Religion of Science-Fantasy Cults Martin Gardner

Home , Bangs Sisters, Can of Worms (Red Dwarf), Cresson Kearny, God Is Dead (comics), Gordon Stein, Reincarnationism

Summer 1987 Vol. 7, No. 3

.40,11

Was the Universe Created? Victor Stenger

The New Religion of Science-Fantasy Cults Martin Gardner

The Relativity of Biblical Ethics Joe Edward Barnhart

Plus "Pearlygate" Morality • New Directions for Humanism • Personal Paths to Humanism with Joseph Fletcher, Anne Gaylor, Rita Mae Brown, Ashley Montagu, and Mario Bunge • Tyranny of the Creed by John Allegro _- FreeC SUMMER 1987, VOL. 7, NO. 3 ISSN 0272-0701 Contents

3 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 9 PERSPECTIVE 10 ON THE BARRICADES 61 IN THE NAME OF GOD 62 CLASSIFIED 6 EDITORIALS "Pearlygate" Morality Paul Kurtz / New Directions for Humanism / Catholic Consistency at Any Cost Tom Flynn

12 The Tyranny of the Creed John Allegro BELIEF AND UNBELIEF AROUND THE WORLD 14 Japan and Biblical Religion Richard L. Rubenstein 21 Letter to a Missionary Ronn Nadeau ARTICLES 22 The Relativity of Biblical Ethics Joe Edward Barnhart 25 Xenoglossy and Glossolalia Don Laycock 26 Was the Universe Created? Victor Stenger 31 Science-Fantasy Religious Cults Martin Gardner PERSONAL PATHS TO HUMANISM 36 A Secular Humanist Confession Joseph Fletcher 37 Free from Religion Anne Nicol Gay!or 38 Surrender to Life Rita Mae Brown 40 As if Living and Loving Were One Ashley Montagu 42 Growing Up Agnostic in Argentina Mario Bunge 46 The Case Against Reincarnation (Part 4) Paul Edwards BOOKS 54 The Cult of Objectivism Nathaniel Branden 55 Propaganda Before Education Gordon Stein 56 Critiquing the Old Unities Robert Basil

Rita Mae Brown's and Ashler Montagu's articles are adapted by permission from The Courage of Conviction, edited by Philip Berman, published in hardcover by Dodd, Mead, and Company and in paperback by Ballantine Books.

Editor: Paul Kurtz Senior Editors: Vern Bullough, Gerald Larue Associate Editors: Doris Doyle, Steven L. Mitchell, Lee Nisbet, Gordon Stein Managing Editor: Andrea Szalanski Assistant Editor: Robert Basil Contributing Editors:

Lionel Abel, author, critic; Robert S. Alley, professor of humanities, University of Richmond; Paul Beattie, president, Fellowship of Religious Humanists; Jo-Ann Boydston, director, Dewey Center; Paul Edwards, professor of philosophy, Brooklyn College; Albert Ellis, director, Institute for Rational-Emotive Therapy; Roy P. Fairfield, social scientist, Union Graduate School; Joseph Fletcher, theologian, University of Virginia Medical School; Antony Flew, philosopher, Reading University, England; R. Joseph Hoffmann, chairman, Department of Philosophy and Religion, Hartwick College, Oneonta, N.Y.; Sidney Hook, professor emeritus of philosophy, NYU; Marvin Kohl, philosopher, State University of New York College at Fredonia; Jean Kotkin, executive director, American Ethical Union; Ronald A. Lindsay, attorney, Washington, D.C.; Delos B. McKown, professor of philosophy, Auburn University; Howard Redest, director, Ethical Culture Schools; Robert Rimmer, author; Svetozar Stojanovic, professor of philosophy, University of Belgrade; Thomas Szasz, psychiatrist, Upstate Medical Center, Syracuse; V. M. Tarkunde, Supreme Court Judge, India; Richard Taylor, professor of philosophy, Union College; Sherwin Wine, founder, Society for Humanistic Judaism Editorial Associates: Thomas Flynn, Thomas Franczyk, James Martin-Diaz

Executive Director of CODESH, Inc.: Jean Millholland Public Relations: Barry L. Karr, Tim Madigan

Systems Manager: Richard Seymour Typesetting: Paul E. Loynes Layout: Alain Kugel Audio Technician: Vance Vigrass Staff: Melvin Carter, Dafrell Crawford, Steven Karr, Jacqueline Livingston, Valerie Marvin, Alfreda Pidgeon

FREE INQUIRY (ISSN 0272-0701) is published quarterly by the Council for Democratic and Secular Humanism (CODESH, Inc.), a nonprofit corporation, 3159 Bailey Avenue, Buffalo, NY 14215. Phone (716) 834-2921. Copyright ®1987 by CODESH, Inc. Second-class postage paid at Buffalo, New York, and at additional mailing offices. National distribution by International Periodicals Distributors, San Diego, California. Subscription rates: $20.00 for one year, $35.00 for two years, $48.00 for three years, $3.75 for single copies. Address subscription orders, changes of address, and advertising to: FREE INQUIRY, Box 5, Buffalo, NY 14215-0005.

Manuscripts, letters, and editorial inquiries should be addressed to: The Editor, FREE INQUIRY, Box 5, Buffalo, NY 14215-0005. All manuscripts should be accompanied by two additional copies and a stamped, self-addressed envelope. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of the editors or publisher. The ultimate goal is a network of free community/educational centers with activities for the whole family. Think of the promo- LETTERS TO THE EDITOR tional benefits in presenting our viewpoint without any pressure on the curious to join anything! This approach would also effectively defuse the fundamentalist ploy of branding secular-humanism as a religion.

Jim Zaluba and Ralph Blasko Chicago, Ill. Needed Affirmations but know nothing positive about humanism. We need to reach out and contact them, but It is truly troublesome that polls taken of to do so we need local organizations. With science majors in school reveal a shocking a few responsible people, Friendship Centers Humanist Sexual Morality number given to pipe dreams in the sky. can take off. Paul Kurtz touched on this in his "Affirma- Robert T. Francoeur's "Positive Humanist tions of Humanism" (FI, Spring 1987)—the Walter Schwartz Statement on Sexual Morality" (FI, Winter tide of religious belief seems to be sweeping Orland, Calif. 1986/87) is good-hearted enough, and his ahead despite the obvious shortcomings of various lists of values are nearly unexcep- such beliefs in addressing the overwhelming It is quite exciting to see how this idea is tionable. I doubt the most confirmed funda- social problems of the world. catching fire. The national secular-humanist mentalists would disagree that sexual rela- "New Age Gurus," in the same issue, was movement has magnified my perception of tionships ought to be "honest" and "respons- one of the best and most timely articles I the need for such Friendship Centers. 1 can ible" (though there'd be some hot arguments have read of late. It is truly confusing to see feel in my heart and see in the eyes of my as to what constitutes responsible behavior). these successful men and women loading friends the social deprivation that has re- Unfortunately, in his concern to present down Rajneesh with dozens of Rolls Royces. sulted from the dearth in our society of secu- laundry lists of conservative and liberal Congratulations on your new drive to lar associations. The cost to freethinking has "players" and "shared values," Francoeur found Friendship Centers. 1 think it might heretofore been high; to soothe the sting of only hints at some crucial underlying issues: be the most important movement in human- that cost, I think, is one of the primary 1. There are significant disagreements ist activity in many years. People have to benefits that will ensue from the establish- among the various "liberal" positions Fran- have some place to exchange ideas when ment of Friendship Centers in communities coeur outlines. The Catholic statement that they are weaned from religious beliefs. everywhere. sexual relationships should be "transcendent" seems to imply that sexual activity needs William Moore Fred Condo some extrinsic justification; on the face of Reno, Nev. Covina, Calif. it, this contradicts Kirkendall's description of "physical pleasure as having moral value." After reading Paul Kurtz's "Affirmations of 1 have never been more satisfied with a sub- We need to see a fuller, more specific ex- Humanism," 1 realized I have been a secular scription than I am with FREE INQUIRY. The ploration of areas of agreement and disa- humanist most of my life. It's taken a long whole secular-humanist movement fits my greement, so that we can establish some time to shake off the bonds of religion as personal philosophy better than anything I goals for practical cooperation. For example, practiced by most people (all words, no have experienced. 1 am especially interested people who disagree on the morality of spirit). "Affirmations" is what 1 have felt for in the founding of Friendship Centers. Vern nonmarital sex can still cooperate in sup- years, but not been able to say. Bullough hit the nail on the head when he porting public funding for family planning. said, "What people most want is a sense of 2. Francoeur simply states in passing Renee L. Groce community with like-minded individuals" that a humanistic sexual morality must be Lithonia, Ga. ("Friendship Center Report," FI, Spring "person- and relationship-oriented" and 1987). "must be integrated with . . . humanistic Charles T. Saunders concerns about peace, world economics Friendship Center Kudos Norman, Okla. [etc.]." But what is his basis for saying so? Let us see a philosophical argument outlin- I am delighted that people are forming Secu- I was beginning to believe there really was ing humanistic morality and spelling out the lar Humanist Friendship Centers. 1 would no proper place in this world for "heretics" way in which sexual morality would fit into also like to see a group for the children of like myself. Now I know differently. this broader framework. members that could emphasize critical Robert Basil's article on Friendship We must ask whether, if it weren't for thinking and individuality. Centers has made me realize how hungry I the accidents of intellectual and religious am for an opportunity to meet and converse history, we would need a specific sexual Barbara McDonald with people who have similar values and morality at all. Consider the issues that have Columbia, Mo. interests. been placed in this category: The immorality of rape doesn't stem from the sexual contact, There are many people who have found Eve Robinson but from the coercion involved. The con- nothing in religious exercise to satisfy them Tomahawk, Wis. (Continued on p. 58)

Summer 1987 3 FREE INQUIRY'S Sixth Annual Conference American University, Washington, D.C. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday September 11, 12, and 13, 1987

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 1987 SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 1987 "Roman Catholicism Confronts the "Humanism and Social Issues" Modern Secular World" 9:00 A.M.-12 NOON—Session 1: 9:00 A.M.-12 NOON—Session 1: Welcoming Remarks: Paul Kurtz, Editor, FREE INQUIRY "Humanist Views on Sex and Morality" Chairman: Joe Edward Barnhart, professor of philosophy, North "The Roman Catholic Church and Politics" Texas State University Chairman: Robert Alley, professor of humanities, University of Kurt Baler, professor of philosophy, University of Pittsburgh Richmond Albert Ellis, executive director, Institute for Rational-Emotive Ernest L. Fortin, professor of theology, Boston College: "Making Therapy Ends Meet—The Dilemma of Catholic Social Thought" Sol Gordon, professor, the Institute for Family Research and Francis X. Winters, professor, School of Foreign Service, Education, Syracuse University Georgetown University: "The Catholic Bishops' War and Elizabeth Algier, professor of psychology, Bowling Green State Peace" University Andrew Lustig, professor of philosophy, University of Lowell: "A Comparison of Catholic and Liberal Understanding of Social Justice" 12:00 NooN-2:00 P.M.—Lunch Henry Gordon, conjurer and freelance writer 12:00 NOON-2 P.M.—Lunch "A Magical Exposition of Humanist Philosophy"

2:00-5:00 P.M.—Session 2: "Contraception, Abortion, and Reproduction" 2:00-5:00 P.M.—Session 2: Chairman: Vern Bullough, dean of natural and social sciences, "Secular Humanism, Textbooks and the Schools" State University of New York College at Buffalo Chairman: Paul Kurtz, professor of philosophy, SUNY at Buffalo Msrjorie Maguire, professor of theology, Marquette University: Ron Lindsay, attorney, Washington, D.C. "Maternal Consent and Ensoulment" Randy Eliason, attorney, Washington, D.C. Robert Francoeur, professor of human sexuality, Farleigh Forest Montgomery, National Association of Evangelicals Dickinson University: "Contraceptive and Reproductive Robert Skolrood, lawyer, National Legal Foundation Freedom" Merle Longwood, professor of religion, Siena College: "Fathering and Fatherhood: A Perspective of Catholic Ethics" 5:30-7:30 P.M.—Cash Bar

5:00-7:30 P.M.—Dinner 7:30-9:30 P.M.—Awards Banquet

7:30-10:00 P.M.—Session 3: Host: Paul Kurtz "Free Inquiry and Papal Authority" Featured Speaker: Sidney Hook, professor emeritus of Chairman: Gerald Larue, professor emeritus of archaeology and philosophy, New York University biblical history, University of Southern California at Los The following awards will be presented: Angeles Kurt Baler, Distinguished Scholar in Humanist Ethics Dan Maguire, professor of theology, Marquette University: Albert Ellis, Distinguished Scholar in Psychology "Truth and the Keeper of Orthodoxy" Sol Gordon, Distinguished Scholar in Sex Education Paul Deats, professor of social ethics, Boston University: "The Authority of the Roman Catholic Church in a Secular Age" Sidney Hook, Distinguished Secular Humanist Leonard Swidler, professor of religion, Temple University: "Dissent and Dialogue in the Catholic Church" John Yoder, professor of theology, Notre Dame University: "The Catholic Bishops and the Question of Authority" SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 1987 "Building Humanism" (Cash Buffet) 9:00-10:30 A.M.—Session 1: 12:00 NOON-2:00 P.M.—LUNCHEON "Building Friendship Centers" "Catholics Anonymous" Tom Flynn Chairman: Robert Basil, National Friendship Center Coordinator Tom Franczyk Paul Kurtz, Editor, FREE INQUIRY Tim Madigan Jean Millholland, Executive Director, Council for Democratic and Secular Humanism "Secular Sobriety Groups" Jim Christopher Vem Bullough, Contributing Editor, FREE INQUIRY "Faith Healing Update" David Alexander 10:30 A.M.-12 NOON—Session 2: "Religion and Politics" Robert Alley "Humanism Worldwide" "Religion and Health" Vern Bullough Levi Fragell, Executive Director, Humanist Association of Norway "Biblical Criticism" R. Joseph Hoffmsnn Rob Tielman, Cochairman, International Humanist and Ethical Union Mark Plummer, Executive Director, Committee for the Scientific 2:00-3:30 P.M.—Working Sessions Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal

Progrsm: The registration fee for the conference is $75.00 (exclusive of meals and accommodations). The luncheon on Friday is $5.00; the special luncheon on Saturday is $10.00; and the banquet on Saturday night is $30.00 (includes wine and gratuity). Bus transportation is $10.00 to and from American University and Hyatt Regency Bethesda on Friday and Saturday. Sunday sessions will be held at the Hyatt Regency. Accommodations: Contact the Hyatt Regency Bethesda, 0ne Bethesda Metro Center, Bethesda MD 20814, 301-657-1234, for reservations. Single and double rooms are $69.00 per person. Limousine service is available from National and Dulles airports to the hotel. For further details: Write or call Jean Millholland at FREE INQUIRY, Box 5, Buffalo, NY 14215-0005 (716-834-2921). Sixth Annual FREE INQUIRY Conference American University, Washington, D.C. September 11, 12, and 13, 1987

❑ Yes, I (we) plan to attend FREE INQUIRY'S 1987 conference. Enclosed please find my check or money order (payable to FREE INQUIRY) to cover: ❑ $75.00 Registration Fee for person(s) S ❑ $5.00 each for Friday Cafeteria Luncheon for person(s) S ❑ $10.00 each for Special Saturday Luncheon for person(s) S ❑ $30.00 each for Saturday Awards Banquet for person(s) S Chicken Wellington Vegetable Plate ❑ Sunday Cash Buffet—please reserve space(s). ❑ S10.00 each for Bus Transportation for person(s) S ❑ I (we) cannot attend the conference, but please accept this donation to help cover the cost of this and other special events. S

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Phone Return to: FREE INQUIRY, Box 5, Buffalo, NY 1.4215-0005 716-834-2921. movement to attract public attention was FREE INQUIRY's investigation launched last Editorials year into the deceptive practices of televan- gelist faith-healers. Until that time, public criticism of the antics of religious leaders "Pearlygate" Morality was considered virtually off-limits to the press. Spearheaded by James Randi, this investigation exposed the deceptive practices of faith-healers like Peter Popoff, W. V. Grant, Ernest Angley, David Paul, Oral Roberts, Pat Robertson, and others, and it received widespread media coverage. But, he bastions of biblical morality have due to the abandonment of God and the in spite of public outrage at this chicanery Tbeen severely shaken by scandal. First, absolute moral values of biblical Christian- we could not interest any state or federal the Reagan administration, self-proclaimed ity. It is now clear that they do not have a agency in protecting innocent people from standard-bearer of Judeo-Christian virtue, monopoly on virtue. Some might even claim even the most egregiously fraudulent was deeply wounded by the revelations of that poetic justice has prevailed. methods. Religion, we were told, was pro- treachery and duplicity in the Iran-Contra The spectacle of "Pearlygate" should be tected by the First Amendment of the U.S. affair. And then, in slapstick-comedy style, of special significance to our readers, for, in Constitution, and faith-healing was sup- amid charges, countercharges, and abject 1980, when FREE INQUIRY was founded, it posedly a "religious" practice. denials, revelations of illicit sexual trysts and was virtually the only voice raised in warning Today the media has declared open sea- misappropriation of funds at Jim Bakker's against the growing power of ultraconserva- son on the televangelists, for their flagrant PTL left televangelism in a state of disarray. tive religionists. At our first FREE INQUIRY misdeeds can no longer be covered up. In- The shocking details of these outrageous conference, on "Religion and Politics," held voking the name of God to proclaim a affairs are common knowledge, but they are at the National Press Club in Washington special ideological/moral message for Amer- manifestations of a deeper problem. Con- in 1983, we pointed out the dangers to ican society at long last is seen for what it servative fundamentalists and evangelicals pluralistic democracy posed by the intrusion is—blatant hypocrisy. have self-righteously railed against the lack of fundamentalist religion on the political We have no desire to exult in the per- of morality in secular humanism and "situ- scene. But the media took little notice. sonal tragedies of Jim and Tammy Bakker, ation ethics." They have vociferously main- What was perhaps the first outright at- who have simply demonstrated that they are tained that the moral decline in America is tack on the evangelical-fundamentalist all too human. But a word of caution: Public memory is often very short. The powerful Tom Toles' View evangelical ministries are making a desperate ORAL RoBERTS CAME DOWN otT OF HIS effort to regain their reputation. "We're try- PRAYER TOWER To COLLECT SL3 MILLION I ing spiritually, theologically, collectively with 1 Tk POPE ANNOUNCED sVPPORT FoR FROM A DoG 'WING MAGNATE So Gob WouLDN t LE6ISLATION NAT WOULD CAUSE PEPPLE our business practices, to put our house in KILL IIIM. THE DoNoR SAID MR. RDBERTS Who DON'T WANT CHILDREN To NAVE TI4LM order," said Jerry Falwell on a recent PTL WOULDN'T HAVE To CoMMIt SUIGDE Now, BUT AND PREVENT PEOPLE Who Do WANT THEM broadcast. Given the apparent willingness DID NEED SOME PSYCNIATRIC TREATMENT. AND CAN'T, FROM RAVING THEM. of their parishioners to forgive immorality MR. RoBERTS' SoN SAID NIS DAD WAS

"TICKLED TO DEATH." MORE LATER. when committed in their own camp, the te. evangelists may in time recoup. Accordingly,

ica

n the fundamentalist challenge to secular soci-

l Sy ety and humanistic values will persist. Tele-

er vangelists will also no doubt continue to iv build their financial empires by soliciting

ws funds from Americans via television broad-

Ne casts.

ffa Although these revelations have been the EVANGELIST JIM BAKKER SAID THAT HE RESIGNEDI major focus of the media in recent weeks, yot 6EEAug of BEAcI(MAILOVER A SEK SCANDAL NOW A REPORT ON TUE. MovEMENT f Bu

WITH A cNURCII SECRETARY AS NE SAID 1gST WEEK, To GET RELIGIOUS VALUES BACK INTO n there has been no critical challenge to the But BKAUSE of A "NosTILE TAKEOVER" BID FROM THE CLASSROOM... io fundamentalists' basic premise that belief in

iss A RIVAL CNuRCII, NIs SuocE SOR, JERRY FALWELL, the divine authority of the Bible is man's

erm

DREw HEAVY CRITICISM FROM BAKKERY Fo1LOItJEQS p h only salvation. FREE INQUIRY is still the only FoR BEIN6 A FUNDAMENTALIST INSTEAD of A it

w major publication devoted to the critical ChARISMATIC. d te examination of such claims. But, alas, our

in r resources are modest compared with those f Rep of the powerful evangelical ministries. As 1

1987. have said elsewhere, we feel sometimes like

ig the little Dutch boy who put his thumb in

r the dike in an attempt to hold back the sea. Copy However modest our success may be, we are grateful to you, our readers, for your encouragement and support.—Paul Kurtz

6 FREE INQUIRY While there are many institutions in modern society that have important social To: Our Readers and educational functions—schools and colleges. labor unions, corporations, libra- From: The Editors ries, hospitals, science and art museums, symphony orchestras, and a wide range of volunteer organizations—until now there New Directions for Humanism have been no centers committed to the use of science and reason in challenging religious truth-claims and devoted to the enhancement and refining of humanist values. The Beyond Religion the psychological and sociological needs of Humanist Friendship Center movement, less individuals. Religions, however false they than a year old, is beginning to fill this void. eligion has always been a powerful in- may be, provide a support system, a frame- We have received hundreds of letters from Rfluence on human life. In America work for ethnic and cultural identity. In the people who enthusiastically share our per- today, religious sects and denominations con- past, these functions have not been suffi- ception that there is a tieed to take this new tinue to proliferate in the public square. ciently appreciated by skeptics, agnostics, or direction. They have been unanimous in Throughout the world religious beliefs com- atheists. Even if one rejects the message of agreeing that humanists need to meet with pete with scientific truths and humanist traditional theistic religion, one cannot hope others to discuss their skepticism and build ideals for the minds and hearts of men and to overcome the transcendental temptation new foundations for a positive humanist women. But skeptics and unbelievers envi- without the emotional equivalent of such morality. sion a world in which the methods of reason systems of belief. Previous humanist move- and science are used to improve the human ments have failed because they did not pro- Where Do We Go from Here? condition and enhance human values; they vide new foundations to replace those of are dismayed at the persistence of dogmatic theism. We would like to hear your ideas about religious doctrines and the gullibility of those If secular humanism is to grow, our main Humanist Friendship Centers. What func- who accept unwarranted claims on faith task will continue to be educational. The tions would be important to you? We do alone. Committee for the Scientific Examination not want to build another religion to replace Yet it is an uphill battle to make secular of Religion (CSER) and the Biblical Criti- the outmoded churches of the past. We do humanism more widely influential. Until cism Research Project were established to not want to define a new dogma or faith. now, efforts to build a strong and viable keep alive the scholarly criticism of religion. Yet we do want to join with like-minded humanist movement have failed, as have But as vital as their work is, the educational people who believe as we do in free inquiry, similar efforts by atheists, agnostics, and program we propose has another, construc- tolerance, reasoned debate, and affirmative freethought movements in the past. Al- tive function: to create new institutions ethical values. And we do want to provide though spokesmen for conservative religions where ethical principles and humanist values the means of passing on the torch of free- proclaim that secular humanism is a power- can flourish. We must build alternative sup- dom and reason to our children, and their ful force in American society, their percep- port systems for those who have left tradi- children. tion is based on the widespread acceptance tional churches and seek fellowship in or- If the Humanist Friendship Center of the ideals of humanism and the impact ganizations beyond religion. movement is to become a reality, it can only of secularism, not on the strength of an do so with your help. It must be a genuine organized humanist movement. The Need for Humanist Friendship Centers grassroots movement. Its future depends Can scientific humanism ever supplant upon you. dogmatic religion? Perhaps, but it can do so It is with these needs in mind that those Do you want to be involved? If you do, only by taking new directions. First, we need associated with the Council for Democratic please lend a hand. We need motivated to continually point out that the scientific and Secular Humanism and FREE INQUIRY organizers and activists. We need individ- examination of religious doctrines demon- have instituted the Humanist Friendship uals who will convene meetings in their strates that they are out of touch with the Center movement. We must start afresh, areas, plan social and educational programs, empirical world, rent with contradictions, break new ground, take new directions. edit newsletters, and reach out to the public and repressive of human potential. Over the Friendship Centers serve an ethical func- and the media. centuries, the battles between science and tion: to help individuals find the courage to What can you do now? If you contact theology have consistently been won by sci- become, to be motivated to enthusiastically us, we will suggest how you can help get a entific skeptics, yet traditional religions seem experience the fullness of life, and to redefine local group started. We will provide you to be winning the larger war. For religionists their ethical commitment to other human with the names of other people in your area have the sustaining power to survive their beings in the wider community. Secular who have expressed a similar interest. defeats; their cathedrals outlive their detrac- humanism is not a religion. It has no sacred But first, if you agree with us, please let tors. The Vatican doctrines on human sexu- text; no creed, dogma, or prayers; no or- us know. If a Humanist Friendship Center ality, birth control, abortion, surrogate dained clergy. It is a philosophical, scientific, is needed in your area, you can help to bring motherhood, artificial insemination, and and ethical viewpoint affirming that a person it into being. • freedom of inquiry may defy all reason, but can live the good life without religion. This the church has outlasted its dissenters in has been amply demonstrated by the per- For more information, please call Robert every age. sonal testaments of distinguished humanists Basil or Tim Madigan at (716) 834-2921 or Second, if the humanist movement is to in FREE INQUIRY's "Personal Paths to write: Friendship Centers, Box 5, Buffalo, have any lasting influence, it must satisfy Humanism" series. NY 14215-0005.

