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Day 42: The Sermon and the Wall

Sunday 26 April 2020

The Sermon

I went out for a walk this morning. It was sunny and warm, and everyone else was busy doing something, so I couldn’t resist. Listening to The Brothers Karamazov as I walked, I heard an amplified voice over the reader’s voice. Sometimes, when the conditions are just right, we hear the announcer at the local high school’s football games. Of course, there are no such games now, and there wouldn’t be any on a Sunday anyway. I paused the recording, stopped walking, and listened carefully. It took a moment, but I realized that it was a preacher delivering a Sunday morning message to the faithful as they sat in their cars. Drive-in church service.

As I walked a little further, I heard a little later furious honking coming from that direction, as if twenty or thirty cars were all randomly honking their horns. I took the earbuds out again and listened for some time.

Through the trees, I heard, “But we don’t have to fear death! Christ Jesus has conquered death!” Fairly typical evangelical formulation. “Isn’t that wonderful?” And then the horns began again, and I realized what was going on.

“They’re honking their amens,” I muttered to myself.

The Wall

The kids have taken the back corner of the house as their practice area: the Boy kicks his soccer ball against the wall; the Girl uses it for volleyball. They decided to use chalk to make some targets to practice accuracy.

The Girl had it all planned out. Colors, target shapes, everything. And then the Boy “messed it all up,” using colors at random for no other reason than wanting to use that particular color. And so they cleaned it and began again.

Passing

Wednesday 5 February 2020

I learned this evening that the pastor who led our local little congregation of the WCG when I was a teenager died recently. Nana and Papa had heard years ago from their connections that the man had Alzheimer’s or some other form of dementia, and that’s what one obit said about him:

R spent his life in the ministry, lastly in the Living Church of God. Due to his ailment, he was retired but continued to attend until his condition did not allow him that freedom.

The church I grew up in held some fairly heterodox beliefs, including the one that its members (at most 150,000 worldwide) were the only true Christians and everyone else, unbeknownst to them, was worshipping Satan and through his “counterfeit Christianity.”

When I read Peter Berger’s work on the sociology of knowledge (especially his books The Social Construction of Reality and The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Social Theory of Religion), I felt he’d looked directly into my youth and described what I’d experienced. When you hold a view that’s in the cognitive minority, Berger explained, it’s difficult to maintain that view. Everyone else says you’re wrong. You either adopt the prevailing view or you insulate yourself with what Berger called plausibility structures — rituals and such that reinforce the heterodox ideas you hold and make them seem plausible in the face of a majority who says you’re wrong. One of the most basic plausibility structures is the cognitive ghetto: you isolate yourself from others physically and mentally to avoid contact with contaminated “others,” who might introduce new ideas that lead to doubt.

Our church did this exceptionally well. We had our own little culture with its own vocabulary, customs, retreats, and other structures that kept the perverted world with their Satanic ideas at bay.

Ministers in this church enforced this isolation with varying degrees of severity and using various leadership methods. It was not uncommon to find very authoritarian and controlling people drawn to the ministry of this organization as a result.

Growing up, I had contact with a number of these ministers and heard about others. Some of them ruled as an autocrat. Many of them were controlling, manipulative, and destructive.

R was none of these.

Certainly, he enforced the rules of the main organization, but there was a gentleness about him that was unlike many of the other ministers. He didn’t seem like he was on a power trip like so many of the pastors in the church did. He seemed humble, and he could certainly laugh at himself — a rarity in ministers in that sect. One online memorial expressed it succinctly: “He brought a new way of looking at things, he encouraged the entire congregation to try new things.”

I became close friends with his sons and spent countless weekends with their family in high school. He and his wife were always kind to me and the other teens in the church.

In the early- and mid-90s, the main organization went through some doctrinal changes that led ultimately to the breakup of the church. “It turns out, we were wrong — we aren’t the only Christians” seemed to be the overriding theme. “All these heterodox beliefs — they’re pretty daft as well.” Several groups splintered off in efforts to hold fast to the truth once delivered.

My parents accepted the changes; R and his family did not. For years I never heard from any of them.

I found myself thinking, “How could our friendship mean so little to them? How could they just let that all disappear? Were we friends only because we believed the same things?” I knew the answers. Instantly we were outside their cognitive ghetto; we were the other; we were heterodox, unkosher, unclean. Dangerous.

Then in the early 2000s, I found R’s email address on the internet and had a brief exchange with him. I was curious about why he stayed with the original beliefs; he was curious about why we left. We had a few exchanges and then as often happens, it ended rather suddenly for no real reason. What really did we have to say to each other, after all?

When Nana passed, I wondered if he and his wife (rumor had it they’d separated, even divorced, but the obituary I found indicates otherwise — or at least that she kept his name) had found out about her passing. My folks were close with them, and I know the dissolution of their friendship due to no-differing theological views pained them greatly.

In my interactions with R, though, I came to see that it pained them too, though in a different way. How could we turn our back on the truth we’d once held? How could we come out of the world (“the world” was the generic term for the non-member hordes) and then go right back into it? How could we hold the key to becoming God as God is God (but not quite — hey, I said it was quite heterodox but you probably weren’t thinking that heterodox) and then give it away?

In truth, it was the church that brought us together and provided the catalyst that we used to break ourselves apart. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. But is that really any different from how other friendships come and go? Except for the handful of true, deep friendships we have, don’t we all move through relationships in the same way, regardless of religious belief or other baggage?

I do this on a smaller scale with 130+ students every single year. I get to know them; I get to like them; I don’t consider them friends, but they’re more than just students. And then they’re gone. And truth be told, I can’t remember most of their names initially when the handful comes back for a visit. “What’s your name again?” I ask with some embarrassment.

Patterns

Sunday 2 February 2020

Some random thoughts that had bounced around my head during the day having nothing whatsoever to do with the photos…

We are a pattern-seeking species. We see them everywhere, and when they don’t occur naturally, we make them appear magically.

Take, for example, all the chatter online and off about the significance of today’s date: February 20, 2020. “It’s the same forwards and backward!” L explained cheerfully. “A palindrome!” I guess she learned that word from some social media post or other about the date, but there it is:

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It even works if we write the year first, which I do when name files:

20200202

Of course, this only works if we’re writing the day and month with leading zeros. Otherwise, it’s just 222020 or 202022 — not nearly so exciting.

