Val: thanks for having the stones to trade barbs with me. I know we rarely agree on anything but that’s what makes things interesting. For my own part in as much as I’ll attempt to defend certain positions these positions are not necessarily ones I accept as 100% trustworthy. In the case of science, it does not have the explanatory power that some people think it does. So while I find it perhaps our most trustworthy means of acquiring a practical knowledge of physical reality I do value Scripture and a life of faith.
I wanted to respond specifically to a few of your statements:
“For example, one could spend years studying the evolutionary model, only to find, late in life, that the DNA of all nations of man can be traced to three men, 5000 years ago, and beyond that, to one female ancestor.”
You need a primer on biology I think. DNA doesn’t work this way, Val. The 3 billion base pairs of DNA definitely can be used to look in to the distant and past development of humankind taken as a whole (but not traceable to individuals per se), e.g. compare the base pairs of a European with that of an African and you can visually trace when these “two” groups were actually “one”. You get the same results when comparing Africans and Asians. Comparative analysis of DNA clearly indicates these two groups came from a shared ancestor. But, statistically speaking, if the human race began from so small a population as is implied in Genesis we most certainly would not have survived; that being, the second generation after Adam, etc. would have been forced to breed sister and brother, etc. Ever seen the movie “Deliverance”? There are hundreds of known genetic disorders. This second, then third, then fourth generation would become more and more plagued by these complications; it is statistically inescapable. Mathematically speaking your base population for humans has to be a minimum two to three thousand in size to have the necessary genetic variability. (Hutterites do not use their faith to interpret whether it is wise or not to“invite” young men to add new genetic information to their colonies. If they didn’t accept the evidence, their communities would suffer from all sorts of genetic problems.) This is all well-established science.
However, when it comes to mitochondrial DNA I think in principle it is possible to eventually trace a path to a single female (but not in the way you think); that is, sons and daughters receive mDNA from their mother; and over time the total number of unique lines of mDNA reduces, e.g. if a mother only has sons then her mDNA is not passed on because her sons are incapable of passing it on to the next generation. The mDNA line ends. In my own family circumstances, my mother’s mDNA will survive because I have a sister; however, my sister had only one son. My mother’s mDNA line is now ended. So at some point in the distant future one woman’s mDNA might be the only one left, the king of the hill if you will. But you meant to say there was “one” at the start…yeah, that’s not so likely.
“I just think that faith would be an asset to the scientist who is a Christian, that would allow him to progress rapidly BEYOND [my emphasis] his colleagues, simply by avoiding time-wasting pitfalls.”
Last time I checked both republicans and democrats were incapable of breathing water. Climate change is not a partisan issue; it’s a human one. (By the way I agree that Biden is a tool and Obama has been a huge disappointment to me.) So let’s refocus: those pitfalls you speak of are actually the absurdities I mentioned earlier. And for the record, I didn’t just cherry pick something some random “republican crank” said to score points. On the contrary, Shimkus had real potential to become significantly influential in guiding domestic energy policy in the United States (until his strange views became public). His belief God would never drown us again as per Noah’s Flood was an excellent example of the absurdity of applying literal interpretations of Scripture to answer contemporary scientific questions. The “time wasting pitfall” in this case would be having to explain to Shimkus that his religious beliefs are inappropriate given his broader responsibilities as a politician. I’m sure he’s a very nice man. But there’s a reason we separated church and state…
“I think, just as faith can help us to properly interpret scientific results, so can science help us to properly interpret faith.”
Science works on the basis of objectivity in the legal sense of the word, i.e. you go where the evidence takes you irrespective of your beliefs going in answering any question. With this in mind, give me one concrete example (just one) where faith would help as opposed to hinder the interpretation of data. In the example of mDNA above, if I had to continually disabuse my colleague of their literalist views (acquired from Genesis) as we study genetics I don’t think the enterprise would get very far. Worse still if our research was time sensitive, e.g. we had to develop a vaccine for a pandemic killing millions of people, etc. we need to be that more efficient in the use of our time. Where faith would be appropriate in this case is it might motivate the scientist to want to save lives.
“I do not find the disciplines mutually exclusive, but rather, highly complementary.”
You’d be wrong to think this IF you are a literalist. Which you are…I think. You’d be justified in thinking this way IF you are a contextualist who isn’t slavish to the idea of inerrancy. Which you are not…or at least I don’t think you are given the vast majority of your statements. I’m not saying one is better than the other. I would assert though that contextualism provides the individual adherent a lot more room wiggle room to reconcile their worldview with science is all.
“I can’t really comment on relativity and GPS, but I will say that if vaccines are best understood through an evolutionary filter, that might be a good reason to revisit the wisdom of the vaccine theory… “
Why can’t we lock down a vaccine to eradicate influenza or the common cold? Why is that our most powerful antibiotics are becoming increasingly in-efficacious? Because viruses and bacteria evolve. They change over time due to selective pressures. We can “see” this happening. So instead of using a telescope to get Church leaders to see for themselves the imperfections on the Moon I can take you to a laboratory and we can see how generations of influenza change over time. But that’d be a “pitfall” or a “dead end” I suppose to you… So why can’t we develop a vaccine for influenza? Now we can use our understanding of genetics (a huge part of Evolutionary Theory) about the recombination and mutation of genes in a virus like influenza to guess which strains of the flu will be out there this season infecting people. And statistically speaking this intervention does pay dividends because our predictions are sometimes right. But nature keeps rolling along, changing, mutating, and evolving, irrespective of human beliefs. The fact you probably won’t accept evolution is at work is proof positive for how your faith, palpable in this case, would get in the way rather than help us understand and then finally combat influenza. To believe in the efficacy of a vaccine and to be a staunch Creationist is a contradiction akin to a Christian believing in reincarnation or a pro-choice person advocating on behalf of whale that cannot speak for themselves.
“If you think that my preference for God’s laws as a guideline for scientific enquiry is ill-advised, you are absolutely free to pursue your own dead-ends; I won’t object.”
This is why I like you. You say clever things like this. Sophistry of this kind is useful for debate to obfuscate the issues. So with your leave I’ll continue to pursue “dead-ends” (the very same “dead ends” which mind you helped develop the technology you used to deliver that wonderful “dead end” epithet above).
“I am unaware of any Scripture that limits the number of stars to 200,000. I think that your source is in error. If I remember correctly, the number of stars was compared to the number of the grains of sand on the seashore, which is basically, innumerable.”
You are correct. I confused a widely held belief during the Bronze Age period with the existence of a literal reference of this belief in Scripture. Thanks for pointing that out. My errors (and all the ones you make) illustrate the wisdom behind working within a community. You vetted my assertion and I was found wanting. We make each other accountable. Now I could defend my erroneous position to my dying breath but that wouldn’t change the fact I was wrong, would it? That’s how science works. That’s why working in a community is more trustworthy than working alone to form strange hypotheses.
