State of Protest

Most Mormons participate in a Temple Endowment Ceremony, which they hold to be very sacred. At the time Joseph Smith introduced this endowment ordinance, he was an active Mason. Many scholars have noted the strong resemblance between this ceremony and Masonic ritual.¹

In 1990, the Church changed or omitted many parts of the original script of the endowment ceremony, but until that time its resemblance to the Masonic Initiators Ceremony was striking. Some of the similarities include: ritual anointing of body parts, a drama representing a spiritual journey, bestowal of a secret name, special garments worn including temple robes and aprons, secret handshakes and tokens, promises to fulfill moral obligations, sworn penalty oaths, progression through three degrees toward perfection, and the word exalted to signify becoming kings in connection with the Royal Arch degree. Smith also used many Masonic symbols such as the beehive, the all-seeing eye, the clasped hands, two triangles forming a six-pointed star, and the sun, moon, and stars. The Masonic square and compass are cut into the temple garment on the breast and a slash is made across the knee. There is also a slash in the garment across the abdomen, symbolic of the disemboweling that would be the fate of anyone who reveals the sacred oaths.²

In the early days of the Mormon Church, Freemasonry was considered by the public to be an elite institution. Joseph Smith’s father and brother were both prominent Masons, and many of the other early members of the Mormon Church became Masons as well. Smith wrote: “In the evening I received the first degree in Freemasonry in the Nauvoo Lodge.” The next day he stated: “I was with the Masonic Lodge and rose to the sublime degree.”³ The degree he refers to is Master Mason, the highest degree of Freemasonry. Seven weeks after his Masonic initiation, Smith established his own Temple Endowment Ceremony by performing the ritual himself. Early Mormons were quite open about the connection between the endowment ceremony and Masonry.

In 1827, Capt. William Morgan, who had become disillusioned with Freemasonry, published a book entitled Freemasonry Exposed. In it, he gave a detailed description of Masonic ceremonies, complete with illustrations. Three months later, Morgan was murdered, allegedly by members of his own lodge, provoking an anti-Masonic furor among the public. Tensions remained high over time, and as the Mormons began to gain prominence in Masonry, the public began to relate them as two parts of one cultish secret society. When Smith established his Temple Endowment Ceremony, he and other Mormons were expelled from the Masonic order for violating their oaths. Smith believed that the Masons had corrupted the ceremony by removing and changing parts that were originated by God in Solomon’s time. He believed his own version of the ceremony was divinely inspired and a restoration to the original and pure form of Adam’s time.⁴ Many of the men who later murdered Smith were identified as Masons. Eventually, the Grand Masonic Lodge of Utah publicly announced its anti-Mormon stance, and since that time many attempts have been made both by Mormons and Masons to downplay their relation.⁵

Capt. Morgan played another interesting role in the correlation between Mormonism and Masonry through his widow, Lucinda Pendleton Morgan. Despite vowing eternal widowhood, she married George W. Harris less than three years after her husband’s death, later converting with him to Mormonism. In 1838, while still married to Harris, Lucinda became one of the first plural wives of the prophet Joseph Smith. Mrs. Sarah Pratt, a great friend of Mrs. Harris, after being propositioned by Joseph Smith in 1842, related the following in an interview with W. Wyl: “When Joseph made his dastardly attempt on me, I went to Mrs. Harris to unbosom my grief to her. To my utter astonishment, she said, laughing heartily: “How foolish you are! Why, I am his mistress since four years.’”⁶

In Joseph Smith’s time racism was rampant, and when Joseph established his endowment ceremony he included the conditions that anyone with any known trace of black African ancestry, even if they were a worthy member of the Mormon Church, was not permitted to participate in the ceremony, nor even enter a Mormon temple. They also, as well as women, could not hold any position of leadership. (Women still cannot hold positions of any real authority today.) Joseph Smith taught that African Americans are the descendants of Cain.⁷ Brigham Young said, “Shall I tell you the law of God in regard to the African Race? If the white man who belongs to the chosen seed mixes his blood with the seed of Cain, the penalty, under the law of God, is death on the spot. This will always be so.” He also said “…if the priesthood was ever given to the Blacks, on that very day and hour, if we should do so, the priesthood will be taken from this church.”⁸ Joseph Fielding Smith said, “They are an inferior race, and their intelligence is stunted.” Apostle Bruce McConkie said, “The Negroes were less valiant in the preexistence, and therefore spiritually restricted.”

It wasn’t until 1978 that then President Kimball claimed to have received revelation overturning the Church’s 148-year-old policy against the ordination of Blacks. The Salt Lake Tribune reported that President Kimball refused to discuss this revelation, saying it was a personal thing. Kimball said, “The revelation came at this time because conditions and people have changed. It’s a different world than it was 20 or 25 years ago. The world is ready for it.”

1. Mormon America: The Power and the Promise, Richard Ostling, Joan K. Ostling. Harper Collins, 1999, p. 188 [↩]
2. Masonry & The Mormon Temple Ceremony Chapter XVIX [↩]
3. History of the Church, vol. 4, p. 552 [↩]
4. Mormon America: The Power and the Promise, Richard Ostling, Joan K. Ostling. Harper Collins, 1999, p. 194-5 [↩]
5. The Mormon Church and Freemasonry by Terry Chateau [↩]
6. No Man Knows My History by Fawn Brodie, p. 460. [↩]
7. Joseph Smith History, vol. 4, p. 501 [↩]
8. Brigham Young Addresses, p. 61 [↩]

One of my favorite stories from the Roman era is that of the arrogant and quite unlucky (if you’re not superstitious) Publius Claudius Pulcher, a Roman consul who fought in the First Punic War. Pulcher set out with a fleet of ships to try to surprise the Carthaginian admiral and his fleet at Drepranum. Although Pulcher did gain the advantage of surprise, his inadequate leadership left the fleet trapped in the harbor, and it suffered the worst naval defeat in that war, losing at least 93 ships. The surviving ships ended up shipwrecked, and Pulcher was later tried for incompetence and heavily fined.¹

Historians and naval battle experts could toil for years over what went wrong with what should have been an easy Roman victory. However, there’s no need. We already have all the answers, and, of course, they’re the same answers to all our questions. Which then prompts the question, why do we even bother?

