Is belief a virtue?
So last night I’m watching CNN. They were running a story on the Republican primary in South Carolina and the importance of conservative evangelicals in the race. Apparently South Carolina has the highest concentration of conservative evangelicals in the country. Also, apparently, since 1980 no Republican candidate has won the nomination without winning South Carolina. So, winning over the evangelical vote in South Carolina is an absolute must for the Republican candidates. (Not coincidentally, this plays into Thomas Schaller’s thesis that we should run against South Carolina conservatives just as R’s have demonized supposedly liberal Massachussetts.)
The CNN story interviewed a number of evangelicals, including a vignette at a conservative church where the worshippers held their personal bibles aloft and recited one of the most disturbing creeds I’ve ever heard: This is my bible, I know it is the word of god, I’m a believer not a doubter.”
The entire emphasis on belief, on believing as a primary virtue, within the conservative Christian subculture in the US is disturbing. Why is belief raised as a virtue?
I once read a book called something like The Lies of the Bible - it was a lengthy book detailing a variety of errors in the bible - scientific errors, factual errors, and internal contradictions within the Bible. To believe the bible is some sort of factual guide to history is seriously flawed. Consider, as an example, the total lack of any reference to the exodus in Egyptian records; if millions of people, as recounted in the bible, suddenly left, the Egyptian economy should have collapsed. Instead, Egyptian records continue blithely throughout the supposed period of the exodus. There’s no reference to the army being destroyed. No sudden economic dislocations. No reference to the plagues. No reference to widespread deaths caused by the final plague. Nothing. Nada. Zip, zilch. Bupkes. Chances are good the so called exodus was far from the glorious stories of the Bible. (Additionally, there is apparently no evidence in the Sinai of the wanderings of the Jews. If millions of people had wandered for four decades there would have been traces left; there are none.)
So, from the standpoint of factual accuracy, the Bible is not a reliable source. But, within the Christian subculture, believing the bible is factually unassailable has been raised to a primary if not the primary virtue. (Remember the youtube debate where the man held up his Bible and asked “Do you believe this book?”)
In a parallel way, a great many, mostly conserative Christians seem deeply threatened by public expressions of disbelief and doubt. Calls to boycott films like The Golden Compass because the book was written by an atheist and doesn’t abase itself at the feet of conservative theology are all about fear of doubt and disbelief. Conservative Christians criticized the powerful scene in The Bridge to Terabithia in which the main characters talk about church and belief. The heroine sums up, saying, “You think you have to believe in it and it makes you miserable. I don’t have to believe in it and I think it’s beautiful.” They don’t praise that rather profound insight, instead they criticize the fact that the book and movie dare suggest that people don’t have to believe in God. Regular calls for censorship of public school courses and library books arise from the fact that public schools expose students to a wide variety of ideas - including atheism.
Public expressions of disbelief can be counted on to receive an increasingly vitriolic, angry and irrational flood of responses from conservative believers. Richard Dawkins recounts the blisteringly ignorant, hateful and bigoted mail such prominent unbelievers, ie Albert Einstein, receive from Americans. All of which raises the inevitable responses - If you’re so confident in your faith and what you believe, why do you care if I raise doubts about it? Why do you care if I don’t believe? If you’re faith is so weak, simply hearing my public expression of disbelief will shake your faith, it seems the problem is your faith not my disbelief in it.
Which brings me to my original question: Is belief a virtue? Is it actually a virtue to be able to believe in something that defies rational belief? Reading conservative Christian critiques of evolution, its impossible to avoid the sense that the authors believe it is a virtue to reject the simple rational conclusions of evolution. I think it’s more than anti-intellectualism (though there’s no shortage of that trait in fundagelical circles). In a recent post, I discussed a daft LTE that suggested our national problems were caused by atheists not praying for the president. Conservative theology sees the lack of belief in a particular version of God as a source of problems because God punishes people, communities and nations for unbelief. In this sytem of faith, belief becomes an invisible defense against all things bad - believing placates God who rewards the believer for believing. “Jesus Christ” becomes an abracadabra invocation that chases the forces evil away. All other systems of belief are attributed to a vast Satanic influence. The threat of public discussions of atheism, rationalism and doubt is not the content but the fear that people will stop believing and then God will punish us individually and collectively. Rationalism, doubt, evolution, anything that calls into question the biblical version of history must be rejected to prove one believes in God - a belief that will be rewarded. Its a system of thinking that holds up irrational belief as more important than rational doubt. It rejects intellectualism, art, literature, movies, music anything that doesn’t explicitly support faith as inspired by Satan.