I’ll explain my error: there is no “total number of stars reference” in the OT. Rather, some clarification is in order: ancient astrologers had counted the total number of stars visible to the naked eye and that equaled somewhere in the 200k plus range. I think my confusion arises from reading one of Voltaire’s works. I unabashedly admit my error. Bruno still got ‘whacked’ though for the reasons stated.
“From what I can see, Rick, we are rapidly nearing the end-times and the fulfillment of all things as well as the ultimate restoration of all things. It is a truly exciting time to be alive.”
Eschatology. Gotcha. I’ll remove my science hat and put on a religious one for a moment. You might be right. There are definitely some things to be concerned about. But as Scripture says the “end” will come like a thief in the night. Perhaps some of these conspiracy peeps you like to read have something to say about this. There is a chance they are just gongs sounding off though, too. To ask a question is one thing but to answer it is quite another. I’m just not sure how I’d ever be able to tell whose ideas are trustworthy and from those that are not. All the ideas sound crazy like the chemtrails idea; it’s paranoia. You’re right that I generalized about these “theorists” but I did so not to produce a stereotype or a Straw Man. I did so because when I use generalizations I can invoke broader principles to illustrate problems with having faith in the claims of such people. Your chemtrails idea in my honest opinion is dubious. I have heard of cloud seeding and certainly crop dusters put chemicals in the air but some government conspiracy is at work? I don’t know. And absolutely planes pollute the air. It’d be nice if they didn’t. I think putting something in the water supply would be a more efficacious method of getting “stuff” in to people to be honest. If I am ever a politician and “they” let me in to their secret cabal I’ll push for the water supply approach to oppression…
“I also don’t care about anything that the Church taught at any one point. This Church (probably RC?) was just teaching doctrine, ie, a limited man’s interpretation and understanding of the written Word. Of course, his understanding was limited and inaccurate. The Church was also selling “indulgences” for cash, at that time…”
Yes we’re talking about the RC at the time of Galileo, Bruno, etc. I get the impression that you think some doctrines were developed arbitrarily rather than through a trustworthy methodology. I think you’re right, i.e. especially when you consider your cited example, e.g. indulgences. Indulgences are only supportable with the most liberal interpretation of Scripture (but you can find references to it in the OT). Yet, there are non-scriptural doctrines which I am almost certain you hold to be true as an “orthodox” believer, e.g. Trinity, Divine Maternity. Trinity is an idea grafted on to Scripture following the Council of Nicea (some 300 years after Christ). Look in to that if you haven’t already. The first reference to the word “Trinitas” doesn’t appear in any Christian based writing until Tertullian in the 2nd century. You will not find any reference to it in Paul. That I can say with absolute certainty. It can be found in the Epistle of John (it was added to this letter by the Church sometime after 335 AD).
So why believe that one doctrine is reliable but not the other? What standard do you use? Is this standard universally applicable? Or is it arbitrary, personal and changing? Again, I call your attention to how inappropriate it is to use faith to answer scientific questions. Scientific knowledge is acquired through rigorous methods of testing; the individual scientist’s intuition is important but it must be reined in by the overall process; also you have to be able to “see” a phenomenon in order to test it; moreover, the findings of science must be “repeatable”. If a research team discovers some sort of mechanism at work there will still be doubt about this mechanism’s existence until it is confirmed to exist by other research teams. If you cannot repeat the results the mechanism is considered “falsified” or non-extant. In the case of theology, you can have as many interpretations as you have people. Just consider how many Christian denominations Luther’s reformation gave birth to. I dig Luther to be sure but there were some unintended consequences of his unleashing a “priesthood of all believers” on the world. To quote Red Jacket, “Brother, you say there is but one way to worship and serve the Great Spirit; if there is but one religion, why do you white people differ so much about it? Why not all agree, as you can all read the book?” Good question, Red Jacket. I don’t know dude, I just don’t know.
So yes we could say the Church made errors. However, you yourself use the very same methods as the Church fathers used to interpret Scripture, e.g. a combination of direct interpretation and logical conjecture, etc. I might add these men were considerably more learned in either Greek or Latin than you and they worked within the context of a theological community…yet they apparently erred. Some of these Church fathers even had access to the apostles themselves. So I wonder: where these learned men of the RC failed why is it that Val would succeed? Some humility is in order.
Disagree without Being Disagreeable
When it comes to scripture I’ve typically focused on the writings of Paul (with his focus on hope and grace). Even in times of doubt, I’ve always appreciated Paul. With that said, I came across something from 1 Peter recently which I felt was so apropos given all the unfriending and disagreement and heat related to covid and mandates and convoys,, etc. etc. that’s going on.
“Finally, all of you, be like-minded, be sympathetic, love one another, be compassionate and humble. Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult. On the contrary, repay evil with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing.” (1 Peter 3: 8-9)
Disagreements are just that: differences of opinion. Nobody has perfect knowledge. But social media, with its echo chambers and recommendation engines, is making people become so impossibly entrenched that they cannot handle having their opinions challenged. Consider putting aside pride and instead love your neighbour without condition. Disagreement shouldn’t be fatal to friendship; after all, it is possible to disagree without necessarily being disagreeable.
Women Revolutionaries
Approximately every 50 years a women-led protest movement of some sort shapes and/or challenges the Western World’s society’s laws, customs, values and assumptions. For your consideration:
1789: the women of Paris march to the Palace of Versailles—armed with muskets—capturing the French King forcing him back to Paris. This is considered one of the seminal events of the French Revolution because it set the country on a path towards either a constitutional monarchy or a republic. The French Revolution’s influence on the subsequent shape of Western civilization cannot be overstated.
1830s: a women’s labour movement in New England: seamstresses are the first to launch strikes in the New World demanding improved working conditions, wages, and the right to form unions and bargain collectively. One of the larger strikes involves over 20,000 workers; this type of action eventually gives rise to an organized political left that leads to all sorts of reforms ranging from unemployment insurance to universal healthcare.
1870s: the Women’s Temperance Christian Union is established as part of an effort to reduce domestic abuse. Root beer is invented to replace the beer drank by all those unemployed men (in the hope to reduce alcohol related domestic abuse). The WTCU’s effort creates the foundation for the brief Temperance Movement of the 1920s and 30s where the consumption of alcohol is made illegal. The Temperance Movement comes to an ignominious end; however, awareness of the difficulties of mothers and women generally increases making future change (improvement) possible.