The “real” reason Pulcher was defeated so severely was that prior to the battle, Pulcher consulted with the sacred chickens, and he didn’t like the response. According to Roman tradition, caged sacred chickens were to be examined prior to a battle to determine the will of the gods. If the chickens ate offered feed, the gods favored battle. If they didn’t eat, going into battle would be a pretty bad idea. Pulcher’s chickens did not eat. Pulcher, angered by the sacred chickens, hurled their cages, chickens and all, into the sea, yelling, “If they won’t eat, let them drink!” Pulcher was fined specifically because of his disrespect toward the will of the gods, and the idea that if he had only listened to the chickens, he would not have suffered the loss.

This superstitious attitude did not die out with the Romans. Today, we are constantly bombarded with accusations that certain events would not have occurred were it not for our alleged disobedience of divine command. This is done with varying degree, ranging from allegations that allowing homosexuality to flourish in the United States was the cause of the death and destruction of 9/11,²

to cubicle-mates becoming irate over a co-worker not desiring to say “Bless you” after someone sneezed, lest God punish the sneezer with a cold. Regardless of where the behavior falls upon the scale, it is irrational and illogical to attribute an incident to an alleged cause without linking the alleged cause and effect with more evidence than the mere observation that one happened before the other. That unsupported attribution is the post hoc, ergo propter hoc logical fallacy, often abbreviated as “post hoc.”³

The post hoc fallacy exists when a causal conclusion is based solely on the supposed cause preceding the effect.

Post hoc, in the Pulcher case, is manifest as a superstitious bias toward jumping to a conclusion based on a coincidence. All of this is examined after the fact, with a seemingly righteous 20/20 hindsight perspective. Ah, it’s obvious that Pulcher would have lost the battle because the chickens predicted as much! Or, more succinctly, as a result of the will of the gods being made clearly against battle, Pulcher lost the battle. One caused the other. Of course, even if the gods had favored the battle (or, more specifically, if the chickens ate), Pulcher would probably still have lost (if the conditions otherwise had not changed).

Some common examples of the way this fallacy is used and abused in our media and society:

• Sex education causes promiscuity
• Video games cause children to be violent
• Prayer causes anything (lottery winning, healing, not getting caught running the red light… anything)
• Going to church causes anything good to happen in one’s life
• Missing church causes anything bad to happen in one’s life
• Having a homosexual parent causes a child to become homosexual (even if it’s not a biological child)
• Cursing causes the cursers and the listeners to be violent

There are many such examples. But there are also plenty of examples in which the effect has not yet happened, but, instead, is used as a threat. It certainly seems possible that reinforcement of existing alleged causal connections somehow strengthens the idea that a threatened effect is likely, at least to those who are easily swayed by such an abuse of logic. Examples of these threats are everywhere:

• If you don’t do/believe X, you will burn in hell
• If you don’t pray, you’ll make God sad. You’ll also make believers angry, and you’ll go to hell and burn.
• If you do something I don’t like (somehow supported by my favorite ancient text), God will hate you, I’ll hate you on behalf of God, and you’ll burn in hell
• The list goes on

Even if it’s not all fire and brimstone, any causal connection between an action or belief and a divine being’s judicial effect is unsupported by evidence. It is not only illogical to continue to make that false causal connection, but it is also what many would consider delusional. There is no more reason for someone to say, “I must not eat meat on Friday because it would offend God, as it is written,” than for someone else to say, “I must not step on a sidewalk crack lest it break my mother’s back.” If you did happen as a child to step on a sidewalk crack and then came home to find your mother had indeed fallen from the stairs and broken her back, you would probably have made a post hoc logical fallacy causal connection. It might take you years to grow out of the idea that you caused your mother to break her back by stepping on that crack, and perhaps you would never quite get over it. But it is that very childish superstition that is retained in believers ranging from the most mild to the most extreme — that there’s some supernatural greater being out there who accounts for every thought in every person’s head as it accounts for every grain of sand on every planet in every solar system in every galaxy in every universe in existence. It’s not a question of “Why would God break my mother’s back just because I stepped on a crack?” It’s rather a question of “Why would I, by default, attribute anything coincidental or anything I cannot otherwise quickly and easily explain to a supernatural, divine, or otherwise unnatural origin?”

What’s missing from the equation and from the general attitude of believers is a logical analysis of cause and effect. What needs to be distinguished is necessary versus sufficient condition. It’s logical to state that it is necessary that a cause precedes an effect. However, it’s not logical to state that merely because an event occurred prior to an effect that the event is the cause of the effect. That is because for the event to be a sufficient condition, it must be something that, if true, will result in the effect. If event P is true, then Q effect is true. If P then Q. So, what’s one of the most common logical fallacies used to justify religious faith? The formal logical fallacy called affirming the consequent,⁴ often abbreviated “miracle.” Spelled out in logic terms, looks like this:

If P then Q.
Q.
Therefore, P.

So, for example:

If prayer works (meaning prayer plus the existence of God), then Healing will occur.
Healing occurs.
Therefore, prayer works (and therefore God exists).

Although affirming the consequent is a fallacy, it’s one of the trickier in logic because if the consequent (Q) is actually true, that doesn’t necessarily mean P is not true. Quite often there’s a correlation (such as a coincidental proximity in time, or a consistency in occurrence) which makes it seem logical to assume that if the effect occurs, then it must be because of the purported cause.

Some examples of affirming the consequent:

• If I were a vampire, I would have long nails. I have long nails. Therefore, I am a vampire.
• If prayer works, then a prayed-for affliction would heal. A prayed-for affliction heals. Therefore, prayer works.
• If I mowed the lawn, then the grass will be short. The grass is short. Therefore, I mowed the lawn.
• If God exists, then Jesus could walk on water. Jesus walked on water. Therefore, God exists.
• If God exists, God will represent images of Jesus or Mary on toast. Images of Jesus and Mary have been represented on toast. Therefore, God exists.

These might at first either sound trivial or quite convincing, especially when a concept supported by this invalid type of argument has been infused into culture for thousands of years. However, just because it sounds good, and just because it has tradition backing it does not mean that it is logical. It is important to note that assertions of this invalid argument are rarely made as straightforwardly as noted. Generally, the representation shifts the language. For example, the latter example would likely be stated: “I saw the image of Jesus on a piece of toast! It’s proof that God exists!” It’s the same argument as above, but presented in a way that attempts to be more convincing. “I prayed all night for my child’s fever to dissipate. This morning, the fever dissipated. That’s proof that prayer works.” Same argument, different (potentially intentionally misleading) presentation.

