Religious World Thhrough an Athesitic Prism

I’ve just finished reading Christopher Hitchens’ god is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. His thesis is two-fold—religion is the work of man, not of divine origin (and it’s used to exploit the fearful) and, as the subtitle suggests, it has no redeeming value; in fact it’s poison. Nu? So what do I think? The first part of the thesis is obviously true on the face of things. Of course religion is the work of man (which should not be read as a denial of the existence of God). People have known this since time immemorial or at least since the Greeks began to think about things. Xenophanes of Colophon (570-480 BCE) noticed that the gods of the “Ethiopians are black and snub-nosed, those of the Thracians have blue eyes and red hair.” The second part of the thesis is more problematic. “Everything” includes a lot of things. Can religion really poison them all? Well, Pope Alexander VI is a well known example of someone who did, in fact, use poison, but Hitchens doesn’t even bother to mention him, though he does include in his rogues’ gallery of examples such icons as Mother Teresa and Mohandas Gandhi.

What are we, the religious people of the world, to make of this? The simple answer is to point out all the errors of fact that mar Hitchens’ work. At some point I started to take account. My dozen examples may be his only gaffs, or the tip of the iceberg; in any event his credibility is undermined. (Examples: William Jennings Bryan was three times—not twice the Democratic candidate for president; scholars believe Jesus was born in 4 BCE, not 4 CE.) We could point to the ethics religions (whether man-made or divine in origin) provide to help guide lives honestly and productively. But he has an answer to that, two in fact. One is the obvious rejoinder that you don’t need religion to have ethics. Atheists and agnostics are potentially as ethical as religious people (and have never burned the religious at the stake). They believe in a natural law perhaps, not a revealed one. And secondly, he asks, are religious people all that ethical? Some are, but remember Alexander VI, and the recent Catholic priests’ sexual abuse scandal, and the Orthodox rabbi who cheated old people in his nursing home. Need I go on?

David Klinghoffer in his valedictory column in the Forward defends religion, Judaism specifically. (I really hate to see him go; Noam Neusner, like his famous father, a former Providentian, is the new conservative voice on the op-ed page, but I’d gotten used to Klinghoffer. Who else could be so wrong so often? Young Mr. Neusner has big shoes to fill.) In this final column Klinghoffer manages to equate liberalism with Hitlerism, a form of journalistic legerdemain unmatched since Goebbles defended Germany’s invasion of Yugoslavia with his famous three lie sentence: “Peace loving Germany was viciously attacked by war mongering Yugoslavia.” To Klinghoffer, while Hitler didn’t believe humans could overcome their nature, real Jews do, but Libels don’t, so liberals are like Hitler. I’m really sorry to see him go. Doesn’t he know that liberals are really Commie Pinkos who are secretly trying to undermine the country? Every Rush Limbaugh Conservative knows that. Klinghoffer argues that liberals believe in gay marriage and handing out condoms in schools since gays and students are simply acting according to their nature and their hormones. Ah, but the Jewish sages have for a thousand years taught that to overcome our nature is why God put us on earth. To this Hitchens would ask: The Great Intelligent Designer gave us hormones and instincts only so that we could suppress them? I add—And give untold business to Freud and his?

In a recent New York Times op-ed piece Edward Luttwak discusses apostasy as viewed by Islam. Those who think that as the son of an African Muslim Obama will be in a better position to negotiate with Muslims are sadly mistaken. Because his father was a Muslim, Islam considers him to be a Muslim despite his father’s having renounced the religion, and despite his own conscious decision to become a Christian. The punishment for this backsliding is beheading by a cleric. It’s worse than murder as the victim’s family can forgive the murderer, but God and Islam can never forgive the apostate. Hitchens would ask where, exactly, in this scenario is the benefit of religion to society? I wonder myself.

Nightmare Scenarios

My recurring nightmare first hit in Junior High School. The dream is always different, yet in theme always the same. I’m wherever I am and suddenly I remember that I hadn’t submitted a required term paper in Spanish class (that was the first, so I give it as exemplar of all). If a benevolent deity were observing he’d wake me then and there; but no such luck. On and on I dream of flunking out of Junior High; the fear becomes angst, the angst, blooms into panic until, finally, gasping for breath, sweat covering my body I awake with a start. But even then the terror has not subsided because I can’t immediately ascertain if the task not done was a dream, or not. Gradually, reality takes hold and I remember that there were no Spanish term papers in the 8th grade. But still the heart palpitates, still the light of day is slow to comfort, still the vice around my head is not fully loosened, until it is.