If you use the Hebrew calendar, it would be 07055780 or 05075780, depending on whether we’re to put the day or month first. In the Islamic calendar, it’s 06081441 or 08061441, again depending on whether day or month is to come first.

All of that is to say the obvious: it’s an arbitrary, meaningless day made somehow special because of an equally arbitrary way of numbering the day. There is no pattern there. We make the pattern and then feel special when it “appears.”

Sometimes, when people see patterns, they read prophetic significance into it. Take, for example, today’s reading in mass:

Thus says the Lord GOD:
Lo, I am sending my messenger
to prepare the way before me;
And suddenly there will come to the temple
the LORD whom you seek,
And the messenger of the covenant whom you desire.
Yes, he is coming, says the LORD of hosts.
But who will endure the day of his coming?
And who can stand when he appears?
For he is like the refiner’s fire,
or like the fuller’s lye.
He will sit refining and purifying silver,
and he will purify the sons of Levi,
Refining them like gold or like silver
that they may offer due sacrifice to the LORD.
Then the sacrifice of Judah and Jerusalem
will please the LORD,
as in the days of old, as in years gone by. (Malachi 3.1-4)

Fr. Longenecker suggested that this first portion is a prophecy that was fulfilled when Jesus was presented in the temple. In the day’s gospel reading, we find:

The child’s father and mother were amazed at what was said about him;
and Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother,
“Behold, this child is destined
for the fall and rise of many in Israel,
and to be a sign that will be contradicted
–and you yourself a sword will pierce–
so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.”

And so this is seen as a proof of providence, a proof that God controls everything. Except that the Old Testament source says he will “purify the sons of Levi, / refining them like gold or like silver.” Since the majority of the Jews of Jesus’s time did not convert to Christianity, it seems the sons of Levi weren’t immediately purified — if that’s what it means, and that’s not clear either. Perhaps it’s about corruption: was there less corruption among the “sons of Levi” after the appearance of Jesus? Hard to say, but doubtful. (I don’t even know if there was corruption — I’m just working under the assumption of people being people.)

So this whole thing presents a pattern of prophecy and it’s fulfillment. But it doesn’t. It only creates that pattern if we accept certain interpretations (which I don’t) and go into it with certain presuppositions (which I don’t). For that matter, we don’t even know if this Simeon bloke said these things or even if he existed — the only evidence we have is the scriptural reference, and for many of us, that’s dubious at best.

In other words, there is no naturally occurring pattern there. We create the pattern and then feel special when it “appears.”

#27 — Sacred Words

Monday 4 April 2011

Catholicism is filled with sacred words to accompany the sacred gestures, time, space, and objects.

The most sacred words, of course, are the words of Scripture, and within that, the Gospel accounts. One of the first things visitors notice is the treating of those words as sacred. When the priest or deacon begins the reading, saying, “A reading from the Gospel of…”, parishioners make three small crosses with their right thumb: one on the forehead (belief), one on the lips (desire to proselytize), and one on the breast above the heart (desire to keep the words in one’s heart). Thus, the sacred words are a catalyst for sacred gestures.

Prayer is another moment when sacred words bring forth an accompanying gesture. When a Catholic begins a prayer, she intones, “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” and makes the sign of the cross simultaneously. The one without the other is incomplete, and while it might become a mere habit with some Catholics, I’ve seen some obviously sincere moments was parishioners cross themselves, and that sincerity itself is moving.

Not all sacred words are for all Catholics, though. Some obviously are reserved for priests. Blessings and absolution come to mind, but they’re not the most important sacred words a priest can utter; the Eucharistic Prayer is. The highlight of the mass is the Eucharist, which Catholics believe to be the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus. They revere it accordingly. Of course this is not always the case: unconsecrated hosts are simply that — hosts. So there comes a moment when, according to the Church, the Holy Spirit transforms the hosts. A skeptic might say, “Hocus pocus — nothing more than cheap parlor magic,” and I myself said the same thing for years. Yet whether or not it’s effective is not my point here: the fact that the tradition of sacred words continues is somehow admirable. I suppose it’s the faith that impresses me.

 

#24 — Sacred Gestures

Friday 1 April 2011

For a long time I felt a little ill at ease when I was attending a Mass and realized I wasn’t doing the gestures everyone around me was doing. On entering the Church, they dipped a finger in holy water and crossed themselves; I didn’t. When crossing in front of the tabernacle, they stopped genuflected or bowed; I didn’t. Just before entering the pews, they genuflected and crossed themselves; I didn’t. When the priest opens the Mass with “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” they crossed themselves again; I didn’t. When they spoke the creed or the Confiteor, I remain silent. When they struck their breast during the “mea culpa” phrase of the Confiteor (at least in Poland), I remained motionless. When they made the sign of the cross on their forehead, their lips, and their heart before the reading of the Gospel, my hands stayed by my side. I stood when they stood, knelt when they knelt, and sat when they sat, but otherwise, I was strictly an observer.

And I felt conspicuous.

At last I began going through the motions, literally and figuratively. What an odd feeling to begin crossing oneself at the age of thirty-eight.

#11 — The Tactile Church

Saturday 19 March 2011

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Georges de La Tour: Büßender Hl. Hieronymus

I am aware of the tactile sensations of my body in a Catholic church in a way that I never was in any Protestant church.

Part of this goes back to my first experiences with Catholicism in Poland. Going to a Mass with someone — most often, K — I knew would be painful. It was not that I hated the liturgy or thought it a waste of time. I knew it would be physically painful: there was very, very rarely free space in any pew, so we spent the Mass standing or kneeling. On a stone floor, this was always tough on my already-injured knees and prematurely-paining back. It added an ascetic dimension to Mass.

Yet mortification of the flesh is not the only — or most common — sense that I think of Catholicism as tactile. Anointing, genuflecting, crossing oneself, baptizing, and kneeling all heighten, in one for or another, one’s awareness of the body. As a non-Catholic, I often feel the distinctness of my lack of action when the individual before me genuflects before entering the row of pews and I don’t, or when my neighbor crosses herself along with everyone else and I don’t.

I wonder if that would change were I to follow suit…

#3 — The Sacred

Friday 11 March 2011

The Papal Altar

The sacred — an idea that, in the ancient world, was an everyday reality. To be sacred is to be “consecrated: made or declared or believed to be holy.” It’s only been in the last few centuries that this notion disappeared from the everyday life of Everyman.

