Coffee!!: Atheism as a major cause of obesity?

Man demonstrates the ease of proving the existence of French fries.
Photo by James Heilman, MD

Along the lines of religion and health, a friend absolutely insists that I write about this:

From a medical perspective, an obese person has accumulated enough body fat that it can have a negative effect on their health. If a person's weight is at least 20% higher than it should be, he/she is generally considered obese. If your Body Mass Index (BMI) is between 25 and 29.9 you are considered overweight. If your BMI is 30 or over you are considered obese.[6] The term obese can also used in a more general way to indicate someone who is overweight.[7]


Two of the major risk factors for becoming obese according to the Mayo Clinic are poor dietary choices and inactivity, thus given the above cited Gallup research, it appears as if non-religious are more prone to becoming obese than very religious individuals.[8] The Bible declares that gluttony is a sin.[9] Furthermore, the Bible declares the physical body of Christians to be temples of the Holy Spirit.[10] Therefore, it is not surprising that many very religious Christians would leave healthy lives.

Well, ... you heard it here first.

I hope the ID controversy won’t degenerate into a “Who’s a tub of lard?” war, a temptation to which my friend may have just possibly given way ...

Seriously, more on religion and health here.

Latest attempt to explain away religion: Religion gene leads to babies, not thoughts

Robert Rowthorn advises, in “Religion, fertility and genes: a dual inheritance model” (Proc. R. Soc. B published online 12 January 2011),

Religious people nowadays have more children on average than their secular counterparts. This paper uses a simple model to explore the evolutionary implications of this difference. It assumes that fertility is determined entirely by culture, whereas subjective predisposition towards religion is influenced by genetic endowment. People who carry a certain 'religiosity' gene are more likely than average to become or remain religious. The paper considers the effect of religious defections and exogamy on the religious and genetic composition of society. Defections reduce the ultimate share of the population with religious allegiance and slow down the spread of the religiosity gene. However, provided the fertility differential persists, and people with a religious allegiance mate mainly with people like themselves, the religiosity gene will eventually predominate despite a high rate of defection. This is an example of 'cultural hitch-hiking', whereby a gene spreads because it is able to hitch a ride with a high-fitness cultural practice. The theoretical arguments are supported by numerical simulations.

“The theoretical arguments are supported by numerical simulations”? They’d need to be because the rest is bunk.

Just three comments:
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Thought for the day: Religion as statements about facts

Religion involves a series of statements about facts, which must be either true or false. If they are true, one set of conclusions will follow about the sailing of the human fleet: if they are false, quite a different set.

- C .S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, p.72 (1943)

This is a useful corrective to silly “new atheist” claims that religion means belief without evidence. Of course, the religious person could be wrong, but he usually has better reasons for believing what he does than eliminative atheists have for believing that the mind or consciousness or whatever it takes does not really exist.

Don’t ask me what is doing the believing in that case. I’m here with Jesus, not with that crowd.

African religion: Begin by trying to understand

A story in Slate (October 25, 2010) about traditional African religion, based on the author's reminiscences and V. S. Naipaul's recent book, almost works, but for its author's tiresome attack on all religions except his own (which I take, from his earnestly sarcastic tone, to be atheist materialism). Here's Johann Hari, "The Valley of Taboos: V.S. Naipaul dares to discuss Africa's indigenous beliefs":

There is a great thudding taboo in any discussion of Africa. Western journalists and aid workers see it everywhere, yet it is nowhere in our coverage back home. We don't want to talk about it. We don't know how to. We smother it in silence, even though it is one of the most vivid and vibrant and violent parts of African life. We are afraid—of being misunderstood, or of sounding like our own ugliest ancestors. The suppressed topic? The African belief in spirits and spells and ancestors and black magic.

Well, full marks for understanding that all cultures have taboos, including ours. Honest discussion of the differences that really do make a difference is a Big Taboo in North America today. And he is right to think it is a serious problem:

These are not trivial side-beliefs, like vague fears of black cats crossing your path. They are at the core of many Africans' understanding of themselves and the world. I have stood in a blood-splattered house in Tanzania where an old woman had just been beaten to death for being a "witch" who cast spells on her neighbors.

He asks where such a belief comes from.