Summer 1987 7 naturally rejects the notion that the scientist, or anyone whose moral view focuses exclu- Catholic Consistency at Any Cost sively on this world without regard for the next, can draw legitimate ethical conclusions. Indeed, it may be its quaint view of science that most tellingly betrays the In- Tom Flynn struction's roots in anti-humanistic, pre- Enlightenment traditions. Not even the brashest creators of grade-B motion pictures rofound religious conviction—especially fection when it is not desired as the fruit still write dialogue like "There are things when applied to science and tech- of a conjugal act, that is to say of the man was not meant to know." Yet the nology—simplifies the defense of inflexible specific act of the spouses' union. Instruction quotes a 1980 discourse by John viewpoints. If this proposition required fur- Paul II to warn us that new reproductive ther proof, the Roman Catholic church's Leaving no stone unturned, the Instruc- techniques encourage man to "take in his Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith tion also reminds us that in AI sperm is hand his own destiny" and expose him "to has now provided its Instruction on Respect typically obtained through masturbation, the temptation to go beyond the limits of for Human Life in Its Origin and on the itself a forbidden act. reasonable dominion over nature." Dignity of Procreation, a bitter denunciation In Vitro Fertilization. The same objec- Nor should observers be surprised that of advancing reproductive technologies. tions employed against AI are also applied the Instruction offers no comfort to married With numbing consistency, the Instruction to in vitro fertilization. In addition, most in couples who cannot conceive by normal confirms traditional Catholic doctrines. Sex- vitro techniques fertilize several eggs in order means. The document acknowledges their ual love, it says, is permissible only within to provide material for multiple attempts at suffering but reminds them that marriage marriage. Even there, the pleasurable and implantation: The Vatican writers consider does not guarantee the right to reproduce, reproductive dimensions of sex cannot be each fertilized egg a person, and they con- then suggests that they view their plight as separated. The fetus is a person, fully en- demn disposal or storage of unused eggs as "an opportunity for sharing in a particular dowed with human rights at the moment of a form of procured abortion. way in the Lord's Cross." conception. Surrogate Motherhood. This controver- Another venerable Catholic tradition is There is nothing new here. Where the sial practice is viewed as a specific case of the church's claim of moral authority even Instruction, penned by archconservative heterologous (using genetic material other over legitimately constituted secular govern- Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger and endorsed by than the spouses') Al. It also "represents an ments. This, too, is echoed in the Instruc- Pope John Paul II, breaks new ground is in objective failure to meet the obligations of tion: applying traditional precepts specifically to maternal love, of conjugal fidelity and responsible motherhood." This view appears controversial reproductive technologies, in- It is part of the duty of the public author- cluding artificial insemination, in vitro fer- to consider surrogate motherhood a form ity to insure that the civil law is regulated tilization, surrogate motherhood, and em- of adultery, morally illicit in the same way according to the fundamental norms of bryo experimentation. The Vatican's re- that recreational extramarital intercourse the moral law.... (Italics in original) sponse to all of these developments is as would be. consistent as it is simple: "No." Embryo Experimentation. In the same Catholics are not only exhorted to work for Artificial Insemination. Doctrine holds vein, experimental medical or scientific pro- reform of the secular laws friendly to new that licit sexual acts between spouses must cedures involving human embryos are for- reproductive technologies but are encour- always combine "unitive" and "procreative" bidden unless they involve a normally con- aged to engage in civil disobedience, includ- aspects: The pleasure of intercourse as an ceived embryo in the womb, are intended to ing conscientious objection and a "movement expression of love and the openness of the be therapeutic for the embryo, and meet the of passive resistance," to attain their aims. act to conception are inseparable. The same standards of reasonableness and ap- Viewed in the context of church history, church has historically opposed contracep- propriateness one would apply to any ex- the Instruction on Respect for Human Life tion and sex acts other than vaginal inter- perimental therapy. Even amniocentesis and cannot be considered a step backward. But course because they offer pleasure without sonography are suspect if the doctor or progressive Catholics can hardly be blamed fecundity. By holding a mirror to this doc- the patient plans to consider abortion based for regretting that the Vatican has again trine, Ratzinger has crafted a new and ex- on test results. refused to seize the opportunity for a long- plicit condemnation of artificial insemination These pronouncements consistently apply overdue step ahead. The document is certain (AI). Even homologous AI, which employs an ethical model that views sex mechanically to contribute to the whirlwind of controversy the spouses' own sperm and egg—sidestep- and uses biological rather than personalistic anticipated during John Paul II's tour of ping objections to the use of genetic material criteria to determine humanhood. Today the United States this September, and in- from a third party—is illicit in this view most secular moralists follow thinkers like creases the likelihood of an eventual schism because it offers fecundity without the ex- Joseph Fletcher in holding that it is the in the American church. Viewed rationally pression of love inherent in the sexual act: capacity to do human things—to be self- and in contemporary terms, many of the aware; to be rationally creative; to think, Instruction's pronouncements are all but Procreation is deprived of its proper per- love, and interact meaningfully with other inexplicable. But faith thrives on the inex- persons—and not merely the possession of plicable, and it is to a comprehensive and Tom Flynn is a founder of Catholics Homo sapiens' forty-six chromosomes that profoundly reactionary faith that John Paul Anonymous and coeditor of the Secular makes an organism a human person. The Il and fellow conservatives like Ratzinger Humanist Bulletin. church disagrees. Having held since Aquinas have chosen to recommit their church at that science is the "handmaiden of faith," it any cost. •

8 FREE INQUIRY errancy in general, and Genesis as a science and history text in particular—are compelled Perspective by their anachronistic exegesis to resort to misquoting, misrepresenting, and casting aspersions on the motives and morals of Humanism's Moral and evolutionists. Integrity lies also at the core of the sim- Spiritual Base mering church-state controversies. The Founding Fathers, as I have mentioned before, gave us freedom of religion not to protect people from it but to rescue them Betty McCollister from governmental coercion. Such passionately held convictions, they saw, were rightfully private matters. Nobody argued this more eloquently than James Madison, s we were saying in the last issue of and loving, to do good and help others. Also who with Thomas Jefferson deserves most AFREE INQUIRY, secular is good. While in Bombay, Ramesh Kulkarni, our distin- of the credit for our nation's unique, price- we're on the subject of living ethically with- guished guide to the Elephanta Caves, told less First Amendment. Read these quota- out formal religious allegiance, let's carry it us he and his wife, raising their children as tions and ask whether any one of us, no further. There's too much confusion these Hindus, taught them to be merciful, caring, matter how many differences of opinion we days about the relationship between religion and gentle. And it was during Emperor may have on other issues, would disagree and morality, confusion often based on the Asoka, almost unknown to Westerners, with one word: naive assumption that religious equals spiri- whose conversion to Buddhism precipitated tual equals good and that nonreligious his development into the wiest, most en- The use of religion as an engine of Civil equals material equals bad. Perhaps even lightened and compassionate ruler India or policy is an unhallowed perversion of the we secular humanists tend to overlook our any other nation has known. means of salvation. philosophy's profoundly moral and spiritual In the different culture of the West, If the public homage of a people can ever foundations. Certainly the Religious Right Christianity has taken hundreds of forms, be worthy of the favorable regard of the —which tries to conjure us into a national many of which have placed more importance Holy and Omniscient Being to whom it is scourge—hasn't an inkling they exist. on creed than deed. Nevertheless, the essence addressed, it must be that in which those The difficulty with adjectives like of Judaism, mined from the Torah and the who join in it are guided only by their "moral," "spiritual," and "religious" is that Prophets and summed up in Jesus' ethical free choice [which alone] can be accept- they are fraught with the different meanings teachings, is that a merciful and just God able to Him whom no hypocrisy can various people and groups have projected expects His servants to be merciful and just, deceive. onto them. When we use them we risk get- and good Jews and Christians have tried to During almost fifteen centuries has the ting stuck on a kind of semantic flypaper. live by these principles. legal establishment of Christianity been on We can clarify the obscurity at least a And aren't these the same ideals that we trial. What have been its fruits? More or bit. Think about these definitions extracted secular humanists adhere to? And aren't they less in all places, pride and indolence in from the Random House dictionary: clearly moral, incorporeal, of the spirit? We the clergy; ignorance and servility in the part company with ethical religious believers laity; in both, superstition, bigotry, and Moral: of, pertaining to, or concerned only by leaving God out of the equation, persecution. with right conduct; syn.: righteous, just, relying on ourselves, taking responsibility for upright, honest, straightforward, virtuous, our actions, basing them on the best use of Is it entirely accurate, then, to charge honorable. our brains. that people who strive to be ethical, honest, Spiritual: of, or pertaining to, or con- knowledgeable, and compassionate are sisting of spirit; syn: incorporeal. Now let us talk about integrity, which I Religious: of, pertaining to, or con- place at the very apex of morality and ethics. materialistic just because they are not theists? cerned with religion; syn: reverent, pious, Integrity, I suggest, is a basic element of Is it entirely accurate, for that matter, to devout, godly. secular humanism's free intellectual explora- claim that all theists are automatically spir- tions, and it's far more compatible there than itual, including those politicking brandishers Significantly, the word moral refers to with dogmatic creeds. The current evolu- of collection plates who dominate the elec- what is ethical between human beings; reli- tion/creation controversy is a dismaying tronic media? gious does not. example. We humanists, without religious Finally, isn't equal justice under the law Still, religion and ethical behavior are blinders, recognize that evolution occurred; an ethical and admirable goal? And isn't often connected and may reinforce each we marvel at the continuing revelations that what our government still stands for, other in Western cultures and others. On a evolutionary theory offers; and we believe despite attempts by many to shoot holes in trip to Bombay, for instance, I met seven that by studying this planet's biological and the Constitution? In America, every citizen, year-old Zia Copper, who told assembled geological evolution scientists can illuminate whatever he or she believes about religion relatives and friends at her navjote that as a ways to better understand ourselves. We or anything else, is judged by his or her Parsi she would try to be kind and honest cherish our connectedness with the rest of actions and is entitled to the same treatment life in the wonderfully intricate web that given every other citizen. That, if you please, Betty McCollister writes regularly for FREE binds us together. is a secular government with secular laws, INQUIRY. "Scientific creationists," on the other and as fine an example of the moral beauty hand—adamantly committed to biblical in- of secular humanism as you could find. •

Summer 1987 9

Hands Off Education

Federal Judge W. Brevard Hand's decision ON THE BARRICADES to ban 45 books in the secondary schools of Alabama has encouraged similar efforts in many other states. "Fundamentalist kooks," News and Views smiles Robert Skolrood, executive director of the Virginia Beach-based National Legal Foundation, now have "the fortitude to speak up." The National Legal Foundation, a conservative organization that handles cases involving the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, was founded two years CODESH Appeals Decision in Congressional Chaplaincy Case ago by Pat Robertson and is encouraging education officials to reconsider the manner Ron Lindsay, attorney for the Council for advance one religious viewpoint over others. in which textbooks are adopted—in Virginia Democratic and Secular Humanism A second complaint of Kurtz v. Baker and elsewhere. (CODESH), which publishes FREE INQUIRY, was that the Reverend Richard Halverson, But Judge Hand, who said he is and FREE INQUIRY editor Paul Kurtz have the Senate chaplain, had used his podium "amazed" that his decision has been de- filed an appeal in the United States Court to disparage nontheists, for he had re- scribed as government censorship, has said of Appeals for the District of Columbia. peatedly maintained that Americans could he would temporarily halt the banning pend- This appeal challenges an earlier decision in not be moral without a belief in God. Since ing the Alabama Board of Education's ap- the Kurtz v. Baker case, which stated that this was in direct violation of the Establish- peal to a higher court. The Council for neither Kurtz nor any other nontheist could ment clause the judge who heard the case Democratic and Secular Humanism open a daily session of the House or Senate expressed concern; but, after Reverend Hal- (CODESH) has filed an amicus brief in the because he would not deliver a prayer. The verson was cautioned about criticizing non- case. arguments of this appeal were heard on May theists, he wrote to Kurtz apologizing for 12, 1987, before a three-member panel com- his remarks, and the judge declared the case prising Douglas Ginsburg, James Buckley, moot. and Ruth Ginsburg. In another case, Kurtz v. Kennickell, CODESH has not contested the consti- CODESH was successful in barring the tutionality of the chaplaincy itself, for the Senate from continuing its recent practice Evangelicals Fill In Their Scorecards Supreme Court had voted in 1983 in Marsh of publishing collections of the chaplain's v. Chambers to uphold Nebraska's practice prayers. Former Senator Charles Matthias, According to a survey conducted by the of opening the state legislature with a prayer, then chairman of the Senate Rules Commit- Biblical News Service, Pat Robertson and basing its decision on the "unique history" tee, agreed in 1986 that it would be inappro- Jack Kemp are the favorites of one hundred of the congressional chaplaincies. The Court priate for the United States Government "leaders of evangelical Christian activist also stated, however, that the forum served Printing Office to publish Reverend Halver- organizations." a secular purpose and could not be used to son's sermons and prayers. "The results of these preferential polls among the nation's evangelical leaders are significant because these groups are not only involved in legislative issues but are also very active in elective politics," says David W. Balsiger, who publishes the news service's tE I "Presidential Biblical Scorecard." "These NNVIV ~R groups influence the 45 million registered TNE SECUIÀR I NIM ~F f7 pop rn 0 R ••~11••~s . evangelical Christian voters," he said. Evan- NuMANIST •6 6 gelicals tend to be Republican, Balsiger notes, but not always. When Republican California senatorial candidate Ed Zschau wandered from the conservative line, he said, evangelicals abandoned him—causing / ✓ ~,~` Jíll~I / /iG 7î him to lose the election to Senator Alan Cranston. We "sent a clear message to Re- II~ 111111 ~Î//I %lll publicans that if a candidate doesn't support IIU' I Í/ , traditional family values, don't count on support from the Christian evangelical community, which made up 23 percent of those &l voting in 1986." Affif / 41,/,r/UI/ According to the "Scorecard," Jesse Jackson, Mario Cuomo, and Edward Ken- nedy receive the strongest opposition from evangelical quarters.

10 FREE INQUIRY Catholics Anonymous concerns outside the walls of the church. faith." Several Catholic protesters held a Pilot Group Meets "We were especially encouraged by the makeup of the audience," said Madigan. prayer vigil outside the hotel where the "These were people who had undergone meeting took place and were later allowed The pilot group of Catholics Anonymous, —or were still going through—painful to make a critical statement before the a support and information service for transitions in their thinking. They re- group. A news crew from Western New nominal, lapsed, and ex-Roman Catho- sponded enthusiastically to the opportun- York's ABC-television affiliate also paid lics, held its first general meeting in Buf- ity to share their experiences and give us a visit, but was denied permission to falo, New York, on Thursday, April 30. their ideas for future meetings." videotape the meeting in order to main- The meeting whose topic was "Why I "These were entirely different people tain the anonymity of the attendees. In- Differ With the Church," began with a from those who consistently attend stead, the cofounders gave a brief inter- brief introduction to the aims and pur- humanist and skeptical meetings in this view outside the hall. pose of Catholics Anonymous and be- area," reported Tom Flynn. "These people Since first announced in a local came a wide-ranging session in which came here because of their problems with page-one newspaper story, Catholics members shared their own reasons for Catholicism. They thought we had some- Anonymous has been highly controversial pulling away from the Roman Catholic thing to offer." Discussion centered on and yielded numerous opportunities for church. Despite negative treatment at the issues of personal liberty and social outreach through the press. The co- hands of a nationally syndicated newspa- morality; many participants shared their founders have been interviewed by news- per story, Catholics Anonymous attracted problems with the church's positions on papers and radio stations across the almost thirty participants, a figure co- divorce, birth control, and women's country, and by the Religious News founders Tom Flynn, Tom Franczyk, and rights. Others told of the oppression they Service and the Associated Press. Tim Madigan considered well within their had experienced in Catholic primary The Buffalo Catholics Anonymous expectations. schools. group will continue meeting on a monthly The founders, all ex-Catholics who "Some critics have claimed Catholics basis at the newly opened Secular Hu- are now active secular humanists (Madi- Anonymous is just a thinly veiled recruit- manist Friendship Center. Discussions are gan is a staff member at FREE INQUIRY; ing operation of secular humanism, and already under way for the launching of Franczyk and Flynn co-edit the Secular that's not the case," said Tom Franczyk. the second independent Catholics Anony- Humanist Bulletin), launched the group "We are providing a service to doubting mous group in a large Canadian city; in order to provide a nonjudgmental Catholics. It's a need we understand be- those interested in forming Catholics environment where doubting and former cause each of us went through our own Anonymous groups in their own areas Catholics could air their questions and individual process of breaking with the should contact FREE INQUIRY.

Hugh Barber, director of obstetrics and the role of women in the church, birth con- Academic Witch-hunt gynecology at New York Medical College trol, and sanctuary for Central American in Manhattan—which is affiliated with the refugees. "We believe that our Archbishop Three science professors at Calvin College Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York has been evaluated improperly, inadequately, in Des Moines, Iowa, are being investigated —resigned his post because the college for- and unjustly," the statement read. by the college's Board of Trustees. The bade him to hire a doctor who had once professors—Howard Van Till, Clarence written a paper on the ethics of terminating Menninga, and Davis Young—are charged pregnancy. Dr. Barber, himself a Roman The Cult of Mary with "not taking the accounts in Genesis at Catholic, says his protest reflects the trouble face value." Said one trustee, "We want to many Catholic physicians are having as they Pope John Paul II has taken a gamble on make sure these men are promoting the try to maintain simultaneously their personal Christian unity by reaffirming what Prote- Christian Reformed faith in the educational and scientific integrity and their allegiance stants call "the cult of the Virgin Mary" in arena." Menninga and Young allegedly teach to the church. "We're in a time of crisis," an encyclical that confirms Catholic teaching that scientific evidence has concluded that said Dr. Barber. that Mary was assumed bodily into heaven. the earth is more than three billion years In a recent issue of Christianity Today, an old, but biblical accounts claim creation, evangelical Protestant publication, senior took place six thousand years ago. "That's Priests Support editor Kenneth Kantzer described this a very dramatic difference," said Menninga. Disciplined Archbishop Catholic veneration of Mary as "idolatrous." If the professors are found to have departed "[These] mythological teachings about Mary from the literal interpretation of biblical The schism between American Catholics and represent one of the proofs that the Roman revelation, they can be removed from the the Vatican hierarchy is widening. Eighty- church is not infallibly guided by God after faculty. eight Roman Catholic priests have issued a all," he wrote. Since the Catholic church's statement calling for restoring full powers adoption of the principle of "papal infalli- to Archbishop Raymond G. Hunthausen of bility" in 1869, the only doctrine that has Seattle, who was harshly disciplined by the been "infallibly" declared is Mary's "assump- Vatican for deviating from church dogma. tion." Pope John Paul II, a devout Marian, One Doctor's Conscience Hunthausen had drawn criticism from con- put the letter M on his papal crest and has servative Catholics for his positions on the visited most of the shrines where the Virgin In another case of "academic freedom," Dr. nuclear arms race, ministry to homosexuals, is said to have appeared.