In a Protestant church, the idea of the sacred is almost non-existent except in a historical, Biblical milieu. The Ark of the Covenant was sacred; the showbread and the Holy of Holies were sacred; God’s name is, in some sense, sacred. But in the sense that time, space, gestures, words, or objects can be sacred, Protestantism proclaims loudly and, for its own part, definitively, “No!” Only God is sacred. Nothing on Earth is truly sacred.

The rest of the religions in the world beg to differ. And Catholicism (as well as the Orthodox East) in particular would argue that there is sacredness on Earth. Indeed, Catholicism is, in part, all about bringing that sacrality to humanity on a daily basis.

Stacking the Deck

Monday 23 November 2009

A daily game of Candy Land has wiggled its way into our routine. L has mastered the concepts: she knows what the cards are for and she generally knows which direction her piece needs to move.

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The problem is that Candy Land is unimaginably dull: draw a card, move your piece, wait. Repeat. While L was learning, it was a pleasant game: actually playing the game was not the objective, and as I love teaching, any educational activity is enjoyable.

Now that she knows how to play the game, though, it can drag.

I feel a little guilty about that. I should adore every single moment with her, but let’s face it: there are only so many times you can feign surprise at having to go back to the Gingerbread House.

When I was working with autistic children, Candy Land was a popular free time choice. I got so utterly sick of it that I — and I am somewhat ashamed to admit it — stacked the deck to make sure the kid I was sitting opposite got all the good cards.

“What!? Another double-purple? Well, you’re well on your way, aren’t you?”

I haven’t done that with L yet. In the truest sense of “stacking the deck.” I might have switched the top two cards after a quick peek at my own, making sure she got another double-purple, but that’s not really stacking the deck. That’s helping.

Chick on Evolution

Wednesday 18 November 2009

Many Christians who criticize evolution are criticizing a caricature of evolution, presented by their preacher and not by a scientist. They don’t even understand the basics of the theory they claim to be debunking, and their efforts to disprove evolution illustrate this with painful clarity.

Recently, when I stopped for coffee, I found a Chick Tract about evolution. I knew what I would find inside, but I couldn’t help but read it out of curiosity.

It was filled with such a ridiculous presentation of evolutionary theory that I found it difficult to believe that anyone who wasn’t already convinced could be convinced through such a simplistic, silly presentation.

The most basic assumption anti-evolutionist Christians make about evolution is that it proposes a linear, step-by-step evolution from lower to higher creatures. They insist that evolution teaches that humans come from monkeys. This particular tract begins with just such a time line.

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“If we come from monkeys,” creationists ask, “Why don’t we see any half-monkey, half-humans?” Indeed, if evolutionary theory supported such an idea, that would be a legitimate question. Yet any evolutionary biologist will tell you that the theory of evolution suggests no such thing. Instead, evolutionary theory postulates that primates come from a common ancestor. In other words, we had the same great9,393,393-grandparents, but our lines split somewhere along the way.

Another common tactic is to associate evolutionary theory with religion. That was the tract’s next step:

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Notice that this text on evolution depicts man and dinosaurs together? That shows how little fundamentalists understand evolution…

I have never heard anyone refer to evolution as his or her “religion.” Further, very few people blindly trust their professors because any professor worth his or her keep wouldn’t expect it. Further, science doesn’t work that way. Science doesn’t seek blind faith like the tract’s mother illustrates. It discourages it, in fact.

What’s most amusing, though, is the illustration the mother is holding in the second panel. With its illustration of a cave man battling a dinosaur, it is more fitting for a creationist. After all, the creationist museum in Kentucky has a diorama that includes humans with dinosaurs. (Before the fall, T-Rex used those massive teeth for breaking open coconuts, as all creatures were vegetarians before the Fall.)

In most arguments, it’s a short step from “evolution says we’re all descended from monkeys” to “that means I’m equal to god.” It’s an illogical step, because God doesn’t come into the picture with evolution. That’s the point: it’s about observable, testable, measurable data. God isn’t easy to measure or convince to come into the lab for tests. That’s why evolutionary theory is agnostic, and why intelligent design is not science: both are claims that science cannot test.

Still, creationists somehow make the connection, and Chick does a finely amusing job of illustrating this:

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The answer to little Johnny’s question is, “Nothing, really.” And that’s not because there is no God and therefore Johnny can place himself on a pedestal. It’s because people willingly make gods (of other people, stones, abstract ideas) all by themselves, and with a little convincing and hocus pocus, individuals convince others to turn them into gods. Priests and televangelists do it all the time. Watch Benny Hinn’s performance: while he says he’s a conduit for the Holy Spirit, it’s clear there’s something else going on in that ego of his.

Yet this notion that evolution does away with morality is ridiculous. Most moral codes are very practical: they protect us from others “lying, cheating” and becoming mini-gods. It’s only an anything-goes situation if people are willing to live in chaos. Most people don’t care for chaos, so we curb our desires for the good of all, including ourselves. If we’re unable or unwilling to curb those desires, the state curbs them for us. (A very Hobbesian view, I realize.)

At this point, the tract takes an unexpected turn. It’s not the proselytizing that’s unexpected; it’s the theology that’s a bit odd.

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This “special blood” theology is something very new to me. It sounds, quite honestly, very primitive. It suggests the notion of blood brothers: mix your blood with another person and it somehow makes you qualitatively different. It makes me think of the old notion that somehow your essence, the core of your being — be that good or evil — can be transmitted through your blood.

It also makes God quite literally a blood-thirsty being. But then again, Jack Chick’s tracts were never about creating an image of a god that any rational, compassionate person would like to have anything to do with.

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Chick’s god is little more than a small child, focusing the sun’s beams on an ant, grimly smiling as the ant writhes in pain.

If I treated my daughter the way Chick’s god treats humans, I’d be very rightly locked up for child abuse.

Collins and the Mind

Tuesday 28 July 2009

Sam Harris, author of the excellent The End of Faith, has an op-ed in the New York Times about Obama’s selection of Dr. Francis Collins to head the National Institutes of Health.

Collins is famous for his work leading the Human Genome project as well as his stance that there exists “a consistent and profoundly satisfying harmony” between science and Christianity. While he is not a proponent of Intelligent Design, Dr. Collins believes both Genesis and Darwin. Harris explained it thus:

What follows are a series of slides, presented in order, from a lecture on science and belief that Dr. Collins gave at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2008:

Slide 1: “Almighty God, who is not limited in space or time, created a universe 13.7 billion years ago with its parameters precisely tuned to allow the development of complexity over long periods of time.”