Well, I have an idea: He also tells us,

In most indigenous African religions, "God" is pretty much inaccessible to humans. But they believe every human is surrounded by a swirl of spirits—of the dead, of the living who can temporarily leave their bodies, of nature—that are constantly at work. Many of these spirits will take on physical representations at key moments, from trees to carved idols to animals. They can protect and heal, or they can smite and curse. Life is a constant exhausting process of wooing the spirits and warding them off. They can be communicated with directly, but it is easier to talk through the local soothsayers and witch doctors. Africans who describe themselves as Muslims and Christians will often retain these traditional beliefs not far beneath the surface.

In other words, the idea that God is a loving father or a just ruler, and always accessible to his rational creatures is absent. And what assumes his place? The spirit of one's still angry dead mother-in-law, who must be placated at all costs ... or something even worse. No wonder missionaries wanted to reach the people with what, for most, seemed good news.

Nonetheless, Hari acknowledges,

Almost all homegrown African belief systems are, or were, based on a reverence for local ecosystems—a belief that the forests and rivers are sacred—and this helped persuade people to preserve them, alive and intact. But when the colonialists arrived, they dismissed such notions as mumbo-jumbo and forcibly imposed religions that originated in the desert and had nothing to say about the African environment. The old taboos were stamped out, and before long the forests began to be systematically destroyed. It's an eco-catastrophe from which Africa has never recovered, and which many Africans have picked up and are continuing to perpetrate today. Wangari Maathai, the Kenyan environmentalist who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004, offered a personal example when I interviewed her, speaking about one particular tree near her village that she loved: "That tree inspired awe," she told me. "It was protected. It was the place of God. But in the '60s, after I had gone far away, I went back to where I grew up, and I found God had been relocated to a little stone building called a church. The tree was no longer sacred. It had been cut down. I mourned for that tree."

This sense of grief at seeing a forest destroyed—or even as morally akin to murder—is in fact more sane than our shrugging.

I've mourned for trees too, but if I ever got around to seeing them as akin to people rather than as elements of places, I'd be well on the road to superstition.

Media and religion: If people cannot safely say what they think, what effect can media have?

Media watchdog Brent Bozell charges "NPR's Religion Double Standard'" (Townhall, October 27, 2010), in connection with the abrupt firing of Juan Williams, for saying honestly that people in Middle Eastern Muslim dress on airplanes made him nervous:

National Public Radio's firing of Juan Williams tells you all you need to know about the radical, and thoroughly intolerant, left. Williams is a liberal, but still, he isn't liberal enough. The idea that he would acknowledge a mere thought of discomfort at the idea of people in "Muslim garb" on airplanes in a post-9/11 world became a firing offense. It didn't matter that he prefaced it with all the perfunctory and politically correct disclaimers about not being a bigot and we shouldn't blame all Muslims for terrorism.

Fired.

Today's left is void of any principles whatsoever. They can be as astonishingly offensive and insulting as they want toward Christians, and no one gets punished. The indefatigable Catholic League provides the documentation.

Bozell goes on to talk about insults to the Catholic Church that are supported by NPR types.

Fair enough, but the reality is that old atheists and new, and all types in between, have stubbed their toes kicking the Catholic Church for two millennia. So?

A greater concern, in my view, is media that do not seem interested any more in what people actually think. Having bought into the idea that citizens are simply random collections of molecules that can be directed by the will of an intellectual elite (among whom they conveniently class themselves), they think they can simply fix or airbrush everything so that their aggregations do not conflict with each other. And if that doesn't work, they fire someone just to prove they are in charge (in charge, that is, of truckling to the right political correctness icon).

No. We must start by asking people to say - with no fear of editing, censure, firing, or punishment: What do you actually think/feel about this? If we want to solve a problem, we start there and move out from there.

Bozell, and many, want NPR defunded. Hmmm. I'd prefer they be asked to voluntarily revisit what happened here. If they prove arrogant, well ...

Prof fired for teaching what the Catholic Church actually says

S. T. Karnick, over at The American Culture, draws my attention to this story:

University of Illinois Instructor Fired Over Catholic Beliefs

The University of Illinois has fired an adjunct professor who taught courses on Catholicism after a student accused the instructor of engaging in hate speech by saying he agrees with the church's teaching that homosexual sex is immoral.

The professor, Ken Howell of Champaign, said his firing violates his academic freedom. He also lost his job at an on-campus Catholic center.