Summer 1987 11 tionary determinism of the last century has faded before the onslaught of less certain philosophies; optimism has given way to despair or shallow pragmaticism. At such The Tyranny of the Creed times, national politics tend to polarize into the extremes of authoritarianism, and moderate men seek refuge in unrealistic nostalgia. Amid such uncertainty, the church finds John Allegro itself unable to speak with confident persuasion, for those divisive forces of individualism that disrupted its witness in the early centuries are still powerful and have indeed gathered strength from a wave of ndividualism is the state's prime enemy; scorned compromise, and sought only that nationalism in politics and sectarian asser- I in organized religion it is the arch-heresy. divinely given Knowledge of God, gnosis, tiveness. The creeds that once held her fol- The church won an empire over the bodies which gave them their name. Their individu- lowers in mortal thrall have lost their un- of heretics and the ashes of their books, but alism led to libertarian excesses that in turn questioned authority; claims to the verbal at the cost of its own integrity. called down on them the wrath and con- inspiration of the canonical scriptures have The gnostic heretics of the first centuries, tempt of secular authorities and embarrassed faltered under the disciplines of literary criti- whom the Great Church hounded to exile the ecclesiastical establishment. To survive, cism. The church's traditional weapons and death in the wilderness, bore witness to the church had to harmonize the laws of against heresy have been blunted in a world a historical essential of the Christian faith. God with those of man, and to accept on less fearful of threats of excommunication Their spiritual heritage was a sectarian behalf of its followers the discipline of the and social stigma. Pharmacology and toler- Judaism, nurtured in the womb of Eastern state. Such considerations were rejected by ance have even subverted the ultimate sanc- mysticism and reared to maturity in a com- the gnostics as unworthy of their high call- tion against sexual license; and Christian munity of religious exiles by the Dead Sea. ing; they preferred the rigors of exile to the humanism has itself led the way to restoring In recent years, one archaeological phe- solitude of the desert monasteries, as their respectability to the unmarried mother and nomenon has restored the writings of the Essene forebears had done in the years of making economically viable the one-parent gnostics' predecessors to the modern world, preparation. family. another a section of their own library long From those centuries of fiery persecu- It is, indeed, through that humanitarian secreted in the sands of Egypt. Now, for the tions the church emerged with a creed and a ethic that has been popularly, if unjustifiably, first time, we can read the story of an evolv- canon as measures of faith and authority. dubbed "Christian" that the church still finds ing faith, founded upon the striving of the Its followers henceforth knew what to believe most support, even among nonbelievers, free spirit for its God. When, in the cause of and what to accept as the unchangeable despite the appalling inhumanity of so much political power and security from persecu- Word of God. The Gospel myth in its every of its own history. Whatever its origin and tion, the church fathers suppressed the particular was made history and unchal- inspiration, it has little to do with the ego- gnostic "heresies," they tried to replace the lengeable; to doubt was to sin and to suffer istic striving for salvation that is gnosticism's uncertainties of a passionate subjectivity with the vengeance of outraged conformity. Yet main intent, nor the forceful imposition of an unchangeable creed, and a free range of heresy persisted, made more entrenched in a creedal conformity that is the hallmark of mythological expression with a historical suppression, and the history of the church ecclesiastical orthodoxy. Even that focus of Christ and a sacred topography. has been marked by a succession of schisms Christian theology, the crucifixion of a But religious emotion cannot be so con- as individuals have rebelled against the con- semi-divine savior as an expression of God's tained; that union of the believer with his straints of organized religion and sought love, is traditionally couched more in terms God, which is the object and motivation of their own means of spiritual self-expression. of an abattoir than of an almshouse. The piety, needs no priestly intermediary. The Today, even within the centers of ecclesi- means and motivation for social responsi- church hierarchy and its organization may astical power, authority is challenged, dogma bility are more often found in political offer channels of grace, but they are neither questioned, ultimate objectives debated, and movements that, if not themselves anti- the source nor the inspiration of salvation. even the pontificate does not escape criti- clerical, have often been antagonistic toward The dilemma of the early church was the cism. the property-owning classes supporting a weighing of the need for political recognition Yet it can be argued that never has man- reactionary church. Of recent years she has against the avoidance of worldly involve- kind more needed moral direction and an tried to dissociate herself publicly from too ment, of being in the world but not of it. overriding purpose for survival. The advance close a liaison with her traditional allies, The gnostics renounced material things, in technology has widened the gulf between whose political and financial support has rich and poor nations; the proliferation of become socially embarrassing and has often weapons of mass destruction has made more estranged her from her more progressive fol- John Allegro is the author of The Dead accessible the means for forcible confiscation lowers. The church has even sometimes Sea Scrolls and the Christian Myth, Physi- of power and property. The ability of man found itself being associated with social cian, Heal Thyself (Prometheus Books), and to control his own evolution has posed new revolution and political extremism. But such many other books. He is a member of the moral problems that, with his limited capac- a violent change in professed loyalties and Committee for the Scientific Examination ity for predetermining natural phenomena the assumption of new political commit- of Religion. and estimating the direction of human reac- ments have left the faithful bewildered and tions, defy rational solution. The old evolu- succeed only in further undermining the

12 FREE INQUIRY church's authority. Overconcern with the naiveté of its missionizing disarm the skeptic. those many centuries ago, a church without affairs of this world has detracted from its But persuasion to believe the incredible and a single creed and an undisputed canon of prime religious function of channeling divine to dread the improbable lies at the heart of sacred writings has no place in the corridors voice. The grace to unregenerate mankind. The gnostics Salvationist propaganda no less than that of power, for it lacks a common despised the world and were contemptuous of any other Christian witness, however it end of gnostic individualism is organizational of its institutions, believing that its creator may be sweetened with a crust of bread and chaos. was evil and the cosmic antagonist of the a hostel bed. author of their faith. Their priorities were Recent archaeological discoveries relating hat, then, may we expect of the not confused with conflicting political atti- to the Essenes of the Dead Sea community Wfuture? The signs are evident enough. tudes since the material world was dross and and the Valentinian gnostics of Nag Ham- The pope undertakes long and exacting heaven was their only goal, salvation their madi have served to underline afresh the journeys to call the faithful to heel and to sole intent. basic inconsistencies of the church's creed. reassert the church's authority. His message The church's creed, based upon the Now that we can penetrate more deeply and is unremittingly stern and uncompromising; Johannine compromise of a God who so realistically into the origins of Christianity, far from admitting the validity of modernist loved the world that he gave his only begot- we can better understand the socio-religious theologies or relaxing moral conventions, he ten son for its salvation, contained within pressures that produced the movement and has reasserted extreme Catholic positions itself a contradiction that centuries of theo- the contradictory aims it inherited. Above that even the church's most loyal supporters logical hair-splitting have done little to all, we can more readily appreciate both the have long imagined outdated. The tyranny resolve. Perhaps this concern with worldly necessity for creedal conformity as de- of the creed must be upheld; the hierarchy affairs finds its most scandalous expression manded by the Great Church and the valid- has spoken. Protagonists of the Latin mass in the recent agonizing of the hierarchy over ity of the claim by the gnostic "heretics" to and the incomprehensibility of the church's the administration and viability of the represent the true genius of faith. Despite, mysteries have taken heart; the central wit- Vatican's multi-million-dollar assets, while or perhaps because of, centuries of ecclesi- ness of the church will not be changed, how- at the same time seeking to finance papal astical suppression, those individualist hopes ever lonely its pinnacle, however heavy its pilgrimages to third-world countries with of salvation, of the striving of the soul defections. For the rest, worker-priests and levies upon the parishes of their impover- toward reabsorption in the universal Good, radicalist lay societies will rally under new ished Catholic communities. At the other without the need for a priestly intermediary, banners and identify their faith even more end of the ecclesiastical scale, the Salvation have constantly reasserted themselves and closely with the cause of the underprivileged. Army commands universal respect for its disrupted the exercise of the church's Among less authoritarian Christian com- charitable work and merely tolerant amuse- authority. It is happening today, and to an munities, the heirs and successors of the ment for its fundamentalist theology. If it unprecedented extent. The church has schisms of the Reformation, the process of escapes criticism, which the size of its assets reached a crisis that must leave it divided disintegration will continue; no degree of might otherwise invoke, the more obvious and weakened as a source of moral and reli- administrative ecumenism will succeed in manifestations of its alms-giving and the gious authority. For, as the fathers realized bringing into a common fold ever more pro- liferating autonomous groups of believers, as confident in their own salvation as they are certain of the ultimate condemnation of their rivals. These are the modern gnostics, the "heretics" born again into a new and more receptive world. Theirs is a message , of individualism in harmony with the aspira- TRAT SINCE 1116 mum BE A NÁ[ÙRALI.YCD°M AILED tions of a technologically dominated human- gTH ITCANT BE 6AM110INID ity striving to retain its identity. ßY THE CATHOUC cam? Once the tyranny of the creed has been broken for all save the relatively few, the 9 way may be open for religion to reassert its true priorities. For that strange emotion that appears to be as old as rational man has basically nothing to do with ethics, or with tribal loyalties, to be used as an excuse for international and interconfessional warfare; it is primarily concerned with seeking God and maintaining a mystical relationship with him as the gnostics maintained. There are as many religions as there are worshipers; groupings of believers in accordance with common rituals and cultural traditions are little more than administrative conveniences and demonstrations of a shared identity. Organized religion is a contradiction in terms, and the tyranny of the creed an intolerable restraint on the freedom of the spirit. •

13 Summer 1987 Japan and Biblical Religion The Religious Significance of the Japanese Economic Challenge

Richard L. Rubenstein

ew, if any, developments in the postwar era possess as utterly without substance. great a potential for world-historical significance as the We can perhaps best understand the long-range significance Frise of Japan. Normally, Japan's rise is discussed in of the Japanese religious challenge, and it is a challenge, if we economic or political terms. Its religious significance, especially consider the role of religion in fostering the modernization of for a nation like the United States, whose cultural inheritance is both Japan and the nations of the West. In the case of the so deeply rooted in biblical religion, is seldom discussed, much West, no attempt to understand the role of religion in the less understood. Japan is the world's most successful nation formation of the modern world can ignore the work of the with non-Christian roots. Even the Soviet Union has Christian German sociologist Max Weber. As is well known, Weber set roots. Marxist atheism is grounded in the very biblical tradition forth the thesis that the modern Western bourgeois-capitalist that Marxism negates. Moreover, the apparent conflict in the world is an unintended consequence of the rise of ascetic West between a biblically grounded and a secular ethic takes Protestantism in the aftermath of the Reformation.' on the appearance of a family quarrel when seen against the Weber did not hold that religion by itself was the cause of horizon of Japanese religion and culture. Far from being the modern capitalism. He regarded religion as a necessary but not antithesis of biblical religion, the secular spirit that pervades so a sufficient factor in the origin of modern economic rationalism. much of Western life is its unintended consequence. Wherever Weber stressed that material conditions alone could not have the biblical faith in a unique, exclusive, extramundane God produced the peculiar form of economic rationalism in which penetrated, it was utterly destructive of indigenous gods and the impulse to accumulate was combined with disciplined re- traditions. Sooner or later this polemical, desacralizing faith straints upon consumption. Nor could capitalism by itself have was bound to give birth to a consciousness that would not rest produced the kind of economic ethic needed for its develop- until all the gods without exception were dethroned. Under the ment. Weber held that the economic ethic that fostered the circumstances, it is hardly surprising that a civilization as deter- development of capitalism was an unintended consequence of mined to preserve its own integrity as was that of Japan would the work of the great religious reformers, especially John marshal all of its forces to resist both the believing Calvin, and their followers. and the secular manifestations of biblical religion. According to Weber, Calvin's doctrine of double predestina- The Japanese have created a thoroughly modern, high- tion was of crucial importance for the development of modern technology civilization whose religious foundations rest upon capitalism. By insisting that the issue of personal salvation had animistic and polytheistic traditions that adherents of the bib- been settled at the very first moment of creation, Calvinism lical religions normally assume to be discredited, primitive, and had the effect of radically devaluing the religious significance idolatrous, a remnant of a far earlier stage of religious "evolu- of all earthly institutions—including the church. The believer tion." From the Japanese perspective, such views are, of course, was thrust back upon himself with no assurance of where he stood before an awesome, inscrutable, and utterly sovereign God. The believer's situation was further aggravated by the Richard L. Rubenstein, Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Pro- fact that there was no longer any credible mediating agency fessor of Religion at Florida State University, is the author of authorized to prescribe the conditions under which an indi- The Age of Triage, The Cunning History, and many other vidual, aided by God's grace, might merit salvation. Concerning books. This paper was read at FREE INQUIRY's 1986 conference, the impact of predestination, Weber observes: "Ethics in Conflict: Biblical vs. Secular Morality," in Rich- mond, Virginia. In its extreme inhumanity this doctrine must above all have had one consequence to the generation that surrendered to its

14 FREE INQUIRY magnificent consistency. That was a feeling of unprecedented before me" (Exod. 20:3) was as much a political statement inner loneliness of the single individual.2 rejecting the divine kings of Egypt and the ancient Near East as it was a denial of animism, magic, and polytheism.' The Under the circumstances, it was inevitable that the believer Bible's radical desacralization of both the natural and the politi- seek for some hint of where he or she stood in the divine order. cal order was thus an enormously significant step toward the According to Weber, at this point economic activity took on a rational mastery of the world. new meaning for the believing Protestant. But before the impersonal market economy, scientific in- A believer who had prospered in his calling could reason- vestigation, and bureaucratic organization could become cul- ably assume that the God who had predestined all things caused turally predominant, these activities had to be legitimated by his or her well-being. Therefore, the sober, methodical accumu- religion. Weber argued that this only became possible after lation of wealth took on a religious meaning it had never ascetic Protestantism had redefined worldly activity, including before possessed, and systematic work within the profane world the taking of interest, as a way of serving God. Neither ration- became the path to overcoming anxiety concerning one's ulti- alization nor Protestantism's interpretation of worldly activity mate destiny that prayer, ritual, and mystical contemplation as a sacred calling could by itself have brought about modern had been in other traditions. capitalism. Only the combination of the two could have pro- The radical devaluation of the normal religious media of vided the "take-off' energies that made capitalism possible in redemption by ascetic Protestantism was part of a process the West. identified by Weber as the "disenchantment of the world," by The development toward a purely secular, rationalized which he meant that "there are no mysterious incalculable forces society can thus be seen as an unintended sociological conse- that come into play, but rather one can, in principle, master all quence of biblical Judaism's "disenchantment of the world." things by calculation."' According to Weber, the roots of this However, Judaism's marginal position in the Christian West disenchantment—which was indispensable to the development limited its ability to influence the latter's development. The full of the distinctive rationalism of the modern world—were to be force of biblical "disenchantment" was only felt after Protes- found in the monotheistic exclusivism of biblical Judaism. By tantism elevated the authority of the Bible over that of the affirming a unique, supramundane creator God, biblical Juda- church. ism denied any inherent sacrality to the natural world or to the From a social-psychological perspective, Protestantism's political order. God alone was regarded sacred. There were no rejection of the authority of the church can be seen as a revolt longer divine spirits inherent in nature to be appeased, suppli- of the sons against the fathers. A similar revolt was indispens- cated, or magically manipulated. Nor was there anything in- able for the successful displacement of traditional society by herently sacred about the political order. Of special interest modern civilization. According to sociologist Robert Bellah, with regard to Japan is the fact that biblical religion was espe- biblical religion provided the legitimation that made these cially vehement in its rejection of the institution of divine king- revolts ethically and psychologically acceptable. Bellah's argu- ship. The biblical injunction "Thou shalt have no other gods ment takes as its starting point a comparison of the father-son

Summer 1987 15 symbolism in Christianity and Confucianism.5 According to Are you ignorant that when we were baptized in Christ Jesus Bellah, although the father-son symbolism plays a decisive role we were baptized in his death? In other words, when we were in Christianity, the natural family has little or no religious baptized we went into the tomb with him and joined him in significance. By contrast, the father-son symbolism is inapplic- death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the able to the concept of the Ultimate in Confucianism, whereas Father's glory, we too might live a new life. [Rom. 6:3, 4] the natural family has overwhelming religious significance. Isaiah ben-Dasan, a perceptive Japanese writer who took Similarly, Jesus is depicted as admonishing his followers to an Israeli pseudonym, has argued that the divine-human rela- "hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters" tion in biblical religion could not be understood on the analogy as an indispensable condition of their becoming his disciples of the relation between a natural parent and child. Ben-Dasan (Luke 14:26). did not stress the political character of the relationship. Instead, In general, premodern societies can be understood as more he argued that the relationship was like that "between adopted or less autonomous, religiously legitimated, extended-kinship child and adoptive parent," God being the adoptive parent and groups, where far greater emphasis is accorded to collective Israel the adopted child.' By thus depicting the divine-human than to individual interests. An enormous psychic effort is relationship, biblical religion introduced an element of insecurity required to reject traditional society for the individualized and anxiety into Western religious life. Unlike the unconditional depersonalized professionalism of the modern West. But this relationship between a natural parent and child, the one be- capacity to reject tradition became the source of the permanent tween an adoptive parent and child is likely to be conditional revolution we call capitalism. As the German sociologist Wolf- upon the fulfillment of contractural obligations involved in the gang Schluchter has observed, "Ascetic Protestantism . . . adoption process. As ben-Dasan reminds us, adoption is a enabled a group of religious virtuosi . . . to overcome the parent-child relationship established by contract. This is in fact psychological barriers which the guiding principles of personal how the Bible depicts God's relationship with Israel. The condi- loyalty put in the way of depersonalizing man's relation to the tional character of the relationship is repeatedly stated. For natural and social world."' example, Moses solemnly warns the Children of Israel lest they By contrast, filial piety is at the heart of the Confucian fail to observe God's commandments: ethic. Unlike biblical religion, the Confucian system has no point of leverage by means of which disobedience to parents But if you do not obey the Lord your God by diligently observ- can be justified. Without a willingness to breach the ethic of ing all his commandments and statutes which I lay upon you filial piety, as was done in Western religion, there does not this day, then all these maledictions shall come to you and seem to be any way in which the revolutionary new beginnings light upon you. [Deut. 28:15] necessary for modernization could have been initiated within a Confucian civilization. This admonition is followed by the terrible list of chastisements Nevertheless, not only has East Asia modernized, but it has that await those who disobey Israel's God. done so with far greater success than Africa, the Middle East, Both Judaism and Roman Catholicism sought to mitigate or Latin America. Moreover, if present trends continue, first the potential harshness of the divine-human relationship. By Japan and then South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, insisting upon the unadorned, literal reading of Scripture, and, perhaps, the People's Republic of China are likely to out- ascetic Protestantism rejected all such mitigations. By contrast, strip Western Europe and the United States in economic there is no sovereign, personal Creator God in Confucianism. development. Has Weber's Protestant-ethic hypothesis therefore Instead, the Tao refers to the cosmic harmony of Heaven, been disproved? In reality, Weber did not hold that the non- earth, and man, and there is nothing comparable to Christian- Western nations were incapable of modernization. He did, ity's use of the father-son metaphor. Nevertheless, insofar as however, believe that the process could only have been initiated religious life is founded upon the family and the ancestor cult in the Protestant West. Weber argued that the material factors in Confucianism, there is a coincidence between the sphere of necessary for capitalist development were at least as favorable the family and that of religion that is absent from biblical in China and India as in the West. Since both East and West religion. Similarly, ben-Dasan points out, the Japanese find the shared comparable material conditions, these could not account biblical idea of God as an adoptive parent distasteful. They for the difference in development. Weber found that difference regard their relationship with their deities as one of blood, like in religion. that of mother and child, as in the tradition of the descent of Perhaps the most fundamental insight offered by Weber is the Emperor from the Sun Goddess, Amaterasu-omi-kami. that, in addition to appropriate material conditions, traditional In the biblical traditions religion and the family are repre- societies can only be transformed into modern societies by a sented by a common set of symbols, yet they are institutionally radical redefinition of the sacred.' The case of Japan would differentiated. While filial piety is a supreme virtue in Con- appear to confirm this insight. According to Marius B. Jensen, fucianism, both Christianity and Judaism tend to devalue filial "The intellectual history of Japan in the first half of the nine- piety when it conflicts with the imperatives of religion. The teenth century is dominated by the consciousness of domestic case of Christianity is the more obvious. Baptism, the rite by weakness and foreign threat."9 Even before the appearance of which one is initiated into the Christian church, is in principle Commodore Matthew Perry and his "Black Ships" in 1853, destructive of filial piety. In baptism one's old, natural self dies word of China's 1842 humiliation at the hands of Great Britain and is reborn a new being in Christ. Thus, Paul writes: had reached Japan. Given the Chinese foundation of much of

16 FREE INQUIRY Japanese civilization, China's defeat shocked many thoughtful institution to guarantee the continuity of legitimate authority Japanese. When China's humiliation was followed by Perry's from the premodern to the modern period, and the Japanese forcible opening of Japan in 1853 and the unequal commercial would have been far less able to withstand the deterioration of treaties forced upon Japan between 1858 and 1866, the Japanese their indigenous institutions in the face of the Western chal- had the choice of either radically restructuring their society or lenge. suffering defeat and humiliation at the hands of predatory The final step in bringing the shogunate to an end was Western military and economic powers. The unequal treaties taken with the Meiji Restoration and the proclamation of the exposed Japan's premodern, agrarian economy to destructive sacred character of the imperial office. The first article of the Constitu- competition from the industrialized nations of the West. With tion of 1889 reads: "The Empire of Japan shall be reigned over tariffs on goods exported to Japan set by foreigners, and with and governed by a line of Emperors unbroken for ages eternal." Japan's handicraft industries incapable of competing with The third article reads: "The Emperor is sacred and inviolable." Western factories, Japan soon found herself flooded with man- There is an element of vagueness in the third article that invites ufactured foreign goods, and this had the effect of ruining interpretation. Perhaps the most important interpreter of the much of her domestic handicraft industries at a time when her Meiji era was Prince Ito, who was largely responsible for draft- currency was rapidly depreciating and high inflation was ing the written constitution. His Commentaries on the Con- dangerously distorting her domestic economy. stitution appeared in 1889, and his comment on the imperial As we know, the foreign threat was met speedily and suc- office is instructive: cessfully by perhaps the most radical restructuring of any society the world has ever known. One of the most remarkable The Sacred Throne was established at the time when the aspects of Japanese modernization is that it was carried out heavens and earth were separated. The Emperor is Heaven descended, divine and sacred; He is preeminent above all his with relatively little bloodshed. The Samurai elite responsible subjects. He must be reverenced and is inviolable. He has in- for the Meiji Restoriation of 1868 were genuine revolutionaries deed to pay due respect to the law, but the law has no power who had emerged largely out of a group of dissidents from the to hold him accountable to it. Not only shall there be no lower strata of their class. Crucial to the success of their revolu- irreverence for the Emperor's person, but also He shall not be tion was the transformation wrought in the imperial office, made a topic of derogatory comment nor one of discussion. 10 whose sacred charismatic character is deeply rooted in Japan's earliest history. Just as religion had played a crucial role in the As in the early Tokugawa period, the emperor's position modernization of the West, so too a very different kind of was once again exalted. In addition, the policies of government religion, one that rested upon the archaic institution of divine were now depicted as representing the "Imperial will." At the kingship, played an equally important role in Japan's modern- same time, the Emperor lost the ability to speak independently ization. of his counselors. By transferring the emperor's residence from For our purposes it will suffice to take brief note of the Kyoto to Edo, exalted though his position may have been, he character of the imperial office in the sengoku, Tokugawa, and spoke, if at all, through the oligarchs who governed in his Meiji eras. In the sengoku jidai period, the "period of the name. No longer could dissidents claim to speak on his behalf warring states" that preceded the Tokugawa shogunate, the in opposing the policies of government. The ceremonial aspects emperors were often bitterly impoverished, yet their office of the imperial institution were exalted, the emperor was effec- symbolized sacralized legitimate authority. The emperors were tively isolated from dissidents, and power was exercised in his political rulers who could influence politics but could not rule. name. The Tokugawa shogunate brought to an end whatever overt In spite of the loss of an active political role, the imperial political authority the emperors possessed. The shogun assumed institution gained an overwhelming new importance. As a direct almost all of the political prerogatives of the imperial office, descendant of the Sun Goddess Amaterasu-omi-kami, the such as the bestowal of titles of nobility, the right to veto the emperor symbolized national continuity, identity, and sover- appointment of court officials, and the right to govern those eignty at a time when foreigners threatened these values more Buddhist monasteries formerly controlled by the imperial court. profoundly than at any other time in Japan's history. The At the same time, the material conditions of the imperial court emperor also symbolized national unity and the harmony were greatly improved and the imperial office was treated with between the rulers and the ruled. According to Herschel Webb, genuine reverence. Scholars responsible for formulating loyalist the Meiji oligarchs were thus able to utilize the imperial institu- ideas concerning the throne in the late eighteenth century even tion "to give unprecedented policies the color of great anti- discerned a causal connection between the Tokugawa sho- quity" and "make it appear that what was in fact an administra- gunate's ability to pacify the country and its respectful attitude tion by relatively lowly placed new men proceeded instead toward the emperor. During this period, the emperor was the from the most highly pedigreed and unquestionably legitimate head of state and the shogun the functioning head of govern- of all possible sources."" ment. When we compare the extreme social and political disorders It was fortunate for Japan that this division of authority that accompanied the transformation of traditional to modern existed in the period immediately preceding modernization. Had societies in the Christian West with the relatively bloodless the supreme sovereign been the functioning head of government transformation that took place in non-Christian Japan, the in the 1850s, his policies rather than the shogun's might have Japanese achievement appears truly impressive. Unlike their been discredited. As a result, there might not have been any modernizing counterparts in the English Civil War of the seven-