Slide 2: “God’s plan included the mechanism of evolution to create the marvelous diversity of living things on our planet. Most especially, that creative plan included human beings.”

Slide 3: “After evolution had prepared a sufficiently advanced ‘house’ (the human brain), God gifted humanity with the knowledge of good and evil (the moral law), with free will, and with an immortal soul.”

Slide 4: “We humans used our free will to break the moral law, leading to our estrangement from God. For Christians, Jesus is the solution to that estrangement.”

Slide 5: “If the moral law is just a side effect of evolution, then there is no such thing as good or evil. It’s all an illusion. We’ve been hoodwinked. Are any of us, especially the strong atheists, really prepared to live our lives within that worldview?” (Source)

Harris is concerned about this blending of religion and science. He writes that when Collins is

challenged with alternative accounts of these phenomena – or with evidence that suggests that God might be unloving, illogical, inconsistent or, indeed, absent – Dr. Collins will say that God stands outside of Nature, and thus science cannot address the question of his existence at all.

Similarly, Dr. Collins insists that our moral intuitions attest to God’s existence, to his perfectly moral character and to his desire to have fellowship with every member of our species. But when our moral intuitions recoil at the casual destruction of innocents by, say, a tidal wave or earthquake, Dr. Collins assures us that our time-bound notions of good and evil can’t be trusted and that God’s will is a mystery.

In short, Harris is worried about the fact that, when it comes to the moral dimension of the universe, Collins ceases being a scientist and becomes a theologian. Certainly the statement “God’s will is a mystery” is not something that can be tested scientifically, Harris rightly points out.

But Harris is up to more, though. He rightly points out that this view of creation — evolution to one point, divine spark-of-morality injection at another — recreates an age-old problem: the mind-body problem.

1-phineas-gage-skullJust how is the mind/soul connected to the body? Where does one end and the other begin? Things we’ve traditionally thought of as part of the mind/soul (such as personality) are oddly susceptible to influence through physical media. The most famous example is Phineas Gage, a railway who, through a series of unfortunate events, had a railroad stake placed in his skull. He survived, but was never the same. He changed. Instead of the kind, fun-loving Gage, he became a foul-mouthed, short-tempered jerk. His personality changed through violent manipulation of his brain. It kind of indicates that personality is not an aspect of the soul.

Contemporary examples abound. As a teacher, I see it every day: Ritalin. Over-medicate a child on Ritalin and you’ll get a somber, introverted, sleepy individual; get it just right, and you’ll get a “normal” person; under-medicate and you’ll get someone almost bouncing off the walls. When I was in school, this would have all been chalked up to “personality.”

This is exactly what Harris has in mind when he writes,

Most scientists who study the human mind are convinced that minds are the products of brains, and brains are the products of evolution. Dr. Collins takes a different approach: he insists that at some moment in the development of our species God inserted crucial components – including an immortal soul, free will, the moral law, spiritual hunger, genuine altruism, etc.

As someone who believes that our understanding of human nature can be derived from neuroscience, psychology, cognitive science and behavioral economics, among others, I am troubled by Dr. Collins’s line of thinking. I also believe it would seriously undercut fields like neuroscience and our growing understanding of the human mind. If we must look to religion to explain our moral sense, what should we make of the deficits of moral reasoning associated with conditions like frontal lobe syndrome and psychopathy? Are these disorders best addressed by theology?

Dr. Collins sees morality as an element of the soul; Harris points out that this is untestable and amounts to a re-introduction of the mind/body problem into contemporary science. It’s an insightful point, and Harris builds to this point very effectively.

It’s a tricky issue. Religious beliefs are often bedrock beliefs: they inform and shape other beliefs. Would we want a Christian Scientist in the role, someone who believes that all ailments are spiritual, figments of an unenlightened imagination?

But will Collins’ religious beliefs affect his scientific reasoning? I’m not convinced, like Harris, that it will. It didn’t when he was director of the Human Genome Project. Then again, Sam Harris is a long-tailed atheist in a Christian rocking chair country: he’s more than a little skittish, and often justifiably so.

Source: Gary Stern, at Blogging Religiously.

1600 and All That

Saturday 25 April 2009

It’s rare that we read something that makes us say “ah!” I’m not quite talking about epiphanies, but something very similar. Take the following passage from Sam Harris’ The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason:

It is a truism to say that people of faith have created almost everything of value in our world, because nearly every person who has ever swung a hammer or trimmed a sail has been a devout member of one or another religious culture. There has been simply no one else to do the job. We can also say that every human achievement prior to the twentieth century was accomplished by men and women who were perfectly ignorant of the molecular basis of life. Does this suggest that a nineteenth-century view of biology would have been worth maintaining? There is no telling what our world would be like had someone great kingdom of Reason emerged at the time of the Crusades and pacified the credulous multitudes of Europe and the Middle East. We might have had modern democracy and the Internet by the year 1600.

A kick to the head when I first read that.

Simply put, there is no difference between the Earth today and the Earth when Shakespeare was was writing Julius Caesar, Much Ado About Nothing, or As You Like It (all possibly written around 1600, give or take a few). Granted, we’ve depleted many resources since then, but the no new elements have been created (except a few radioactive ones in the lab).

More tellingly, nothing has changed about the physiology of humans. Our brains haven’t become more efficient; our general intelligence hasn’t really increased; our bodies haven’t become necessarily more adept at anything. Granted, we do live longer and are stronger, but that’s due to improved living conditions, which has been brought about by improved technology — the whole point of this.

But as far as resources and intelligence go, it is, at first blush, difficult to understand why we haven’t had “modern” technology for centuries.

What could have held the human race back? Only the human race itself.

How? Simple: unrelenting, unbending dogma.

Take away all the restrictions of dogma, all the assurances that slaughtering animals will somehow help us after death, all the certainty that initially unexplainable experiences (pestilences, plagues, diseases, seizures, and the like) can only be explained supernaturally, take away the fear that someone’s different thoughts pose an existential threat to us as individuals, and what do you have left? Free inquiry: the liberty to pursue questions to their end no matter how uncomfortable. It is this, above all, that leads to technological development.

Yet there is always a push against it — a reaction from the powers that be, because those powers understand that their authority is based on a presumption of never-changing Truth. Because eternal Truth and new, contrary evidence are in conflict, one or the other must be crushed. Usually it’s the new, contrary evidence.