1920s: women, like Mary Wollenstonecraft, had been advocating for equal rights since at least the latter part of the 18th century. The Great War (1914-1918) unleashed a series of reform-minded forces and challenges to traditional authority. The English-speaking world is challenged by suffragettes in Canada, England, Australia, New Zealand and the United States. Suffragettes demand the right to vote in elections and hold political office. Some women, like Frances Perkins work (Secretary of Labor during Roosevelt’s first term), serve directly in government. Broadly-stated, election dynamics change because women bring different views and tolerances to political decision-making. Politicians must adapt in order to gain enough votes and supports. This gives rise to Roosevelt’s and Bennett’s “New Deal” political regime leading to the things like universal healthcare, Medicaid, and the establishment of the social safety net. These developments presage a fundamental shift in government, i.e. governments up until Franklin D. Roosevelt tended to avoid intervening directly in the economy or in the lives of citizens. Women help push democracies away from a laissez-faire (“hands off”) approach towards the liberal socialist approach used today by every major industrialized democracy in the world.
1960s: a book called The Feminine Mystique is published giving rise to second-wave feminism; women now push for pay equity, equality of opportunity in the workplace, and attitudes towards motherhood, reproductive rights, birth control, etc. all change. Women enjoy unprecedented opportunities in education and work.
2010s: Me-Too.
Interesting pattern to discern: there’s a sociology PhD in there somewhere. Anyways, what will 2060 bring? I predict women will rise up and save the planet from climate change.
Canada 2.0: The Co-mingling of Western and Indigenous Civilizations
Please read the following with charity: difficult topics, or at least ones which at first blush appear contentious, are difficult to write about because they’re frequently misinterpreted (particularly on social media where everyone is so amped up already and easily offended). Difficult topics make demands on readers and writers alike: they require readers to be thoughtful and discerning while writers make the nuanced, plain, and the emotional, rational. I’ll do my best to communicate what I have to say:
Recently I received some much-needed clarity on something long vexing me: how do I justify spending so much time (grades one through 12) teaching mainly non-Indigenous students about Indigenous culture and history. As a classroom teacher, I’m given curricula and a professional obligation to teach it (without necessarily understanding or even accepting it). As a trained historian, and more significantly as a human being capable of empathy, I believed the merits of teaching non-Indigenous students about Indigenous worldviews important, e.g. if we want to understand others we must give them an opportunity to speak and we must genuinely listen. The importance of listening to others is self-evident. Yet, listening isn’t enough (we must become something different).
The confluence of two things recently—the first-ever Truth and Reconciliation Day and the re-reading of Rupert Ross’ Dancing with a Ghost—gave me a better appreciation for both the Day and the real reason why non-Indigenous folks should receive an education in Indigenous ways, i.e. all civilizations and cultures have merit; thus, we need to weaken the tendency some have of at times believing—explicitly sometimes, implicitly at others—that Western civilization is somehow superior to all other cultures. (Every civilization has members believing themselves at the center of the world, e.g. the word “China” literally means “Middle Kingdom between Heaven and Earth.”) There’s much that is beautiful about Western civilization’s literature, art, philosophy, music, and history. But the same is true about all of the cultures composing Canada’s panoply of First Peoples from coast to coast to coast. Canada, really, is a marriage of civilizations, a dialogue (not a monologue): and through the current dialogue on reconciliation we can appreciate all civilizations have merit and are beautiful in their own way; we understand all of Canada’s peoples have something to teach and something to learn from one another; and as we smash down old barriers to understanding we create the basis, in the co-mingling of Western and Indigenous cultures, for the emergence of a new civilization in real-time, a truly and uniquely Canadian one.
Canada Re-elects Yet Another Liberal Government: 2021
I wasn’t surprised by the results. The election was a referendum on how well the government handled Covid. The Liberal Party stuck to the science, avoided politicizing a plague, and looked after Canadians in a time of crisis. The Conservative Party remains on the outside looking in. One word sums up their situation really well: relevance. They are supposed to be the grown-up party, the reality-based one, but they continue dragging their heels on climate change. They’re also tone deaf: balancing the books is important but it’s not the only role of government (particularly during a pandemic). We aren’t Americans who have this irrational love affair with rugged individualism at any cost (which looks more and more like Social Darwinism to me). Canadians have a reasonable expectation their government can materially improve the lives of Canadians through wise policy. The Liberals will continue to win election after election after election until the Conservatives find someway to appeal to people in the middle.
Believing Brains
Given the propensity of our believing brains to cast aside reason to embrace the conspiracy du jour, I would say “facts might be stubborn things” but there’s nothing as immovable and stupid as unqualified conviction.
Smart Phones & Anomie
The sociologist Emile Durkheim (1858–1917 CE) coined a special term in the latter part of the 19th century describing a sense of growing alienation from “nature and creativity” combined with a feeling of “purposelessness” produced by a “rat race existence” promoting a mindless consumerism in people instead of virtue or community. The word Durkheim coined is anomie.
When a social system is in a state of anomie, common values and common meanings are no longer understood or accepted, and new values and meanings have not developed. According to Durkheim, such a society produces, in many of its members, psychological states characterized by a sense of futility, lack of purpose, and emotional emptiness and despair. Striving is considered useless, because there is no accepted definition of what is desirable.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/anomie
Durkheim grew up and died occupying two significantly different worlds: he was born before scientific advances—by Darwin, Lyell, Currie, Maxwell, Freud, and Weber—successfully challenged a traditional, ostensibly religious, narrative that people were taught to believe as true in their churches; it was a romantic narrative placing everyone and everything in its place helping adherents make sense of the world. This worldview, conservative for the most part, was far from perfect but what it lacked in rationalism it made up for in coherence.
By the early 1900s Durkheim and other intellectuals felt a sense of impending dread—expressing itself through a suicidal arms race between Great Britain and Germany and, eventually, through the violence of the Great War itself. This impending sense was accompanied by a breakdown in traditional values and social norms: specifically, the Gilded Age (1870s) promoted values like self-interest and the profit motive at the expense of higher values like seeking the public good or pursuing truth for truth’s sake. This is why so many young men greeted the Great War (1914-1918 CE) with such enthusiasm. The existentialist philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889-1976 CE) best captured why the Great War was so important: war, Heidegger observed, provides a metaphysical reawakening of the spirit. If mass consumption and a stress on economies over communities was soul-destroying, war (somewhat ironically) was a way to reawaken that spirit. Conflict would give a directionless generation purpose; and there were at least three thinkers—France’s Henri Bergson (1859-1941) and Germany’s Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) and Oswald Spengler (1880-1936)—who ]wrote extensively on what they deemed was the cultural decline of the West. (Many of those young men whistling tunes on their way to destruction—on both sides of the coming conflict—were carrying copies of Nietzsche’s Ecco Homo in their pockets.) Aristotle observed art imitates life: thus, the 19th century novels of Herman Melville (1819-1891), the poetry of Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) , the anomie Weber identified, and the sense of cultural decline Nietzsche and Spengler intuited, all pointed to a growing sense of generally unease felt and expressed by the masses, i.e. with the decline of traditional religion, and no other narrative capable of uniting people into a corporate whole, people discovered that while they were born into a world full of rainbows and creative potential, many discovered in mid-life they inhabited a grey world dominated by mindless consumerism, urban decay, and despair.