One might argue, correctly, that merely because it’s a fallacy does not negate the truth of the cause being the cause of the effect. Indeed, if a child’s fever dissipates after prayer, the healing could very well have occurred as a result of the praying. However, the argument doesn’t actually prove that. The reason this is a logical fallacy is that one may not use affirming the consequent as a means by which to prove that the purported cause is true merely because the effect is true. The way to prove P is to prove that Q could not have occurred but for P. In other words, one would have to rewrite the equation to read:

If Q, then P.
Q.
Therefore, P.

If there is prayer, there will be healing.
There is prayer.
Therefore, there will be healing.

If I have long nails, then I am a vampire.
I have long nails.
Therefore, I am a vampire.

Although these may look very similar to the logical fallacies above, they are not logical fallacies. This is because they are valid. If the premises are true, then the conclusion must be true. That’s what makes a valid argument.

Compare:

If I were a vampire, I would have long nails.
I have long nails.
to
If I have long nails, I would be a vampire.
I have long nails.

In the first instance, it is easy just to say, so what? According to that premise, plenty of non-vampires could still have long nails, and that wouldn’t make them vampires. However, in the second example, having long nails is a sufficient condition for being a vampire (at least according to the premise). So, if that premise were true, and I have long nails, then, indeed, I would be a vampire. If the first example’s premise were true, and I had long nails, I might or I might not be a vampire. The argument certainly would not confirm. What can be said about the latter argument — If I have long nails, then I am a vampire, I have long nails, therefore, I am a vampire — is that it is unsound. The reason it is unsound is that at least one premise is not true. I have long nails, but I am not a vampire, despite the fact that the premise says that if I have long nails, then I would be a vampire. It’s obviously wrong. Therefore, despite the validity of the argument, it’s not a good argument. A good argument exists when it is valid and the premises are true.

When someone states that healing having occurred after prayer was a result of prayer (and therefore implicitly or explicitly a result of a diving being granting the prayer), that person is manifesting the logical fallacies of post hoc and affirming the consequent, and is also using an unsound argument, because nothing in the argument confirms the veracity of the premise that prayer works or that God exists. We can determine the unsoundness of the valid prayer argument by praying for healing and not having healing occur. It’s unsound because the premise “if there is prayer, there will be healing” means exactly what it says: prayer manifests healing. If it doesn’t, then it’s false.

What generally happens at that stage of discussion is that a believer will state something to the effect of, “Prayer doesn’t work like that.” Or, “You’re not doing it right.” If that’s the case, then the premise must be properly adjusted to reflect how it works or how to do it right. Ultimately, purported miracles are not a good way to try to prove the existence of a very specific deity, for the believer will undoubtedly fall into a post hoc/affirming the consequent trap.

Whenever I encounter someone who leans so heavily on these false arguments as to live life by edicts that would perhaps be validated if the arguments were true, I generally respond, “Prove it.” If the discussion survives the cause/effect analysis above, I’m often given the imperative that I must disprove something — mostly, “Prove that this isn’t a miracle of God!” Then the discussion usually devolves into an argument regarding burden of proof — worthy of its own article on another day. In the meantime, remember Claudius Pulcher and his chickens that were probably just overfed by a disgruntled Roman soldier — don’t fall for the post hoc + affirming the consequent logical fallacy, regardless of which side you choose to represent.

-Procrustes

1. Some greater details of the Pulcher story:
   http://www.barca.fsnet.co.uk/drepana-249bd.htm%5D [↩]
2. Falwell on 9/11:
   “I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say ‘you helped this happen.’”, Falwell apologizes to gays, feminists, lesbians, September 14, 2001, CNN.com,
   http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/09/14/Falwell.apology/

   Called 9/11 “God’s punishment”, Reverend Jerry Falwell Dead at 73, November 26, 2007, NY1 News,
   http://www.ny1.com/ny1/content/index.jsp?stid=1&aid=69715 [↩]

3. More about the post hoc fallacy:
   http://www.fallacyfiles.org/posthocf.html [↩]
4. More about the affirming the consequent fallacy:
   http://www.fallacyfiles.org/afthecon.html [↩]

We live in a post 9/11 world. Pre-9/11, public criticism of another person’s religious beliefs was strictly in the realm of the socially outrageous: provocateurs like George Carlin, Madonna, Sinead O’Connor, and self-proclaimed contrarians like Christopher Hitchens (who deserves his own book review). While the attacks on the US perpetrated by a relatively small group of Islamic fundamentalists were seen by many as a call to defend the US, many prominent thinkers saw it as a continuation of a disturbing pattern. Religious fundamentalists both in the United States and abroad, according to these thinkers, are waging a war on science and rational thought. Not only are they blowing up buildings, but they are also doing less obvious damage, by getting elected to school boards in order to prevent children from learning modern science and history. We cannot afford to stand idly by while those who cling to ancient superstition spread the gospel of willful ignorance and revisionist history, unchecked. Here are three big books in what promises to be a very long-term war of ideas and ideals:

Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon ISBN 0-670-03472 Penguin Group 2006

One of the best arguments against rational activism seems to be the abundance of the irrational around us. How do they thrive in society, when most of them are either too stubborn or clearly incapable of making sense of the universe? What makes people cling to superstition when there are better explanations at hand? Why do people turn to superstition in times of fear, anxiety, or when faced with danger? Why do some religious people spend so much time and energy, and indeed commit acts against their own moral codes in order to protect these beliefs? And why should secular folk not question the so-called moral authority of these ancient traditions?

Daniel Dennett, American Philosopher and Scholar at Tufts University, takes on the notion that religion is “off-limits” for scientific and philosophical scrutiny. Dennett discusses the natural, and yes, evolutionary reasons why human beings invent religions in nearly every culture in existence. The same inquisitive nature that allows man to understand nature also allows us to become overwhelmed with fear. The same essence in mankind that drives us to invent amazing technologies also allows us to invent supernatural explanations for natural phenomena long before we had the tools to discover better understanding. The same emotions that lead us to create sophisticated social networks also give us abundant reason to hope for connection with our loved ones after death.

From this revolutionary bit of poking at the sacred cow, Richard Dawkins goes one step further, to cow-tipping. Not satisfied with questioning the public ban on questioning the religious, he goes further, and calls them, well… nuts.

The God Delusion (2006) ISBN 0-618-68000-4

Richard Dawkins is an Evolutionary Biologist, Ethologist and the Chair for the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford. He is also really tired of creationists inventing and repeating bad science like one of those inane chain e-mails you get from your well-intentioned neighbor about how Bill Gates is going to give you lots of money for forwarding an email to your friends and family. You know, the ones you disprove in three seconds of Google searching? Well, for rational activists who are not also evolutionary biologists, Richard Dawkins is Snopes.com, a one-man army, willing to dismiss the so-called arguments of creationists wherever he goes (and he goes just about everywhere) spreading the good news of science. Not only does he say we should question the superstitious, but that we all have a duty to point out the naked state of the Emperor.