Progress undermines Truth, and history is replete with examples:

The printing press was invented in fifteenth century, but Bibles in the vernacular were banned many decades afterward. Why?

Someone looked at nature and came up with an explanation for its diversity that differed from that which had been delivered in a book written in pre-scientific times; many people wanted (and still desire) to muzzle the theorist.

A gentleman provided reproducible, mathematical evidence that an earlier gentleman’s suggestion might in fact be correct: the motions of the planets might better be explained by placing the sun at the center of our planet’s rotation instead of the opposite. The gentleman was condemned as a heretic.

And “heresy” is a useful term here, for its Greek root means “choice.” Choice historically has been stifled in the name of salvation and homogeny between what individuals see and what those with metaphysical authority say must be say. In short, dogma, in its many forms, stifles choice, and in turn, stifles curiosity, and in turn, stifles progress. Without people constantly looking over their intellectual shoulders for centuries, we might have achieved a much greater technological development much earlier.

Really, the only thing that stopped us was ourselves. And that is perhaps the most tragic legacy I can imagine delivering to our progeny.

A sobering question is whether or not we’ve rid ourselves of this dogma. The simple answer is, “No.” And why?

Because dogma cannot change. Dogma cannot even admit the possiblity of change. Development — of any kind — depends on the ability and (more importantly, for humanity has the ability) the willigness to change our ideas when new evidence emerges. Dogma prevents this. Dogma says, “What is true is true, for all times.” Dogma instists on its own veracity and because Truth never changes, dogma never changes.

Could we have had the Internet in 1600? Certainly, but we didn’t give ourselves the necessary freedom.

More on ID

Thursday 1 September 2005

Thud mentioned “the kind of ID that also rejects short-history ‘the world is 5000 years old’ creationism.” It’s been my sense lately that “ID” is an effort by more moderate believers to distance themselves from the more literal, fundamentalist reading of a six-thousand-year-old universe. Look at the

Catholic church’s official position: the Vatican holds that God created the universe, but it makes no claim as to how he did it. Very sensible, but too sensible for fundamentalists – who often are rabidly anti-Catholic as well.

The problem lies with the fact that creationists – and I mean the hard-core, 6k variety – take the issue very personally. I once stumbled onto a teen message board of a fundamentalist sect and jumped in on the question, “Do you believe in evolution?” I found that the kids’ initial reaction was always an emotional one. “I’m not descended from primal sludge!” was a common theme. While I fail to see how the origins of my species affect my personal worth and self-confidence, the thought of being able to trace the human race back to amoebas somehow offended their sense of personal dignity.

“Something that used to be sludge can’t possibly be a child of God,” they reason. “I am a child of God,” they continue, concluding with, “Therefore, I did not evolve from primordial soup.”

Not the most well-founded syllogism I’ve ever encountered, but these are emotions we’re dealing with, not reasonable, rational responses.

Accepting evolution is rejecting God. For them, it means rejecting the very bedrock of their lives: the Bible. It makes the Bible a liar, because the use of figurative language has largely escaped them as a possible interpretation. If “And the evening and the morning were the first day” (Genesis 1.5) can be interpreted figuratively, so can “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3.16). If the Bible got it wrong about biology, then what confidence can we have in it regarding salvation.

This black-and-white, either-or thinking permeates the fundamentalist world.

All we had to do was elect an evangelical president to see that.

Reading Strobel

Tuesday 31 August 2004

I began reading The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel this week. My parents brought it to me in addition to the two books I’d requested. I’d read some reviews of it on Amazon, and the common complaint against it is that it doesn’t present the other side of the issue. There is a short chapter on the issues raised by the Jesus Seminar, but that’s about it other than occasional objections raised here and there by skeptics. I’ve no problem with this in a way, for the book is The Case for Christ and not Christ on Trial. In other words, even in the title it makes it clear that it’s presenting one side of the story.

One thing I do have a problem with is how much of the argument is based on something being “reasonable” or the alternative being “unlikely.” For example, “Given that Jesus’ followers looked upon him as being even greater than a prophet, it seems very reasonable that they would have done the same thing [(i.e., record his words accurately)]” (41, emphasis mine).

It’s often just conjecture. For example, concerning the casting of the demons into the swine, Strobel points out that Mark and Luke say it happened in Gerasa, with Matthew putting it in Gadara. After the scholar (Blomberg) suggests that one was a town and the other a province, Strobel adds, “Gerasa, the town, wasn’t anywhere near the Sea of Galilee.” Blomberg responds:

There have been ruins of a town that have been excavated at exactly the right point on the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee. The English form of the town’s name often gets pronounced ‘Khersa,’ but as a Hebrew word translated or transliterated into Greek, it could have come out sounding something very much like ‘Gerasa.’ So it may very well have been in Khersa — whose spelling in Greek was rendered as Gerasa — in the province of Gadara (46, 47).

Goodness — proper understanding of the Bible requires knowing how people could have transliterated or misspelled words! Isn’t the Bible of divine origin? How could this happen?

This issue of divine origin comes up again when discussing the consistency between the gospel accounts. Blomberg says,

My own conviction is, once you allow for the elements I’ve talked about earlier — of paraphrase, of abridgement, of explanatory additions, of omission — the gospels are extremely consistent with each other by ancient standards, which are the only standards by which it’s fair to judge them (45).

The only standards? How about the standard of them coming from a supposedly omnipotent, omniscient source? Of course, apologists like to conjecture that if there was perfect consistency between the gospels, that would be suspect in itself. Perhaps, but there is such a level of inconsistency on basic issues (who saw the resurrected Jesus first, for example).

In some ways, the book is strangely persuasive. I guess it comes from this strange, nonsensical desire to believe again. A childish desire, I suppose — and Christians wouldn’t deny that. “Unless you become like a child” and all that.

Pre-Wedding Seminar

Monday 5 July 2004

So we survived this Catholic church’s inability to treat its believers like responsible adults—i.e., we survived the pre-wedding, weekend-long marriage class. I would say “seminar,” but “seminar” implies more interaction than actually took place. The first half of the first day especially was nothing more than a long lecture.

Kinga and I decided that the people who really need such a thing don’t benefit at all from it, because they don’t really pay attention to it; and the people who don’t need it obviously don’t benefit from it all that much. The price was not worth the benefit in our case, I would say. It didn’t really cover anything Kinga and I hadn’t heard/thought/realized before.

