- David French asks and tries to explain why Christians are so cruel;
- David Brooks writes about his experience of faith;
- And Kurt Gray about misunderstanding human nature.
Of course I’m sure they would deny this. Passing the truth along to other people, even imposing it on them, isn’t cruel, it’s kind, to their way of thinking. This is what all the missionaries thought, and still think.
NY Times, Opinion by David French, 22 Dec 2024: Why Are So Many Christians So Cruel?
Here’s a question I hear everywhere I go, including from fellow Christians: Why are so many Christians so cruel?
I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve heard someone say something like: I’ve experienced blowback in the secular world, but nothing prepared me for church hate. Christian believers can be especially angry and even sometimes vicious.
It’s a simple question with a complicated answer, but that answer often begins with a particularly seductive temptation, one common to people of all faiths: that the faithful, those who possess eternal truth, are entitled to rule. Under this construct, might makes right, and right deserves might.
Which is sorta what I said above, going in.
It begins with the idea that if you believe your ideas are just and right, then it’s a problem for everyone if you’re not in charge.
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The practical objections to this mind-set are legion. How can we be so certain of our own righteousness? Even if we are right or have a superior vision of justice compared with our opponents, the quest for power can override the quest for justice.The historical examples are too numerous to list. Give a man a sword and tell him he’s defending the cross, and there’s no end to the damage he can do.
And then French, who is devout himself, goes on discussing Jesus and what he said according to the Bible. As I’ve long noted, most Christians behave quite differently than how Jesus advised them to behave. After reflecting on Christmas, French concludes,
It’s remarkable how often ambition becomes cruelty. In our self-delusion, we persuade ourselves that we’re not just right but that we’re so clearly right that opposition has to be rooted in arrogance and evil. We lash out. We seek to silence and destroy our enemies.
But it is all for the public good. So we sleep well at night. We become one of the most dangerous kinds of people — a cruel person with a clean conscience.
The way of Christ, by contrast, forecloses cruelty. It requires compassion. It inverts our moral compass, or at least it should. We love rags-to-riches stories, for example, so if many of us were writing Christ’s story, we might begin with a manger, but we’d end with a throne.
But Christ’s life began in a manger, and it ended on a cross. He warned his followers that a cross could come for them as well. An upside-down kingdom began with an upside-down birth. When Jesus himself is humble, how do we justify our pride?
Yes yes. This strikes me another example of the endless tortured reasoning the faithful engage in to justify their faith no matter based it is on sand, and no matter what the modern-day consequences.
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For another example, the lead piece in today’s NY Times Opinion section is this.
NY Times, Opinion by David Brooks, 19 Dec 2024: The Shock of Faith: It’s Nothing Like I Thought It Would Be
I tried reading this, then skimmed. Here’s the gist, near the beginning:
When faith finally tiptoed into my life it didn’t come through information or persuasion but, at least at first, through numinous experiences. These are the scattered moments of awe and wonder that wash over most of us unexpectedly from time to time. Looking back over the decades, I remember rare transcendent moments at the foot of a mountain in New England at dawn, at Chartres Cathedral in France, looking at images of the distant universe or of a baby in the womb. In those moments, you have a sense that you are in the presence of something overwhelming, mysterious. Time is suspended or at least blurs. One is enveloped by an enormous bliss.
That is, this is nothing about understanding reality, this is all about random emotional moments and the openness of human psychology to narrative, and how these random moments must *mean* something. The experience of the universe must *mean* something in human terms.
Brooks’ piece goes on and on.
In complete contrast, of course, is the approach to life by philosophers and scientists and adults (per yesterday’s post) who have come to understand that the universe works in ways different from human ideas of “meaning.” They do not possess the self-righteousness that the religious do; they are not so sure of things; they are endlessly open to new experiences and to changing their minds. They do not pass laws imposing their views on others. And they do not launch religious wars.
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Another NYT opinion piece today.
NY Times, Kurt Gray, 22 Dec 2024: We’ve Misunderstood Human Nature for 100 Years
I think the takeaway here is the presumption of the writer’s “we.” Here’s the thing about a lot of coverage in the mass media about scientific topics: they present isolated topics without any context. This essay — granted, it’s adapted from the writer’s forthcoming book, which perhaps provides more context — focuses on:
One day in the summer of 1924, an anthropologist named Raymond Dart made an incredible discovery — and drew a conclusion from it about human nature that would mislead us for a century.
Dart was examining a set of fossils that had been unearthed by miners near the town of Taung in South Africa when he found the skull of a “missing link” between ancient apes and humans. It belonged to a juvenile member of the species Australopithecus africanus who was later nicknamed the Taung Child.
The skull conclusively demonstrated that Africa was the birthplace of humankind. It also seemed to reveal something sinister about human nature: There was a series of grooves etched in the bone, which Dart believed could be produced only by human-made tools. These marks convinced him that this young hominid had been butchered and eaten by another member of its tribe (perhaps a hungry uncle).
Our ancestors, Dart concluded, were cannibalistic killers. He argued that Australopithecus africanus represented a “predatory transition” in which our ancestors evolved from eating plants and fruits to devouring meat — and one another.
And how this became scientific consensus, as reflected in LORD OF THE FLIES and even 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY.
There is a glaring problem, however, with the widespread assumption that humans are predators by nature: It’s wrong.
Or at least incomplete; after all, it was based on a single study. In some context, yes perhaps some people still think humans are basically ruthless killers. But the study of human psychology has evolved to encompass so much more. Whereas once the invention of tools was regarded as the key point in humanity’s evolution (thus the opening of 2001), recent thinkers have identified the idea of cooperation in large groups as being key. That led to tribalism, which served its function for hundreds of thousands, even millions, of years, but which is now undercutting our species’ ability to cooperate on a global, or even national, level.
“We’ve understood” is wrong. Lots of modern writers and thinkers have already thought this issue through more deeply. (Update: actually it could be merely the headline writer’s error. Writers don’t usually write their own headlines.)
