Index

Faith is Insane, Literally

If your faith is so important, why does it make no sense?

David French in his opinion in the New York Times (March 29, 2023 on the web, paywall alert) tries to make an argument that faith is needed and begs for us to respect it, or at least his version. Unfortunately, he doesn’t move the meter one iota for those of us living in a rational space. To quote from his begging:

It is a terrible sign of our polarized times that the very concept of prayer in the midst of tragedy has itself become contentious. “Spare us your prayers,” some will say. “We demand action.” But what if people need prayer? What if grieving neighbors are desperate for prayer?

The first question is obviously what are they really desperate for? Prayer does nothing. Mr. French even admits as much:

In an increasingly secular culture, there is often a misunderstanding of the true purpose of prayer. If you don’t believe in God, it may strike you as silly, something beneficial only to the extent that it provides a placebo effect. At its worst it can seem like a cheap and easy way to respond to a terrible, preventable tragedy. Prayer, in this formulation, is a substitute for action. It’s a way that a guilty culture can feel good about itself even as it does nothing — nothing but watch children die. Again.

He hits the nail on the head, and knows it. “Thoughts and prayers” is exactly what he calls it - a substitute for action, intentionally and malice aforethought, from those who have no intention of doing anything to help the situation. All indications are that those deepest in the NRA and gun manufacturers’ pockets might even get a bonus when these things happen, because it helps the gun sellers sell more.

The real problem that creates the desperation is, of course, impossible to solve, so religion doesn’t do any real damage. For those who care about others, the pain of the shootings is intense and inescapable. While “prayer” is supposed to help deal with this in some arcane way, it doesn’t do anything but help them pretend. The best you can call it is a placebo, as Mr. French does. Having a scapegoat that doesn’t really exist is no big deal, just a symptom of a child’s overactive imagination.

He then goes on to make some obviously incorrect claims:

For the faithful believer, prayer isn’t a substitute for action, it’s a prerequisite for action. It grounds us before we move to serve others. It grounds us before we speak in the public square.

Where are all three of those “faithful believers?” The best I have seen is a few people holding signs and walking in circles. We know for a fact that protesting has zero effect on the GQP monsters that are the ones preventing real action on guns. The protests have had zero effect on the abortion debate. They have had no effect on the book banning debate. They have less-than-zero effect on the hospital closings that the GQP causes. The monsters could not care less what the “little people” want - they love “owning the libs” and get off on the pain they cause. If they didn’t enjoy the misery, they wouldn’t create so much of it. Adam Serwer said it best in the Atlantic: The Cruelty is the point.

One of the real problems with “faith” is that it is based on hallucinations and fairy tales. No cult has anything like evidence to support its beliefs - like all of the other conspiracy theories, the lack of evidence just spurs “the faithful” on to further (ir)rationalizations. The mind control tricks the Catholic church has used - mass guilt and sin - are pure, straight schizophrenia.

The “sin” concept is hilarious. Giving someone neurotic guilt trips over normal human behavior is patently ridiculous. It is bad enough when we have to face the consequences of doing things that hurt others, but calling normal sexual behavior - the thing that keeps the human race in existence - a sin is (pardon the pun) fucking ridiculous, I’ll not even try to go down the rest of the list - I will be falling out of my chair laughing. Maybe they aren’t good, but not the stuff of “evil.”

Mass guilt - “Jesus died for your sins” - is also humorous (at best). It is only worthy of a bad acid trip, so how can any one take it seriously? Something about time flowing in only one direction kinda ruins it, given the couple of thousand years between then and now, even if the mythical events really happened.

The people who try to preach this at me do nothing but make me want to reach for a Narcan to bring them back to reality. They operate in a complete reality vacuum, and what they preach is silly in the extreme. For instance, the so-called “bible” is (by definition) almost entirely fairy tales, and what isn’t blatantly fairy tales is based on the fairy tale myths. Any attempt to justify anything based on it is precisely the same as justifying things based on Santa Claus or the Easter bunny. At least the Norse mythologies had better stories, as the comic book and movie businesses have proven. Trump had the right idea - hold up the book and watch the idiots bow down.

To top it all off, the same illogic that makes up religion is also the basis for QAnon and the rest of the totally batshit-crazy conspiracy believers. The reality vacuum is incredible - “lack of evidence to the contrary” does not prove anything, especially when they aren’t looking. Reality is exactly what none of them want - it would destroy their mystical and mythical soap bubbles. What few even-vaguely-scientific babblings I saw to support the various “christian” mythos also supported an infinity of other things, most of which were far more believable. The QAnon sorts don’t even bother with that much - they know better. Whether christianity or QAnon, the whole stupid mess is nothing but a huge con game, with the “believers” as the suckers.

I love reading Mr. French and the rest of the New York Times, mostly, but this is ridiculous. I am reminded of something a fellow humanist said: “Don’t pray in my school and I won’t think in your church.” When the newspaper reports on reality it is great, but this was too far away from reality to let go without at least a rebuttal.