Howell, who taught Introduction to Catholicism and Modern Catholic Thought, says he was fired at the end of the spring semester after sending an e-mail explaining some Catholic beliefs to his students preparing for an exam. (July 09, 2010, Associated Press)

I always say that students who cannot deal with ideas they disagree with should find a well-recognized trade school, not a university. They can earn a good living on graduation, and if some of the ideas they encounter are upsetting, that is only because no one wants them to lose a hand or a foot on the job.

Pseudo-neuroscience: If you believe in God, it is just because you think you ARE God?

See the abstract for "Believers' estimates of God's beliefs are more egocentric than estimates of other people's beliefs" by Nicholas Epleya,1, Benjamin A. Conversea, Alexa Delboscb, George A. Monteleonec and John T. Cacioppoc:

Abstract

People often reason egocentrically about others' beliefs, using their own beliefs as an inductive guide. Correlational, experimental, and neuroimaging evidence suggests that people may be even more egocentric when reasoning about a religious agent's beliefs (e.g., God). In both nationally representative and more local samples, people's own beliefs on important social and ethical issues were consistently correlated more strongly with estimates of God's beliefs than with estimates of other people's beliefs (Studies 1–4). Manipulating people's beliefs similarly influenced estimates of God's beliefs but did not as consistently influence estimates of other people's beliefs (Studies 5 and 6). A final neuroimaging study demonstrated a clear convergence in neural activity when reasoning about one's own beliefs and God's beliefs, but clear divergences when reasoning about another person's beliefs (Study 7). In particular, reasoning about God's beliefs activated areas associated with self-referential thinking more so than did reasoning about another person's beliefs. Believers commonly use inferences about God's beliefs as a moral compass, but that compass appears especially dependent on one's own existing beliefs.

Well, obviously, people who believe in God would want to take God's side in ethical issues, right? Who wants to be merely on the neighbours' side (obsessed with property values) or on Satan's side ... (evil for the fun of it?).

The authors of this study, having begun by assuming that God does not exist, attempt to reason about why people conform their beliefs to what they think God wants, based purely on private preferences. That goes against everything I know about religious people.

Birth of religion? My latest Deprogram column at Salvo Magazine

On the supposed evolutionary origin of religion:

Did you know that: Religion is good for you; also, Religion is bad for you; also, Religion makes no difference; also, Religion can be explained by a God gene, or a meme, or part of the brain . . . or whatever the editor of your local paper’s “Relationships” section will buy for this weekend’s edition?

You didn’t know any of those things? Aw, no surprise. But never fear: One outreach of the new atheist movement, currently making its way around the lecture rooms of the nation, is the academic attempt to account for religious belief, and to do so on any basis whatsoever, except one.

We will get to that forbidden one in a moment. First, let’s look at the permitted ones.

[ ... ]

Okay, so what is missing from this picture?

First, common sense: Suppose I told you that flossing your teeth (1) helped; (2) didn’t help; (3) made no difference; (4) can be explained by . . . (choose an option). What would you reasonably conclude about the state of the evidence?

Go here for the rest.

Denyse O'Leary is co-author of The Spiritual Brain.

MercatorNet: Can evolution explain religion?

Here's my MercatorNet column (10 December 2009),

Can evolution explain religion?

Evolutionary psychologists offer two contradictory explanations for the existence of religion. They can't both be right, but they can both be wrong.

In a recent issue of the leading journal Science , Elizabeth Culotta offers a variety of speculations in an article titled "On the Origin of Religion." Explaining religion without God is quite the growth industry these days among evolutionary psychologists. Some argue that religion exists because it increases evolutionary fitness (survival of the fittest). Others argue that it makes no difference to fitness. It is merely a glitch in our thinking that doesn't kill us off.

They can't both be right, but they could both be wrong. Let's see.

For the rest, go here.

Neuroscience: Stuff I didn't need to hear about what people care about, but pass along anyway

This from a recent study of religion, using neuroscience techniques:

While religious and nonreligious thinking differentially engage broad regions of the frontal, parietal, and medial temporal lobes, the difference between belief and disbelief appears to be content-independent. Our study compares religious thinking with ordinary cognition and, as such, constitutes a step toward developing a neuropsychology of religion. However, these findings may also further our understanding of how the brain accepts statements of all kinds to be valid descriptions of the world.