Religion, he says, will destroy your mind and shrink your brain. Calling an argument with a creationist a debate is an insult to actual rational debate. Dawkins, as a quick trip to Youtube will show, is not afraid to exchange one-line demolitions of twisted creationist logic. That is all the oxygen that he is generally willing to spend in exchange with such people (with exceptions). However, the subject of this type of person is an entirely different story. In The God Delusion, Dawkins takes on the stereotype of the pessimistic, suicidal atheist. In fact, he argues, happiness in atheism is superior to happiness under a cloud of delusion, because those who reject superstition have independent thought and healthy attitudes. Dawkins also questions the common idea that it’s a good thing to give children religious training for the sake of ethics and morals. What’s so moral about lying to children? He points out. Religious education is indoctrination into a cult, and should be regarded as child abuse.

From cow-tipping to planning the barbecue, we come once again to Sam Harris, this time for the book that sparked the controversy that lead to one of the last books reviewed here, Letter to a Christian Nation. This book, of course, is The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason (2004) ISBN 0-393-03515-8. This book predates the other two in this series by a couple of years, but it is arguably the boldest of the three. Dennett invites people to question where they used to demure or defer. Dawkins, himself a brilliant scientist, is clearly annoyed at having to defend some of the most brilliant work of modern science from those who benefit from the fruits of and yet denounce it at every turn, as one can see from witnessing creationist youtube vloggers. Harris pulls no punches at all. He opens his call for the end of religion with a day in the life of a suicide bomber. He holds up this mirror to all religious fundamentalists, announcing- this is the natural extension of your beliefs. The Spanish Inquisition, Nazis, Suicide bombers and flying planes into buildings, these are the natural extensions of those who have the courage of their conventions.

Not only does Harris criticize the religious, but also anyone (including non-religious intellectuals such as Noam Chomsky) who fails to identify religion as a major factor in the world’s biggest problems. It is the indoctrination into illogic, into superstition and even allowing freedom of belief that “allows otherwise normal human beings to reap the fruits of madness and consider them holy.”

Harris advocates a societal abandonment (the kind that Christians are always accusing society of anyway) of religion, and demanding that within the realm of freedom of expression there is room for question, speculation and imagination, there is no room for tolerating dangerous superstitions that are, he says, on par with any other mental illness that leads people to commit atrocities. He constructs a rational ethical system, and also allows for the non-supernatural spirituality of enlightened eastern philosophies which advocate meditation and do not require god-belief. He makes a distinction between non-supernatural mysticism as within the realm of rationalism, but supernatural religious beliefs as being firmly outside of that realm, and not worthy of respect.

Any one of these books would be worthy of activist gift-giving. I myself will consider wrapping them in gold paper, as a poetic nod to the alchemy of turning Christmas back into the Yule from which it came.

Mormons view the Old and New Testaments as divinely inspired and also have additional books in their scriptural canon, i.e., the Book of Mormon (where the term Mormon is derived), the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price. The vast majority of the content found in these additional books was dictated by Joseph Smith, Jr., and nearly all his teachings had some root in the King James Version of the Bible, or his interpretation of it.¹

The historicity of the Book of Mormon has been widely disputed. The consensus among geneticists is that the Native American people descended primarily from north-east Asian stock. However, the Book of Mormon says that the Native American people descended from groups of Semitic people, including Israelites, who emigrated from the Old World by ship. The book also refers to things such as steel, horses, and elephants that are not known to have existed in the New World at the relevant time.

Another point of contention is Smith’s method of translation. Among other artifacts found with the plates, Smith wrote of interpreting devices called the Urim and Thummim. He described them as a pair of stones, fastened to a breastplate joined in a form similar to that of a large pair of spectacles. The Urim and Thummim, or “seer stones,” are what Joseph claims to have used to interpret the writings on the plates.² Joseph’s first wife, Emma, was the first person to act as his scribe. She later recounted the following to her son Joseph Smith III: “In writing for your father I frequently wrote day after day, often sitting at the table close by him, he sitting with his face buried in his hat, with the stone in it, and dictating hour after hour with nothing between us.”³ David Whitmer, one of the Three Witnesses of the Book of Mormon, gave an address in 1887 in which he stated, “I will now give you a description of the manner in which the Book of Mormon was translated. Joseph Smith would put the seer stone into a hat, and put his face in the hat, drawing it closely around his face to exclude the light; and in the darkness the spiritual light would shine. A piece of something resembling parchment would appear, and on that appeared the writing. One character at a time would appear, and under it was the interpretation in English. Brother Joseph would read off the English to Oliver Cowdery, who was his principal scribe, and when it was written down and repeated to Brother Joseph to see if it was correct, then it would disappear, and another character with the interpretation would appear. Thus the Book of Mormon was translated by the gift and power of God, and not by any power of man.”⁴

Given these and other descriptions, it is easy to draw a correlation with Joseph’s early career as a “Glass Looker” who would be hired to locate buried treasure in exchange for fees in various areas of Western New York during the 1820s. To do this, he would place his “peep stone” into a hat and look into it to have the location of the treasure revealed to him. In 1826, he was arrested for this, under the charges of being “a disorderly person and an imposter.”⁵

In 1835, Smith purchased some Egyptian papyri containing hieroglyphics and four mummies from a traveling exhibition.⁶ He later translated the papyri in the same method he used with the Book of Mormon. He called it the Book of Abraham and in it recounted the story of Abraham’s early life and of a vision in which God revealed to Abraham much about astronomy, the creation of the world, and the creation of man. It was originally published in 1842 and is now an official book of the Pearl of Great Price.

Although the Rosetta Stone was discovered in 1799, it had not yet been completely deciphered. Translations of the Egyptian language were not widely available until the 1850s, and by this time the original papyri were considered lost. However, in 1966, twenty-two fragments of it were discovered in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Both Mormon and non-Mormon Egyptologists confirmed their authenticity and that these documents were in Smith’s possession. This discovery raised some major issues. First, the papyri can reliably be dated to around A.D. 60, which is much too late for Abraham to have written it. Of course, it could be a copy, or a copy of a copy, but that brings us to the second issue. When the text of the book of Abraham is compared with the translations of the original papyri, they are clearly not the same. In fact, they were discovered to be funerary texts containing passages from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, which were commonly buried with mummies.⁷

The LDS Church has given two possible explanations for these contradictions, neither of which are very satisfactory. One explanation given is that Smith might have been translating a different portion of the papyrus rolls, a portion that remains lost. The other explanation given is that we must take into consideration what Joseph meant by the word translation. Receiving revelation through the Urim and Thummin is a much different process than translating a text using the tools of scholarly research.⁸ I can only concur.