I was born in 1971: looking back I think I was taught to possess a healthy respect for authority; I feel like people used to all fundamentally share something akin to a single narrative; there wasn’t universal agreement on everything, yet most reasonable people didn’t confuse their personal opinions as a substitute for the knowledge of genuine experts; scientific knowledge was considered authoritative, not dismissed out-of-hand as partisan when conclusions didn’t conform to one’s political ideology; people prized flexibility of perspective rather than stubbornness; communities were healthier largely because churches were stronger, and so on and so forth. I sound like a conservative. I am not. If I identify as anything, it’s as a rationalist. All I am trying to say is the world feels different in 2020 than it did back in the 1970s.
Much has changed: we’ve become increasingly polarized and egoistical, less concerned (if contemporary research in sociology is accurate) with the public good and more focused on our own personal path to wealth. Science, arguably our best and most trustworthy way of looking at the world, has become a casualty in an increasingly post-truth world: theories like evolution, anthropogenic climate change, the Big Bang, and even vaccines, and so on, have all become regarded as “liberal” ideas, instead of reflective of a single shared reality. Anti-intellectualism has produced a climate where pseudo-science—flat earths, Moon landing conspiracies, pyramid creating aliens—flourishes while genuine science critical to the public interest is under constant fire.
Computers and the Internet certainly existed when I was born; however, we were a long way away from the advent of either Facebook or Twitter and the eventual weaponization of social media. Social media and smartphones, perhaps more than anything else in contemporary culture, has displaced a sense of fair play, community, and pride of purpose previously making society—however flawed it was in the 1970s and 80s—cohere. That coherence is gone. I’m not so pessimistic to say there’s no sense of community any longer; however, it’d be naïve to suggest communities are not becoming increasingly vulnerable due to shrinking municipal budgets, rural depopulation, austerity measures enacted by provincial, state and federal governments, and a shrinking middle class (as eight exceedingly wealthy people control more wealth than the lowest 3.7 billion people on the planet combined).
I’m a secondary school history teacher: I see all these kids with their faces buried in phones sitting on couches with other kids with faces buried in phones—ten of them sitting together not saying a word to one another; the silence is broken only by the occasional chuckle or swipe. They are plugged in but disconnected. All of them are lonely because the one thing they crave online (a sense of connection and belonging) is impossible to find in either worlds grey or virtual.
Suicide rates in adolescents and young adults is rising in the West. This trend is shaped in part due to how much time youth spend alone online rather than spending time outside or connecting with one another. Related to this, albeit this is just anecdotal, I’ve noticed over my 20 plus year career more and more kids simply have no idea how to play outside. They can’t take their minds off their silicon obsessions; and collectively speaking, society is stuck in a sort of “Pavlovian despair” where everyone is rewarded to do precisely what they do not want to do: wake up and check the smartphone; go to work, check smartphone; walk in the park, face buried in phone; have dinner with the family (check the phone); watch a bit of television with the family (watch the smartphone at the same time).
In the Gospel of Mathew Jesus observes that people “do not live on bread alone, but on every word from the mouth of God.” Even the most unreligious person, given the current state of despair and purposelessness society seems to occupy, can appreciate what he’s saying here: life is meant to be lived directly, not vicariously through a device; and that the surest path to despair is one where we substitute genuine connections with people for superficial ones based on views and likes.
Conduits of Conspiracy: Breitbart and Parler
A number of young and impressionable boys and men joined ISIS after being radicalized watching propaganda videos on YouTube and reading ISIS’ online magazine “Dabiq”. These sources of “information” presented the West as a Great Satan to be destroyed while painting Islamic State fighters as heroes and preservers of all that is good and holy. Convinced that what they were reading and exposing themselves to was the truth, a couple dozen Canadian men and boys became radicalized enough to go fight for ISIS from 2012 through to 2018.
Is there anything making a young Muslim man more impressionable to the influence of disinformation and propaganda than, say, a non-Muslim person? I shouldn’t think so: every human being shares the same fundamental psychology in common; we share the same tendencies to take cognitive shortcuts and accept at face-value that what we read and hear is true (especially if what we hear is something we like).
Which leads me to why I’m writing: I have noticed a disturbing trend among some former students of mine on Facebook, all males, posting and sharing conspiracy theories sourced from a right wing propaganda site called Breitbart News. Breitbart was established around 2007 to provide a strong conservative voice on the Internet; arguably, some of the work they did in those early years presented what could be construed as journalism (not my cup of tea, but nonetheless the site at times made some good points); however, over the last 13 years the few genuine journalists they had working for them have left and Breitbart has become a full-blown conspiracy website.
The same process which radicalized young Muslim men is being repeated through older sites like Breitbart and new ones like Parler: three events in the last two months have made me come to view these sites as truly dangerous both to these young men individually and to society generally, e.g. an attempt to kidnap the governor of Michigan by a Qanon-inspired militia group, attempts to storm poll stations in Arizona and Michigan during the 2020 election, and during that same election an attempt by two gunmen to fire upon a poll station in Pennsylvania (but was thwarted by the FBI).
Sites like Parler and Breitbart have been given legitimacy by the President of the United States, Donald Trump. His command, for example, to followers to “liberate Michigan” (because the governor was imposing unpopular Covid regulations) was followed by those militia-men as were his commands for MAGA hat wearing supporters to go “watch the polls”. He has created an atmosphere legitimating alt-right conspiracy theories which, for the life of me, I cannot figure out why reasonable people prescribe to them; and if you point out the ethical and moral and epistemological problems of supporting the President his supporters just double-down. There’s no convincing them that he’s dangerous. He’s fighting the so-called “Deep State” (one of several conspiracy theories perpetuated by Qanon).
There is literally no reason to think that young Muslim men are any more impressionable or vulnerable than young Christian men to propaganda. Sites like Breitbart are incendiary and dangerous conduits of conspiracy theories. Pay attention to the young men in your families and in your local orbits. Some of them are being exposed to fantastical conspiracies which are literally white supremacy tropes re-branded.
What concerns me is the types of conflicts we’ve seen between different groups in Iraq or Syria or Afghanistan can be transplanted to Western countries like the United States and Canada; and alt-right movements seem to hold some sort of allure for young men–Christian or otherwise (likely because it gives them a sense of purpose and belonging).
If the radicalization is left unabated, I suspect the failed attempts at kidnapping the governor of Michigan and attacking the poll stations are simply preludes to greater violence to come. Breitbart is not a reliable source of information whatsoever; it is paving the path towards conspiracy inspired mob violence.
Thank You Vlad
I’ve learned more about what liberty is from its enemies compared to what I’ve learned about it from its friends. I suspect a similar conclusion was reached by Martin Luther King, Jr. when he observed, “The opposite of love is not hate, it’s power.”