The study compares religious believers and non-believers, which I think is a bogus comparison. Everybody believes something. One must be quite the dull stick not to believe anything. Non-believers in traditional religions are often great fans of the environment, the government, their trade union, their home team, a political party, atheist book clubs, a rock band, their local Hell's Angels club house, or whatever.

It would be a big step forward if researchers recognized that religious beliefs are not different in principle from other beliefs. The fact that contrary nonsense is even entertained is an impediment to science.

Yes, religion is very important, at least to some people. But then so is membership in a Chrysler trade union or the Hell's Angels or the Flyers' fan club to others.

Thus, I am hardly surprised to learn that "the difference between belief and disbelief appears to be content-independent."

Hat tip: Stephanie West Allen at Brains on Purpose

Religion: Does religious literacy matter?

Montreal's McGill University Faculty of Education hosted a conference October 2, 2009, on "Why is religious literacy important?":

Participants in this symposium will have an opportunity to hear from internationally recognized experts on the topic of Religious Literacy and learn about choices made by school systems in different parts of the world.

Well, why is any literacy important?

Do I want people to graduate from high school without knowing why the bar mitzvah is important to Jews, that Muslims fast during Ramadan, that Jesus was crucified, or that materialist atheists do not believe in life beyond death? Not knowing this kind of thing closes a door on understanding events, controversies, and symbols in the world around them.

Religion: Putting God on trial once again

I thought you couldn't be tried twice for the same offence, not here anyway.

The publicist for a new novel, banned in Malaysia, advises me that the author wishes to put God on trial.

With his new book, The Book of Walla, Krishn takes a controversial approach in capturing and relaying the power and significance of spirituality worldwide, essentially putting religion “on the spot” to explain its starring role in human conflict. Its main character, Dr. Shoorab blames religious dogma for upheaval in his life, and consequently sues God. The defendants – from all different religious sects – find themselves putting these differences aside.

Interesting, but not new, I am afraid. It is the central thesis of the Book of Job, possibly the oldest book in the Bible (3500 years old). And don't count on getting God convicted when he starts to argue his case.

Banned in Malaysia? I'd rather be banned in Britain for the anticipated publicity. But we'll see.

Genetics and popular culture: Another claim that genes "explain" religion

In "NPR religion reporter dusts off fingerprints of God," (Salt Lake Tribune, July 30, 2009) Peggy Fletcher Stack reports on Barbara Bradley Hagerty's new book, Fingerprints of God:

“After interviews with Dean Hamer, researcher at the National Institute of Health's National Cancer Institute and author of The God Gene , Francis Collins, former head of the National Human Genome Research Institute, Pat McNamara of Boston University as well as several skeptics, Hagerty concludes that genes do seem to play a role as a "sort of tipping point for spiritual experience."

"It's a little bit like automatic air-conditioning," she writes. "For some people, a relatively modest rise in temperature ... can flip on the cooler system. Those people are genetically inclined to be spiritual. Others may sweat it out to 90, 95, 100 degrees; only then will their God switch flip on. And some would rather die of heat than turn to 'God.' "

Why should I think this is good news? It implies that no one on the other end is really listening, just an automated system.

I don;'t believe any of it. People with the widest variety of genetic backgrounds have spiritual experiences and there is no "switch." There is a line, of course, 24/7.

Religion: Why did the pig become so unpopular?

Recently, a friend alerted me to an item of junk called "Clean Conservatives and Filthy Liberals" that I can no longer find online. It may have been a gag, or perhaps a riposte to some other junk, like this ("From the Iszatso? dept: Thoughts from Sharon Begley on "liberal" vs. "conservative" brains ")

Anyway, gag or not, it raised some interesting questions for me, one of which is how some animals come to be forbidden food. Obviously, most devout people are just going to follow their religion's guidance in these matters, but sometimes there is more to the story. I am thinking of the interesting case of the pig in the Middle East.

Years ago, an author pointed out in a book on economics that pigs differ from most animals kept anciently in those regions because they are not multipurpose. I quickly made a list of factors that he mentioned, plus a few others:

1. Pigs compete directly with humans for food. (Most agricultural animals do not compete directly with humans for food, because they can eat things humans cannot.)