1. Joseph Smith’s Wentworth Letter, 1842 [↩]
2. Joseph Smith-History, Pearl of Great Price [↩]
3. History of the RLDS Church, 8 vols., Independence, Missouri, 1951, “Last Testimony of Sister Emma” [↩]
4. David Whitmer, An Address to All Believers in Christ, Richmond, Missouri, 1887 [↩]
5. D. Michael Quinn, Early Mormonism and the Magic World View (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1987) [↩]
6. History of the Church, Vol. 2, Ch. 17, p. 236 [↩]
7. Jay M. Todd, “Egyptian Papyri Rediscovered,” Improvement Era, January 1968: 12–13 [↩]
8. Michael D. Rhodes, “I Have a Question,” Ensign, July 1988, 51 [↩]

This is the conclusion of my interview with Dirk Van Tuerenhout, Ph.D., Curator of Anthropology at the Houston Museum of Natural Science. The first half of the interview is titled I Love Lucy.

Dirk, here’s a question from an associate; he mentions that creationists usually say that none of the other hominin species we know about today have anything to do with humans. According to them, fossils like Lucy are not the remains of a related species, let alone a direct human ancestor, but merely “some ape gone extinct”. So how do scientists arrive at the genealogical trees we all know from biology text books?

This is a question that requires an extensive answer. This question has shades of a favorite creationist line to critique/attack on Darwinian evolution. “Darwin says we all came from monkeys. Can you believe that?!”

Here is what we can say to that:

• Darwin never said we evolved from monkeys.
• However, we do share with other apes a common ancestor (ultimately also with monkeys, but much more remotely in time).
• We are as humans also part of the family of Great Apes.

In order to ascertain what links might exist between us and Lucy, we need to define what constitutes a modern human and then see which traits if any we can find with Lucy. Scientists have identified four traits that define a modern human:

• Walking upright all the time (a.k.a. habitual bipedalism)
• Making and using tools (complex tools especially)
• Having a large brain compared to one’s body size
• Having the ability to communicate (especially complex communication)

Having these traits make us modern humans human. When, however, do we see these traits appear in the fossil record?

Take Lucy, at 3.18 million years ago. She only had one of these traits: she walked upright all the time. In other words, Lucy, like us, was a habitual bipedal creature. That is a significant trait to have and one that separates her from the other apes (living or extinct), because they did not.

Moreover, and equally important: genetic data help us make that distinction more clear cut as well: based on comparing DNA from modern human beings and that of our closest non-human primate relatives (a complicated way of saying: chimps, gorillas and orangutans) we differ very little with these guys. The genetic difference between us and a chimp is about 1% in our DNA. Scientists have calculated that it may have taken about 7 million years for that 1% difference to accumulate over time.

While this number is certainly subject to revision and further study (nothing is black and white in science, there is a continuous questioning of what we know), based on what we know today we can say this:

• Lucy is a habitual bipedal creature (we know this because of her hips, hip and knee joints) and so are we.
• Lucy dates to 3.18 million years ago. This postdates the split between our lineage and that of the other Great Apes by about 3 to 4 million years. So in that regard Lucy also belongs on our side of the tracks.

In other words, both her bones and modern DNA data make Lucy a distant relative of ours and not one of the extinct non-human apes.

So how does one put a family tree together?

Initially the family tree was put together based on observed similarities between organisms. Specifically, this led to the development of a family of Hominoidea, of which we are the only member as this time and the family of the Pongidae in which the chimps, gorillas and orangutans are placed. This classification, or taxonomy, goes back to that devised by Linnaeus. He classified based on what he could see.

Nowadays, we classify also based on genetics. That has resulted in the coning of the term hominin, rather than hominid, in which both humans and chimps are placed together (because they are so closely related genetically), with the gorillas and orangutans left in the remaining niche.

In image form, this is what we are talking about:

The traditional view first, based on observed similarities:

 

 

 

Here chimp, gorilla and orangutans are categorized together, because they look a lot more like each other and not that much like a human.

The more recent classification next, based on genetic relationships:

How do we know that the various hominin species are related and, more importantly, how do we know in what way they are related to each other?

How do we determine the degree of relatedness among extinct hominins? While it is a human trait to want to see everything classified and neatly placed in a pigeon hole, it is not always possible to do this – at least not right away.We always work from the known toward the unknown. At this stage, when a fossil is found, it is compared against known fossils. “Known” here means that we know where they are from, how old they are and where they are placed in the family tree. A new fossil also has a location where it was found and eventually will also have a date assigned to it. What remains (far from simple) is to determine where your fossil fits in. Again you have to work with the known, or in this case: what did you find? If you have a complete skull, it might be much easier to make this determination than if you have found a foot or wrist bone. You compare morphologies and suggest degrees of similarities (and therefore old fashioned taxonomic relationships – see above) to establish a place in the family tree.

Remember, however: science will continue to subject any finding to future insights which might require revisiting and fine-tuning previous conclusions.

When we want to assign a fossil a spot in the genealogical tree, do we have to rely on inferences from bone morphology alone or are there other means of supporting our model?

Given that most fossils (with the exception of H. sapiens and Neanderthalers) do not have extractable DNA in them, we have to rely on morphology, place of discovery and dates to assign a place on the family tree (or family bush as we are calling it today).

What, on the other hand, would we expect to find under the creationists’ hypothesis?

The way in which this is phrased is too kind to creationism: hypothesis belongs in a scientific framework. Creationism or its “scientific” clone, I.D., does not work with hypotheses – no matter how much they would like to disagree with this. In the end, they already have their conclusion: an intelligent creator, or God made everything and here is the evidence for that line of thinking. Creationists/I.D. people are very good at casting doubts on scientist’s interpretations, producing a prodigious amount of materials everywhere to disseminate this perception that scientists do not really know what they are talking about. In reality what they are picking up on is the debate inherent in science on the manner in which evolution has proceeded in the past, not a discussion about the existence of evolution itself. Small detail with important repercussions.

In order to make the point that creationists do not really work with scientific hypotheses but that they prefer to cast aspersions on other people’s thinking to push their agenda, I refer to a point raised earlier: “creationists say Lucy is not an extinct human ancestor but rather an extinct ape.”