A Scientist & a Rabbi Walk Into a Bar
The scientific enterprise is astonishingly similar to the rabbinical tradition: what was previously taught is considered an advance over the knowledge that came before it; but the duty of every student is not to be satisfied: rather, one must first learn what was taught, then question it, and then succeed it. The process does not pretend to be headed toward consensus or any kind of conclusion; it is the pursuit of knowledge for knowledge’s sake.
Trump: Conspiracy in Chief
During a recent coronavirus briefing, Trump touted Houston Dr. Stella Immanuel as “very impressive”. Immanuel released a video, which Trump presented on his Twitter feed, presenting the following views:
1). Hydroxychloroquine prevents Covid-19 infections (it doesn’t though, but studies seem to indicate it correlates with increased morbidity rates). She claimed masks do not work (but it has been experimentally verified they can reduce the potential for infection by as much as 30%).
2). The virus has a cure which was created using “alien DNA” (we do not have a vaccine yet). Alien DNA…? So life on other planets has been found? The odds of an identical building block of life (DNA molecule) existing off earth is not low, but likely impossible. If you have even a modicum of understanding of how we went from organic compounds to RNA to DNA, you’d have some appreciation for how stupid a claim this is.
Yet, if DNA is ubiquitous in our galaxy, or the Cosmos generally, it would seem to support a “pan-spermia” hypothesis where life began somewhere else and ended up seeding life here. I read lots of science and so far I haven’t heard about life being found on other planets just yet. That’d be kind of a big deal…
At the briefing, CNN reporter Kaitlan Collins highlighted some of Immanuel’s past comments, including that alien DNA is being used in medical treatments and that doctors want to make people immune from religion.
So the proposed vaccine will immunize you from religion….?
Can this POTUS cause anymore harm? He props up stupid people and criticizes genuine experts. The appended picture is a metaphor for the American response to the pandemic.
Past Meets Present
If I lived back in 2020 BCE, I would’ve regarded myself as a “modern” (inhabiting a smarter, better world) while simultaneously looking down on those poor primitives who came before me who didn’t know any better (sort of like we do today). A thought like this helps perhaps explain why pseudoscience, e.g. belief in a flat earth for instance, etc. continues to shape thinking in the present: the chronological present never quite escapes the intellectual past.
I’ve literally met people who entertain 8000 year old ideas as though these notions are “current”; it convinces me we can take the person out of the 21st century BCE but we cannot take the 21st century BCE out of the person.
Social Media is a Cancer
I heard possibly the most apropos description of the role social media plays when it comes to shaping public dialogue and understanding for the negative: political leaders and other individuals knowingly perpetuating conspiracy theories and speaking outright lies without anything being done about it. Section 230 of the Decency Act prevents social media companies from being held accountable for being a pulpit for pseudoscience and harmful propaganda. This is a good thing, in principle, because rarely does censorship end well; but in the reality zero-accountability is destroying the public’s capacity to make informed decisions.
This reminds of the situation back in the 1950s when corporations were dumping mercury into lakes and rivers with abandon because it was more profitable and easier to just dump it than recycle it (it only later became illegal when the harm to public health became apparent); and so Facebook (which is probably the worst of these corporate polluters) sits behind Section 230 and is an enabler of the transmission of information which hurts the public understanding of science (e.g. climate change denialism and anti-vaccination propaganda), politics (e.g. Russian trolls and “pizzagate”), justice (e.g. Trump deflecting criticism from himself on to “Psycho Joe Scarborough” by Tweeting long debunked falsehoods about a so-called cold case), ethnic groups (e.g. Myanmar used it encourage and maintain the genocide of the Rohingya) and so on.
I’m 48. I’m not ancient, but I’m not young. Something feels tangibly different today than it did when I was younger and I think it has everything to do with how we use and how much we consume social media: we are less tolerant of diversity; we are less tolerant of disagreement (considering it destructive to friendship as opposed to just a reflection of that aforementioned diversity); there’s a belief that an uninformed personal opinion on any given topic is equivalent in trustworthiness to the expert on that given topic; there’s way too much tolerance on the right for a lack of fundamental decency where people veil their intolerance behind attacks on political correctness; and there’s too much of a demand on the left for cultural and political purity that to disagree with them you get branded as a racist for even thinking of dissenting.
Belief in an Age of Doubt
Introduction
Art imitates life compelling us to look deeper in to the significance and meaning of human experience. For this reason Roger Lundin, author of Believing Again, felt studying literature was vital to our well-being—books weave experience and sensation together giving expression to certain underlying truths about human existence. When Lundin was thirteen years old he read Jack London’s short story “To Build a Fire.” After finishing the story he felt like his life was taken away momentarily—measured and judged—and then returned to him in the form of an alienated majesty (a realization his own situation, and that of the main character in London’s story, was essentially identical.)
“To Build a Fire” is a story about a man lost in the Yukon wilderness. He must build a fire or perish. Everything that can go wrong goes wrong. When the nameless man’s efforts eventually fail, he submits to fate by falling asleep and slipping into death. London’s story of a hapless man freezing to death made perfect sense to a young impressionable Lundin: life was not directed by any divine being towards some sort of greater purpose; on the contrary, life appeared governed by purposeless accident and blind necessity. Things, sometimes terrible things, simply happened to people for no particular purpose or reason. The death of his older brother, in Lundin’s grade ten year, during routine surgery reinforced this sense of life’s purposelessness. To Lundin everything was either random or the workings of a God so distant and indifferent the thought of submitting to it was unbearable. So for the final two years of high school, he poured himself into reading books; and the poets and novelists he encountered during this time placed him on a path towards eventually returning to God.
In his book Believing Again, Roger Lundin describes his personal journey from unbelief to belief. He traces his journey using the thoughts and paths followed by various 19th century writers. Writers like Emily Dickinson, Herman Melville, and Fyodor Dostoevsky provide a fruitful context for a discussion on the origin and consequences of doubt for people living in the 21st century.
A Changing Zeitgeist
Lundin takes the beginning of the 19th century as his starting point: the Enlightenment was in full swing. People were buoyed by a sense of hope and optimism about the future. They believed reason, and education in particular, was the solution to all of humanity’s problems. There was a scientific renaissance in fields like geology, biology, chemistry and physics successfully challenging old assumptions about the physical world (and God). Emerging sciences like sociology and psychology added further fuel to the fire challenging traditional beliefs and religious claims about the world in particular. The increase in scientific knowledge contributed to the development of a new more modern Zeitgeist.[1] Where once we thought ourselves special, advances in biology (e.g. theory of evolution) indicated we were not; where once it was believed the Earth was only thousands of years old advances in geology pointed to the planet actually being hundreds of millions of years old. More than one person asked themselves questions like why did God create the dinosaurs and why did He take so long to get to us? In a sense science knocked humankind off of its pedestal. By the end of the 19th century people were filled less with optimism and more with a sense of feeling adrift.[2]
The scientific process cannot really be blamed for causing this cultural shift; rather, it was the perceived implications of scientific findings causing people to question the existence of a divine order or purpose to things. Many of the major cultural figures of the 19th century, like Emily Dickinson and Fyodor Dostoevsky, wrote their most important works during this period. Both writers felt they were living during a time of challenge and bracing change; and although doubt had always co-existed alongside faith, it was during the 1800s open unbelief first became an intellectually viable and, perhaps most importantly, a socially acceptable option. In the 21st century, we have learned to live with unbelief. Yet, when modern unbelief first broke upon the scene in the mid-nineteenth century, the sense of disruption and disorientation it caused, was palpable, even overwhelming for some; and by the end of the 19th century doubt went from being an isolated experience on the cultural margins to becoming a central component of modern life.