2. Pigs drink a lot of water. That is inconvenient in a dry environment.

3. Pigs cannot be milked.

4. You cannot ride a pig.

5. Pigs cannot be used as pack animals.

6. Pigs do not pull carts.

7. Pig skin is useful as leather, but it is not a fleece.

8. Stampeding pigs may trample their keepers. (You’re lucky if they just run off a cliff in that case, as in a famous incident in the New Testament.)

9. Pigs can give humans diseases like “swine flu.”

10. It is difficult to develop a relationship with an adult pig, unlike say, a horse or donkey.

So, if people who live in a semi-desert environment are not going to eat an animal for religious reasons, to demonstrate their faith, it may as well be the poor old pig. Perhaps he isn't quite as bad as his reputation, but he is too ecologically expensive for many environments.

Religion: Yes, faith is good for you

Here's a short YouTube of the skinny on one aspect of The Spiritual Brain, which I worked into a chapter of Hot Apple Cider.



Hey, if you want to know about the Canadian Christian community, do NOT waste your time on Canadian lit queen Margaret Atwood's diseased fantasies about "Gilead."

Buy this indispensable book instead.

(Note: Atwood didn't have the guts to write the Gilead garbage about Canada. Because she knew that her fellow citizens - a great many of whom are devout Christians - would smell the horse dung.

So she set the story in the southern United States, which we seldom get a chance to visit.

In reality, we traditional Canadian Christians, Jews, and Muslims are world leaders in freedom of expression.

I am ashamed of the fact that so few literati (mere government-funded glitterati?) have bothered to notice that. But I do not care, because it is true anyway, and they will soon find out, if they haven't already.)

Religion: From the okay, okay, some religions ARE just plain bad files ...

Get a load of this. If it doesn't creep you out, seek help. Soon. Now.

Religion on the decline? Maybe, but then again maybe not

Recently, the American Religious Identification Survey showed an apparent decline in churches, prompting some to prophesy doom. For example, Robert Spencer writes in Christian Science Monitor:

We are on the verge – within 10 years – of a major collapse of evangelical Christianity. This breakdown will follow the deterioration of the mainline Protestant world and it will fundamentally alter the religious and cultural environment in the West.

Within two generations, evangelicalism will be a house deserted of half its occupants. (Between 25 and 35 percent of Americans today are Evangelicals.) In the "Protestant" 20th century, Evangelicals flourished. But they will soon be living in a very secular and religiously antagonistic 21st century.

Others are not so sure: Allen Hunt, a radio host who pastors a megachurch comments:

... nearly all of the decline in Christian “market share” came from the slowly collapsing ranks of mainline Protestant churches ... Forty years in a row of creeping death. These highly bureaucratized, often theologically relativistic and liberal, groups await their own funeral. Americans simply have chosen to find spiritual meaning and growth outside the mainline churches.

I think Hunt has a point here. It's not that these mainline churches' causes are necessarily bad. Many - like fighting poverty and domestic abuse - are highly commendable.

The problem is that - if that is what you want to do - join a political party rather than a church. A political party can form a government and a church can't. That is doubtless a conclusion many people have reached, and surely one reason for the decline in these churches' numbers.

The churches that survive will continue to cultivate spirituality, though it probably will be more eclectic than in the past: Hunt, again:

In fact, a number of those who classified themselves as having no religious affiliation (“None”) actually claim to be Christian but with no organizational affiliation. These people simply claim to be “followers of Jesus.”

Yes, that is another thing. People who say None often just mean, "I don't want to be bugged by long jaws about God and Religion." But if you involve them in a conversation, they often turn out to have ideas on the subject. There is a striking incident of this very type in the New Testament - Jesus and the woman at the well in Samaria.

While we are here, Spencer writes,

This collapse will herald the arrival of an anti-Christian chapter of the post-Christian West. Intolerance of Christianity will rise to levels many of us have not believed possible in our lifetimes, and public policy will become hostile toward evangelical Christianity, seeing it as the opponent of the common good.

Okay, well, that anti-God crusade is happening already, but not, I think, for the reasons Spencer believes. (He blames it on cultural and political conservatism, but the authors of anti-God books are mostly promoters of materialism, period. Opposition to Christian moral beliefs are only a part of the story.)

Two other things to note: First, the viewpoint of traditional Christians on many currently contentious issues has been widely held until fairly recently over much of the world, and still is in a great many places. The traditional Christians didn't move; others did.