By framing the discussion a priori they have – in their mind – already won the battle. They have effectively removed Lucy from our lineage and so more doubt and scorn can be heaped on any arguments to the contrary. One needs to go back to the very crux of the matter and prove that their assertion of where Lucy belongs is wrong in the first place. Having reconstituted a level playing field, then you can proceed by proving that she is indeed an early human ancestor.

As best as I can tell then, a Creationist could not care less about what these fossils might look like and where they belong. In the end, they all see them as evidence of a creation by a Creator to confuse us or to make us marvel at the creation we live in. This is not a form of logic I can follow, but that seems to be their line.

Dirk Van Tuerenhout leverages his time to provide educational opportunities about the Lucy fossil to museum visitors while also teaching at the University of Houston-Clear Lake during the summer. If you are in the Houston area, I encourage you to visit the Houston Museum of Natural Science, and of course, Lucy.

Further Reading

Lucy Exhibition

Australopithecus Afarensis

PBS Humans: Humankind Evolution

Sometimes I wish my kid would start a pro-transvestite anarchist atheist socialist anti-censorship club at his school. Just so I could watch the religious right-based school board members writhe in their plush seats as I defended my son’s right to establish such a student group in a public school presumably so unbiased that it would allow an antiabortion religious group. Unfortunately, what I really envision is them sitting there with smug looks of self-righteousness reminiscent of the Joe McCarthy witch hunts of the 40’s and 50’s. Honestly, I don’t mind if kids want to set up an antiabortion student club. More power to them. If a school board, on the other hand, insisted on having one, that might be a different story. What’s truly disturbing, though, is that a school board would probably find some sort of justification for prohibiting my son’s hypothetical student group, despite allowing a group that is self-admittedly religiously based. Perhaps the school boards across the nation have an idea of what is right and wrong for their schools based not on the secular governmental positions they hold, but, instead, on their own religious idealism. I think the facts tend to speak for themselves. You decide.

The United States was created and continues to be governed by a document called the U.S. Constitution. Shortly after its adoption, amendments were added to ensure further protection from the government of the citizens of the nation. The first ten amendments are commonly referred to as the Bill of Rights.

The First Amendment states:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.¹

There have been a number of court cases involving to what extent this prohibition against establishment and the protection of free exercise applies in a public school setting. Most recently, an Illinois U.S. District Judge, Robert Gettleman, issued a preliminary injunction against The Silent Reflection and Student Prayer Act of Illinois, citing its vagueness and probable unconstitutionality, as a result of a lawsuit brought by concerned parent Rob Sherman.²

The law states, in part:

In each public school classroom the teacher in charge shall observe a brief period of silence with the participation of all the pupils therein assembled at the opening of every school day. This period shall not be conducted as a religious exercise but shall be an opportunity for silent prayer or for silent reflection on the anticipated activities of the day.³

[the initial "shall" was originally "may" until recently amended]⁴

Judge Gettleman stated that the statute’s language would indicate to a child that the child must think about praying.⁵ Although the case is still early on in its likely prolonged history, especially if there are appeals made and the Illinois state Attorney General decides to get involved, it is an example of how the court system takes very seriously the First Amendment, and attempts to side, by default, with the amendment’s distinct separation of church and state.

However, some school administrative bodies have lately not been so adherent to the edicts of the Constitution. Or, at minimum, have not been consistent in application of prohibitions against school activities. For example, in early November, a teenager fought and won a fight to establish an after-school antiabortion club that is specifically and openly based on a religious agenda. The purpose of the club, as stated, is:

To educate people about the biggest holocaust that is going on right here in the United States. To come together and pray to end abortion. To be a voice for my generation and a voice for those who cannot speak for themselves.⁶

But, as a Defense Fund attorney insisted:

There is a discomfort with religious speech in the schools, even when it’s engaged in by students, which should not be the case. Once they open up the facility to clubs, merely . . . allowing a religious club in the mix does not promote religion.⁷

Whether or not by allowing such a club, a school is endorsing or establishing religion, there should at least be some consistency in such decisions by the governmental organizations that closely control the curricula of public school systems. Unfortunately, that appears not to be the case at all. A Florida school board has been the subject of a lawsuit by a student group, titled the “Gay-Straight Alliance” which was a result of the school board insisting that the after-school club change its name, lest it violate a Florida law requiring schools to teach abstinence and “heterosexual marriage.”⁸

What is happening here is that a school board is using an obviously biased, discriminatory, religious-based, and unconstitutional law to justify a decision about the name and activities of an after-school student organization. Could it genuinely be a conflict between the desire of the school board to facilitate student activities and the board’s fear of reprisal by the state for not conforming to its law? Possibly. But compare this situation with the after-school antiabortion club, and that school board’s ease of acceptance, despite the possible unconstitutionality of the establishment of such a group.

If one school board could be so lenient in favor of a religious student organization, why can’t another school board be just as accepting of an organization that is not only not religious, but potentially pro-secular? It’s quite likely that both school boards and the state governments in which they reside are biased toward pro-religious organizations, and will find a way to accept them, while rejecting those that potentially threaten their religious beliefs, at least until a concerned atheist activist parent, like Rob Sherman, brings a lawsuit against the school board, and a rational judge like Judge Gettleman challenges the status quo by actually trying to enforce protections provided by the Constitution and the First Amendment. What this nation needs is more Rob Shermans and more Judge Gettlemans.

-Procrustes

1. U.S. Constitution [↩]
2. Judge bans moment of silence in suburban district, Chicago Tribune, November 14, 2007 [↩]
3. The Silent Reflection and Student Prayer Act [↩]
4. The Silent Reflection and Student Prayer Act [↩]
5. Judge bans moment of silence in suburban district, Chicago Tribune, November 14, 2007 [↩]
6. Teen Wins Fight for Antiabortion Club at School, WashingtonPost.com, November 6, 2007 [↩]
7. Teen Wins Fight for Antiabortion Club at School, WashingtonPost.com, November 6, 2007 [↩]
8. H.S. gay club rejects name change, United Press International, November 15, 2007 [↩]

This is the first of a series of Religions Unearthed, where resident author Laura will explore the development and impact of specific religions, denominations, and other belief systems worldwide. We will begin with Mormonism. Enjoy. -Procrustes