Changing Zeitgeist: Changing Expectations
Up until the middle of the 19th century young people were expected to adopt the same values and worldview as their parents. No questions asked. Today the situation is changed: young people are expected to make their own way through the world; they cannot rely entirely upon traditions, society or their family to guide them. Young people are expected to examine things objectively and not just accept things at face value. People living in the 21st century possess a degree of freedom and individual responsibility inconceivable to our ancestors.
Lundin is a child of the 20th century. He grew up living with significant doubt. At times he entertained the idea some force governed the course of life; however, he had no idea what it was like or whether it even had a name. He clearly did not believe it was a loving, forgiving, or personal power directing history or events from behind the scenes. As a child of the 20th century, Lundin believed the laws of life took no notice of his personal longings or the prayers and destiny of people. Instead, it appeared to him people were simply wandering around life from nowhere to nowhere. The Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz aptly describes the situation in his poem “Road to Nowhere”:
If what is proclaimed by Christianity is a fiction,
And what we are taught in schools,
In newspapers and TV is true:
That the evolution of life is an accident,
As is an accident the existence of man,
And that his history goes from nowhere to nowhere,
Our duty is to draw conclusions
From our thinking about the innumerable generations
Who lived and died deluding themselves,
Ready to renounce their natural needs for no reason,
To wait for a posthumous verdict, every day afraid
That for licking clean a pot of jam they go to eternal torment.
Milosz’s reference to the “evolution of life” is an allusion to the work of Charles Darwin. When Darwin developed the theory of evolution he made no use of a God. Instead he explained humankind’s origins solely through material and observable forces. Life took the shape it did, not because of the activity of a loving all-powerful God, but through interspecies struggle and survival of the fittest. Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859. His “dangerous idea” caused controversy for at least two reasons: firstly, it provided an alternative explanation to the biblical account of humankind’s origins; and secondly, the theory contributed to the emerging 19th century notion that all previous generations of the faithful had merely been, to quote Milosz, “deluding themselves”.
For his part Darwin was never an atheist. Scientists study nature for its own sake (not to disprove religion).[3] Darwin developed the theory of evolution through his work studying barnacles. He wanted to explain why there was such a variety of them. Why caused them to differ so much from one another? He concluded that barnacles took the forms they did due to adapting to new environments through a process he called natural selection, i.e. organisms better adapted to their environment tend to survive and produce more offspring. In other words, dead barnacles don’t have babies. Competition between the different varieties of barnacles shaped what they looked like. The most important conclusion Darwin reaches was all of varieties of barnacles shared one ancestor population in common. The implications of shared ancestry weren’t lost on him: he looked at the United States with horror because white people justified the continued practice of slavery by an appeal to racial superiority. Darwin concluded correctly that if humankind was evolving, then just like with the barnacles, every human being could trace their ancestry to a single shared ancestral population in the distant past. Later developments in biology confirmed what Darwin suspected: there is no white person or yellow person or black person or red person genome (DNA molecule). There is a single universal human genome.[4]
People living in the 21st century are shaped by both faith-based and scientific perspectives. Consequently, today even “firm” believers appreciate that while religion provides a meaning, science likewise has something to teach us. Therefore, to be a believer today is to recognize that in the deepest personal sense, belief appears to be more or less optional; that is, whatever a person is able to accept and affirm he or she is also free to reject or deny. Faith, therefore, is a choice. By the same line of reasoning unbelief is a choice, as well.
The Adulthood of the World
There is no point in regretting our freedom to choose. The Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer said as much in his Letters and Papers from Prison. Bonhoeffer argued it made no sense for Christians to try and fight the “adulthood of the world”.[5] Specifically, he observed that it was “in the first place pointless, in the second place ignoble, and in the third place un-Christian” to jettison scientific findings if and when they conflicted with established belief.[6] Admittedly, some ideas and certain perspectives make many believers uncomfortable. But being made uncomfortable by a particular idea or line of reasoning isn’t evidence that the idea is false. Such discomfort is more or less an indicator of individual’s ability or inability (unwillingness) to change their thinking to reflect new and better information.
Bonhoeffer asserted if gainsay was our only defense against challenges to belief little was accomplished. Facts are, as President John Adams once observed, stubborn things. So, when an assumption about God is successfully challenged, like the Earth is 4.5 billion years old and not 6000 years like some creationists claim, this does not mean that because we got the Earth’s age wrong we must also be wrong about God even existing. Darwin argued science told us how processes unfold, not why[7] or for what greater purpose they unfold. Look at it this way: people make assumptions about others all the time. Are the assumptions themselves the person whom they’re being made about? Or are they an imperfect reflection of a version of them? God and the assumptions people have about It.[8] are not the same thing. Not even close.[9]
Shortly after Lundin’s conversion to Christianity, he dreamt about how much better his life might have been if he were born during the middle ages. Life was simpler then and the authority of the Church and the Bible were not questioned (actually this authority was challenged but the Church’s ability to kill or imprison opponents is what kept such questioning to a minimum). Yet, Lundin’s view of the medieval period was correct in at least one respect: the Christian narrative then was firmly accepted “as is” without any real challenge from science. Lundin, though, freely admits wishing to be alive at this time is an example of foolish idealism. When he was a child his life was saved twice by modern medicine. If he lived during the middle ages, he would have died twice by the age of ten. Lundin does not cry over our loss of innocence and medieval certainty. Instead, he accepts reality for what it is: something is true not because it is believed in; rather, nothing depends upon a believer at all, e.g. God might exist despite the atheist’s lack of belief and God might not exist despite the theist’s belief. Again, Lundin asserts there is no point in wishing this were not the case. Faith is a choice.[10]
To writers like Emily Dickinson and Czeslaw Milosz , belief and unbelief were real tensions, and like Jacob did with the angel, these authors wrestled with God—and in some cases also with the shadow cast by His apparent absence. To her credit Dickinson perceived the promise and peril of the modern world earlier than most. In the case of Dostoevsky, he knew that the theological ground had shifted dramatically over the course of a single generation from confidence to doubt in God. They found the new dynamics of belief challenging and grew weary pursuing God; though they had strong convictions their self-dividing doubts always remained. Near the end of her life Dickinson observed to a friend that on “subjects of which we know nothing…we both believe, and disbelieve a hundred times an hour, which keeps [belief] nimble”.[11] Her observation captures the essence of what it means to believe or not believe in the 21st century—we are as justified in practicing one position as the other.