Second, if Canadian experience is any indicator, many activists against Christians are highly illiberal and have little respect for civil rights. So catering to their demands would be as unwise for non-traditionalists as for traditionalists - and can be opposed on those grounds.

In fact, a pushback is setting in here in Canada already, and it is not necessarily being led by reactionaries, but rather - in many cases - by liberal groups. A number of gay rights activists, for example, have been quite outspoken in saying, essentially, "We're not asking you to persecute pastors and priests who preach that the gay lifestyle is not acceptable to their church. We just want to be left alone to live the way we want."

Significant civil rights victories are now being won here as a result of concerted action by people who agree on little else.

The latest on God neurons: There ARE no God neurons

I am sure glad Mario Lopez posted this "Wired" item under "eyes rolling" at Uncommon Descent.

Whatever those people are Wiring themselves with, they should stop.

Here's the deal: Let us compare humans to weasels (a pine marten weasel is pictured at right).

Humans think about God because we have human mental faculties, period.

Weasels do not think about God because they do not have human mental faculties.

Humans realize that we will die one day, and wonder what happens after that. (Weasels do not.)

Humans think that some of our behaviour is good and some is bad, and we wonder whether the universe is organized in such a way as to promote the good and penalize the bad. (Weasels never think of these things.)

It is not correct to say that humans only think of these things because we are socialized to do so. Moral revolutions are often started by people who go against the leaders of their society. These revolutions can be good or bad, of course, depending on their outcome. It could be Gandhi - or Hitler - for example.

Human societies have changed a lot in the last couple of thousand years. (Weasel dens have not changed at all. They may not have changed in a million years, and will probably never change.)

There is a lot to know about being a human that we don't yet know. (There is nothing to know about being a weasel that weasels don't know.)

I think "neuroscience" studies about religion are often a waste of time because, as I said when I first climbed back onto my coffee perch in 2006, they are starting from a fundamentally flawed premise: That the explanation should be some God gene or circuit, rather than awareness of mortality and moral responsibility.

What they don't want to confront is the reality of the mind. And they will never get anywhere until they do.

Denyse O'Leary is co-author of The Spiritual Brain.

Religion: When bad things are done by (supposedly) good people ...

Columnist Michael Gerson recalls

sitting at a Kigali restaurant with a Tutsi woman who described the death of her younger sister, a university student, during the Rwandan genocide. The girl had been given up for murder by one of her own teachers, who was a nun. The survivor across from me, previously a Catholic, had never attended church again. In the sacrifice of the Mass, she could only see the sacrifice of her sister.

Many items on the list of horribles laid at the door of religion are libels or exaggerations. But this charge - the indifference or complicity of many Christians during the great genocides of modern history - is one of the genuine scandals.

In Hitler's Germany, Christians responded to mass murder with general acquiescence and only isolated defiance. Protestants earned the most shame.

He's right, of course, and he adds

During the Rwandan genocide, writes Timothy Longman, "Numerous priests, pastors, nuns, brothers, catechists and Catholic and Protestant lay leaders supported, participated in, or helped to organize the killings." Two Benedictine nuns collaborated with Hutu militias in the murder of 7,000 people just outside their convent grounds. A priest participated in the burning and bulldozing of a church with 2,000 men, women and children inside.

It is very difficult to understand how those who worship a man on a cross could help to drive the bloody nails themselves.

He offers a useful analysis:

When religion is infected by racism, ideology or extreme nationalism, it can become a carrier of hatred instead of conscience. And when churches are concerned mainly for their institutional self-preservation, they often end up neck-deep in compromise or paralyzed by cowardice.

Yes indeed. The Vatican was not telling those people to do those things; rather the opposite. But the message they heard was "protect our institution, our culture, our spocial and political advantages, etc."

This is a perennial temptation of religion.

Gerson is writing in the context of Pope Benedict XVI's lifting the ban of excommunication on a Pope St. Pius X Society bishop - in an effort to heal a long-standing rift. Unfortunately, the bishop turned out be a Holocaust denier. I am sure that "B16" did not know that. He fully intends to continue his predecessor's project of healing rifts. But one wishes that he had better research services. Perhaps he will take steps to acquire them now.