FWIW, I think I the inverse of Pascal’s wager makes sense. Pascal suggested that the cost of not believing was so high (going to Hell for all eternity) if God really existed, and the cost of believing if god didn’t exist (nothing) that believing was a good bet. I think that if God is real and is the forgiving Christian God, then God will forgive you for not believing; but if God is real and isn’t the Christian God, is say Baal or Thor or Zeus, then it won’t matter if you believed in the Christian God so a bit of rational doubt and unbelieve is no real risk.
January 19th, 2008 at 2:53 pm
Faith or belief reinforced by experience and knowledge is a very good and comforting thing. I have faith the sun is going to come up every morning and that as a human, my chances for survival and happiness are unbelievably good by simply using reason, experience and knowledge as a guide.
America is not using reason as a guide today. I believe we are in trouble unless we get leaders who stop using the bible to get elected. Every single candidate is being something I guess you could call biblically correct. The networks shouldn’t even be asking questions about their religious beliefs in a political race, because it’s, um, lets see…
Oh yeah! Against the Constitution!
But ALL of them are, anyway!
Bully!
Remember when Michael Newdow tried to get the words “under God” removed from the Pledge of allegiance and every congressman was on the steps of the capitol singing “God Bless America.” I loved Bill Maher’s reaction on his “Politically Incorrect” series. He said something like, ‘get the (bleep) back to your offices and do your (bleep) job!’
AMEN Bill!
January 19th, 2008 at 3:03 pm
Larry, I remember the outrage over any suggestion that we remove “under God” from the pledge. It was hysteria. It’s as if people actually don’t know that the words were added in the 50s. I for one would like to see us remove all the religious references from our public buildings, currency, and oaths. There was a time that the post office delivered mail on Sundays because to do otherwise would have been seen as establishing a religion. I would also like to see a whole lot fewer references to faith from our politicians.
January 19th, 2008 at 3:13 pm
If nothing else, Mr. Newdow let some of us know that the addition to the pledge was in the 50’s as a result of McCarthism.
The amazing thing is that the very next word in the Pledge is “indivisible.” By putting the words “under God” in there, you divide people.
January 19th, 2008 at 5:40 pm
Then, ‘Liberty and Justice FOR ALL’. Those are the only words in the whole thing that enable me to even stand at cub-sout meetings and recite.
January 19th, 2008 at 5:58 pm
I don’t like it when the godly sock-puppet shakes my faith.
January 20th, 2008 at 1:21 am
In 2000, Senator John McCain was a great skeptic and lost the South Carolina primary. Now he believes in stuff that defies rational thought, such as the Iraq “surge” and supply-side economics. Wins South Carolina primary. The power of belief is real.
January 20th, 2008 at 6:01 am
It’s reverse-projection and a straight-jacket you put yourself in, only to find out that it’s others still more powerful and not necessarily ‘believers’ in the same sense you are, cinching the straps. A very dangerous situation.
January 20th, 2008 at 2:20 pm
Holy cow! They played a clip of McCain on “Meet The Press” just after the 2000 race actually saying he lost South Carolina because he refused to lie. This time he’s the straight lie express!
I really hate politics, sometimes!
January 21st, 2008 at 9:00 am
I agree this is a dangerous situation. The eternal quest for ideological purity becomes a vicious cycle. You see it among Republicans these days, saying that they need a “real” conservative rather than George W. Bush - the argument essentially says that we need ideological purity and the problems will be solved - it’s disconnected from the real world.
January 21st, 2008 at 9:02 am
Larry, McCain scares me. I just don’t see him as a principled person - he may once have bee principled but the mauling the Bush machine gave him back in 2000 was a transformative experience. He seems to have realized that to get ahead he had to abandon his principles and do and say what the Republican base demanded, even if those demands were completely contradictory. The base demands obedience, not logic or honesty.
January 21st, 2008 at 9:30 am
Glendon, McCain has principles, alright, it was his principles that had him bombing the Vietnamese back in the day. It’s hard to imagine that the republicans can’t come up with better cantidates. Must be something to do with the dumbing down of America
January 21st, 2008 at 10:37 am
It’s not just a dumbing down, it’s the inability to tell truth from fiction. Then again, we never really put Bush in office anyway. We’re not as stupid as we seem. Lots of elections have been jiggered in, at least, the last few years to make us look like we’re stupid enough to be electing crooks because we think they have family values. I’m not saying I have any proof that’s been done in Utah, but we absolutely have one of the, if not THE least transparent systems in the nation. It has been set up that way on purpose. The people who set it up that way will tell you the people who want to change it are the ones cultivating distrust in the process.
Call me crazy, but I say TRANSPARENCY EQUALS TRUST, or as the great and honorable, (wretch), Ronald Reagan once said “trust, but verify”
Some people are planning a screening of the film, “Uncounted” here. I’ll keep you informed.
When it comes to elections, belief is definitely NOT a virtue!