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, originally known as the Church of Christ, currently claims nearly 13 million members worldwide. Its adherents are usually referred to as Latter-day Saints, LDS, or Mormons.¹ It is widely believed that their reported membership is inflated through counting inactive members, those who have moved on to other churches, those who have had their names removed from the rolls, and even excommunicated members. In 1998 their President, Gordon B. Hinckley, who they consider to be a modern-day prophet, stated: “We are experiencing a combined growth of converts and a natural increase of some 400,000 a year. Every single year, that is the equivalent of 160 new stakes of 2,500 people each.” This statement has been widely quoted as evidence of the Church’s rapid growth, yet these numbers are incorrect. The Church has never in its history experienced an increase as high as 400,000 members in one year, nor have they ever formed as many as 160 stakes.²

The founder of Mormonism, Joseph Smith, Jr., wrote that in 1820 at 14 years of age, he went into the woods to pray and had a vision of God, the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ (referred to as the First Vision in Mormonism). This is the derivation of the Mormon belief that God, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are three different beings and that the Father and Son have physical bodies. According to Smith, God told him during this vision that all of the existing sects of Christianity were “wrong” and “an abomination in his sight.”³

In 1823, Smith claims to have had another vision, this time of a resurrected prophet named Moroni, who led Joseph to a hill near his home where he unearthed a book inscribed on golden plates, a record of God’s dealings with the ancient Israelite inhabitants of the Americas. Mormons believe a Great Apostasy occurred soon after Jesus’ ascension and continued until the truth was restored through Smith’s revelations and his interpretation of these plates (the Book of Mormon). Mormons view the Council of Nicaea as an example of how pagan philosophy corrupted Christianity early on.⁴

After Smith was murdered by an angry mob in 1844, several groups split off, the largest of which is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The LDS Church came under the direction of Brigham Young, who introduced Smith’s teachings of plural marriage to the public. Most estimates put the number of Joseph Smith’s wives at about 33 at the time of his death, although this was kept highly secret at the time, even among all but a few Mormons.⁵ Although Smith’s first documented plural wife was married to him in 1831, he did not record the polygamy commandment until 1843. Joseph’s first wife, Emma Hale Smith, was publicly opposed to polygamy and did not follow Brigham Young after her husband’s death, instead forming her own sect with her son as the head. Further evidence of Emma’s abhorrence of the practice can be found in the recorded revelation itself, wherein “God” directly addresses Emma: “And let mine handmaid, Emma Smith, receive all those that have been given unto my servant Joseph, and who are virtuous and pure before me;… But if she will not abide this commandment she shall be destroyed, saith the Lord; for I am the Lord thy God, and will destroy her if she abide not in my law.”⁶ Over 50 other denominations (many now defunct) have been documented to have formed since Smith’s death, several of which continue the practice of plural marriage today, often employing legal loopholes to avoid committing a criminal act.

When Brigham Young led the Mormons west to the Utah territory, they began to participate in national politics. On July 8, 1862, President Lincoln signed the Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act into law, which forbade the practice of polygamy in US territories. The measure had no funds allocated for enforcement, and President Lincoln chose to leave the Mormons alone. In 1887, Congress passed the Edmunds-Tucker Act, which disincorporated the LDS Church and authorized the federal government to seize all of the church’s assets. By September 1890, the church was losing control of the territory government, members and leaders were being pursued as fugitives, and federal officials were preparing to seize the Church’s four temples, when Wilford Woodruff, the Church President at the time, announced that he had received revelation from Jesus Christ that the Church should cease the practice of plural marriage.⁷ The timing speaks for itself. There were differences among members regarding the scope of Woodruff’s declaration, and so it was not surprising when the Smoot hearings of 1904 revealed that the practice was continuing unofficially. That year, under President Joseph F. Smith, the church finally and completely banned plural marriage everywhere in the world.

1. Official LDS Website [↩]
2. The Salt Lake Tribune [↩]
3. Joseph Smith-History, Pearl of Great Price [↩]
4. The Great Apostasy: Considered in the Light of Scriptural and Secular History by James Edward Talmage, 1909 [↩]
5. In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith by Todd Compton [↩]
6. Doctrine and Covenants 132 [↩]
7. Wilford Woodruff, “Remarks”, Deseret Weekly, Salt Lake City, Utah [↩]

Upon reading the news that A. Afarensis Lucy was “on tour” with her world premier in Houston, I eagerly awaited the exhibit’s opening. On a beautiful September morning, Mom (me), Dad, and the kids climbed into the car to see this famous 3.2 million-year-old fossil. We prepared our children with the expectation that Mom and Dad would be “taking a very long time” reviewing the entire exhibit. And we did. The exhibit is incredible.

Dirk Van Tuerenhout, Ph.D., Curator of Anthropology at the Houston Museum of Natural Science is the man behind this news-breaking exhibit. I had the opportunity to interview him, with questions related to Lucy, evolution, and human ancestry.

Dirk, the foremost question on my mind is in regard to the Australopithecus Afarensis “Lucy” exhibit at our local museum in Houston. I have had the unique opportunity to see this fossil. Lucy is the grand finale to the Ethiopia exhibit on display until April 2008 at the museum. I remain impressed by the entire exhibit, and plan on visiting a few more times before April arrives.
If I remember correctly, a section of the Lucy exhibit contains fossils of early hominids, including homo sapiens. There are also educational time-lines present in the exhibit, assisting the visitor in gaining perspective of how very removed we are from 3.2 million years ago. These help trace what we currently know about human evolution.

Have you received criticism from proponents of “Intelligent Design” or those that reject evolution? If so, do the critics engage you in dialogue?

I have received reactions from people who are proponents of Creationism and ID. They come in many formats, ranging from comments left in our guest books, as well as emails sent to the museum. I engage these individuals in a dialogue when possible – none of those who leave comments in our guest books leave a phone number or email. Occasionally I also hear from our docents that ID proponents will come through the exhibit and challenge the docents.

Have you anecdotes of a particularly amusing or volatile conversation?

I have received emails from school groups and teachers who either have been to the exhibit or have heard of it. In the latter case, there was one email from a Christian Academy in Scottsdale, AZ. The questions they raised were: did we share with our visitors the facts that

a. One of Lucy’s knee joints was found 1.5 miles away from the rest of the skeleton and

b. Some of the remaining bones were said to have been found 50 feet down.

I replied asking where these allegations come from – this is always step one: please identify your sources. The answer was vague but informative enough: “books written by creationists.”