What was especially frustrating was the repetition of the Catholic birth control talk. It began with an attempt at justifying it logically (and of course theologically, and even thought “logical” is in the word “theological,” it often isn’t). The presenter hung up a poster of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers and asked us to imagine we’d painted it. In comes a friend who rips the painting and she had us brainstorm what we would feel toward that friend: anger, surprise, hatred, desire for revenge, etc. were the words that came to people’s minds. She then pointed out that we weren’t physically harmed by our “friend’s” action, but that our creation was. “Ah,” I began thinking, “That’s how they’re going to try to justify the church’s absurd position on birth control.” And sure enough, she pointed out that we’re God’s creation, and that according to the Genesis account (which apparently we’re to interpret literally), we were created with four critical aspects/commands. One of them was our fertility and the command “be fruitful.” So the reasoning went, that when we’re tampering with our fertility, we’re tampering with God’s creation, and so on and so on.

She then went on to frame it as a question of faith, and I believe that was a great mistake. “Checkmate,” I thought, recalling my upbringing. In short, I wanted to talk to her about this and say the things I’m about to write, but I didn’t. If it’s a question of faith in God’s almighty power, then going to the doctor is just as much a questioning of that faith as using birth control. It’s one and the same. Catholics pray to God for healing—and then use medicine. If it’s an act of anti-faith (for lack of a better term) to use birth control, it’s just as much to use birth control.

Another one of the critical aspects of the Genesis account that they brought out was the control over creation that God supposedly gave Adam and Eve. So we’re supposed to “panować” all of creation except our fertility…

The church’s position is an antiquated position based on a time when infant mortality was much higher than now, and global overpopulation was an unthinkable concept. “Be fruitful” makes a lot of sense when perhaps half of the children you bring into the world live to be adults. In today’s society, it just makes no sense whatsoever. So the church is left scrambling to explain a first century (and earlier) tradition in a twenty-first century reality.

Interesting that the woman presenting said that the church’s position was not a question of the church wanting to have as many Catholics as possible—having babies for the church, in other words. And yet, just the day before, the priest said just that. That children were a blessing, and that by having many of them (he suggested three!) we would help our “fatherland” and the church.

The whole weekend wasn’t a waste. There were some interesting moments, but it could have been done in an afternoon as opposed to two full days. And the fact that it was required was ridiculous. Of course those conducting it had nothing to do with that, as they pointed out at the beginning when they said that no one would be excuse for any reason, we had to sit there throughout the whole thing. And then actually said bottom line themselves: “Ci który mają świadecwy mają władca.” “Those who have the certificates have the power.” It was meant as a joke, but I didn’t find it terribly amusing.

Soccer Religion

Wednesday 30 June 2004

After having written a short review of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code (Okay, I admit it – I have to stoop to some pretty low levels in my English reading while in Poland), I recently received the oddest letter from a complete stranger. The subject line: The DaVinci [sic] Code and The DA Revelation of Avatar Adi Da Love-Ananda Samraj

Dear Gary,

My name is John Forth from Melbourne Australia. I got your e-address from Amazon reviews.

The DaVinci [sic] Code is an interesting book on an important theme: namely the suppression [sic] of the gnostic [sic] strain in Christianity. A suppresion [sic] which has turned out to be a disaster for ALL beings on this planet.

With that in mind please check out The Divine Revelation of Avatar Adi Da Love-Ananda Samraj at:

1. www.adidam.org

2. www.adi-da-samraj.org

A Prophetic Criticism of the “Great” Religions (essays on how non-gnostic [sic] essentially materialist Christianity took over) at:

3. http://www.dabase.net/proofch6.htm

Grace Shines

John Forth

My response, after checking out the links he’d provided, was short: “What exactly does The Da Vinci Code – which is a horrid book filled with historical errors – have to do with a New Age cult?” Of course I knew such a reply was antagonistic enough to get another response out of him. In other words, I realized I was childishly provoking him, but I couldn’t help it. After all, it’s not every day that you get to speak to a cult apologist.

Mr. Forth replied:

Dear Gary,

Thankyou [sic] for your response.

IF you do your hope work you will discover that Adidam or The Way of the Heart created by Adi Da Samraj is not a “new age” cult. Christianity is a cult. Every body belongs to numerous cults. A cult being a group of people from the very small or in the billions fascinated by some object of desire or fascination.

Please check out “Beyond The Cultic Tendency in Religion—-” at: http://www.dabase.org/cultic.htm

You could say that the fascination with the Davinci [sic] Code is a cultish [sic] phenomenon [sic]. AS are the cults associated with The Lord of the Rings, the Matrix films, Star Trek etc etc [sic] Perhaps the relevance to Adidam is that Adi Da addresses in a very real way some of the themes, especially the repressed gnostic [sic] elements of early christianity [sic], mentioned in the Davinci [sic] Code.

Grace Shines

John Forth

Leaving aside the question of what “home work” Mr. Forth thought I was supposed to have done, I took him up on his offer and read – or rather, scanned – the piece Mr. Forth recommended, written by none other than the guru himself: Avatar Adi Da Samraj.

It was full of Things Not Normally Capitalized which were written in Capital Letters to express Their Importance (though he did restrain from some cult/sect writers’ typographical IDOCYCRIES), and basically filled with nonsensical Eastern guru babble. (I’m not suggesting that Eastern wisdom is just “babble,” just this particular “wisdom.”) Some choice quotes:

  • The relationship to Me that is Described (by Me) in the Ruchira Avatara Gita is not an exoteric cultic matter. It is a profound esoteric discipline, necessarily associated with real and serious and mature practice of the “radical” Way (or root-Process) of Realizing Real God, Which Is Reality and Truth. Therefore, in the Ruchira Avatara Gita, I am critical of the ego-based (or self-saving, and self-“guruing”, rather than self-surrendering, self-forgetting, self-transcending, and Divine-Guru-Oriented) practices of childish, and, otherwise, adolescent, and, altogether, merely exoteric cultism.
  • Just so, the cult of religious and Spiritual fascination tends to be equally righteous about maintaining fascinated faith (or indiscriminate, and even aggressive, belief) in the merely Parent-like “Divine” Status of one or another historical individual, “God”-Idea, religious or Spiritual doctrine, inherited tradition, or force of cosmic Nature.

The piece mainly dealt with the issue of “cultism,” which Adi Da claims is endemic in all religions – except his own, of course. His is the antidote to cults. Clever move: take critics’ charges and aim the back at them.