Gerson's reflections throw a curious light on Bill Maher's documentary, Religulous. Recently, on a radio show hosted by Barry Arrington, I expressed puzzlement that the film focuses on ridiculing simple peole who are religious and says comparatively little about evils committed orc ondoned by religious folk. But a moment's thought, and the picture comes in: It would then be necessary to talk about the good that far more religious people do.

Here's my review of Religulous. I was also on

See also:

Spotted: Neuroscientists in the movies ... Andrew Newberg!

Commentator challenges "Religulous" documentary producer to a debate

Does religion protect us against pseudoscience?

Atheist bigots: Avoiding serious questions and targeting ignorant religious folk?

Religion and the media: Why it doesn't pay to be just plain vindictive

Last night, the Hudson Institute's Center for Religious Freedom in Washington, D.C. offered a panel discussion on the theme of the book, edited by Paul Marshall, pictured here, Blind Spot: When Journalists Don't Get Religion.

This subject is more complex than some realize because, as I have discussed elsewhere, modern media people have often seen their role as essentially replacing, marginalizing, or at best patronizing religion. In such cases, not understanding becomes a point of pride. That is, they wouldn't even want to be the person who knew what, say, the "apophatic tradition of mystical language"* is.

For example, Terry Mattingly quotes Roy Peter Clark, a senior scholar at the Poynter Institute, a premier center for media studies:

I don't know the difference between evangelical and charismatic, but I can argue about who has sluttier videos, Britney or Christina. (P. 5)

Remarkably, Clark is a Catholic who attends Mass most Sundays. While he tells us that he recognizes that he has a problem, I don't get the feeling from his comments that he understands how big a problem it is or - and this is the critical point - that at this point it is only his problem, not the religious community's.

That is because, as it happens, media that celebrate ignorance often have the opposite effect from what they intend. In the chapter "Jesus Christ Superstar: The Passion of the Press," Jeremy Lott discusses the curious case of Mel Gibson's 2004 film The Passion of the Christ. Media people were determined to hate the film, and gave a ready ear to any dirt about it:

With a few notable exceptions - Peter Boyer's profile in the New Yorker being one - news coverage of the movie was bad, the opinion writing was clichéd, and the movie criticism was worse.

But, he notes, it was all so bad that the audience decided to give the movie a chance. Which turned out to be just the ticket for producer Gibson:

Evangelicals might have had serious theological difficulties with this film: the focus on the suffering of Jesus was too intense and unrelenting; the identification of bread and wine with body and blood was so very transubstantial; and the movie drew heavily on the traditions of the Church, rather than relying only on the bare text of the gospels, to determine the content and structure of the story. ... By repeatedly reporting concerns over the movie's literalism, the press did yeomen's work to put these concerns to rest.

Yes indeed, media hatchetmen would have loved to set the Protestant cat among the Catholic pigeons, but they knew so little about the true theological and cultural differences between the two groups that they had no idea that their frantic accusations were reassuring the Protestants that the film was literal enough to be suitable viewing for Protestants.

In the same way, the media-driven uproar over the film's supposed anti-Semitism caused Christians to renew efforts to scrub anti-Semitism away. Thus, when Mel Gibson actually did make anti-Semitic statements (while drunk and under arrest) in 2006, the incident sank without a trace.

That, I believe, is because the accusations of anti-Semitism - not supported by the film as released - sounded pretty stale - and now the film now stood apart from its creator.

Lott sums up:

In one sense, the story of the success of The Passion of the Christ is really about the press's failure to honestly grapple with broader questions of religion. In another sense, the story is about the estrangement of American journalists from their audience. The movie did not lead to the rise in anti-Semitic sentiment that the critics had predicted. The fact that the predictions were broadcast as widely and loudly as they were (see the "anti-Semitism" chart above) bespeaks a troubling willingness by journalists to believe the worst of religious would-be moviegoers.

In my view, as noted above, the main thing to see at this point is that the estrangement isn't hurting the religious moviegoers; it is hurting the media.

But then, as Aunt Marge has always told us, people who are just plain vindictive end up wishing they had two noses to cut off to spite their face with - but they don't even have that.

*The apophatic tradition? Defining by negatives, as in "no eye has seen, no ear has heard no mind has conceived ... " A form of speech sometimes used by mystics, because of the difficulty of describing experiences involving altered consciousness.

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