I checked in with the website TalkOrigins and very easily found an outline of these allegations and rebuttal materials. Specifically, it amounted to two favorite tactics used by creationist proponents: incorrect representation or conflation of the information at hand. The knee joint turned out to be another knee joint, also belonging to an A. afarensis [but not Lucy], which was found by Johanson in 1973. He never made the claim that it was Lucy’s knee joint, but creationist sources clearly did. What we have here at best is an unintentional conflation of a Lucy knee joint and another A. afarensis knee joint (a Lucy-like joint) and at worst…? The reference to “50 feet down” does not mean that they were digging 50 feet down, although it does imply it, but rather that the archaeologists went up and down the slope over a distance of 50 feet.

I sent this information to the teacher and she was very appreciative of the fact I had sent her an answer. Typically, she indicated, people do not bother (read: the scientific community. I am sure that any creationist source would be bending over backwards to answer promptly and exhaustively). She went on to say that she had printed out the document I had sent and that she would spend a class period on the topic. That is all I can ask for: please take the scientific data and share it with your students.

What are your favorite strategies when having these discussions?

I make it a point to always answer any questions. This needs to be done, because otherwise we run the risk of being accused of not having an answer or being unwilling to respond. I also make sure to stay away from engaging in a discussion regarding religious topics – many emails are replete with Bible quotations – preferring instead to zero in on specific scientific statements. Any statements in this regard tend to suffer from conflation or misquotation and are much easier to refute, point by point. I tend to get answers back that abound with more Bible quotes and very little science. Usually I will reply one or two more times. Then I end the conversation with a polite thanks to the other person.

As I viewed and participated in the exhibit, I wondered: “this history - all that science has shown us of these fossils - is this enough to turn the minds of those that reject evolutionary theory?”

I don’t think that one can change the mind of those who favor creationism. That is not my goal either. What I do want to achieve is to reply to every single email and allegation that comes my way. We cannot afford to not do this, or else we go the way of the dodo in the court of public opinion.

Next week, I will post the remainder of the interview, which will focus on human ancestry.

-Mutha

Two short must-reads confronting the inherent dangers of popular mythologies

In January of 1776, Thomas Paine’s pamphlet, Common Sense, sparked the powder kegs for not only the American, but the French Revolution as well. Paine’s original style of thinking was as straight-forward as it was original. As with the later Declaration of Independence, the revolutionary notion of Paine’s work was to declare simple truths as self-evident that had been anything but evident throughout all of human history. Paine not only challenged the notion that Kings were necessary for civilization, but completely ridiculous when viewed with fresh eyes and reason. “A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom.”

Most adults in the US have a vague recollection of reading (or at least being assigned to read) Common Sense in a High School government class, and, as with all assigned reading, it’s easy to think of reading such a thing as a cure for insomnia. Try taking a look at it as an adult, and you might be surprised at how the text retains the simple, straight-forward appeal that inspired two nations to oust their respective royal families. Paine’s prediction that his ideas would be met with criticism was of course correct, but his fearless promotion of reason led to a rapid gathering of like minds and bold actions. Like many great minds in the Age of Reason, Paine simultaneously criticized Christianity and spoke of God in a manner that seems to confuse (to put it charitably) today’s Fundamentalists into thinking that Paine was a religious man. On the contrary, in his later work, The Age of Reason, Paine quite plainly stated that “All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.” As a Deist, he took delight in natural order, and described his religion in characteristically simple form: “The true Deist has but one Deity, and his religion consists in contemplating the power, wisdom, and benignity of the Deity in his works, and in endeavoring to imitate him in everything moral, scientifical, and mechanical.”

Nearly 230 years later, Fundamentalists are using Deist’s references to Nature’s God as evidence that this country is and always was a Christian Nation. If Thomas Paine were around today, he would probably have written something very much like Sam Harris’ Letter to A Christian Nation. Harris wrote this book as a response to the overwhelming outcry following the publication of his book, The End of Faith. At first, he responded more or less individually to the emails and letters, passionately defending Christianity from Reason. Harris, like Paine, doesn’t back down, but instead pushes the message even further. The most common complaint that religious people have of a reason-based rejection of religion is the cherished notion that religion provides people with morals. What are morals to an atheist? The idea that, without the threat of an invisible eye, surveying all of our actions and holding us to some ultimate account, human beings will be nothing more than depraved animals.

Harris’ dismisses this idea and completely explodes the notion that religion is even remotely moral. With a complete disregard for the traditional respect that people often show for the superstitions of others, Harris asks Christians to really look at the Bible and ask themselves- what is so moral about Christianity? He challenges them to ask themselves- is it just to condemn a child to death for showing disrespect to their parents? His tone carries with it the echo of Paine’s natural authority: “We read the Golden Rule and judge it to be a brilliant distillation of many of our ethical impulses. And then we come across another of God’s teachings on morality: if a man discovers on his wedding night that his bride is not a virgin, he must stone her to death on her father’s doorstep (Deuteronomy 22:13-21).”

Furthermore, Harris demands of Christian America, is it moral; is it intellectually valid to ignore reality, to attempt to twist facts in order to keep believing in ancient mythology? “Despite a full century of scientific insights attesting to the antiquity of the earth, more than half of our neighbors believe that the entire cosmos was created six thousand years ago. This is, incidentally, about a thousand years after the Sumerians invented glue” he points out with some asperity. Is it not immoral to try to persuade people who are willing to die and kill for faith that defies reason? He explains that he was motivated in part by the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, and asks Christian America to really think about what they believe, and the natural consequences of religious beliefs: “It is terrible that we all die and lose everything we love; it is doubly terrible that so many human beings suffer needlessly while alive. That so much of this suffering can be directly attributed to religion—to religious hatreds, religious wars, religious delusions and religious diversions of scarce resources—is what makes atheism a moral and intellectual necessity.” Harris goes on to encourage religious moderates and liberals to break with tradition and confront the consequences of tolerating religious extremists- the negative consequences to political, scientific and cultural progress: “In the year 2006, a person can have sufficient intellectual and material resources to build a nuclear bomb and still believe that he will get seventy-two virgins in Paradise. Western secularists, liberals, and moderates have been very slow to understand this. The cause of their confusion is simple: they don’t know what is like to really believe in God.”

Harris’ short work, like Paine’s before him, is a clarion call for reasonable people to insist that reason be given greater weight, for a change, than the dangerous and antiquated superstitions of others: “According to the most common interpretation of biblical prophecy, Jesus will return only after things have gone horribly awry. Imagine the consequences if any significant component of the U.S. government believed that the world was about to end and that its ending would be glorious. The fact that nearly half of the American population apparently believes this should be considered a moral and intellectual emergency.” Clearly, it costs too much for us to live with those who can be so easily manipulated, those whose lives are based on a fantasy world in which the best possible outcome begins with Armageddon.

-Philadelphic