Next step, I decided to do my “homework” that Mr. Forth took me to task for not having done – particularly easy with Google. Soon I was flooded with information about Adi Da, Daism, and assorted goodies.

The Guru

I was initially not sure whether to call this charlatan “Franklin Jones” or “Adi Da.” Indeed, Jones himself cannot seem to make up his mind as far as names go. (names.adida.org) Continually referring to him as Jones makes his claims seem particularly absurd, but since they are currently published under the name, it seems to make contextual sense to call him “Adi Da.” In the end, I just oscillated back and forth.

I found out that – surprise, surprise – “Adi Da” is in fact Franklin Jones, a sixty-something Long Island born “guru” who has been holed up for over twenty years in Fiji , where he dispenses his Eastern-tinged “Crazy Wisdom” (his term, not mine) selflessly. I scanned a bit of his stuff and it was quickly evident that the guy is a fraud.

Jones’ religion, his “Crazy Wisdom,” is not a Siddhartha-type Western understanding of Buddhism, something which might raise the eyebrows a bit of a true Eastern master but cause no real consternation. In other words, it’s not some new meditation method, some slightly commercialized take on yoga (i.e., twelve positions for the supermarket checkout counter). Nothing so insignificant as that.

The claim that Jones make – the heart of his religion – is that he is an Avatar. A human manifestation of God. To frame it in Western terms, Jones makes the same claim Jesus did: that he is God incarnate. As he explains it:

I Am the Divine Heart-Master of every one, and of all, and of the All of all. Therefore, I Call upon every one (and all) to rightly and positively understand My Divine Self-Revelation. And I Call upon every one (and all) to truly devotionally recognize Me, and to responsively demonstrate that devotional recognition of Me in the
context of, and by Means of, the right, true, full, and fully devotional, and really counter-egoic, practice of the only-by-Me Revealed and Given Way of Adidam (www.dabase.org)
.

He is the Set Apart Guide (I can’t help lapsing into some Jones-esque capitalization) for All those Who want to Know the Way. The Way, coincidentally, is Jones himself, so his teaching amounts to how to recognize he is God. Indeed, followers are given instructions that the best way to forget about ego is to meditate on Jones, and since he’s living it up in Fiji and not physically available to all his followers, they’re provided with a photo album to help with the visualization!

Salvation, it seems, is based on fantasizing about a fat, bald, literally slimey-looking (just scroll down a bit) New Yorker with glaucoma.

The only Liberating discovery is that My Avataric Divine Spiritual Presence is Real, able to be tangibly experienced under any and all circumstances. It is not about imagining My Spiritual Presence or manipulating yourself. None of that is satisfying, in any case. To searchlessly [sic] Behold Me and, in the midst of it, to notice My Spiritual Presence tangibly moving upon you in your real experience–this is the great and Liberating discovery, the only Satisfaction. Ultimately, it is the only Satisfaction in life. Everything else is temporary, conditional, ego-based, and disheartening. Only the discovery of the tangible Reality of That Which Is Divine is heartening and Liberating and Satisfactory (adidam.org).

The practice is searchless, ego-forgetting, altogether to-Me-turned Beholding of Me in My bodily (human) Divine Form. When you are not in My physical Company, you can recollect My bodily (human) Divine Form. You can use My Murti-Form, My Padukas, and so on. Persisting in this practice, there is the potential of moving Me to Bless you further. [March 24, 2003] (adidam.org)

I closed my eyes and pictured him for a few moments and the only result I got was a chill running down my back and a brief
paranoia that, like the catchy melody of the latest pop trash hit, the image would keep popping back into my head unwanted.The Suckers and VictimsThe case of Franklin Jones and his AdidDaSes (the name “Adi Da” supposed just came to him; perhaps he just glanced down at someone’s athletic shoes) would be more comic than anything if it weren’t for the people that follow him. The difference between a cult leader and a raving schizophrenic homeless man in a subway station is that someone has taken the former seriously, and that’s a frightening thought. What makes a cult tragic is of course the devoted, mindless followers.Jones’ website speaks of “turning to him,” of “recognizing him,” of “loving him.” It’s scary stuff. But the words are not half as scary as the pictures – images from the inside workings of a cultic compound. Imagine David Koresh made pictures available of what went on in Waco. It might look something like this:And what’s worse is the fact that there are children being raised on this bullshit. Children of followers living on Jones’ Fiji island paradise are taught from birth (i.e., primarily socialization) that this snake-oil salesman is God. It’s difficult enough to deprogram adults who have surrendered (voluntarily or not) their grip on reality, but these poor kids will never have had a firm understanding of reality to begin with, and they’re going to be warped for life. It’s nothing short of child abuse, but unfortunately, such child abuse is legal.Thus armed, I dashed off a quick reply to Mr. Forth:

I read the piece to which you sent me the link, and I found this passage:

All cults, whether sacred or secular, thrive on indulgence in the psychology (and the emotional rituals) of hope, rather than on actual demonstration of counter-egoic and really ego-transcending action.

What is the difference between this “indulgence in the psychology [. . .] of hope” and what Adi Da offers? His form of TM simply offers the hope of getting in touch with true reality.

I suppose, to some degree, as an atheist I would agree. Any time we seek from a religion something beyond what we experience in our senses, quantitatively confirmable through science, we are indulging in “the psychology [. . .] of hope.”

Further, I would go so far as to say that Da is exploiting this “psychology [. . .] of hope” to build up his own cult. And for the record, I am using “cult” in the sociological sense of the term. Like Jim Jones (though I don’t know that Da will go so far), he has holed himself up in a remote corner of the world and refuses contact with outsiders.

Concerning this, Ken Wilber asks,

[Da’s] claim, of course, is that he is the most enlightened person in the history of the planet. Just for argument, let us agree. But then what would the most  enlightened World Teacher in history actually do in the world? Hide? Avoid? Run? Or would that teacher engage the world, step into the arena of dialogue, meet with other religious teachers and adepts, attempt to start a universal dialogue that would test his truths in the fire of the circle of those who could usefully challenge  him. At the very least, a person who claims to be the World Teacher needs to get out in the world, no? (www.beezone.com)

Indeed, what does the Dali Lama think of Da? How is he received in, say, India? Yes, yes, I know that some notables (most disturbing, Allan Watts) have given credence to Da’s claim, but as far as I know, true spiritual leaders don’t have much to do with him.