Conclusion
Poet W. H. Auden looked at the influence of science as both admirable and harmful. According to Auden, science liberated men from misplaced humility before a false god. Interestingly, Auden observed the god whose death Friedrich Nietzsche declared in the late 19th century was not the Christian God but a cultural creation or a “Zeus without Zeus’ vices”. To Auden, the singular achievement of science in the modern world was to demythologize the universe; and since God created the universe He could not be directly encountered within it.[12] So we are left partially blind and to our assumptions. In his book The Secular Age, Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor explains the situation this way:
Now this change, which has taken place over the last [thousand years] in our civilization, has been immense. We move from an enchanted world, inhabited by spirits and forces, to a disenchanted one; but perhaps more important, we have moved from a world which is encompassed within certain bounds and static to one which is vast, feels infinite, and is in the midst of an evolution spread over [ages].[13]
In 1849 Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky was arrested by the czar’s secret police in Russia for criticizing the government’s policies. He and several others were condemned to death; at the last moment, a note from Czar Nicholas I was delivered to the firing squad. The czar spared the writer commuting his sentence to four years’ hard labor in Siberia. A woman named Natalya Fonvizina gave Dostoevsky a copy of the New Testament just before his four-year exile began. Dostoevsky wrote Natalya a letter while in prison. The contents of the letter place the Russian author squarely at the center of the 19th century discovery of unbelief and the subsequent efforts to believe again:
I will tell you that I am a child of the century, a child of disbelief and doubt, I am that today and (I know it) will remain so until the grave. How much terrible torture this thirst for faith has cost me and costs me even now, which is all the stronger in my soul the more arguments I can find against it. And yet, God sends me sometimes instants when I am completely calm; at those instants I love and I feel loved by others, and it is at these instants that I have shaped for myself a Credo where everything is clear and sacred for me. This Credo is very simple, here it is: to believe that nothing is more beautiful, profound, sympathetic, reasonable, manly, and more perfect than Christ; and I tell myself with a jealous love not only that there is nothing but that there cannot be anything. Even more, if someone proved to me that Christ is outside the truth, and that in reality the truth were outside of Christ, then I should prefer to remain with Christ rather than with the truth.[14]
There exists no more passionate statement of faith than what is found in Dostoevsky’s letter. Human beings are as much a product of reason as they are of passion. If people are genuinely thoughtful, and value intellectual humility and honesty, they cannot ever entirely escape some degree of doubt. But then I remember one simple thing I learned as a young boy reading scripture for myself: Jesus never told me I had to have the right ideas (assumptions) in my head. He didn’t tell me faith consisted in having the right understanding; he told me I was literally born to do good. Maybe the question of God’s existence is not so important after all (since it cannot really be answered scientifically). Perhaps faith then is best understood not as a series of logical propositions or doctrines, but more of a conscious decision to persist and choose to love the good and live in hope and trust.
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[1] Zeitgeist is taken from the German literally meaning “spirit of the time”. The zeitgeist is the “defining spirit or mood of a particular period of history as shown by the ideas and beliefs of the time”.
[2] In the 1930s, sociologist Émile Durkheim described this popular sense of feeling adrift through the concept of anomie. Anomie, in societies or individuals, is a condition of instability resulting from a breakdown of standards and values or from a lack of purpose or ideals. Scientific advances successfully challenging religious claims contributed to a collective sense of rootlessness and despair. Science, or knowledge itself, was not to blame per se; rather, the problem was with how intractable and unbending people were in their thinking: instead of adapting to the new information by adjusting old beliefs to reflect new scientific information, many abandoned religion altogether.
[3] Darwin actually completed significant education and training towards becoming an Anglican priest.
[4] By the end of his life Darwin was an agnostic: he accepted the fact some questions were simply unanswerable by their nature. He never said at any point evolution disproved God’s existence. Darwin observed scientific theories merely describe how a process unfolds; scientific theories, however, do not answer the question why the observed process existed in the first place (or if someone as opposed to something was responsible); thus, unlike some opponents of religion claim, evolution never unseated or “killed” God; it is possible God used evolution as a means of creating and shaping life. Nonetheless, it is accurate to say evolution certainly challenged certain assumptions people had about God.
[5] Bonhoeffer used “adulthood” as a metaphor referring to the advances made in science and the subsequent leaving behind of certain beliefs.
[6] Bonhoeffer, D. (2017). Letters and papers from prison. London: SCM Press, p.327.
[7] The words how and why are actually quite similar in their meaning, e.g. they both ask the question in what way or manner did something come to be. However, I am using the adverb why to refer to something related to Providence or the work of an unseen God. So why is being used here as a synonym for “underlying reason” or “overarching purpose”, e.g. Why was X made? So that Y would happen.
[8] It is not even clear that God is a He or a Him in the strictest human sense of the word. Some theologians and anthropologists argue that if we live in a patriarchal society it’s more likely we’ll explain God in masculine as opposed to feminine terms.
[9] Every ancient society believed gods directly influenced human history. Judaism was unique, in that, it was the first religion to posit the idea there was only one God, not many gods, at work in the world. Christians believe God worked through Israel to prepare a foundation for the birth of Jesus; and God used Jesus to show us His parental heart: God is a parent—in every sense of the word—who looks after us. He is not necessarily an indifferent cosmic power as some critics claim.
[10] When it comes right down to it faith is a choice. Faith is not a collection of ideas. Faith is a state of being, not a series of “correct” propositions the believer is obligated to memorize and apply to their life formulaically. Appealing directly to St. Paul, faith has less to do with fide (literally “belief” from the Latin) in series of ideas or doctrines and more to do with a persistent state of pistus (literally “trusting” from the Greek) in God, anways. Faith, therefore, is a choice between trust and doubt.
[11] (n.d.). Retrieved May 14, 2020, from http://archive.emilydickinson.org/correspondence/lord/l750.html.
[12] Auden elaborated on this position through the following analogy, e.g. Just as when I read a poem, I do not encounter the author himself, only the words he has written whit it is my job to understand”. Kirsch, A. C. (2005). Auden and Christianity. New Haven: Yale University Press, p.162.
[13] Taylor, C. (2018). A Secular Age. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, p.323.
[14] Frank, J. (2002) Dostoevsky: Years. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, p.160.