Summer 1987 17 teenth century and the French Revolution of the late eighteenth Know ye, our Subjects! century, the modernizing elite of Japan succeeded in ration- Our Imperial ancestors have founded our empire on a basis alizing the economy and society of their nation with a minimum broad and everlasting and have deeply and firmly implanted of domestic violence and alienation of the elite classes and insti- virtue; our subjects, ever united in loyalty and filial piety, have tutions. By utilizing a seemingly conservative doctrine, that of from generation to generation illustrated the beauty thereof. the emperor's divinity, to legitimate a radical social and political This is the fundamental character of our empire, and herein revolution, the elite was able to create a strong central govern- also lies the source of our education. Ye, our subjects, be filial ment, abolish all estate distinctions, eliminate warrior privileges, to your parents . . . pursue learning and cultivate arts, and open military service to commoners hitherto forbidden to thereby develop your intellectual facilities and perfect your moral powers; furthermore, advance the public good and pro- possess arms, establish a system of universal public education, mote common interests; always respect the constitution and and facilitate the entry of members of the samurai class—in observe the laws; should any emergency arise, offer yourselves general, the best-educated class—into the world of business courageously to the state; and thus guard and maintain the and commerce. All this was done without the transformation prosperity of our Imperial throne, coeval with heaven and of traditional elites and institutions into embittered enemies of earth." [Italics added.] the new social order, which was so often the case in Europe. By subordinating all other loyalties to loyalty to the The religious traditions fostering modernization in Japan emperor, the samurai were able to transfer their allegiance and the West can thus be seen as polar opposities. Whether from local leaders, who in many cases could no longer support one is Jewish, Christian, or Muslim, it is impossible to worship them, to the leader of the new centralized state and, perhaps of the God of Abraham without rejecting the gods of one's earliest greater importance, to the oligarchs and bureaucrats who ancestors. When Joshua assembled the Israelite tribes at claimed to speak on his behalf. This was a precondition of Shechem to swear fealty to the Lord, he reminded them: "Long successful modernization in an era of heavy industry that ago your forefathers Terah and his sons Abraham and Nahor, required large-scale capital investment. lived beside the Euphrates and they worshipped other gods" We have already noted that a precondition of modernization (Joshua 24:2). In order to worship the God of the Bible, some- in the West was the weakening of the value of filial piety. No where in history a drastic uprooting process had to have taken such rejection was necessary for Japanese modernization. place. The old pagan gods had to be foresworn and the ways Normally, the Western "carriers" of modernization were the of one's oldest ancestors abandoned. This was as true of urbanized commercial classes rather than absolutist monarchs, Muslims and Christians as it was of Jews. Here again, Catholi- whose roots were generally agrarian and who were seldom cism sometimes mitigated the harshness of the process by inclined to set social hierarchies in disarray. Class warfare, identifying local deities with Christian saints. Not surprisingly, often religiously legitimated, was an almost endemic byproduct the young Hegel, though Lutheran by tradition, expressed of Western modernization. By contrast, the social transforma- bitterness at this alienation from his own archaic religious tions necessary for modernization in Japan were initiated from inheritance: the top down rather than from the middle up. Filial piety became an indispensable component of Japanese moderniza- Every nation has its own imagery, its gods, angels, devils or tion. saints who live on in the nation's traditions... . Thoughtful Japanese leaders of the Meiji era were concerned Christianity has emptied Valhalla, felled the sacred groves, that too great a reliance on Western ways would lead to the extirpated the national imagery as a shameful superstition, as destruction of the value of filial piety. "Imperial Rescript: The devilish poison, and given us instead the imagery of a nation Great Principles of Education, 1879," written by Motoda Eifu, whose climate, laws, culture, and interests are strange to us the Confucian lecturer to the emperor, reads in part: and whose history has no connection whatever with our own. A David or Solomon lives in our popular imagination, but our Although we set out to take in the best features of the West country's own heroes slumber in learned history books... . and bring in new things in order to achieve the high aims of Thus we are without any religious imagery which is home- the Meiji restoration ... this procedure had a serious defect: It grown or linked with our history.... All that we have is the reduced benevolence, justice, loyalty, and filial piety to a remains of an imagery of our own, lurking amid the common secondary position. The danger of the indiscriminate emulation people under the name of superstition.t4 of Western ways is that in the end our people will forget the great principles governing the relations between ruler and sub- Hegel concluded this complaint by asking: "Is Judaea, then, ject, and father and son. Our aim, based on our ancestral the Teutons' fatherland?" teachings, is solely the clarification of benevolence, justice, The contrast with earthbound, non-nomadic Japan, a nation loyalty, and filial piety.12 that has never foresworn her most ancient gods or thought of these spirits as separate from nature, could not be greater. Whereas the West initiated modernization with a rejection Japan's modernization was predicated upon unconditional reaf- of the highest religious and political authorities and tended to firmation of the sacred connection between the modern state equate modernization with secularization, Japan undertook and its most archaic roots. One of National Socialism's long- modernization under its supreme religio-political authority and range objectives was to eradicate the biblical heritage in in defense of the values of its traditional civilization. Wrote Germany and regain Germany's archaic inheritance. But the Motada: Japanese did not require the social and political violence in-

18 FREE INQUIRY herent in Nazism to remain in touch with their roots. hour ceremony at the Mazda factory. When in 1945 the victorious Americans used their political If Japan is not yet the world's richest nation, it soon will leverage in Japan to secure the emperor's denial of his divinity, be. Its extraordinary achievements have a meaning, both for they were responding to the institution of divine kingship in a Japan and the world, that transcends economic success. One way that accorded with their age-old biblical tradition. Accord- consequence is already apparent. The majority of Japanese ing to William P. Woodard, who served as an adviser on reli- have interpreted their postwar economic and technological gion to General Douglas MacArthur's occupation administra- achievements as confirming the superiority of their civilization tion, the general was conscious of being called by the biblical over that of their trading partners and competitors. If ever the God for the hour and regarded himself as the leader of the Japanese were amenable to conversion to a biblical religion, Protestant world, "as the Pope was the leader of the Catholic that time has past. Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone offered world." Although the general later moderated the tone of his the following comment on Japanese religion: remarks, in the early years of the occupation he made unfavor- able comments about both Buddhism and Shinto.15 He favored The Japanese tend toward polytheism rather than monotheism. the return of Christian missionaries in large numbers to Japan We believe in many Gods and consider ourselves part of and saw the occupation as an unparalleled opportunity for the nature's unending cycle. There is broad and general acceptance conversion of the Japanese to Christianity.16 MacArthur felt of the idea that a man's fate is inseparable from that of every his mission was to lead the Japanese out of what he, as a animal, tree, and blade of grass. believing Christian, regarded as their spiritual ignorance. Side by side with this is the Indian concept that each man In spite of apparently favorable circumstances, the postwar is the whole of nature unto himself—as is evident in Zen philosophy as well. The Japanese combine both of these con- missionaries who came to Japan quickly discovered that few, if cepts, oneness with nature and the individual as the whole of any, free countries offered less promise to Christian missions nature, within their being. It is my belief, however, that our than Japan. After more than a century of strenuous efforts, sense of oneness with nature is indigenous and goes back to with one of the world's largest concentrations of foreign mis- our Jomon roots. Japan's ancestor worship is thus quite dif- sionaries, almost 5,200 in number, Japan remains more resistant ferent from Christianity's contract between man and his mono- to Christianity than any other developed country. Less than theistic god. In the process of honoring our forefathers, we one percent of the population is Christian, and the numbers create the harmony which is such an integral part of our are declining. By contrast, many observers anticipate that lifestyle.' neighboring South Korea, whose Christian population comprises almost 25 percent of the whole, will have a Christian This is not a heritage he or any other Japanese is likely to majority by the year 2000. Apart from the fact that Christianity abandon. Nor do all Japanese regard the emperor's postwar is rejected as "un-Japanese" by a population with a very strong distrust of anything foreign that cannot be readily assimilated, the Japanese find the biblical conception of an omnipotent, extramundane Creator who establishes a covenant with a non- Japanese group utterly lacking in credibility. The Japanese deVoted to the ideals of believe themselves to be descendants of a race of gods, and secularism and freedom their emperor to be a direct descendant of the Sun Goddess; but, as we have seen, this descent is an organic rather than a We invite you to subscribe conditional relationship, like the covenant between the trans- ❑ 1 year $20.00 cendent Creator God and the "chosen people." ❑ Biblical monotheism, with its persistent tendency to desacra- 2 years $35.00 ❑ lize both the natural and political orders, led to what has been 3 years $48.00 termed the "disenchantment of the world." It is precisely what Subscription includes the Secular Humanist Bulletin this "disenchanting" religion rejects—animism and polytheism— ❑ New ❑ Check or money that Shinto affirms. Moreover, Shinto plays a significant role ❑ Renew order enclosed in contemporary Japanese business, science, and technology. ❑ ❑ Among the leading corporations that have Shinto shrines at Visa MasterCard their headquarters, branches, and industrial establishments are Acct. # Exp. Date the Sanwa Group, Toyota, the Mitsubishi Group, Hitachi, Name Toshiba, and Matsushita. Konosuke Matsushita, founder of (print clearly) the giant Matsushita Electric Company (Panasonic, Quasar) Street and one of this century's preeminent Japanese business leaders, has served for many years as president of the Worshipers of Ise City State Zip Shrine, Japan's most sacred shrine. Groundbreaking ceremonies 0utside U.S. add $6.00 for surface mail, $12.00 for airmail. for new factories usually involve a Shinto ritual, as was the (U.S. funds on U.S. bank). case when Mazda's new automobile factory opened in Michigan FREE INQUIRY, Box 5 • Buffalo, New York 14215-0005 and the jointly owned Chrysler-Mitsubishi company launched Tele: 716-834-2921 7/3 its first plant. The governor of Michigan attended the two-

Summer 1987 19 denial of his divinity as having really changed his "divine" upon the size of her population, Japan is of all modern nations status. In a document prepared for the Ninth International the least able culturally and psychologically to absorb new Congress for the History of Religions (1958), the Shinto Pub- immigrants—even Koreans, who are often physically indistin- lications Committee declared: guishable from the Japanese. Here again, Japan and the United States are polar opposites. Since the change was merely a change in outward treatment, it In view of the overwhelming international importance of is only natural that the Shinto of the Imperial House and Japan, one must ask whether she can any longer ignore the Shrine Shinto should still be considered orthodox. It is one of problem of finding a more universal basis for community than the noteworthy peculiarities of Shinto as a religion that, since is offered by her indigenous traditions. Were Japan a minor these types of Shinto are not bound by dogmas and scriptures provincial power, this issue might be of little consequence. but preserve their life in traditional form, in so long as there is However, Japan is a world leader, and there is a profound no great impediment in the continuation of the religious rituals, conflict between the traditions that have enabled her to achieve the wounds inflicted by this change are not too deep.'$ her current position and the universal responsibilities that position demands. Whatever shortcomings can be discerned in In any case, the "divinity" of the emperor was never con- biblical religion, it has repeatedly demonstrated its capacity to sidered comparable to that of Jesus in Christianity or God in enlarge humanity's sense of community. The question of biblical Judaism. The emperor was thought of as ikigami, "a whether Japan has the spiritual resources to enlarge her sense living human kami." The term refers to outstanding servants of of community may be the most important confronting her in the nation who might be enshrined and worshiped while still the coming Pacific era. alive. Imperial princes, national heroes, Shinto priests, and the emperor can all be reverenced as ikigami. To the Japanese, the Notes emperor remains the supreme living kami. At present, his status is somewhat ambiguous. As Japan's power continues to grow, 1. The Weber hypothesis was first stated in Max Weber, The Protestant there is every likelihood that the ambiguity will be clarified in Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904), trans. Talcott Parsons (New York: Scribner's, 1958). favor of the traditional understanding of the emperor's "divine" 2. Weber, Protestant Ethic, op. cit., p. 104. status. 3. Max Weber, "Science as a Vocation," in From Max Weber: Essays Unlike most allegedly "primitive" indigenous religions, in Sociology, trans. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946), p. 139. Japanese religion has demonstrated its power to inspire a civili- 4. See entry "Covenant" in Encyclopedia Judaica (Jerusalem: 1972), zation capable of competing successfully with the West in vol. 5, pp. 1,012-1,022, and George Mendenhall, The Tenth Generation: The almost every significant sphere of human activity. Never has Origins of the Biblical Tradition (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973), pp. 64-66. the monotheistic exclusivism of biblical religion been challenged 5. "Father and Son in Christianity and Confucianism," in Beyond Belief: as successfully as it has by modern Japan. Essays on Religion and a Post Traditional World, by Robert Bellah (New It should be obvious that this writer has a profound respect York: Harper and Row, 1970), pp. 76-99. 6. Isaiah ben-Dasan, The Japanese and the Jews, trans. Richard L. for the achievements of Japanese civilization, especially in the Gage (Tokyo: Weatherhill, 1985), pp. 134 ff. Meiji and post-World War II periods. Nevertheless, I feel con- 7. Wolfgang Schluchter, The Rise of Western Rationalism: Max Weber's strained to conclude by raising an issue that may prove to be Developmental History, trans. Guenther Roth (Berkeley: University of Cali- fornia Press, 1981), p. 173. of considerable importance in the years ahead. Those who 8. See Robert Bellah, Tokugawa Religion: The Values of Pre-Industrial fault biblical religion for its exclusivism tend to overlook one Japan (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1957), p. 8. of its principal strengths, namely, its ability to unite men and 9. Marius B. Jensen, "Changing Japanese Attitudes Toward Moderniza- tion," in Changing Japanese Attitudes Toward Modernization, ed. Marius women hitherto strangers to one another in a new community B. Jensen (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965), p. 54. of worship and moral obligation. Indeed, the covenant at Sinai 10. Hirobumi Ito, Commentaries on the Constitution of the Empire of served that function when it transformed a "mixed multitude" Japan (Tokyo: Government Printing House, 1899), trans. Miyoji Ito, cited in Modern Japan and Shinto Nationalism, by D. C. Holtom, (Chicago: Uni- of escaped fugitives into a community united in the worship of versity of Chicago Press, 1947), p. 9. the God who redeemed them from Egypt. Enlarging on an 11. Herschel Webb, "The Development of an Orthodox Attitude Toward impulse already present in scripture, Christianity was able to the Imperial Institution in the Nineteenth Century," in Jensen, op. cit. (see Note 9). create a community of moral obligation that transcended old 12. "Imperial Rescript: The Great Principles of Education, 1879," in The religio-communal boundaries of ethnicity and common descent. Japan Reader: Imperial Japan: 1800-1945, ed. Jon Livingston et. al. (New It is perhaps no accident that the United States is the modern York: Pantheon Books, 1973), p. 150. 13. "Imperial Rescript on Education, 1890," in Livingston, op. cit. nation most committed both to biblical religion and to the 14. G. W. F. Hegel, "The Positivity of Christianity," in his Early Theo- absorption of an immigrant population of every race, color, logical Writings, trans. T. M. Knox (Chicago: University of Chicago Press: and creed. If, as ben-Dasan asserts, the relation between Israel 1948), pp. 145-148. 15. William P. Woodard, The Allied Occupation of Japan 1945-1952 and God is "artificial" rather than organic, the bonds the and Japanese Religions (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1972), p. 241. Founding Fathers created to unite Americans were also a mat- 16. Douglas MacArthur, Letter to Dr. Louis D. Newton of Atlanta, ter of human invention, losing none of their potency thereby. December 13, 1945. Cited by Woodard, op. cit., p. 244. 17. "The Flow of World Civilization and Japan's Role in the 21st By contrast, while Japan has been most successful in defending Century: A Dialogue Between Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone and Pro- the integrity, continuity, and organic character of its civilization, fessor Takeshi Umehara" (Tokyo: Prime Minister's Office, April 1986), p. its indigenous traditions offer little basis for a wider community 11. 1 am indebted to Dr. John Tepper Marlin of New York City for this reference. than that which rests on kinship and common descent. Apart 18. Cited in Stuart D. B. Picken, Shinto: Japan's Spiritual Roots (Tokyo: from the obvious constraints Japan's limited space imposes Kodansha, 1980), p. 40. ©1987 Richard L. Rubenstein •

20 FREE INQUIRY Japan Doesn't Need Christianity

Ronn Nadeau

ear Missionary: Perhaps you will of debate invariably led to a wall that those who possess it. Faith provides a Dnot remember me until I tell you had a big sign on it saying, to both me cushion against life's disappointments and how we met. We were at Wrigley Field and the believers: "There is no proof for tragedies. It provides easy and pleasant in Chicago. You, Katsuko (my wife), and the existence of God. There are some answers in the face of depressing situa- I conversed while waiting for the things that cannot be proven. You must tions and difficult questions. It acts much Cardinals-Cubs game to start. You ex- have faith to believe." like a drug. I don't believe in using drugs plained that you were a missionary work- To have faith, in my opinion, means and am even a teetotaler. ing to spread Christianity in Japan. I to want to believe. One is more likely to I choose to not be fooled. I prefer to explained that I was an atheist and want to believe if one is effectively brain- live my one and only life with my eyes thought that the Japanese people seemed washed with fears of hell, has great diffi- wide open. I want to know life and the to be doing quite well without Christian- culties coping with life's trials and tribu- universe as it really is. If someone else ity. As you will remember, my wife is a wants to believe in God, so be it. 1 believe native of Japan, and for that reason I in freedom of choice in all matters, in- am fairly well acquainted with the Japa- "Do you really think the Japanese cluding religion. And I only ask that nese and their customs and their beliefs. society would be better off if it people who hold particular beliefs do not We both were impressed by your fluency was more Christian? Do you feel try to force them on me through legisla- in Japanese. We also felt that you were a safer walking the streets of Tokyo tion or other means. kind and friendly person. I hope you will I also believe in my own brand of not be offended by this letter but take it or those of Chicago? If you lose a missionary work—for atheism. I am let- in the spirit of my having been stimulated valuable item ... where is it more ting you and others know that I have by our brief but interesting conversation. likely that someone will find it and great confidence that all brands of Chris- Your immediate response to my state- give it back to you? How do the tianity, and every other religion that is ment that I was an atheist was: "Well, crime rates compare? Where is the centered on belief in a supreme being, you know, they say there aren't many are essentially human-made fantasies that family unit stronger?" atheists in the foxholes." I suppose you exist only in the minds of their believers. meant that you believe that many people I also don't believe in voodoo, telekinesis, do not believe in God until they are lations, and/ or is afraid of death. spiritualism, reincarnation, and the like. troubled or fear for their lives. I would For better or worse, I do not have Returning to my original question, do have liked to have answered you, but faith. I do not believe that there is a you really think the Japanese society just then the holders of the tickets for supreme being that marks my time on would be better off if it was more Chris- the seats between us arrived and the game earth. I do not fear death, although I tian, more like our highly Christian started soon after. I now take this oppor- hope to live a long and productive life. I American society? Do you feel safer tunity to answer you. enjoy life. I do not fear hell and do not walking the streets of Tokyo or those of I was brought up in a religious family expect a heavenly hereafter. I am avidly Chicago? If you lose a valuable item in and went to Catholic elementary and high interested in how the universe works. I Japan and in America, where is it more school. But the things the nuns and do not expect, when death appears immi- likely that someone will find it and give brothers taught me never added up. I nent, to call for a priest to give me the it back to you? How do the crime rates took an interest in science and found that last rites. To the contrary, I would tell of Japan and the United States compare? the more I learned about life and people him to find someone else to accept his Where is the family unit stronger? That the less I believed in religion. When I magic water and intonations. However, is what I meant when I said that I discussed religion with believers, our lines if I was losing my mental faculties, who thought the Japanese seemed to be doing knows what I might do. well enough without Christianity. Both Ronn Nadeau is president of the Ration- Above, I said "For better or worse, I sociologically and economically, our alist Society of St. Louis, Missouri. do not have faith." By that I mean to "Christian" society would do well to acknowledge the advantages of faith for emulate relatively Godless Japan. •

Summer 1987 21 The Relativity of Biblical Ethics

Joe Edward Barnhart

t is an axiom among fundamentalists and evangelicals doctrine of the goodness of God or that of the inerrancy of that theology is the foundation of ethics and morality in Scripture is to prevail when they conflict. I think the doctrine I North American culture. Without this foundation, they of the goodness of God is the more certain of the two. Indeed, fear, ethics would fragment into total relativism or dissolve only that doctrine renders this worship of Him obligatory or into whim, arbitrariness, and chaos. I would like to contest even permissible."' that view by showing how some organized religions are para- In short, Lewis came close to saying that the Supreme sitical to the body of ethics and how the Bible itself exemplifies Might must live up to moral standards if he is to be regarded moral relativism. as God and not as some cosmic sadist unworthy of worship. Various theologians of the Middle Ages raised the interest- In his letter to the philosopher, Lewis expresses the realiza- ing question of whether right and wrong are whatever God tion that he could not wholly relativize and trivialize the concept decrees them to be. For example, if God had commanded of goodness for the Supreme Being he envisioned: "Thou shall rape thrice daily," would it have been morally right to carry out the command and wrong to disobey it? If To this some will reply "ah, but we are fallen and don't recog- divine decree is not only the source but the ultimate criterion nize good when we see it." But God Himself does not say that of right and wrong, is there any basis for trusting the Supreme we are as fallen as all that. He constantly, in Scripture, appeals Being who concocts the meaning of right and wrong? Indeed, to our conscience: "Why do ye not of yourselves judge what is were this putative Being to trick his creatures by scrambling right?"—"What fault hath my people found in Me?" And so on. Socrates' answer to Euthyphro is used in Christian form the consequences of commands and prohibitions, it would be by Hooker. Things are not good because God commands them; irrational to call Him evil; He is the Cosmic Existentialist who God commands certain things because he sees them to be invents right and wrong ex nihilo. If He should lie, deceive, good. (In other words, the Divine Will is the obedient servant order Joshua to slaughter the Canaanites, or command rape, of the Divine Reason.) The opposite view (Ockham's, Paley's) He could do all this and still label Himself as perfectly good. leads to an absurdity. If "good" means "what God wills" then Apparently having second thoughts about a Supreme Being to say "God is good" can mean only "God wills what he wills." unrestrained by moral principles, in the year of his death C. S. Which is equally true of you or me or Judas or Satan.4 Lewis wrote: "The real danger is of coming to believe such dreadful things about Him. The conclusion I dread is not 'So Lewis was not always consistent in his attempt to find a there's no God after all,' but 'So this is what God is really like. foundation for morality. In some of his earlier books he sug- Deceive yourself no longer.' "' Only four months before his gests that God's goodness is compatible with whatever happens, death, Lewis wrote in a letter to an American philosopher that which, instead of giving theism any advantage over atheism, there were dangers in judging God by moral standards. How- does little more than make Cosmic Might the personification ever, he maintained that "believing in a God whom we cannot of moral randomness, of relativism gone out of control. but regard as evil, and then, in mere terrified flattery calling Recently, I asked a fundamentalist author and apologist Him `good' and worshipping Him, is a still greater danger."' who had labeled abortion as murder to tell me whether the Lewis was responding specifically to the question of Joshua's killing of pregnant Canaanite women by putative divine decree slaughter of the Canaanites by divine decree and Peter's striking and Joshua's sword was murder. He replied that the unborn Ananias and Sapphira dead. Knowing that the evangelical babies killed by Joshua went straight to heaven—which of doctrine of the Bible's infallibility required him to approve of course does not answer the question of whether God com- "the attrocities (and treacheries) of Joshua," Lewis made this manded murder or whether God is above (or below) moral surprising concession: "The ultimate question is whether the standards. The point here is not to determine whether the fetus is a person but to call attention to the fact that there is con- Joe Edward Barnhart, professor of philosophy at North Texas siderable moral and ethical relativism in theology and the Bible. State University, has written extensively on religion. His latest Consider this passage from Deuteronomy: book is The Southern Baptist Holy War (Texas Monthly Press), and he has just completed a novel about religion and He whose testicles are crushed or whose male member is cut abortion. off shall not enter the assembly of the Lord. No bastard shall enter the assembly of the Lord; even to