I tell you that because a variant of it happened again, recently. On Saturday last I napped. But my reverie was suddenly interrupted by the dream of the undone assignment. I had a column to write for the Voce & Herald and unlike Spanish term papers, this was real. I awoke with a start but without an idea. What to write, what to write, what? The Forward had arrived while I slept. It’s usually good fodder for ideas, but not that issue. But then, grasping for straws, I knew there was one ace in the whole as yet unexplored. David Klinghoffer. He doesn’t always appear and so my immediate prayer was, “Let there be Klinghoffer,” and I was rewarded with … Klinghoffer! His essay was on Huckabee and evolution, but, to be honest, I didn’t follow the thread of it, and so I despaired. But then I read the description of the author: “David Klinghoffer, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, is the author of the forthcoming ‘How would God Vote? Why the Bible Commands You to Be a Conservative’ (Doubleday).” So maybe there is a compassionate deity who hath delivered a column into my hands, after all.

Now, one of the first things you learn in PhD school is “Never discuss something you’ve not read.” Normally this makes excellent sense, but as Doubleday has not yet spewed forth this tome, may I be excused if I disobey, just this once? Done! I grant myself the dispensation.

Let’s start with basics: What’s the difference between a conservative and a liberal? The former thinks society is pretty much the way it should be. The latter realizes that things could be much better. I’m thinking that a compassionate deity would not expect readers of Tanakh to support policies that make the rich richer, the poor poorer, the nation engaged in unnecessary wars of opportunity.

According to a recent column by Bob Herbert in the Times, Wall Street fat cats are collecting $38 billion in seasonal bonuses this year. My guess is that they read Klinghoffer and vote for Bush. On the other hand, only 16% of workers think their children will be better off than they are. And Tanakh says about this? “And you shall not glean your vineyard…; you shall leave them for the poor and stranger.” This is one of six references in Leviticus which suggests that rapacious employers should leave at least something for the tired, the poor, the homeless, the people liberals are concerned to protect. I don’t know how Klinghoffer will address this issue.

Labor is protected in Tanakh, not to be exploited as modern conservative are wont to, justifying it with market-driven theories. Every Yom Kippur Isaiah asks: “Is not this the fast that I have chosen… to share your bread with the hungry, and that you bring the poor that are cast out to your house; when you see the naked, that you cover him…?” Liberals seek to provide for the needy; Bush conservatives cut taxes and when a hurricane struck New Orleans the poor (and the poor always suffer most in a natural disaster) found that there was neither money nor interest in helping them recover. Is that what Tanakh teaches? I’ll have to wait until Klinghoffer’s tome enlightens.

I began by discussing nightmares, but the real nightmare of course, would not be a column unwritten, but four more years of compassionate conservatism with faith-based initiatives and tax breaks for the wealthiest.

A pagan and an atheist on religion re: Klinghoffer

Those of you who know me know the depths of my piety. So rigorous is my observance of the laws of Judaism that I constantly search for a six-hundred-fourteenth commandment to obey. Until recently, no luck. So it might come as a surprise that four times a year, around my oval table, I entertain two old friends, Paulie (“Poopidingus”) Pearlman, and Artie (“the Dodger”) Alston. Poopidingus is a practicing pagan; Artie, a devout atheist. This despite the fact that both were born to Jewish mothers; I attended their bar mitzvahs.

Over the years we've worked out a pattern. I say kiddish over the wine, Paulie the motzi, and Artie leads birkat. In unison, looking at our respective wives we stutter along through the interminable list of their virtues cited alphabetically in the Eishet Chayil. Why a pagan and an atheist would engage in these Jewish rituals I'm not sure. I, for instance don't sacrifice goats in Poopidingus's backyard. Just to make things kosher in their eyes we end the evening by singing the “Internationale,” for Artie, and “Diana” for Paulie (“I'm so young and you're so old/This, my darling I've been told/I don't care just what they say/'Cause forever I will pray/You and I will be as free/As the birds up in the trees/Oh, please, stay by me, Diana”) which is the closest to a pagan hymn he can find in English.

But this time Paulie arrived madder than Zeus with a toothache. “Did you see Klinghoffer in the April 20th Forward?” As we hadn't, he pulled out his copy and showed it to us. “It's titled 'Defend your Faith when it's Blasphemed.' My goddess (remind me to hit you up for another chai—we're having a building campaign to reconstruct Temple Beth Artemis which burned down a few years ago). Remember the Danish cartoon riots? It's headlines like Klinghoffer's that are the feces that launched a thousand Shiites.

“What is his problem?” he continued, his agitation mounting. “I don't get upset when people deny the existence of Zeus or Hera; Klinghoffer's the atheist to Christians who believe in the divinity of Jesus and the Holy Trinity. He's mad because Richard Dawkins says that the God of the Hebrew bible is 'arguably the most unpleasant character in fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully' doesn't make it true. But Klinghoffer's outrage doesn't make it false, either.” He was just getting warmed up. “I was at a couple of friends' daughter's bat mitzvahs recently and read of the death of Aaron's sons and of the death of the poor chap who was trying to prevent your holy arc from falling to the ground and smashing to smithereens. You do seem to have an arbitrary god there. Homer, at least, gives us the occasional reason for the displeasure of the gods. Your god just kills somebody and then, apparently, demands silence as a response. Some god!”