Gateway to Destroying Truth: Holocaust Denialism
The casualty of the ongoing culture wars raging in the United States today is a decrease in the public’s trust in media, political figures and the historical record. Leaders exploit this uncertainty using a combination of fear mongering and plausible deniability to mould public opinion. If you can simply wipe away the historical record by calling it “fake”, then collectively we are in a lot of trouble indeed. Specifically, for any civilization to cohere, move forward, or even endure, its people must share a historical sensibility in common. When memory itself is under assault, as is the case with Holocaust denialism, then all of us placed into greater jeopardy because scrupulous and powerful individuals will exploit the subsequent weakness; and with every such attack democracy and the democratic impulse becomes just a little weaker. Democracy dies the death of a thousand such wounds.
Perspectives on Antisemitism
Racism affects every single society on the planet shaping politics, economics, social policy, culture, art, music and everything in between. Racism is not a rational viewpoint to hold; it is an emotional response of a person to the strange and unknown. Racism reflects the fact human beings are not particularly rational by nature. We tend to make decisions from the hip based on incomplete information. In the process we risk mistaking our assumptions about people for facts. Since 2015 antisemitism (or hatred of Jewish people) has risen significantly in democratic countries like France, Britain, Germany, Canada and the United States.
Antisemitism’s rise correlates with the significant economic problems following the Great Recession in 2009 and a subsequent rise in populism.[1] Mark Twain reputedly observed history doesn’t repeat though it rhymes. With Twain’s observation in mind, the 1920s and the early 2000s “sound” eerily similar: during these two decades both Germany and the United States experienced existential crises where economic collapse fell fast upon the heels of military failure, e.g. Germany losing the Great War and the United States being chastened in both Afghanistan and Iraq. These crises contributed to, and exacerbated feelings of, desperation and a sense of rootlessness in German and American political life; and in both situations, for good or for ill, the type of leaders benefiting most weren’t democratic-minded ones but reactionary men promising radical solutions.
Economic or politic crisis doesn’t always mean a rise in the popularity of right-wing movements. However, at the risk of sounding fatalistic, authoritarianism does hold a certain attraction for those of us—especially in times of uncertainty—who look at the world in black and white terms as opposed to grey.[2] In this context, the fear felt by white Americans, and expressed in their support for Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential election, seems understandable, even predictable. There really is no historical precedent of a majority (white men) going quietly accepting their fate, i.e. sitting back while women grow in influence and immigrants from Asia, Africa and the Middle East radically change America’s demographics. The average person really isn’t motivated by principles like pluralism, tolerance or even democracy. Instead, what motivates them more are things reflecting some of the cognitive (“thinking”) problems affecting to human nature: tribalism, the distrust of strangers, and the jealous guarding of privilege.
One of the oldest and most common forms of racism is antisemitism. For centuries Jews have experienced violence and discrimination at the hands of Christian groups and governments.[3] This hatred isn’t confined to the past: in 2017 white supremacists, and members of the so-called “alt-right” (otherwise known as reactionary conservatives), marched in Charlottesville, Virginia. They were protesting the removal of statues depicting “heroic figures” who fought defending the South during the American Civil War. The majority of these statues were erected in the 1960s, 70s and 80s—in reaction to the Civil Rights movement led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.—making many African Americans feel insecure and understandably upset, i.e. these statues are justifiably perceived as symbols celebrating racism. The Charlottesville white supremacists marched at night carrying torches shouting “Jews will not replace us” over and over and over again. The protest reminded me of similar actions taken by National Socialists in Germany during the late 1920s and early 1930s. Eventually, during a counter-protest white supremacists and their opponents clashed in street battles. One counter-protester was killed when a white nationalist drove his car into a crowd. On October 27th, 2018, a white supremacist walked into a Jewish place of worship in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania opening fire killing eleven Jews.
Actions are the products of thoughts and thoughtlessness: in April 2018 an article broke revealing how four out of even ten millennial had never heard of the Holocaust.[4] Ignorance of the Holocaust didn’t necessarily contribute to either the Charlottesville or Pittsburgh events; however, when we forget or ignore our collective history we seem to be doomed to repeat past mistakes.[5] The world has changed a lot over the past seven decades since the end of World War II. Human rights are more broadly respected. In Western countries like Canada, America, France, Germany and Britain, minorities enjoy greater security and opportunities than ever before. Governments and courts actively protect vulnerable people from exploitation and discrimination. Yet, despite this progress some people remain unwilling to tolerate others different than themselves. Jews, and other minorities, are still targeted by hate groups, e.g. Jewish gravestones are frequently marred by spray painted Swastikas, synagogues are broken in to and burned, and the people themselves are likewise attacked.
As bad as the marches by torch wielding white nationalists, and the physical attacks on Jews themselves, I’d argue one of the greater threats to Jewish people comes in the form of Holocaust denialism. In an insult to the memory of millions of people who suffered and died under the Nazis, deniers claim the Holocaust never even happened. If deniers convince us 6.5 million people didn’t die in the gas chambers of Auschwitz, Dachau, or Treblinka, etc. then they might be able to convince us to reconsider other things like respect for human rights or tolerance of minorities generally; it is important to fight Holocaust denial if only to preserve and remember the voices of a million children silenced by jack booted, educated men.
Elie Wiesel, author of the novel Night, is only one of many people who actively worked to preserve the memory of those who died in the camps. Historian and author, Deborah Lipstadt, likewise worked opposing Holocaust denial and antisemitism. She publishes books, gives lectures, takes the deniers on directly through court cases, educates people, and generates awareness of the problem of denialism by working closely with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
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[1] Populism is a political approach where leaders of a movement appeal to ordinary people who feel that their concerns are disregarded by established elite groups. Populist leaders were elected in the United States, Italy, Turkey, and Brazil. The growth of populism reflects the growing discontent among the average person with politicians who appear to be beholden to corporate interests. Regrettably, in the Western context the growth of populism correlates strongly with a growth in intolerance.
[2] Marc Hetherington and Jonathan Weiler, Authoritarianism & Polarization in American Politics, p.18.
[3] Jews were not allowed to hold certain types of jobs or participate as full members of society; they were forced to live in ghettos apart from surrounding Christian communities. In addition to being socially and economically marginalized, Jews experienced violent persecutions (called pogroms) in every country, e.g. they were thrown in to holes upside down and buried, they were drowned, and beaten to death. Although the Jewish People have suffered persecution for centuries, the term anti-Semitism is actually a relatively new word: it is based on a 19th century German term, e.g. Judenhass literally meaning “Jew-hatred.”
[4] The Holocaust was the product of the Nazi’s so-called “Final Solution” the “Judenfuge” (translated to “Jewish problem in Europe”). Two-thirds of the Jewish population of Europe was gassed, starved, shot, etc. from 1941 to 1945. This equates to approximately 6.5 million people (an estimated 1.5 million were children). The article can be accessed here: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/holocaust-study-millennials/.
[5] The German philosopher George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831 CE) observed “the only lesson history teaches is we don’t learn from history.”
Peasants & Emperors 