22 FREE INQUIRY the tenth generation none of his descendants shall enter the assembly of the Lord. No Ammorite or Moabite shall enter the assembly of the Lord; even to the tenth generation none belonging to them shall enter the assembly of the Lord for ever. [Deut. 23:1-2 (RSV)]

Whatever the circumstances prompting these prohibitions, it is noteworthy that fundamentalist and evangelical apologists find it necessary to call upon their own version of situation ethics in order to make it clear that not all moral injunctions in the Scriptures are moral absolutes. Evangelical scholar G. T. Man- ley, in The New Bible Commentary, tries to justify the morally inferior outlook found in Deuteronomy by noting that it be- longs to "the Mosaic age, and [is] quite different from that of the later monarchy."5 Unfortunately, to cast the biblical material in historical context (as doubtless it should be) serves only to emphasize the historical relativism of so-called biblical morality. Indeed, the very notion of a complete and self-consistent biblical morality is problematic. The attempt by some evangelicals to borrow the "progressive revelation" principle in order to make the claim that the later revelation (i.e., the New Testament) stands on a higher plane than the earlier revelation (the Old Testament) collapses when one considers the rage against, and hatred of, most of the human race exemplified in the Book of Revelation. 1987) there is much in the Bible that contributed to the institu- And certainly the threat found in Hebrews 6:4-6—which pro- tion of slavery and little that in actual practice moved against claims that God will never forgive a repentant apostate—is it. Even the Golden Rule of the New Testament, because of its more, not less, vicious than anything found in the Old Testa- abstractness and adaptability, has throughout history often ment. When theologians try to justify the vendetta that the failed to override the deep-seated racial bigotry of the Book of Book of Revelation describes in lurid detail, they demonstrate Genesis. just how perverse the human mind can sometimes become. The doctrine of election accepted by the Puritans did not incline Those who believe that the Bible presents its readers moral them to gentleness in their dealing with inferior races. The absolutes have failed to acknowledge the staggering diversity of savage Negroes and the savage Indians were accursed peoples its moral perspectives. These differing perspectives are often whom it was quite proper to destroy or enslave. "We know not grounded in the political and evangelical experiences of the when or how these Indians first became the inhabitants of this early Christian church. Professor Daniel Fuller, noted evan- mighty continent," says Cotton Mather, "yet we may guess gelical scholar and former president of Fuller Seminary, pointed that probably the Devil decoyed these miserable savages hither, out to me, for example, that the apostle Paul had three major in hope that the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ would never problems to face in the early Christian churches: (1) the wall come to destroy or disturb this absolute empire over them."6 separating Jew and Gentile, (2) the wall separating male and female, and (3) the wall separating slave from free citizen. To be sure, the Bible gives conflicting messages regarding According to Fuller, Paul, whose theological interpretation of the assimilation of strange peoples. Compare, for example, the Christ's teachings formed the foundation of the church, felt books of Ruth and Ezra. The moving and humanistic story of that he had to make a practical decision to concentrate on the Ruth in the Old Testament is viewed by some scholars as a problem of the ethnic and religious relationship between Juda- moral challenge to the Deuteronomic injunction to bar Moa- ism and Christianity to the exclusion of the other two problems. bites from the Lord's assembly. The book tells the story of an Fuller's point is that, while racism and sexism are in principle Israelite man who, because of famine in Israel, chose to move undermined by the Christian gospel ("Love thy neighbor as to Moab, taking his wife Naomi with him. The man died, thyself"), Paul was forced to leave to later generations the leaving Naomi with two sons, one of whom married Ruth, a application of this subversive Christian insight to the problems Moabite. In time, the two Israelite sons living in Moab died, of racism and sexism. For Paul, getting the church off the leaving Naomi with two widowed daughters-in-law. According ground was the key thing; to try to implement total Christian to this tightly woven story, when the famine in Israel passed justice would have scared most potential converts away. I take and Naomi returned to her homeland, Ruth the Moabitess this to be an example of situation ethics. Whether Paul utilized moved with her, asserting, "Your people shall be my people, situation ethics in order to advance the agape principle of 1 and your God my God" (Ruth 1:16 RSV). Corinthians 13 more effectively is a question open for debate. The author of the Book of Ruth remarks again and again As Morton Smith ably demonstrated in FREE INQUIRY (Spring that Ruth was the Moabitess; she even calls herself "a for-

Summer 1987 23 person to remain as he is. Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek to be free. Are you free from a wife? Do not seek marriage. "Unfortunately, to cast the biblical material in But if you marry, you do not sin. Yet those who marry will historical context (as doubtless it should be) serves have worldly troubles, and I would spare you that. I mean, only to emphasize the historical relativism of so- brethren, the appointed time has grown very short; from now on, let those who have wives live as thou they had none .. . called biblical morality. Indeed, the very notion and those who mourn as though they were not mourning, and of a complete and self-consistent biblical morality those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and those is problematic." who buy as though they had no goods, and those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it. For the form of this world is passing away. [ 1 Cor. 7:26-31] eigner." Despite this, Boaz (of Bethlehem in Judah) takes Ruth for his wife. He marries her in part because of the goodness she It turned out that Paul's judgment of the historical situation has shown her mother-in-law, Naomi. Boaz declares that "all was in error. The end was not around the corner, and this my fellow townsmen know that you are a woman of worth" miscalculation made his situational advice less than useful. (3:11 RSV). Human miscalculation is one of the weaknesses of situation The story closes with a telling blow against racial bigotry: ethics; but it is a weakness inherent in finite human nature— Ruth has a son, Obed, who in time becomes the grandfather of and it is finite human nature that pervades biblical thought. none other than David himself. So, the Moabitess is the great- My criticism, however, is not of situation ethics. Rather, I grandmother of Israel's most beloved king. criticize those theologians who tell people that biblical ethics The moral conclusion of the Book of Ezra is less savory. advances moral absolutes. In fact, so-called biblical ethics is According to Ezra 9 and 10 the Israelite exiles returning from situation ethics that often sets itself up as immutable divine captivity had brought a curse on themselves. God had sent a decree. The unfortunate consequence of this tactic is that moral heavy rain to the land as punishment for their sin of marrying positions taken in the Bible are denied the useful process of foreign women and bringing them back to pollute the land of criticism and refinement, a process that is essential if ethics is Israel. Ezra's solution was simple. Those Israelite men who had to escape the brutalizing effects of dogmatism. foreign (even Moabite) wives should demonstrate their faithful- ness to God by putting all these wives away. If the story of Notes Ezra 10 reflects an actual historical period, we must believe that there was wholesale divorce in the land of Israel during 1. C. S. Lewis, A Grief Observed (New York: Seabury Press, 1963), pp. Ezra's time. Indeed, Ezra destroyed more than the marriages. 9-10. Upon his command, and in the name of God, the men who 2. July 3, 1963, letter from C. S. Lewis to John Beversluis. Letter quoted had married foreign women were forced to separate themselves in full in John Beversluis, C. S. Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985), pp. 156 f. from their children as well. 3. Ibid., p. 157. Italics added. It is interesting to see how this kind of moral relativism is 4. Cited in ibid., p. 157. perpetuated by evangelical commentaries. In The New Bible 5. G. T. Manley, in The New Bible Commentary, 2nd ed., F. Davidson, Commentary, evangelical scholar J. Stafford Wright claims that ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1954), p. 215. Ezra's morality should be accorded the status of a norm, the 6. Thomas J. Wertenbaker, The First Americans, 1607-1690 (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1971), pp. 231 f. biblical story of Ruth merely an exception to the rule.' This 7. J. Stafford Wright, in The New Bible Commentary, op. cit., p. 371. • strange piece of gerrymandering becomes even more strange when set against the background of the apostle Paul's instruction, which is the opposite of Ezra's. Paul advises the Christian woman who is married to an unbeliever to remain with him as Moving? long as he consents to the marriage. Paul then says that the children will greatly benefit by the marriage being kept intact. Make sure FREE INQUIRY Ezra's justification for commanding divorce is that the mixed marriage is a pollution or defilement. Paul's justification for follows you! advising against divorce is twofold: to provide the Christian Please attach old mailing label here with opportunities in marriage to spiritually redeem her or his spouse, and to prevent the children from becoming "unclean" (Include number in upper right-hauid corner.) (1 Cor. 7:12-16). New Address Those who think that the Bible is above situation ethics might find the following worth pondering. In 1 Corinthians 7:20-31, Paul appears to believe that the end of the world is Name around the corner. In the context of that conviction, the follow- Address ing advice is given: "Every one should remain in the state in which he was called" (1 Cor. 7:20 RSV). Paul elaborates: City State Zip FREE INQUIRY P.O. Box 5 • Buffalo, NY 14215-0005 I think that in view of the impending distress it is well for a Tele.: 716-834-2921

24 FREE INQUIRY tions, there is a recorded "glossolalic" text in an Egyptian ritual, and another in Xenoglossy and Glossolalia Sumerian cuneiform. In the oldest records, glossolalia is associated with religion and magic, but by the Middle Ages an associa- Don Laycock tion with the powers of evil was more common. The Catholic Rituale Romanum lists among the signs of demonic possession rom time to time reports surface in the the multitude came together, and were con- "speaking many words in an unknown lan- Fmedia about people "speaking in founded, because that every man heard them guage, or understanding it when spoken." tongues"—reports that range from the cred- speak in his own language. And they were The possessed nuns at Loudun in the seven- ulous to the skeptical, though the prevailing all amazed, and marvelled, saying one to teenth century spoke Latin—but the demons tone is often mere silliness. another, Behold, are not all these which inside them kept getting the Latin endings The reports always fail to distinguish speak Galileans? And how hear we every all wrong. glossolalia from xenoglossy—not surprising- man in our own tongue, wherein we were Other religious ladies, like the nun Hilde- ly, since the man in the street knows nothing born? Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, brand in the ninth century, and Friederike about either phenomenon. But there is and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, and in Hauffe, the "Seer of Prevorst," in the nine- nothing difficult about the concepts. Judea, and Cappadocia, in Pontus, and Asia, teenth century, spoke unidentifiable "angelic" Xenoglossy means speaking a known, Phrygia, and Pamphylia, in Egypt, and in languages of their own—from the sparse natural language that has not been learned the parts of Libya about Cyrene, and stran- records available these appear to have been by the speaker in any normal way—that is, gers of Rome, Jews and proselytes, Cretes compounded from glossolalia and deliberate the foreign language has not been learned and Arabians, we do hear them speak in invention. in school or by residing in that country, or our tongues the wonderful works of God." Edward Kelley, the spirit medium of the by studying a grammar book. However, modern Pentecostalists, and sixteenth-century scholar John Dee, also There are no conclusively demonstrated adherents of other charismatic sects, indulge produced a language of the angels, which instances of true xenoglossy, although there in glossolalia, which is something very dif- turns out on analysis to be based entirely have been hundreds, even thousands of ferent. The adherents of such sects often on English. claims (many of which I have investigated). claim that glossolalia does represent speak- The nineteenth century saw a revival of Many instances, such as those of spirit ing in natural languages, but no evidence glossolalia and xenoglossy among spirit mediums, boil down to outright fraud. There has come to light. All examined recordings mediums. The earliest was Laura Edmonds, are a number of ways to fake an apparent of glossolalia show something very different: the daughter of a New York judge who knowledge of a foreign language during a a form of babbling, characterized, usually, spoke Greek, Polish, Spanish, and several spirit séance, and I have given a demonstra- by extreme repetition and a limited inven- American Indian languages—but we have tion of one of the ways. Often the claims tory of sounds, of a kind that is impossible only her father's word for it. Confucian rest on insufficient documentation, but have in natural language. Chinese and Ancient Egyptian were also an inherent implausibility—such as the in- Much glossolalia is virtually identical popular languages. In 1926, and on later stance of a spirit-medium language being with the kind of babbling that a baby pro- occasions, a German peasant girl, Teresa identified as an obscure Persian dialect by a duces at about twelve to fourteen months, Neumann, showed stigmata of Christ, and person who had no knowledge of it. and psychologists have suggested that it is spoke several sentences in Aramaic, the Other instances have a prosaic explana- in fact such a regression. It is produced by language of Christ—but it has also been tion. There was a well-documented case "turning off" the brain connections that shown that she had access to books in which some years back of a man who spoke ex- associate sound with meaning, so that only these phrases were recorded. cellent Russian, though there seemed no way meaningless sound is produced. In modern times there have been many he could have learned it. Investigation Some forms of glossolalia, particularly claims from occult groups or individuals to showed that his parents had lived next door those produced in churches that go in for be speaking a language from "outer space." to a teacher of Russian, whose lessons were "tongues with interpretation" (where the (I have a recording of a man who claims to clearly audible to the baby in the cot next "message" of the glossolalist is "interpreted" speak seventeen different extraterrestrial lan- door. The language was thus acquired by by another member of the congregation) are guages, but all of these are demonstrably natural means, but the circumstances had a little more sophisticated. We might want glossolalia.) The other languages of this type been totally forgotten by the speaker. to characterize these as glossomimia, or that I have examined often show evidence Xenoglossy was clearly the phenomenon phonetic imitation of natural languages. of deliberate—and often very naïve—lin- at Pentecost, although this is usually identi- When an actor like Danny Kaye produces a guistic creation. fied with glossolalia. The Bible states (Acts fake but plausible-sounding imitation of A recent case is that of a fifteen-year-old 2:4-11), "And they were all filled with the German, it is glossomimia. schoolgirl in Naples. Her language appears Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other It is not hard to learn to produce to be xenoglossy, since it is said to be "a tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. glossolalia—and there are records even of mixture of Portuguese, Provencal ... Span- And there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, Pentecostalists practicing it. It is not neces- ish, and some Hebrew words." Yet an "ex- devout men, out of every nation under sarily even associated with religious fervor; pert" identified it with glossolalia, which he heaven. Now when this was noised abroad, glossolalia can be produced under the influ- said "was observed in mediums and people ence of alcohol or drugs, or even of extreme in an abnormal mental state." Pentecostalists Don Laycock is professor of linguistics at tiredness. at least would surely claim to be neither— Australian National University. Both glossolalia and xenoglossy have a though they may be just as confused about long history. Apart from the biblical men- what it is they are speaking. •

Summer 1987 25

Was the Universe Created?

Victor J. Stenger

But multitudinous atoms, swept along in their multitudinous as implied by their holy scriptures—but are, in physical terms, courses through infinite time by mutual clashes and their own insignificant bits of dust in a vast cosmos. How great must be weight, have come together in every possible way and realized the Creator of all this! everything that could be formed by their combinations. So it But what will these churchmen and their flock say about comes about that a voyage of immense duration, in which they the latest conclusion of physical cosmology, that have experienced every variety of movement and conjunction, the universe is has at length brought together those whose sudden encounter probably the result of a random quantum fluctuation in a normally forms the starting-point of substantial fabrics—earth spaceless, timeless void? In other words, physicists are now and sea and sky and the races of living creatures. claiming that the hundreds of billions of stars and galaxies, including the earth and humanity, are not conscious creations —Lucretius, but an accident. There is no Creator, because there was no De Rerum Natura creation. This is not a new idea, as the quotations above indicate. It We had the sky, up there, all speckled with stars, and we used first appeared in modern scientific literature fourteen years ago to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss whether in a short article in Nature (Tryon 1973) that received little they was made, or only just happened. notice. Suggestive as it was, it nonetheless failed to examine all the evidence adequately or to develop its hypotheses. Since —Huckleberry Finn 1980, however, there has been a tremendous upsurge in theoretical work on the early universe; hundreds of papers have he bitter debate over Creationism has focused on the appeared describing conditions during that first tiny fraction of origin of man. Only fundamentalist Christians who insist a second after time began. Only a few of these papers directly Ton a literal interpretation of the Bible refuse to accept touch on the question of whether the universe's origin was the biological evidence for evolution. Most other churches, accidental or designed (see Vilenkin 1983 and Davies 1983). including the often dogmatic Catholic church, have by now Yet these studies are rapidly converging on the conclusion that quietly accepted the notion of evolution as a scientific fact. the universe spontaneously formed out of a void. It would be Many religious writers now even see evolution, and the complex too strong to say that we have final "proof'—if there is such a beauty of life as it unfolds over time, as positive evidence of the thing as proof in science —against the creation of the universe majesty of the Creator whom they worship. In a similar way, or the existence of a Grand Design. But it is fair to say that and with a similar rationale, they have come to accept the fact there is not a single shred of evidence that demands that we that the earth and man are not at the center of the universe— hypothesize that the universe was created, and we can now at least provisionally understand how all we are and all we know could have come about by chance. Victor Stenger, professor of physics at the University of The Inflationary Universe Hawaii, is the author of Not by Design: The Origin of the F vidence that the universe is now expanding from a Big Universe, forthcoming from J Bang that occurred ten to twenty billion years ago is Prometheus Books. overwhelming. Not only has the remnant of that explosion— the 3 degrees Kelvin microwave background—been discovered,

26 FREE INQUIRY but detailed calculations on the synthesis of helium and other light elements extant during the explosion agree exactly with observations. Nevertheless, the pre-1980 Big Bang model was incomplete, and it usually assumed certain initial conditions. In scientific terms, this is what the debate over planned versus chance creation comes down to: Is it necessary to invoke a set of initial conditions from which the universe evolved—the Grand Design—or can we show that the structure of the universe naturally evolved from nothing? Note that it is not sufficient merely to say, "You can't get something from nothing." While our everyday experience and common sense seem to support this principle, if there is anything that we have learned from twentieth-century physics, it is this: Common sense is often wrong, and our normal experiences are but a tiny fraction of reality. We should not be surprised when science jars our picture of the cosmos. The scientific revolution, still in progress after four hundred years, is not so much the result of people getting smarter as it is both the cause and effect of the advance of technology. Increasingly sensitive instruments bring us data about the very large and very small that are inaccessible to our unaided senses. And the theories we develop to describe these data feed back into the development of yet more precise and innovative instruments; and thus the cycle continues. The past decade in particular has witnessed huge strides in elementary particle physics that have enabled us to push our are not predictable—and predictability is what we mean by knowledge of the early universe back even earlier than the order. The old saying that no two snowflakes are alike is pro- formation of nuclei one second into the Big Bang. We know found: each intricate, unique, and beautiful pattern is accidental. that energies involved in reactions studied at the giant particle The measure of disorder or unpredictability is entropy. accelerators existed naturally when the universe was only a Order can be produced in some local region, with a decrease in trillionth of a second old; the physics learned from these the local entropy, as long as the total entropy of the universe accelerator studies can be directly applied to that time and remains constant or increases. That is, the rest of the universe extrapolated to an even earlier time. Further, the successes must become more disorderly when a smaller system becomes achieved in the theoretical unification of the weak and electro- ordered. This is the famous second law of thermodynamics. magnetic forces have pointed the way to an understanding of When the second law was discovered in the nineteenth how forces and particles, the very "laws" of nature, could have century by Nicolas Carnot and others, people were led to a been spontaneously generated as the universe expanded and depressing conclusion: The universe must be proceeding inexor- cooled. ably to a state of ultimate total disorder, to what has been The universe very likely went through a period of exponen- called "heat death." Small pockets of order like the earth may tial inflation during which it increased in size by fifty orders of occasionally form, but eventually everything must collapse into magnitude in 10-3° seconds or less (Kazanas 1980; Guth 1981). chaos. There was, however, a glimmer of hope in this idea: The Much has been written on the "inflationary universe," so I will universe must have begun in a state of very high order. Many not linger on this point (nonspecialists should see Guth and concluded that only a divine creator could have produced that Steinhardt 1984). Rather, I will attempt to show how inflation order. probably was triggered by accident from an initial state of total Several fundamental developments in this century turn that chaos and, more generally, confront the question of whether conclusion on its head. Nineteenth-century science viewed the the evidence of an orderly universe around us requires that universe as a place of more or less fixed stars in a firmament. there was, at the beginning, or now, any Grand Design. Let me In 1932 the concept of such a firmament of stars was disproved start with the latter. and replaced by the model of an expanding universe when Edwin Hubble discovered the galaxies and found them to be Entropy and the Grand Design rapidly receding from one another. This, coupled with the observation of the microwave background in 1964 by Penzias he universe presented to our senses is obviously not a and Wilson, made it possible to conceive of the universe as Trandom jumble of data. There is order, though less than having irrupted from utter amorphousness—that is, from most people believe. This order is frequently cited as evidence entropy—and still being able to produce orderly systems like for a Grand Design: How could it all have happened by chance? galaxies and DNA. Physicists well understand, however, that order occurs by This appears paradoxical, but it is not too hard to see how chance all the time. Crystals grow into intricate patterns that it could happen. First, most of the universe's entropy is carried

