Ex Cathedra

Second lesson from my upcoming book on how to be an effective Christian evangelist.

Not long ago I wrote here about why believers of the Christian variety who endlessly quote the bible to convert freethinkers and skeptics might want to take a little vacation and try something else. The inky electrons were hardly dry before I found a better article by Russell Glasser about the same thing.

I’ll leave it to Glasser to explain his brilliant Star Trek Test. Go click the link already!

Variations on a theme of Glasser follow. I use “we” a lot more than may be justified, so feel free to disagree when I seem to be including you erroneously. We all speak our own minds. Or perhaps we don’t

Let’s imagine that freethinkers all became convinced that observation and reason aren’t the best tools for understanding and getting along in the real world. Let’s suppose we ditched them and all became big fans of figuring things out by reading ancient authorities. But that still leaves the question, why that authority? Why would the bible be a convincing authority, even if we became susceptible to that kind of thinking?

Most freethinkers (nontheists, humanists, skeptics) have studied the bible for years. We’ve already concluded that it’s false from top to bottom. Let’s not be dogmatic: let’s just say  the bible clearly fails the most elementary tests for credibility.  It tells about talking snakes, people turning into pillars of salt, worldwide floods (but no Kevin Costner,thank god), people living in the bellies of whales, the sun stopping in the sky (conservation of angular momentum isn’t real big in the bible), and example after example of things that observation and reason tell us are ridiculous. It talks about characters — Moses, Jesus, Adam, Samson, Goliath — about whom there’s way too little credible evidence that they ever existed — “Jesus of Nazareth” when there was no such place as Nazareth when he supposedly lived there, and on and on.

Can believers possibly imagine that we’d never thought about about the morality of the the things the bible teaches? We’ve thought about it.

And there’s the versions of the bible they choose to quote — the most unscholarly versions, some hundreds of years old, but all chosen for piety, not accuracy. The thing they’re quoting to us is barely even a bible.

The problem isn’t that we don’t know the bible. We know it fine. The problem is, some of us don’t think a book of such dubious provenance, credibibility and character could conceivably have any authority for us Assuming that we thought the best way to find out about the world and our lives is to consult ancient authorities — which we don’t.

But let’s forget about our reasoning. After all, we could be fools, we could be villains, we could be distracted by our lust for Lucy Lawless or for these ladies or whoever or whatever distracts you.

Dear believers, whatever the reason, the simple fact is we don’t think the bible is authoritative. If we did, your job of convincing us that you know the way to save us and that there’s anything to be saved from would already be mostly done.

But we don‘t think the bible is authoritative. We really don’t.

In that case, how could you expect we’d be converted when your preaching consists of little more than “The bible says…”?

That doesn’t mean we don’t respect believers as people. Believers can be magnificently intelligent and good people. We believe that, and more than that, we’ve seen it with our own eyes. The human species has some wonderful people in it Show us that. Show us why you think belief is a good idea. Show those of us who are perfectly content to live here in the real world how your belief has made your life in the real world richer. You can show us all sorts of things that might be convincing. You aren’t stupid, we aren’t all that unreasonable. But quoting from the bible isn’t going to convert us. Ever. Isn’t it about time you tried something else?

A good start might be owning up to some of the evils that can all too easily result from belief. Pretending those evils don’t exist or trying to explain them away just makes you look like George W. Bush.

Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds. – attributed to Richard Feynman (h/t to Leiter Reports)

But perhaps philosophy of science might come in a little handy for scientists and the rest of us when we’re trying to respond to believers a bit more than “I’m not very religious, thanks”

We respond, especially in public forums, in the hope that somebody‘s listening, — it’s usually not the believer, unless that believer is one of those rare birds of that species for whom life is actually a dialogue, not a monologue.

“Here’s your bible,” they shout, and then point to something by Darwin. I can’t imagine missing the point worse. It’s like hollering “Here’s my Godfather of Soul” and pointing to that picture of the dogs playing poker. Not just pointing to Hannah Montana, but these guys.

It isn’t that Darwin isn’t the authority we all follow. Scientists and nontheists don’t have authorities. In fact, we’re lousy followers. That isn’t the way science, skepticism and nontheism work.

I think it was PZ Myers who said Scientists have heroes, but they don’t have authorities. Well, I guess that shows what kind of authority Myers is around these parts. I couldn’t even remember his name, but I enjoy reading what he says. It shows thought and wit.

Believers can quote scripture (some of them love to quote scripture) till they’re blue in the face. They might as well be speaking Swahili. Worse than that — some of us actually know a few words of Swahili Authorities, holy or otherwise, just don’t mean that much to us, ahsante sana. They aren’t speaking our language. Speaking in tongues would work better.

Don’t tell the authorities. That is, don’t tell me the authorities you follow if you’re into that sort of thing.

Maybe believers should forget the scriptures for a while and try a little thought and wit. Maybe dogs should try playing poker. They can — not the dogs,silly, but anybody who’s halfway human can think and have a sense of humor and have wit enough to know when they’ve stopped communicating.

I’ve just done that. Fortunately I also stopped typing.