When I wrote this, I was still unaware of the extent of Jones’ claims to be God. As such, it’s a little flawed, for there does indeed exist a Gnostic element in Daism – the knowledge that a fat New Yorker is God.

Now, as far as this and some connection to that horrid The Da Vinci Code, I still fail to see the  connection. Gnosticism was not about mystical meditation but instead knowledge. “Gnosis” means “knowledge,” not meditation. The Da Vinci Code attempts to rehabilitate the idea of the sacred feminine – goddess worship, in other words – and not Christian mysticism. If that’s what Brown were trying to do in writing “DC” he would have written about, say, Father Pio. Instead, he wrote about Mary Magdalene, the “proper” object of veneration in Christianity as it was originally formulated.

In closing, I’d like to thank you for your emails, and encourage you, if you are involved in Adi Da’s cult, to get yourself out as fast as possible.

I never heard from Mr. Forth again. I suppose he realized that time trying to convert me was not time well spent, and I imagine he’s off emailing other people who submitted reviews of The Da Vinci Code to Amazon.com.The Ultimate Sell: YourselfOne question remains: to what degree does Franklin Jones believe his own nonsense? There are two equally disturbing possibilities. The first is that he simply knows that he’s a charlatan and realizes it’s all a big scam. This seems unlikely, for a conscious con-man, no matter how good he is, eventually slips up.The second possibility is that he thinks he is God. This simply means he belongs in an asylum. Indeed, the only difference between Franklin Jones and the probably uncountable number of Jesuses, Buddhas, Thors, and Jehovahs sitting around in state hospitals is that  Jones hasn’t been locked away. You can almost imagine a large nurse reassuring a pajama-clad Jones, “Yes, Mr. Jones, I know that my salvation rests on perfect contemplation of you. Now be a sweetie and take your medicine . . .”

Circumcision and the Bible

Tuesday 16 March 2004

I was reading this morning, of all things, the Bible. I found an interesting passage in Romans:

Circumcision has value if you observe the law, but if you break the law, you have become as though you had not been circumcised. If those who are not circumcised keep the law’s requirements, will they not be regarded as though they were circumcised? The one who is not circumcised physically and yet obeys the law will condemn you who, even though you have the written code and circumcision, are a lawbreaker.

A man is not a Jew if he is only one outwardly, nor is circumcision merely outward and physical. No, a man is a Jew if he is one inwardly; and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code. Such a man’s praise is not from men, but from God.

What advantage, then, is there in being a Jew, or what value is there in circumcision? Much in every way!

First of all, they have been entrusted with the very words of God (2.25–3.2).

It is very clear here that Paul is not talking about starting a new religion but expanding an old one. Judaism is a religion passed on by blood with the surrounding culture—there aren’t many converts and there’s no effort at proselytizing. But here’s Paul, out converting people not to anything called Christianity (when did they get that name, anyway?) but to be Jews!

Second, he mentions that Jews are the ones who “have been entrusted with the very words of God.” No mention of anything that would eventually become the New Testament “words of God,” and here is a good opportunity at least to mention the oral traditions, if not the gospels if they were being circulated in some fashion. Proof? Of course not—and proof of what? That the gospels were written later? That’s widely acknowledged. It’s simply indications of the ordinariness of Christianity, of it’s non-divine nature.

And I didn’t set out looking for this—I just decided to read for a while, as I drank my coffee.

XCG Thoughts

Friday 7 December 2001

Last night I spent a lot of time on the internet, and I found a lot of information about the Philadelphia Church of God. I’d found most of it before, but I hadn’t read it. It is, indeed, a cult. It is almost reminiscent of Jim Jones or David Koresh in its horror. From the account of one Sue Hensley:

March 1993 — He compared what was happening in Waco Texas to the persecution that would happen to us.  He told us the Branch Davidians were an example of the persecution coming upon us because they used many of the same terms we did.  David Koresh talked about a “little book,” he said the “lion roars,” he said Christ was the “Key of David,” he claimed his predecessor was “Elijah,” and he preached about the “Millennium.”  Mr. Flurry also brought up Jim Jones & the People’s Temple during his examples of the persecution to come, and he said Jonestown was their “place of safety.”

Regarding the “college” he’s building, Ms. Hensley wrote:

When the announcements were made in 2000 about the land that was being bought for the college, one of the tapes from headquarters told us a great deal of what was planned for the future of this land. They are putting in their own sewage treatment system, so that, if things reach a critical stage, all the members could stay on the property; they would be capable of handling over 7000 people on site. There was also an old airstrip in the property, which they thought could be refurbished and utilized to either “further the work” or to fly people out to the place of safety when the time came. The swimming pool (announcement made in 2001) is also to serve as an emergency water supply in case of fire or other needs. Even the first time I heard these things, it gave me a chill.

And lastly, regarding Flurry’s status:

He has also lately given the ministry some very strict rulings concerning what the ministers should do if a person in the congregation talks to them about something they think is wrong. Mr. Flurry has told the ministers that even if the person is right, they should never agree with the member because it would be disloyal to God’s Prophet.

I used to think that the PCG was just a silly bunch of neo-Armstrongites who were pissed because the WCG made all these changes. On the contrary — they are a full-blown, physically dangerous cult. The WCG was mentally dangerous. Spiritually abusive, even. But it never made statements like this. It never openly compared itself to the People’s Temple. And if Armstrong had been alive to see the Waco fiasco, I’m sure he wouldn’t have compared himself to Koresh. He would have said something ridiculous about it, no doubt, but I don’t think he would have drawn a direct parallel between the two organizations.

The reason is simple: I don’t think Armstrong really ever actually believed he and his group would “flee.” Why would they? That would mean giving up the luxurious lifestyle he’d grown so accustomed to. You can’t buy prosthetic dildos in the desert; Steuben crystal is fairly impractical in the desert; a Rolls Royce doesn’t take well to the desert. He never actually believed it. It was a good way to milk people of their money. Nothing more.

People like Jim Jones, David Koresh, and, apparently, Gerald Flurry, though, actually do believe the nonsense they’re teaching. And apparently, they’re all willing to die for it.

I’ve really got to get a handle on this obsession I’ve had for the WCG and all its splinter groups. It’s really just a waste of time, I know, but I can’t help it. I can’t bear the thought of something sensational happening in, say, the PCG and me not knowing about it. Why? I guess I just want to be able to watch the fallout as it happens.