Summer 1987 27 length. (A particle traveling at the speed of light will travel 10-" "Physicists are now claiming that the hundreds centimeter in 1043 second.) of billions of stars and galaxies, including the The entropy of a black hole of any size is the maximum earth and humanity, are not conscious creations entropy any system of that size can have. This follows from the fact that no light or other carrier of information can escape a but an accident. There is no Creator, because black hole. Because we can have no information about what there was no creation." goes on inside one, we can infer that black holes are filled by total chaos, or maximum entropy. In the trade, the fact that a black hole is completely featureless is wittily expressed by the in the microwave background (or in a background of "dark phrase "Black holes have no hair." If the universe had the matter" that is believed to be present but has not yet been entropy of a black hole at some time, then it had to be in a detected by scientific instruments; its existence affects the details state of complete disorder at that time. So we conclude: There but not the general conclusions reported here). For every atom could not have been any Grand Design at the Planck time. in the galaxies there are a billion photons in the background. If the universe had the entropy of a 10 37 centimeter black In fact, the galaxies—including the Milky Way, which contains hole at 1043 second, then it was, for all practical purposes, a the earth and our sun—are really no more than minor residue black hole. Order formed in the universe after this black hole left over from the Big Bang. They would not be there except disintegrated into radiation that then cooled to form the uni- for a slight asymmetry between matter and antimatter that verse. That order appeared as a random crystalizing process resulted when the particles and forces formed. similar to the formation of a snowflake from a raindrop in an During the Big Bang most matter and antimatter annihilated expanding container of water vapor. into the photons that have since cooled to 3 degrees Kelvin and The disintegration of tiny black holes into radiation is a formed the current background. But the burning was imperfect; quantum mechanical process that was discovered by Steven and the billions of galaxies in the observable cosmos comprise Hawking (1974). It is a very unlikely process for the usual the tiny bit of unburned remnant that has remained. This asym- stellar-sized black hole, but it happens with increasing prob- metry between matter and antimatter is not just a guess; it is a ability as the size decreases. Surprise! The average lifetime for fundamental part of modern particle physics and was first a 10-13 centimeter black hole is 10'3 second. serendipitously glimpsed by Cronin and Fitch in 1964 in an You may wonder that we have theories that can be satis- accelerator experiment involving K-mesons. factorily applied to such tiny distances and times. Physicists Second, as the universe expands, the maximum entropy believe that the basic structures of relativity and quantum that can be contained in its volume increases. A larger volume mechanics are valid down to that point, even if our current has more room for disorderly behavior. So, in an expanding specific theories of particles and forces do not apply. However, universe little pockets of order can easily form in which most at smaller distances, and times earlier than the Planck time of of the particles are part of a uniform background; the local 1043 second, we definitely get into trouble. Beyond that point entropy decrease is easily compensated for by an entropy our common notions of a universe composed of elementary increase in the remaining part of the universe. Since the orderly particles and fields moving in a framework of space and time part of the universe—the galaxies—includes only a minute have to break down. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle fraction of the total particle count, there is plenty of room— implies that a particle cannot be localized within a region and more than adequate energy—for minor, little-ordered smaller than the Planck scale; so most of our usual physical structures like the earth and life to appear. concepts cannot be operationally defined in that region. Since Actually, the universe is now expanding adiabatically—that clocks are made of particles, and since time is nothing more or is, its total energy is constant—so that its total entropy is also less than what one measures on a clock, values of time less constant. This was not the case during the inflationary epoch, than 1043 second can have no meaning. when an enormous amount of free energy was generated. (In So there is no point in asking what happened before the thermodynamics, "free energy" is the portion of energy available Planck time; there was no before, because there was no time. It to bring about order.) However, even an adiabatic expansion is impossible operationally to define zero absolute time. Further, implies that the maximum allowable entropy keeps increasing we have seen that the entropy of the universe at that time was with time (Frautschi 1982; Davies 1983), with a corresponding maximal—the universe was as disorderly as it possibly could increase in free energy. Incidentally, we conventionally have have been. So if the universe was created, it was placed in a defined time to flow in the direction of increased entropy. This state of complete and utter chaos without even the space, time, is just the arbitrary choice we make for what Sir Arthur and forces needed to produce the ultimate order, which then Eddington called the "arrow of time"; the future differs from was generated by chance. I doubt whether that is what most the past by its lower predictability—by definition. people would regard as a "creation." Now, as we extrapolate this variable maximum entropy back in time, it decreases; and, if we go back far enough, we Something from Nothing find a remarkable thing. At a very special instant, when the universe was only 10'3 second old, the Planck time, when the n developing a view of what happened at the Planck time maximum entropy was exactly equal to that of a black hole I we cannot use our conventional notions of space, time, 10-37 centimeter in diameter—a distance known as the Planck matter, and energy. These are all based on operational defini-

28 FREE INQUIRY tions requiring the use of instruments (such as clocks) that could not have existed at that time even hypothetically. This "What had to happen to start the universe was would seem to leave us with nothing, for virtually all our concepts are formulated in terms of space and time. Yet not the formation of an empty bubble of highly completely all. It was recognized in the early days of quantum curved space-time. How did this bubble form? mechanics that there were phenomena, specifically the electron What caused it? Not everything requires a cause. spin, that could not be described in a space-time framework. It could have just happened spontaneously as So, in the development of quantum mechanics, the state of a system was represented by a vector in an abstract multidimen- one of the many linear combinations of universes sional (Hilbert) space. Such a vector is independent of our that has the quantum numbers of the void." more familiar four-dimensional space-time. Further, by the principle of superposition, any quantum the attraction of gravity formed by matter. But the same sign state is a linear combination of all the possible states of a in the absence of matter results in an exponential expansion, system with the same quantum numbers. What this means is far faster than the linear Hubble expansion observed in the that a system in a particular state can be found with some red-shifts of galaxies. probability in any one of the other states that are part of the So what had to happen to start the universe was the forma- linear combination. This has real effects. For example, a tion of an empty bubble of highly curved space-time. How did vacuum is a linear combination of electron-positron and other this bubble form? What caused it? Not everything requires a particle-antiparticle pairs that still have, in sum, zero charge cause. It could have just happened spontaneously as one of the and other quantum numbers of the vacuum. The momentary many linear combinations of universes that has the quantum appearance in the vacuum of an electron-positron pair results numbers of the void. Formed with a random value of the in an electric polarization, leading to measurable shifts in the cosmological constant and maximum entropy, this bubble ex- spectral lines of atoms. Quantum electrodynamics can calculate panded exponentially, increasing the maximum entropy, open- these minute effects to an incredibly high degree of precision. ing up all kinds of room for order to form. This order, the In other words, the void has some probability of being elementary particles and the laws they obeyed in forming the found in any one of an infinite number of possible states; one universe, then "froze out," breaking the highly symmetric state of these could have grown into our universe. Of course the of the universe the way an iceberg breaks the planar symmetry universe generated by this quantum fluctuation would not be of a polar sea. expected to look like the one today, which does not have all the quantum numbers of the void. It would have zero total energy and equal numbers of particles and antiparticles, if it had any particles at all. Today's universe appears to still have Help Further the Cause zero total energy (particle kinetic energy minus gravitational of Humanism. potential energy), but there is a definite excess of matter over Please remember FREE INQUIRY in your will. antimatter that must have resulted from an early breaking of the symmetry between the two. The primeval universe would have existed in a state of very Won't you consider making a provision in your will high symmetry, as well as disorder—like the molecules of air in for FREE INQUIRY and the Council for Democratic and Secular Humanism? This will ensure vital support a balloon. Out of this state of maximum entropy, order would for the defense and development of humanism. still have to form; as we have seen, the formation of order Although humanists do not believe in immortal- becomes possible as the newly established universe expands ity, they know that the good work they do will sur- and the allowed entropy increases. As we will see, this order vive them. By leaving a percentage of your estate to will happen as a process of symmetry-breaking. FREE INQUIRY (CODESH, INC.), you will be furthering the ideals of humanism. The Cosmological Term We would be happy to work with you and your attorney in the development of a will or estate plan that meets your wishes. hen Einstein developed his general theory of relativity Besides a will, there are many other possibilities, Whe found it necessary to add a new repulsive force, the such as living trusts and charitable gift annuities "cosmological constant," to balance the attraction of gravity from which you receive an annual income from the and keep the universe a firmament. Later, when Hubble dis- transfer of property now. Or you might make a con- covered that the universe was expanding, Einstein dropped the tingent bequest, by which FREE INQUIRY (CODESH, constant, calling it his "biggest blunder." INC.) will receive a gift only if your primary bene- ficiaries do not survive you. While the cosmological term is of little value in describing For more information, contact Paul Kurtz, Editor gravity dominated by matter, it does allow for an intriguing Of FREE INQUIRY. possibility: A universe empty of matter and radiation can still have a space-time curvature proportional to this cosmological P.O. Box 5 • Central Park Station constant. Einstein's equations admit any value or sign for this Buffalo, New York 14215 • 716-834-2921 curvature. He assumed a sign that gave a repulsion to balance All inquiries will be held in the strictest confidence.

Summer 1987 29

Broken Symmetry This implies the existence of randomly oriented fields inside the bubble that still have a net-zero total field intensity, by hen water vapor condenses into a raindrop, and that analogy with the hot ferromagnet or the polarized vacuum. At Wraindrop freezes into a snowflake, the system of water some point in the expansion the temperature drops sufficiently molecules passes through two familiar phase transitions—lique- so that a phase transition occurs in which the field vectors lock fication and solidification. In each case the system goes from a in place, destroying the symmetry and creating order. The state of higher to lower entropy and from higher to lower particular orientation that results is accidental, but whatever symmetry. Except for gravity, the raindrop would have spher- orientations remain after a whole series of these phase transi- ical symmetry; when it becomes a snowflake its spherical sym- tions freeze out the character of the universe. metry breaks to a new six-pointed symmetry. So order actually So we now have order, but the particular order of our occurs as the breaking of a symmetry during a phase transition. universe was a chance happening. Other universes could have The less symmetric state is actually the one of higher order. formed as well, with other chance orientations of their field The position of a molecule of water is more predictable in the vectors and with characteristics totally different from ours. snowflake than in the raindrop, and in the raindrop more than Some may have quickly deflated instead of inflating, being in the cloud of vapor out of which it formed. born with an attractive cosmological term. Just as the charac- Another familiar analogy, which perhaps more closely teristics of each of us result from a chance encounter between a describes the early universe, is that of a ferromagnet. Think of sperm and an egg, the characteristics of our universe are just the atoms inside a piece of iron as little bar magnets. At high those that it happened to get, and they were conducive to temperatures these move about randomly, pointing in all direc- forming our kind of life. Our universe is a very unlikely one, tions, so that there is no net magnetization and the magnetic but it is the only one we have. And this unlikeliness of our fields of the bar magnets cancel out on the whole. There is high universe is no argument for its having been planned. symmetry and disorder. As the iron is cooled the motion slows Undoubtedly, in the course of future study we will find until a critical point, called the "Curie Point," is reached when many changes in the picture reported here, and even more in the atoms lock into a particular orientation and a net magneti- the detailed theories that are being developed to describe the zation results. This permanent magnet becomes the favored events of the early universe. Much is still in the speculative state because it is the one of lower free energy. stage, and I must admit that there are yet no known empirical Let us apply this to our empty bubble of space-time. Because or observational tests that can be used to test the idea of an of the accidentally repulsive cosmological term, there is a non- accidental origin. I believe these will come, as the theories zero energy density inside the bubble that drives the inflation. become more specific in their details. The scientific method demands excessive conservatism, and it in fact is just that conservatism that leads us to our current conclusion: There is no RENEW NOW! evidence for a creation, so one must not presume it. The burden of proof that there was and is a Grand Design rests with those Subscription Rates seeking to demonstrate it. It is they who must slide down Occam's razor. One Year $20.00 The need for initial conditions at the beginning of time may Two Years $35.00 some day be demonstrated—although I will be surprised if it Three Years $48.00 is. But, if so, it will be by the work of future scientists with bigger telescopes and accelerators, more powerful computers and mathematical methods. And, when that happens, I doubt very much that this new picture of the creation will resemble Affix mailing label here. the primitive mythological image of the Creation that has been (Include identification number in upper right-hand corner.) carried down by the Judeo-Christian tradition.

References

Outside U.S.A. add $6.00 for surface mail, $12.00 for airmail. Davies, P. C. W. 1983. "Inflation and Time Asymmetry in the Universe." (U.S. funds on U.S. bank) Nature, 301:398. Dyson, F. J. 1979. "Time Without End: Physics and Biology in an Open Universe." Reviews in Modern Physics, 51:447. ❑ Check or money order enclosed Frautschi, S. 1982. "Entropy and the Expanding Universe." Science, ❑ Visa ❑ Master Card 217:593. Guth, A. H. 1981. "Inflationary Universe: A Possible Solution to the Horizon Acct. # Exp. Date and Flatness Problems." Physical Review D, 23:347. Guth, A. H., and P. J. Steinhardt. 1984. "The Inflationary Universe." Scien- tific American, 250:116. FREE INQUIRY Hawking, S. W. 1974. "Black Hole Explosions?" Nature, 248:30. Box 5 • Buffalo, New York 14215-0005 Kazanas, D. 1980. "Dynamics of the Universe and Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking." Astrophysical Journal, 242:L59. Tele.: 716-834-2921 Tryon, E. P. 1972. "Is the Universe a Vacuum Fluctuation?" Nature, 246:396. Vilenkin, A. 1983. "Birth of the Inflationary Universe." Physical Review D, 27:2,848. •

30 FREE INQUIRY Science-Fantasy Religious Cults

The story of Ray Palmer, forgotten flying-saucer pioneer

Martin Gardner

cience-fiction fans have a long, dreary history of falling States government aircraft? Soviet planes? Spaceships from for outrageous quasi-religious, pseudoscientific cults that Mars or Venus? Sarise within the community of science-fiction writers and The time was ripe for a new mythology. Traditional reli- editors. L. Ron Hubbard's Scientology, first introduced as gions were declining, and the fundamentalist revival was yet to "dianetics" by John Campbell when he was editor of Astound- begin. Sea serpents had long ago retired to isolated spots like ing Science Fiction, is of course the prime example. This article Loch Ness. Not many people were seeing visions of the Virgin will tell the story of an almost forgotten science-fiction editor, Mary or conversing with angels the way Joan of Arc did. But Ray Palmer, and the curious roles he played in the notorious out there, over our heads, was dark, endless space—a region "Shaver hoax" and, later, in promoting the cult of UFOlogy. teeming with mysteries far more exotic than any in earth's Although reports of mysterious unidentified flying objects ancient seas. Were aliens from other planets watching us? Could go back to ancient times, and numerous UFO reports are scat- they be here to conquer us? To save us from self-destruction? tered through the writings of Charles Fort, the UFOmania of Add to these fears and hopes the steady deterioration of science the present century had an abrupt beginning. It was almost teaching, widespread resentment against technology for inven- exactly forty years ago, on June 24, 1947. ting the atom bomb and polluting the environment, the upsurge Kenneth Arnold, a manufacturer of fire-fighting equipment of enthusiasm for astrology and all things occult, and it is not in Boise, Idaho, was flying his three-seat cabin plane from hard to understand why the UFO craze spread so rapidly. Chehalis to Yakima, in Washington. Arnold remembers it as a cloudless day with the air "as smooth as silk." At about 3 P.M. n our country's science-fiction subculture, Ray Palmer was he spotted nine crescent-shaped disks bobbing up and down I the first editor to perceive the mythic potency of UFOlogy. "like a tail of a Chinese kite" over the peaks of Washington's "And who was Ray Palmer?" I can hear the young readers ask. Cascade Mountains. They seemed headed for Mt. Rainier at a We older readers remember him well. speed Arnold estimated to be more than 1,700 miles an hour. Raymond A. Palmer (the "A" didn't stand for anything), Later that afternoon in Pendleton, Oregon, Ken decided to born in Milwaukee in 1910, was a blue-eyed hunchback about report what he saw to the FBI. Finding its offices closed, he four feet tall.* He always claimed that his deformed back had took his story to the editor of the Eastern Oregonian. been caused by an accident when he was seven, but what sort Whatever Arnold saw—some skeptics think it was a group of accident is not clear. In one version he was hit by a butcher's of weather balloons—they seemed not to be circular. "They truck; in another, he was hit by a streetcar. Howard Browne, flew erratic," Arnold told a United Press reporter, "like a saucer who for six years was editor-in-chief of all of Ziff-Davis's pulps, if you skip it across water." In the story he sent over the wire, told me that Ray told him the accident was a fall off a roof. the reporter called the objects "flying saucers." Before a week When Hugo Gernsback started Amazing Stories in 1926, had passed, newspapers throughout the nation were having a Palmer became a lifelong fan. He edited what is said to be the field day with reports of new sightings and wild speculations first fanzine, The Comet. "The Time Ray of Jandra," in Wonder about what the mysterious "saucers' could be. Secret United Stories (June 1930), was his first published story. According to Palmer, for the next ten years he sold hundreds of tales in such Martin Gardner is the author diverse fields as SF, mystery, western, romance, and even of Science: Good, Bad and pornography. He used many pseudonyms. Bogus, and some forty other books in the fields of science, *In the sixties, science-fiction writers Gardner Fox and Jule Schwartz wrote mathematics, and literary a comic book called The Atom, about a scientist who had the power to criticism. shrink himself to a height of six inches. They named the scientist Ray Palmer.

Summer 1987 31 below the earth's surface. But the rays still damaged them, and they were forced to abandon the planet. An inferior race of humans discovered the caverns and the fantastic machines the superbeings had left behind. Alas, radiation from the machines turned the humans into midgetlike idiots whom Shaver called the "deros" (short for "detrimental robots"). The deros still live beneath us. All sorts of terrible disasters that occur above ground, including great wars, are caused by psychic forces coming from the evil deros. Palmer printed Shaver's first short novel, I Remember Lemuria, in the March 1945 issue of Amazing. The response from simple-minded readers was indeed amazing. After thousands of letters, many from persons reporting their own en- counters with deros, Palmer realized he had on his hands the making of a monstrous swindle. For the next few years he rewrote all of Shaver's demented submissions, presenting them not as fiction but as sober fact. Only older SF fans can comprehend the furor that resulted. Little is known about Shaver, but some evidence suggests he may really have believed he was in psychic contact with creatures of the caverns. In the July 1971 issue of Forum, Palmer revealed that for eight years, while Shaver was feeding him raw data, Shaver was in a mental hospital. "He suffered 74e from being a tremendous psychic person," Ray wrote, "and this in my belief makes him superior, mentally, to those people SHAVER MYSTERY unable to perceive the ordinarily unseen aspects of our total existence." A few months later Palmer reported that Shaver had years earlier escaped from the mental hospital and "is at Amazing Stories warned its readers against the psychic forces of "evil deros." present a fugitive." Young Palmer belonged to a club called "The Milwaukee Fictioneers," which included Robert Bloch, Stanley Weinbaum, and Ralph Milne Farley. After Weinbaum died, Palmer edited a collection of his work, Dawn of Flame and Other Stories. When Weinbaum's widow objected to Ray's introduction, he substituted a new one, making the first edition of this book a rarity. Amazing Stories was in the doldrums when Ziff-Davis took it over in 1938. It was being edited by Gernsback's friend T. O'Conor Sloane, then eighty-six. Ziff-Davis replaced Sloane with Palmer, and the magazine's character altered overnight. The shift was away from hard science to action and adventure. Sales of Amazing leaped upward. The next year Palmer started Fantastic Adventures, featuring yarns on a level even more juvenile than those of Amazing. At about this time Palmer's nose began to sniff the burning A rsre photograph of Richard Shaver, who created "a vast, com- fuse of the coming occult explosion. Millions of young readers, plex mythology." he correctly sensed, cared little about orthodox science. They were hungering for far-out science. Over the transom came It was a period in which the two men seemed not on good some weird material of just the sort Palmer wanted. A Pennsyl- terms. Palmer published a letter from Shaver that vigorously vania welder named Richard Sharpe Shaver claimed to be in denied Palmer's disclosures. He had, Shaver said, been in a telepathic communication with a race of evil humanoids who sanitorium for only two weeks, and only to recover from a lived underground. heat stroke. The two men also clashed over the nature and Let us try to capsule Shaver's vast, complex mythology. location of the deros. Palmer put forth the theory that they Long ago the earth had been the home of the Atlans and the could be spiritual beings above the earth, on a higher astral Titans, godlike creatures who flourished on the now-sunken plane. Shaver responded with anger: "I was in the caves. Not continents of Atlantis and Lemuria. To protect themselves from in the clouds overhead or in any mental world of the liar's harmful solar radiation they constructed enormous caverns imagination, but in actuality." How much of this debate, in the

32 FREE INQUIRY few years preceding Shaver's death in 1975, is accurate and how much was cooked up by the pair to keep the Shaver "At about this time Palmer's nose began to sniff mystery alive is impossible at this time to say. the burning fuse of the coming occult explosion. Did Palmer ever believe in the deros? Some think he did, or maybe half-did, but I can't buy it. Jim Wentworth, in a Millions of young readers, he correctly sensed, history of the Shaver flap that I'll return to later, tells us that cared little about orthodox science. They were neither Palmer's wife, Marjorie, nor Shaver's third wife, hungering for far-out science." Dorothy, took the deros seriously. I met Ray on several occasions in the forties, when I lived in Chicago, and I have talked restrial. In 1950 Palmer advertised and distributed Arnold's to many people who knew him well. He impressed us all as a pamphlet The Flying Saucer as I Saw It. Two years later he shy, kind, good-natured, gentle, energetic little man with the published The Coming of the Saucers, a book on which he personality of a professional con artist. He may have been collaborated with Arnold. slightly paranoid in the pleasure he got from his endless flim- Arnold, by the way, was a great admirer of Charles Fort. flams, but I think his primary motive was simply to create Like so many Forteans who seem unable to comprehend that uproars that would sell magazines. the Fortean Society was a joke, Arnold was inclined to take Sell they did. It is said that at the beginning of the Shaver seriously every published UFO story, no matter how outlandish, flap Amazing reached a circulation higher than any other SF including tales of little men seen coming out of saucers. "I magazine up to that time. Mature readers, however, were realize it's the 'data of the damned,' " he told a newspaper in strongly disturbed by what came to be called the Great Shaver 1950, quoting one of Fort's famous phrases. "Who's to deter- Hoax. It was immoral, they thought, to deceive gullible readers mine what is and isn't real?" he asked. into thinking Shaver's delusions were true. The hoax was giving It would be foolish to suppose that UFOmania would never SF a bad name. The management of Ziff-Davis stood it as have gathered steam without Palmer's aid; yet no one can deny long as they could. Eventually, smitten by an attack of con- that he played an enormous role, now almost forgotten, in science, they asked Palmer to go. tirelessly promoting the craze. Here are some of the pulps he edited, ostensibly to publish SF but primarily devoted to beating he time was the late forties and the occult revolution was the drums for UFOs and other aspects of the paranormal scene: Trunning full blast. Why not, Palmer decided, start a new Other Worlds, Imagination, Universe, Hidden Worlds, Mystic, pulp devoted entirely to the occult? His friend Curtis Fuller, Search, Forum, and Space World. When Other Worlds folded then editing the Ziff-Davis periodical Flying, agreed that this he changed the title of Universe to Other Worlds. It was later was an idea whose time had come. The pair formed Clark changed again, to Flying Saucers from Other Worlds, and Publishing Company—the name was taken from Chicago's finally shortened to Flying Saucers. No one knows how many North Clark Street, where the firm had its first office—and in pseudonyms Palmer used in writing for these publications. early 1948 Fate was born. (Palmer has written that he suggested Palmer's first mistake was pushing his Shaver hoax to the name, but Fuller recently claimed he thought of it first.) absurd extremes. Then he made a second, more serious blunder. Many years later Fuller bought the magazine from Palmer He decided to tie UFOs into his beloved underground caverns. and has been its publisher ever since. With a current circulation So far as I can determine, his first article to do this was "Flying of about 150,000, Fate is the nation's top purveyor of psychic Saucers from the Earth," in the December 1959 issue of Flying garbage. Fuller's wife, Mary, is editor. The pair, both in their Saucers. From then on, articles began to appear with increasing seventies, are Unitarians who have almost as little belief in frequency, most of them written by Palmer, contending that what they publish as Palmer did. "The Bermuda Triangle," the earth is hollow, with enormous openings at both poles. Mary told a reporter a few years ago, "is for the birds." UFOs were spacecraft built inside the earth and sent through When Palmer saw the newspaper accounts of Ken Arnold's the polar holes for reasons that were never too clear. (Palmer famous sighting, he lost no time getting in touch with Arnold was seldom consistent in his flimflams.) From 1960 until his and requesting an article for Fate. The first issue (Spring 1948) death seventeen years later, Palmer seemed obsessed by the led off with "I Did See the Flying Disks!" in which Arnold hollow-earth theory, though there is not a scintilla of evidence gave more details about his sighting. In the same issue he he ever believed it. Indeed, he added almost nothing to the old reported his investigation of a later UFO sighting in Tacoma. hollow-earth theories (you'll find a history of them in my book "What Were the Doughnuts?"—another UFO piece in the issue Fads and Fallacies) except the Shaver mythology of subsurface —was written by Fuller under the pseudonym of John C. Ross, creatures. But the idea of a hollow earth was new to most of a name he used for later articles in Fate and other magazines. his young readers, and Palmer was careful never to admit even Palmer wrote Fate's editorials, as well as many of its articles, to friends (were his wife and children exceptions?) that it was under the byline of Robert T. Webster. Several years later, another calculated scheme to boost magazine sales. when I sold Fate a manuscript, my correspondence was entirely The most ridiculous artifact in this mad history was the with "Robert Webster." June 1970 cover of Flying Saucers—a NASA photograph that The first issue of Fate marked the beginning of a long Palmer called "the most remarkable photo ever made." It was collaboration between Arnold and Palmer. The second issue a composite picture of the earth, seen by a satellite above the featured Arnold's "Are Space Visitors Here?" This was possibly North Pole, that seemed to show a huge black hole surrounding the first magazine piece to argue that UFOs were extrater- the pole. Palmer knew perfectly well that the hole was nothing