Artie chimed in. “Have you guys seen reviews of Hitchens's 'God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything'? I can't wait to read Klinghoffer on that.” Skimming the article, he continued: “I see here that he also objects to universities teaching that Tanach is just a collection of stories stitched together, and that the Zohar is not a second century book of mysticism but a 13th century hoax! Can you imagine? A religious hoax? Gershom Scholem, the great scholar of Jewish mysticism, whom he slams, once defended his academic endeavors by saying the “Nonsense is nonsense, but the study of nonsense is scholarship!” I've always loved that line. That the sun revolves around the earth, that'll be Klinghoffer's next claim.”

Sadly, we lamented the decline of the Age of the Enlightenment. It had a good run while it lasted, but the fundamentalists are back in force—Muslims in their madrass schools, Christians at Liberty University, and Klinghoffer at the Forward. “Religion's all made up by man,” said Poopidingus; “still, it's an occasionally amusing story, if you don't take it seriously,” chimed in Artie. Sighing, Paulie in his “Zeus Lives!” tee-shirt, Artie sporting his “Vote Atheist” button, peered deeply into the depths of their Manischewitz Concord Grape wine and wondered where humanity had gone wrong. I, on the other had, had discovered my six-hundred-fourteenth mitzvah! To comfort rationalists as the darkness descends.

Response to David Klinghoffer on the religious right

Every once in a while I hear the ground rumble. Usually it’s my mother turning over in her grave as I commit one faux pas or another. It’s nice to know that she’s keeping an eye on me. But when it happened a couple of weeks ago, I checked and no, it wasn’t her this time, it was old Abraham Cahan.

Cahan (1860-1951) established the Jewish Forward in 1897. His paper espoused socialist principles. The rights of the workingman, the release from the superstitions of the religious, were his rallying cries. The newspaper was also a way to Americanize his readers. Yes, it was written in Yiddish, but the goal was to turn the children and grandchildren of immigrants into the American doctors, lawyers, dentists, teachers, union activists that they became. “It is as important to teach the reader to carry a handkerchief in his pocket as it is to teach him to carry a union card,” he famously wrote.

So what made him turn over in his grave? Probably the piece by David Klinghoffer who began his August 18th column in the “Forward” with “Some members of America’s political and cultural elite…” This is code wording for liberals, we élitists not in touch with the common man; it’s a word “compassionate conservatives” (as opposed to the usual kind, I suppose) use to slur liberals who, as far as I can tell, are the people who speak for the underclasses in America—the poor, the worker, the black, the immigrant.

OK, so what are we élitists doing today, according to Klinghoffer? We are confusing the political philosophy of Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and America’s religious conservatives. Who knew? And we are wrong to think of Bush, Jr. etc. as attempting to impose an Iranian style theocracy on America. As a former colleague of his at the “National Review” argues, disingenuously, “even the most ambitious members of the so-called Christian right wish to do nothing more radical than return the United States to the status quo of the 1950s” and that was certainly not a theocracy.

Ah, the 1950s, I remember them well. Bible-thumping ministers denouncing integration, voting for the likes of Orville Faubus, Ross Barnett, and George “segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever” Wallace. It was a quieter, gentler time when Mrs. Hollman, my fourth grade teacher, would start our day at PS193 by reading form the from Psalms, but other teachers across the country began their classes with the Lord’s Prayer. The words “Under God” were added to the Pledge of Allegiance, though the pledge’s author, Francis Bellamy, a Baptist minister, had deliberately omitted them. But even in the 1950s I don’t remember anyone teaching creationism in school or even the deceptively re-coined version of it “intelligent design.” That throwback to the 1920s had to wait until our own enlightened time, foisted upon us by the Christian right, if they can get away with it. I don’t remember in the 1950s arguments that religious symbols such as the Ten Commandments, should be emblazoned on public property, but I do remember that come Christmas we Jewish students of PS 193 learned to sing “Silent Night, Holy Night” as well as “Jingle Bells.” I loved being excluded from the rest of America, didn’t you?

Klinghoffer argues that we élitists miss the point that some of biblical law is essentially natural law—thou shall not murder, thou shall not steal, etc. Fine, so we don’t need religion to teach it. The Ten Commandments begins, “I am the Lord Your God…” how in conformity with the first amendment’s separation of church and state is that, festooned behind the judge? And what kind of God does it mean? The unitary God of Jews and Muslims? The Trinity of Christianity? The Divine Spirit of Reason preached by natural law philosophers such as Cicero? These are the kind of questions people kill each other over, each certain that he has the correct answer and that the others are infidels (or, to cite Klinghoffer in another context, “pagans.” A blurb for a forthcoming book reads: “Addressing such timely topics as the controversy over public displays of the Commandments and the battles over Intelligent Design, Klinghoffer demonstrates that Christians and Jews are united in their opposition to the pagan aspects of our culture.”) Oh, Zeus, why do you not strike such people with your thunderbolt? That’s the trouble with Zeus. He’s never around when we need him.

No wonder poor Abe Cahan is rolling over in his grave.