Summer 1987 33 ow that almost forty years have gone by without finding Na single nut or bolt from a flying saucer, leading UFO buffs have switched to the safe, untestable view that UFOs are

THE TRUTH ABBU': ghostlike things from some higher plane of reality, perhaps THE MING SAIIL S illusions created in our minds by alien superbeings. Ken Arnold himself moved with the psi flow. In an interview in MAHä TWAIN AN» UFO - NA ETTS COMET Review (November 1982) he recalled many UFO sightings since I, ton. a, x MW.11 1947, including one craft that kept changing in such a way that INVISIBLE BEINGS WALK THE EARTH it led him to think it was a living creature, possibly a link between our life-forms and those of a spirit world. He repeated TWENTY MIIIION his claim that invisible entities from UFOs once entered his MANIACS bp 11. x.1+.111 home. "I was aware of their presence," he stated on an earlier occasion, "because I could see my rugs and furniture sink down under their weight...." Arnold belonged to a large class of what are known in UFO circles as "repeaters." These are people who, contrary to The first issue of Fate, "the nation's top purveyor of psychic garbage." all laws of statistics, keep seeing the same kinds of UFOs. In a Seattle Times interview (June 26, 1983), shortly before his death more than the region where sunlight could not penetrate at the in January 1984, Arnold speaks of seven occasions since 1947 time the photos were taken, but of course he didn't tell his on which he saw UFOs, always in clusters and always traveling readers that. "We do not see any ice fields in the large circular at fantastic speeds. Who can have confidence in such repeated area directly at the geographic pole," he wrote. "Instead, we claims? see—The Hole!" The September 1957 issue of Fate carried an amusing ad. Mariner photos had also disclosed, Palmer assured his Arnold was selling a product called "Turn-ers," guaranteed to readers, a similar opening at the north pole of Mars. Mercury cure dandruff, restore hair color, and "make your scalp pink too was hollow. Palmer printed numerous letters from readers and clean as a baby's." A testimonial by Palmer says it not who raised objections, some of them written by Palmer himself. only banished his dandruff in one week but turned his father's You have only to read his clever responses to get the picture— snow-white hair back to the color it was when his dad was a strange little man, chuckling to himself as he wrote, somehow thirty. getting enormous kicks out of hornswoggling people bigger Ray and Marjorie spent their later years on a large farm than he was. near Amherst, Wisconsin, where they brought up two daughters Most histories of UFOlogy either do not mention Palmer and a son. For a time, Shaver and his wife lived on a nearby or give him only a passing glance. One exception is Robert farm. It was in 1977, while the Palmers were visiting a daughter Sheaffer's splendid book The UFO Verdict: Examining the in Tallahassee, Florida, that Ray died after a series of strokes. Evidence, published by Prometheus Books in 1981 and recently Marjorie still lives in Amherst, where she heads Amherst Press. reissued in paperback. It is the source for what I have written The firm publishes books about parascience and the occult, above about Palmer's exploitation of the NASA photograph. including two basic references on Palmer's life, The Secret The only leading UFOlogist who didn't scoff at Palmer's holy- World (1975) by Palmer and Shaver, and James Wentworth's poler theory was Brinsley LePoer Trench, a member of the Giants in the Earth (1973). Marjorie continued Ray's magazine British House of Lords and founder of the influential Saucer Search until 1981, when she sold it to another publisher. Review. Trench liked the hollow-earth theory so much that he The Secret World is one of Palmer's masterpieces of hokum. wrote an entire book about it: Secret of the Ages: UFOs from Although his is the only name on the cover, only the first third Inside the Earth (Pinnacle, 1977). of this large hardcover volume is by him. It is an autobio- A book titled The Hollow Earth, by Dr. Raymond Bernard graphical account of his early life, filled with startling anecdotes (he claimed a Ph.D. from New York University), was first that may or may not be true. He claims, for example, that he printed in 1963 by a New York house called Fieldcrest Publica- remembers seeing Halley's Comet through a window while tions, and later reprinted by several other firms. Because being held as a baby in his grandmother's arms, although he Bernard frequently quotes Palmer, calling him "America's learned later that, when he was born, in August 1910, the greatest authority on flying saucers," and because his hollow- comet had passed beyond the range of being visible to unaided earth book was heavily advertised in Fate, it has been rumored eyes. that Bernard and Palmer were one and the same. Not so. Palmer devotes many pages to his discovery of Oahspe, a According to several informants, Bernard's real name was book he heavily promoted as a revelation that reinforces Walter Siegmeister, a German crank who at one time ran a Shaver's claims. "The book proved itself," he writes. "To me, it health-food store in Brooklyn and who wrote many worthless could not be a fake. It had to be authentic—because it proved books and pamphlets on health, sex, and occult topics. I am the key to all the vast amount of material I had collected in my told he died in Brazil, but I have been unable to confirm this lifetime, and especially ... the Shaver Mystery. Oahspe proved or to learn any more about him. Shaver, and Shaver proved Oahspe."

34 FREE INQUIRY For readers unfamiliar with the wild history of spiritualism, Oahspe was written by Dr. John Ballou Newbrough, a New Space-Age Religion York City dentist and psychic. He claimed he could paint pictures in total darkness, using both hands at once, that he could he quasireligious character of the UFO movement remote view and read any book in any library, and that while Thas been underscored recently by the publication of under a spirit's control he could lift a ton of weight. Oahspe, two popular UFO books: Communion, by Whitley subtitled A Kosmon Bible in the Words of Jehovah and His Strieber, and Intruders, by Budd Hopkins. Both books Angel Ambassadors, was published in Boston in 1882. Accord- report stories of visitations and abductions by semi-divine, ing to its author, it was dictated by angels who manipulated his intelligent "space aliens." Hopkins, who conducted "hyp- hands while he sat at his typewriter. One morning he looked notic regressions" upon numerous alleged abductees, out the window and "beheld the line of light that rested on my paints an alarming picture of extraterrestrials performing hands, extending heavenward like a telegraph wire towards the genetic experiments on the human race. Strieber, whose sky. Over my head were three pairs of hands, fully materialized; book (subtitled "A True Story") tops the nonfiction list, behind me stood another angel with her hands on my shoulders. describes his odyssey as "an intense spiritual search." "The My looking did not disturb the scene, my hands kept right on universe and the works of God," he reports, have been printing ... printing. For fifty weeks this continued.... The "recharged with mystery and wonder." peculiar drawings in Oahspe were made with pencil in the same The Committee for the Scientific Investigation of way." Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP) has found these For an excellent summary of the strange doctrines in this two books to be wholly unreliable. Strieber is well known 800-page Bible—they are funnier than the doctrines in the Book for his admittedly fanciful novels and screenplays in which of Mormon and almost as funny as those in the Unification intelligent nonhumans often appear. Moreover, alternative Church's Bible, written by the Reverend Sun Moon—see the and naturalistic psychological explanations can easily be entry on Oahspe in the Hastings Encyclopedia of Religion and given for "memories" and those hypnotically induced by Ethics. Followers of the new religion called themselves "faith- Hopkins; the extraterrestrial hypothesis need not be in- ists." They were strict vegetarians and pacifists and hated all voked. Both books fail to provide or document convincing forms of capitalism. In 1894 a sect of faithists actually estab- corroboration or physical evidence for their claims. lished a colony called "Shalam" in New Mexico. The sect later But it is apparent that the transcendental religious shifted to California, where for a time they published a peri- temptation is not easily discarded by rational considera- odical, The Faithist Messenger. tions.— Paul Kurtz Where can you obtain a copy of this great revelation? Why, all you have to do is send $19.95 to Amherst Press. Here is James Wentworth's Giants in the Earth is a history of the how their catalog describes this modest work: Shaver hoax. I have no idea how much of it should be trusted, and I have been unsuccessful in learning anything about the A history of the higher and lower heavens and of the Earth for author—not even whether his name is a pseudonym. the past 24,000 years; also a brief history of the preceding 55,000 years. An explanation of all the world's religions; the ess than two months before his death, Ray attended the cosmogony of the universe; the creation of the planets, of man; T new commandments applicable to the present day; the unseen a 4 First International UFO Congress in Chicago, June 1977— worlds. Written in 1881, Oahspe's science is today being con- a conference sponsored by Fate. Ken Arnold was on hand to firmed by space satellites, new archaeological discoveries and give the keynote address. Both men participated in a symposium many other sources. Perhaps the most remarkable and impor- that you'll find in the hilarious Proceedings of the First Inter- tant book in the world today! national UFO Congress (Warner Books, 1980), edited by Palmer's old sidekick, Curtis Fuller. Move over Bible! Move over Velikovsky! Oahspe is here! If Calling himself "basically a science-fiction writer," Palmer Ray Palmer for one moment believed the crap in this crazy reminded his audience that airships were common in fiction volume then the man was a moron, which of course he wasn't. long before a single plane had been successfully flown. Was it The last two-thirds of The Secret World carries Shaver's possible, he asked, that Jules Verne's stories about airships byline. He describes in detail, with many color pictures, how were based on reports that had come his way from persons you can obtain "rock books" by slicing a stone in half. The who had seen UFOs? Palmer closed his remarks with an cross-section is then photographed and magnified. If you study unusual admission. "It's a basic weakness that we like to fool it carefully, turning the photo this way and that, you'll see ourselves. We go out and catch a big fish. It's always a big fish, vague shapes of objects, animals, and people—like the shapes and the bigger it is the more it gets away." you see in clouds. It was Shaver's contention that before the Perhaps we have here the key to Palmer's declining years, Atlans and Titans left the earth they recorded the life-forms on when he faded away from both SF and UFO landscapes. Flying our planet, before Noah's Flood, by fabricating these rocks. saucers from inside the earth was just too whopping a fish Shaver sliced thousands of stones to get such pictures. The story. Palmer did his best to defend this fish that got away, but book reproduces some of Shaver's paintings, many erotic, that only a few kooks on the lunatic fringes of UFOlogy could believe he had based on rock books. him. •

Summer 1987 35 Personal Paths to Humanism

FREE INQUIRY continues its series of personal testaments, in which distinguished writers reflect on the moral and ethical bases of their lives.

A Secular Humanist Confession

Joseph Fletcher

here was a time when I thought that tions. Tthe foundation for morality must lie in For the past thirty years I have seen a religion. When I was a young man it seemed lot of what goes on in the secular profes- to me that right and wrong had to be sions, the "helping professions" of social grounded in the will of God—a standard workers, people in public services, and phrase in theological rhetoric. Because God physicians, and I have always been impressed commands us to, we ought to be moral. by how nonreligious their decision-making along with, and I would also say because Without a divine sanction to back up the is and how consistently they ignore and of, ridding my mind and conscience of reli- human will, I then thought, Dostoyevsky's bypass religious beliefs and theological doc- gious ideas—ideas that by their nature are warning was a sound one—if God is dead, trines. They consistently and for the most neither verifiable nor falsifiable. They are, anything goes, as far as morality is con- part constructively disregard "commandment in a word, without evidence to support them, cerned. ethics" and choose instead whatever courses and logically so full of holes that it is a pure I was a pragmatist and much admired of action rationally promise the most relief to be free of the burden of trying to William James, and he too believed that, if humanly beneficial consequences. It is defend them. we make the "leap of faith," God would human benefit, not "revealed" or "divine" As a pragmatist, by the way, I think I provide our human wills with extra moral norms, that provides the moral values of ought to point out that pragmatism is only power, "the strenuous mood," to do what serious decision-makers. In other words, a method; it is not a substantive philosophy we ought to do. He expounded this prag- their morality is humanistic, not theistic. at all. Its test of knowledge is "Does it matic argument for an undefined religiosity God is never consciously or explicitly in the work?" and its test of all value choices is the in The Moral Philosopher and the Moral picture. same. But • pragmatism itself does not and Life. In terms of the values moral judgments cannot answer the question "Work to what In the end, however, I came to agree try to realize or achieve, we might say the end; for the sake of what?" It is humanism with other pragmatists that the idea of reli- single value that sets religious morality apart that gives me my answer to that vital ques- gious moral influence simply does not stand from secular morality is "God's wish (or tion, just as for others theism does. up on the record. As in all syllogistic reason- will)." This wipes out any supposed differ- We should not put men in God's place. ing, James's conclusion would be valid if ence between humanist and theist morality; We should not deify mankind. The record his premise was—that is, that believers get it makes belief in God of no special impor- of human life and conduct, the data of "an added strength and moral power." Many tance ethically. The idea of God thus be- history and psychology, won't let us make of us who read the data of religious behavior comes irrelevant morally and leaves only the idols of human beings any more than we carefully, however, come to a different con- double question of whether one wants to can idolize or deify some kind of super- clusion. Billy Sunday and Billy Graham are make 'the "leap of faith" and why. (For natural or supernal "Being." There are even always using James's argument; but, on the philosophers it also lifts the lid of Kant's times when we wonder how much men and other hand, apologists for religion are always "moral argument" for the existence of God.) women are morally worth being concerned trying to explain away the fact that the My own personal experience of life sup- about. morality of believers is not significantly dif- ports the secular or humanist (nontheist) In short, they are finite and imperfect, ferent from the morality of unbelievers, just understanding of ethics. After thirty years but they are real. We know they exist. They as the churches are typical of other institu- of believing, worshiping, and theologizing I have a potential we hope for. We are our- gave them up for pragmatic reasons, and in selves human; we laugh and cry as and with Humanist Laureate Joseph Fletcher is a the following thirty years I have never missed humans. And therefore we put our hope, theologian and professor emeritus of medi- the belief or the ceremonies of worship or our educated guess, in the species Homo cal ethics at the University of Virginia the God-talk that went with the God- sapiens. To put it wryly, it is because they Medical School. thought. On the contrary, my interest in are finite and imperfect that we can "believe ethics has continued to grow and develop in" them. •

36 FREE INQUIRY

Free from Religion

Anne Nicol Gaylor

n that remote and quiet time that was that bible. But, far from impressing or com- Morality, I realized, is learned not I America Before Television, it was pos- forting me, these forays into its bloody through dogma but by example, thought, sible to grow up almost oblivious of religion. depths frightened and dismayed me. In time and observation; and it is practiced not with I know—I did. 1 came to share the view prevailing in my blind obedience but by good will. It was As a country child in Wisconsin in the world that it was a book of myths and very dangerous, I could see, to extract your 1930s, I found religion a vague institution legends, not to be taken seriously. But it morality from religion—especially from the that really didn't touch me. Most of our was a special childhood cross to bear to be bible, with its obscene, cruel, and often neighbors were part of that majority in this so eager for something to read while there conflicting teachings. 1 came to believe that country: the unchurched. Few relatives or sat that bible—forbiddingly, uniquely un- a good yardstick for moral behavior was its friends were religious; prayers before meals readable. measure of kindness. When you are contem- were an oddity. If there were evangelists on Appropriately enough, there was little plating an action, you ask: Is it kind? And the radio, I never heard them. Certainly they attention to religion in school. Catholics had is it reasonable? And it seemed to me that did not have the ubiquitous obtrusiveness brought suit in the Wisconsin State Supreme the kindest people 1 knew were not religious. of today, when we are unable to check out Court in the 1890s because a public school In reading history it became clear to me what's on television without encountering had instituted devotional bible-reading, and that freethinkers were the moral leaders— some unscrupulous mercenary asking for the bible chosen was the King James ver- the first to speak out for prison reform, for cash "for the Lord." sion, not the Douay. This suit brought a humane treatment of the mentally ill, for My freethinking father never went to ringing opinion by the court that devotions the abolition of slavery, for removal of the church or suggested that his children should. and devotional bible-reading violated the death penalty, for women's right to vote, I never heard him use the word god in a separation of church and state. In its no- and for the right to choose contraception, serious, pious, or profane way. He ignored nonsense opinion the court concluded: sterilization, and abortion. religion except for gentle jokes over some "There is no such source and cause of strife, I probably would have continued in my occasional religious excess that got reported quarrel, fights, malignant opposition, perse- family's pattern of just ignoring religion had in the daily newspaper. cution, and war, and all evil in the state as it not been for my work for birth control. There were two Jesus pictures among religion. Let it once enter our civil affairs, Wisconsin was the last state in the union to those hanging in our house; they had been our government would soon be destroyed. legalize contraception. As late as 1974 it was donated by a housekeeper along with a bible ... Those who made our Constitution saw illegal in Wisconsin for any unmarried per- after my mother's death. A favorite family this, and used the most apt and compre- son to purchase contraceptives, and our laws joke involved one of the pictures and the hensive language in it to prevent such a were hostile to birth control even for some- neighborhood tad who insisted it was a catastrophe" (Weiss v. District Board, one properly married. Trying to change that portrait of my father! 1890). law turned me into an activist for free- When I began school, in the 1930s, So we never prayed in school; neither thought, because I learned who the enemy schools were very poor, and there were not did Ronald Reagan, at least not organized really was. many books available. Our "library" was not prayers. To be sure, a common distortion That enemy was religion. That enemy a room, or even an alcove. It was an old employed by prayer-people is to suggest that was those long lines of priests, nuns, and oak bookcase whose glass doors had been in past decades little children dutifully fundamentalists who came to the state capi- broken years before. It held only a few dozen prayed in the public schools every day. tal to testify against contraception and abor- books for the children in our eight grades, Blithely, they then blame all sorts of social tion, even as Wisconsin women were having and a hungry, growing reader like myself ills on the cessation of school prayer, when babies every year until they died from it, went through them in no time. Soon, I was in many states such prayer was nonexistent. even as the world began to shudder from reading the adult books at home, including Looking back, 1 regard it as a wonderful overpopulation. In working for women's some memorably bad turn-of-the-century plus that 1 could grow up relatively free from rights I fought in a battle that would never novels. Occasionally, in desperation, I even religion: 1 had little to unlearn. All around end, because the root cause of the denial of tried my father's agricultural journals. One me 1 began to see how religion hampered those rights was religion and its control over book available to me, which I attempted to intellect and freedom, how it devastated government. Unless religion is kept in its study with a high degree of earnestness, was lives. I thought of the wasted hours of those place, all personal rights will be in jeopardy. who tried to rationalize the hocus-pocus into This is the battle that needs to be fought. Anne Gaylor is the president of the Free- reality. It was as though they were attempt- To be free from religion is an advantage dom From Religion Foundation. ing to prove the existence of Jack and the for individuals; it is a necessity for govern- Beanstalk or Wisconsin's own Paul Bunyan. ment. •

Summer 1987 37 love partners and pour it into my friend- ships. The result is that I have a host of people I truly love in this world, whereas Surrender to Life people who have reserved all their emotions for "the One and Only" are alone because "the One and Only" has a nasty habit of walking out on you—or you become bored Rita Mae Brown with him or her. As to the partner in my life, I think of this individual as a friend with whom I share my body. I •suppose I eople are like teabags; you never know that the style of the work must be simple, think of my partner as the Romans thought how strong they'll be until they're in although the themes need not be. A clear, P of the princeps, first among equals. hot water. In times of trouble, you not only pure style is difficult to achieve. The simpler discover what you truly believe but whether the style, the harder the author has to work or not you can act on those beliefs. Much to achieve it. This is important for another believe it is my patriotic duty to ques- as I would like to put down a list of lovely, reason. To write in a tortured, "high-brow" I tion the actions of my government. I brave, and self-enhancing beliefs, I think I'd style is a subtle form of insult to the reader. also believe that we deserve what we get. If better stick to what's been tested. This will You're telling the reader that you're terribly you aren't willing to work for your political keep me to the particular as opposed to the intelligent, possibly more intelligent than she beliefs then you should have the good man- ravishing abstract. or he. I've always thought if people have to ners not to complain about the state of I believe you never hope more than you go out of their way to impress you with affairs in which you find yourself. In my work. In action, this means I work ten to their intelligence they probably aren't too youth, this meant working for civil rights: sixteen hours a day, usually seven days a smart. Or to put it in "high brow" style: I work that cost me my scholarship to the week. Since I love my work, which is writing, distrust manifest knowledge. University of Florida. Fortunately, New this is a joy. I believe piety is like garlic: A little goes York University at Washington Square gave I believe you are your work. Don't trade a long way. In action, this means I have me one, so I could continue my studies with- the very stuff of your life—time—for nothing never inflicted my strongly held religious out fear of political reprisal. I had cursory more than dollars. That's a rotten. bargain. beliefs on anyone else. contact with the anti-war movement. My In my life I worked until I was thirty before I believe that monogamy is contrary to attitude about Vietnam was different from I made enough money to go to the movies nature but necessary for the greater social that of many of the white, middle-class pro- when I wanted to. Before that I existed on good. In action, I have not committed in- testers. My cousin, who was like a brother less than five thousand dollars a year, and fidelities, but I'd be hurt if no one thought to me, was in the Marine Corps. My sometimes the figure dropped below two me capable of them. thoughts were that either we win the war or thousand dollars. It takes a long time to I believe the true function of age is we pull out. As it became clear that we develop into a writer. It takes about the memory. I'm recording as fast I can. would not push to win but only to "contain" same amount of time to develop into a I believe that, when all the dreams are the North Vietnamese, I wanted out. I neurosurgeon, but the young woman or man dead, you're left only with yourself. You'd realized that many of my compatriots had in medical school has an elaborate support better like yourself a lot. deep moral reasons for being against the system and a method of obtaining loans I believe that human sexuality is in a war, whereas I did not. I just didn't want unavailable to the artist. For an artist it's continual state of flux. For people in my cousin blown to kingdom come for noth- sink or swim. I sanded floors, painted Western culture this, for some reason, is ing. houses, refinished antiques—anything—to terrifying. One is either heterosexual or In fact, 1 would have to say that my buy one hot meal a day and keep a dumpy homosexual and thereby branded for life as beliefs and actions are usually connected to roof over my head. I believed that learning though one had chosen a profession or com- something tangible. I do admire people who my craft was worth this scramble. I'm sorry mitted a crime. I believe this is a very can become motivated by some large, ab- that our country and the people in it do not destructive attitude toward oneself and stract belief. Nevertheless, I am not one of consider the arts as vital to our well-being toward others, and the only action I can them. I need to see a person, place, or thing as, say, medicine. Suffering is unnecessary. take against this attitude is to question it. I before I feel anything, before I am willing It doesn't make you a better artist; it only am no more afraid to be called a lesbian to act. makes you a hungry one. However, to me than I would be afraid to be called a wife. It was this same simplicity, if you will, the acquisition of the craft of writing was I believe that our concept of romantic or earthiness, that encouraged me to help worth any amount of suffering. To have love is irrational, impossible to fulfill, and found the feminist movement. I wasn't com- meaningful work is a tremendous happiness. the cause of many broken homes. No human pelled by a vast concept of female liberation, I believe the artist has an obligation to being can maintain that rarified atmosphere but rather by the fact that I had been pushed make his or her work accessible. This means of "true love"—and we equate love with sex, aside once too often. As we came together another huge mistake. I'm not saying there in the late sixties and the early seventies, I is no loving sex or long-term partnerships, began to see that my individual experiences Rita Mae Brown writes screenplays, poems, but that our absurd emphasis on romance were not so individual. Only then was I able essays, and novels. The New York Times has created a nation of love junkies. Amer- to go from the particular to the general. called her Rubyfruit Jungle "the single most icans want to be passionately in love. I The mistakes I made in that political process incendiary novel to have emerged from the believe this is a sickness, and I question it. were the mistakes of youth. I thought what women's movement." In my personal life I act by taking the energy made sense on paper would make sense with that most Americans reserve for their sex or people. I have since been disabused of that

38 FREE INQUIRY notion. I sang, and I voted. Now those times are These experiences taught me that actions gone and I do other things. I have instituted have consequences. First, we were the only a small scholarship at Piedmont Community political movement that had a national College to enable a student who is female image before we had a local base. Television and black to study literature. If my fortunes cameras swooped upon us in our nascent improve, so will the scholarship. protests, our excessive youthfulness, and our I believe that if you are heterosexual pictures were beamed across America. Sud- (meaning you have accepted your sexuality denly, there was a women's movement. But as fixed, you accept the cultural definition if you wanted to find a women's center in of static sexuality) then you have a responsi- Charlottesville, Virginia, there wasn't one. bility to think seriously about homosexuality We looked half-baked in those days and we ... not as a practice, but you should think were. Consequently, I learned political about how it feels to belong to a misunder- organizing backward. Those lessons were stood and despised minority. If you are a extremely valuable. Whereas I had earlier man, you try to identify with women. And distrusted government (and, remember, the so on down the line. Even if you can't get only sane thing to do in those days was to yourself in gear to do anything about it, the distrust Nixon) I now began to understand very act of thinking about it, of putting how disaster might result when the public yourself in another's shoes, is bound to give scrutinizes a policy before it has been fully you some understanding, some compassion. and properly formulated. I don't know how That can only help us all. we strike the balance between the public's Why am I putting the burden on the right to know and the government's right to majority, on the mainstream? Because to fall into any minority group means you must create new policy. These experiences taught me that most learn to understand the majority in order to people enjoy the comfort of opinion without survive. A minority person knows much the discomfort of thought. As an example, return. I hated being treated that way, but I more about a majority person than vice child molesters are thought to be homo- wasn't shot or thrown in jail. In plenty of versa. It's time we reversed this process. sexual men, yet the statistics on child countries that would have been the price I I believe, passionately, that drugs, drink, molesters show that over 95 percent of them would have had to pay. Still, you can't make and cigarettes are foolish. I do not drink, are married men with two or more children. gray look white by comparing it with black. smoke, or take drugs. I never have. When I Still, can we dislodge the stereotype from The behavior of our government toward give speeches I beg people to give up this this statistical reality? So it was with the its own citizens during those war years was form of slow self-destruction. However, if feminist movement. Suddenly, 1 found my- reprehensible. Constant vigilance is required you do it, that's your choice. It's your life. I self freighted with instant stereotypes that of every one of us so that it never happens only ask, then, that you contain your self- had nothing to do with me or my work. again. destructiveness. Why should I be forced to When 1 pressed forward to gather gay people I believe that it is the duty of every citizen watch it? into their own political movement, this pro- to vote. I vote. 1 believe it takes courage to live. In cess of negative stereotyping became even I believe every one of us who is sane, or action, this means I surrender myself to life. more pronounced. The sadness of it is that partially sane, anyway, and physically To try to control your life is the coward's many times the victims often think of them- healthy has a duty to watch out for others way out. It means there are no adventures, selves in such self-hating, negative terms. in our community, for animals as well as surprises, or magical turning points. A con- My beliefs were severely tested. My people. This is much easier for me than for troller doesn't trust his or her ability to live actions brought unwanted consequences. The those in big cities. My town has forty-five through the pain and chaos of life. There is CIA and the FBI kept files on me, which I thousand inhabitants, and there are another no life without pain, just as there is no art have secured through the Freedom of In- forty-five thousand in Albermarle County, without first submitting to chaos. Stated formation Act. 1 was disgusted that tax- Virginia. If someone suffers hardship I will another way: A neurotic solution is one that payers' dollars were spent in watching the know about it even if it isn't a close friend. seeks to avoid legitimate suffering. You have growing up of a young woman whose only Word gets around and our newspaper tells to suffer—not every day, but as a conse- "sin" was that she asked questions. 1 have us. This is a good town because, when quence of time. Perhaps a five-year-old does never advocated violence. 1 never will. I disaster strikes, everyone who can chips in. not suffer (if the child is lucky enough to be worship the Constitution of the United 1 also help the SPCA when I can, too. I in a good, loving home) but the rest of us States. I am shocked that so few of our love animals. must suffer at various times. You'll live elected officials seem to care about it. I 1 believe those who are in the mainstream through it. You can't control suffering be- despise communism with a visceral passion. have an extra obligation to consider the lives cause if you try to avoid it then you kill But I asked questions, and so 1 was watched, of those who are not. I am not in the main- rapture and joy. The two are inextricably and even bugged, the whole nine yards. It stream. I was born, orphaned, adopted, linked. Joy never comes without suffering didn't stop me from asking questions, but it raised with much love and practically no and therefore demands courage. For myself made me think about how fragile liberty money. But 1 do have advantages. 1 am that means that if something terrible happens really is. Those experiences were invaluable. white. I am healthy. I secured my education, to me, I say to myself what my mother used They forced me to examine myself, my including a doctorate. So I think 1 must be to say to me, "Worse things have happened country, my generation. Those were bad on guard in those areas where 1 might be to nicer people." You'd be amazed at how times, and 1 do not wish to see them ever insensitive. On the issue of race, 1 marched, that works.

Summer 1987 39 I believe the next great revolution will occur when human beings learn to politically organize without the concept of the outside As If Living and Loving Were One enemy. Our entire foreign policy is built around ideological antagonism. So is the foreign policy of every other nation on earth, famous neuropsychiatrist in England. What and most individuals think the same way, Ashley Montagu attracted me to the book was, first, that it i.e., that there is a person, group of people, was new, and then, even more fascinatingly, religion, sex, or other country that is "the was born in London, England, in 1905. the fact that it contained colored illustrations enemy." One's behavior is then crystallized I 1 was an only child, and lonely. Never- of nerve cells in various stages of develop- around reaction to the enemy. How utterly theless, the world seemed to me to hold ment in a number of diseases and disorders. perverse this is. It means your life is con- promise of never-ending enchantment, over The book opened up a new world to me, trolled by the very people you hate. A life which, alas, adults, with few exceptions, were and as 1 read it I began to understand how of reaction is a life of slavery, intellectually engaged in casting clouds of confusion and many of the questions that puzzled me about and spiritually. One must fight for a life of incomprehensibility. It seemed to me that adult behavior might be answered. Years action, not reaction. Right now my only adults had not the least conception of what later, when 1 became a member of the med- weapon in this struggle is my typewriter. it was to be a child, and I often wondered ical section of the British Psychological The only thing I can do is introduce this whether they had ever been children them- Society, I met Maurice Craig and had the concept and wonder whether anyone will selves. To judge from their behavior toward pleasure of telling him what a great influence accept it, enlarge it, make it far better and children it seemed unlikely that they had his book had had upon me. more sensible than my embryonic effort. ever belonged to that species. That wonder Interest in the brain led to the skull, It was my mother who taught me to tell was the beginning of my journey toward which at first I was able to study only from the truth and my father who taught me becoming an anthropologist. 1 wondered illustrations. It was not possible for me to patience with those lands, people, and crea- why people were so different: some warm collect the skulls of fish and other animals, tures entrusted to my care. I feel, whatever and loving, others cold and cruel, and all and certainly not human ones, until by great my personal failures, that I have lived up to the variations in between. As I grew older good chance a friend's father, knowing of my parents' teachings. How many times I my curiosity extended to embrace differ- my interest, presented me with a human have been encouraged, begged, and threat- ences, physical and behavioral, that charac- skull. This was a most interesting creature, ened to lie about what I believe concerning terized the many different peoples of the for it had a slight, almost keel-like elevation civil rights (back in the sixties), to downplay earth, of whom, at the time, I had very running from front to back atop its head equal rights for women (back in the seven- limited knowledge—but it was enough to and was very dark in color—suggesting some ties), to back off from my criticisms of our pique my curiosity. What did all these antiquity. By the time I was fifteen I defense octopus (today), and sadly, always, differences mean? How did they come about? mustered up enough courage to take the always, to lie about being gay. I cannot lie. As a child I learned to live with my skull, in a brown paper bag, to the Royal I will not lie. I must not lie. You don't have frustrations in a world of make-believe and College of Surgeons, where I knew the to agree with me. You don't even have to very early found magic casements open to world's most famous physical anthropolo- like me. But you can rely on me. Ask me me through the world of books. By the age gist, Sir Arthur Keith, was conservator. what I think and I'll tell you. r expect the of ten I had already acquired a shelf of Arriving at the imposing building I was met same from you, whoever you are. books from the barrows and stalls of in the portico by an even more imposing There you have it. 1 believe in you. I itinerant vendors. Then there were many dignitary, a man in a blue, brass-buttoned believe in myself. I believe in the majesty of museums and galleries that sold books re- uniform, who appeared at least nine feet the English language, and I believe in the lating to their collections, and which were tall and who genially inquired what my political system of the United States of marvelously inexpensive. 1 still have a num- presence betokened. I said I would like to America, flawed and infuriating though it ber of these books, one, on Egyptology, see Sir Arthur Keith. He further inquired sometimes is. But mostly 1 believe in you inscribed in my hand as of February 1916. for what purpose. Whereupon I told him and I believe in me. We can change our- Blessed by the memory of these last dis- what I had in the brown paper bag and that selves. We can change our communities. We pensers of civilization. Thanks chiefly to my I would like Sir Arthur to explain its mys- have incredible spirit. We can brave life's itinerant booksellers, I could range through teries to me. Whereupon my genial porter pains and enjoy the triumphs. Generation the whole world of English literature and retired and soon returned accompanied by after generation of human beings have through realms of knowledge that I would a tall, benevolent, handsome man in his early walked this earth. They have known hunger, not come upon until much later. Un- fifties. Clad in his white lab coat, this was fear, ignorance and pestilence, war and rape. doubtedly the key book in my development Sir Arthur Keith, who, putting his arm But they endured. You and I are here, thanks at this time was a publisher's discard, owing round my shoulders, gently guided me into to them. They bequeathed to us the will to to several omitted pages. This was Maurice his laboratory, seated me, and treated me as go forward. Whatever dragons we face, we Craig's Psychological Medicine. I did not if I were a learned colleague of not less can slay. Our dead mothers and fathers know at the time that Craig was the most stature than himself. After explaining the believed we would go forward. They did skull to me as what Thomas Henry Huxley what they did with little hope of immediate London-born anthropologist Ashley Mon- had called "the Thames River Bed Type," reward but with a hope that life would be tagu is the author of scores of books, in- Sir Arthur asked me about myself, and then better for their children and their children's cluding Touching: The Human Significance extended to me the invitation to come and children. We are those children's children. of Skin, and most recently, The Dehuman- take advantage of the Hunterian Collection We cannot fail. • ization of Man. of skulls and other anatomical and anthropological materials over which he presided.

40 FREE INQUIRY It can well be imagined what an effect this great man's civility to a young boy had. It is an effect that has had a tremendous influence upon me, especially in my relations with children and students. I took full advantage of Sir Arthur's invitation and haunted the museum for years, in the process becoming a devoted student of my mentor, who was the kindest and gentlest of men. We kept in close touch until his death at eighty-nine in 1955. Prior to my encounter with Keith, at about age nine, I saw in the window of a small shop the brightly colored cover of a magazine showing a black-bearded young basic behavioral needs, the most important it is not an educational system that we have man in a white lab coat seated at a bench of which is the need for love—not only to in the cubistically dilapidated world in which on which there was a microscope and a be loved, but also to love others. we live, but an instructional system, training variety of instruments together with an as- The basic behavioral needs are essentially in techniques and skills, mainly in the three sortment of ape and human skulls. I vividly human needs, needs that correspond to basic "r's" (reading, `riting, `rithmetic), while the recall gazing at this spellbinding scene and physical needs (i.e., oxygen, food, liquid, most important of all the "r's" (human rela- wondering how on earth anyone could sleep, rest, activity, etc.). Recognition of the tionships, love) is largely uncared for. Edu- achieve so blissful a state. Seventeen years nature of the basic behavioral needs is of cation, as I conceive it, means to nourish later 1 became that young man, a professor fundamental importance, for they must be and to cause to grow and develop the unique of anatomy and anthropology, minus the satisfied if the individual is to grow and potentialities with which every human is beard. It was not for many years after that develop as a healthy human being. By health endowed. That is the original meaning of that I suddenly recalled the magazine cover, I mean the ability to love, to work, to play, the word from which the term is derived, which 1 had completely forgotten. and to use one's mind as a fine instrument namely, educare, only too often confused Nine seems to have been a magical year of precision. This has been the burden of a with educere, which means to draw out, a in my life, for it was also at that age that I half-dozen of my books. very different thing. Educare means to nour- moved into a class in my elementary school My occupations as student, anatomist, ish and to cause to grow the basic behavioral where my teacher for the next four years biological and cultural anthropologist, social needs. Educere means to draw out whatever was George Bidgood. It was from Mr. Bid- biologist, and, above all, teacher, have all the particular "educator" feels should be good that 1 learned the most important of been directed toward helping others under- established. all the lessons of my life: the nature and stand the nature of human nature, how Just as we are designed to grow and necessity of love. It was not that Mr. Bid- humans came to be the way they are, and develop in all those physical traits with which good, so far as I recollect, ever uttered the what can be done about making ourselves we are born, so we are also designed to word, nor do 1 think that any of us were over into what we are designed to be— grow and develop in all those behavioral ever aware of the fact that something re- healthy human beings. As a teacher my pur- traits with which the child is born. We are markable was happening in his class. It was pose has been to help my students to per- the only creatures who are born with the only years later that I understood what had ceive education not as something that leads capacity to develop those childlike traits, but occurred. Mr. Bidgood not only loved chil- to a way of making a living, but rather as a unlike the physical traits, the basic be- dren, but considered it a privilege to be with way of life; to learn, not to become learned havioral traits must receive a prolonged them. He kept a notebook on each child, persons, but learning persons, to wonder, to training from the child's socializers. We are evaluating each one's aptitudes, personality, think critically, to question the obvious, to all born with the capacity to speak, but we intellect, and other traits, each child being be experimental-minded, curious, imagina- would never develop the ability to speak treated as a person and respected as such. tive, and much else, all the days of one's unless we were repeatedly spoken to. So it He would call on parents to discuss their life. is with all other behavioral needs. To men- children with them, always with encouraging I count myself fortunate that of all the tion some of the behavioral needs: words, often suggesting that it would be a many sources from which 1 have learned, good thing if they could send their children and the unusually broad interests I have The need for love Experimental- Friendship mindedness to a better school in which their talents could cultivated, I have been able to perceive and Sensitivity Explorativeness understand relationships, which, as a gener- bloom more fully. To think soundly Playfulness At the university I had the good fortune alist, I so seldom observè among specialists. To learn Imagination to have similarly beneficent teachers from As a lifelong student of our species I know To work Creativity whom I learned what good human beings that humankind's speciality is nonspecializa- Curiosity Flexibility could really be like. At a later school 1 suf- tion. Indeed, our speciality as a species is fered the misfortune of an unloving teacher, versatility, for we are the most educable, These basic behavioral needs constitute and from him I learned, painfully, what an adaptive, and generalized of all creatures. the inborn, genetically based value system absence of love can do to damage and frus- We are designed to be, programmed to be, of the human organism. They tell us what trate a child. My study of physical, biolog- generalized learners. Understanding this, it the organism requires in order to grow and ical, and cultural anthropology, of evolution, saddens me to see the trend toward narrow develop as a healthy human being. We do genetics, and psychoanalysis, dramatically specialization casting its gray shadow over not at present understand or recognize these served to point me in the direction of the the so-called educational system. As I see it, needs, and in our ignorance we deform and

Summer 1987 41 attenuate them. What years of investigation insensible to evidence that tends to falsify it. one has become, and however inadequate a and study have taught me is that every A scientist believes in proof without certain- human being one may be, that doesn't relieve human is at birth designed to be a generalist, ty, other people believe in certainty without one for a moment from the responsibility of who grows and develops all the days of his proof. My beliefs have been arrived at pri- making oneself over into what one ought to life in those childlike (not in the adult- marily by the scientific method of verifica- be: a warm human being capable of love, produced childish) traits with which we are tion and falsification. Consequently, I have work, play, and critically sound thinking. I all endowed. This means not to grow into learned to take the meaning of a word to be further believe that such an accomplishment the adults we are forced to become, but to the action it produces, and through my daily is within the capacity of everyone who is continue to grow and develop our childlike conduct I have tried to relate warmly and honestly willing to make himself so. Such traits to the optimum. Adults at the present creatively to my fellow human beings. I easy evasions as "You can't change human sorry state of our evolutionary history are, believe that love is demonstrative, and in a nature," "The leopard cannot change its in the civilized world, nothing more or less society of untouchables, such as we have spots," and the like, through the whole than deteriorated babies; and that, as I see become in the Anglo-Saxon speaking world, calendar of myths, belong to another era. it, largely accounts for the peril the civilized 1 have made it a point to unashamedly Today we know that human nature isn't world is in today. To me these are not embrace people whenever I am sure that something that is fixed and inexorable, the theories but demonstrable facts. Yet most they will not be embarrassed by or misun- equivalent of fate or predestination, but scientists, especially in the behavioral sci- derstand my message. I have done this with something that is eminently 'malleable; and, ences, seem to be unaware of them. They many of my students of all ages and have while it is true that the leopard cannot appear to be locked into a view of human enabled them to hug others as easily as I change its spots, we can certainly change nature that almost totally disables them from have embraced them. My book on the sub- ours, if only we are willing to devote our- perceiving the facts for what they are. ject, Touching: The Human Significance of selves to the task. I do not believe in absolute truths. I the Skin, astonishingly enough, was the first 1 think this is a wonderfully hopeful believe that theories are golden guesses to of its kind and has gratifyingly had some discovery, a discovery open to each one of the full round of truth. I believe that theories influence in the Western world. us to make for ourselves, a self-discovery, as well as facts are subject to testing and Human nature is plastic, malleable, edu- the rediscovery of our authentic selves: to that one should never become so enamored cable, adaptive, and capable of change. 1 learn to flourish and fulfill ourselves, to live of a theory or a fact that it renders one believe that no matter who made one what as if to live and love were one. • On Growing Up Agnostic in Argentina

Mario Bunge

was born in Buenos Aires shortly after suffering in hospitals to keep any strong reli- I the end of the First World War's gious faith. My father, a physician, politi- butchery, during which the chaplains of four cian, and polymath, had shown early religions blessed the cannons and inflamed promise as a theologian. But when he turned the troops. The horrors of war and the fourteen he disappointed his Jesuit teachers infamy of the Versailles Treaty were subjects by declaring that the Christian credo con- of daily conversation at home for as far back tained too many absurdities to be believable. as I can recall. My parents brought me up Like most other members of his generation by precept and example at home, where the as an agnostic and taught me to hate both and social class, he enthusiastically embraced foremost virtues were honesty, truthfulness, war and the military. Indeed, when I wanted a progressive ideology that included evolu- endurance, courage, industry, and dedication to irritate them, I would proclaim that I tionism, materialism, and agnosticism. My to the public good. There was also a pinch would be a soldier or a priest when I grew father's book The Cult of Life shows that of charity, particularly at the time of the up. his Weltanschauung also incorporated many Great Depression. But as a substitute for My mother was raised a Lutheran, but of Rousseau's ideas, especially an affection economic justice, charity was rejected; my for the natural world. Before I started as a head nurse she had seen too much parents both were Social Democrats and school, he told me about plants, animals, believed that social reform, not religion, was Mario Bunge, at present a visiting professor germs, and fossils. And I was allowed to the best way to relieve human misery. I hope at the Department of Theoretical Physics of keep as many pets—dogs, cats, birds, even they succeeded in passing this credo on to monkeys—as I could take care of. So I grew the University of Geneva, Switzerland, is me. Frothingham Professor of Logic and Meta- up ignorant of that alleged abyss between As a child I was told many stories about physics at McGill University, Montreal. He humans and other animals, and I learned to dishonest men who had met bad ends, and is the author of thirty books and more than love nature and respect the cognitive, and of upright men whom I should take as three hundred articles in the fields of physics, even the moral, achievements of my pets. models. (Women didn't appear in these social science, and philosophy. Although I was not subjected to religious stories. Women were supposed to be good, indoctrination, I was given moral instruction and prostitution was regarded as the product

42 FREE INQUIRY of poverty, not immorality.) One of my chief happy as the parson's children described by morality. On the other hand there is a strong ethical models was my paternal grandfather, Samuel Butler in The Way of All Flesh. negative correlation between fanaticism, a judge who had presided over the Supreme They had few joys, knew everything about whether religious or not, and morality. In Court in Argentina. One day his wifé re- ancient Palestine and nothing about their the course of a life that already has been ceived a large basket of luscious glazed fruit. own world, and were often subjected to cruel long, I have known plenty of kind and When my grandfather learned that the bas- punishments. A standard punishment was honest people who were religious, and just ket was the gift of a defendant in one of the to lock the culprits in a small, dark room as many, or more, who were not. I have cases he was about to try, he demanded that and force them to kneel on corn grains for also known many crooks—in business, poli- it be immediately returned. On discovering an hour. 1 could spot the unlucky ones by tics, and academe—who were religious, and that his eight children had already devoured looking at their knees. others who were not. An impartial examina- the fruit, he ordered an identical basket Things changed drastically after the 1930 tion of the historical record should yield a bought and sent to the offender. Incidentally, military coup, which installed the first fascist similar result. For every religious saint like my grandfather was strongly anticlerical, dictatorship on the continent. From then St. Francis we can find a lay saint like particularly after visiting the papal states. on progressive ideology fought a rear-guard Thomas Paine. I also heard plenty of anecdotes concern- action, whereas the fascist-clerical credo, Fanaticism is a different ball-game alto- ing fraud in forensic medicine and insurance supported from above, gained t ascendancy. gether. The fanatic, whether or not he is cases in which my father had been pro- The death penalty was briefly reinstituted, religious, exploits people and tries to force fessionally involved. The stories that im- and torture appeared as a means of extract- them to adopt his own dogmas. He does pressed me the most were those of people ing confessions. The Catholic church never not care about the means he uses as long as who, before committing suicide, had taken condemned such official violence. Moreover, they are effective. Hence he may feel justified out large insurance policies in order to leave several bishops have been accused of partici- in using deceit, torture, and even murder to their families well provided for. My father pating in the torture and murder of thou- attain his ends. After all, he acts in the name had only harsh words of condemnation for sands of "suspects of subversion" between of "God" or "Mankind"; he never feels re- those unfortunate individuals. To this day I 1973 and 1982. And nearly all the servicemen sponsible to actual people. can only feel pity for them. and policemen in charge of political repres- Unfortunately, there is a continuum be- Although most Argentinians were and sion professed to be devout Roman Catho- tween the passive acceptance of dogma and are Roman Catholics—at least on three lics. Pérez Esquivel, the architect who earned this fanaticism, just as there is between the occasions during their lifetimes—the Catho- the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in the occasional sniffing of cocaine and drug ad- lic church had no say in political matters human rights movement, was the great diction. Since one can so easily develop into between 1880 and 1930. Most children at- exception—but he was a lay Catholic and the other, it is indeed safer to abstain from tended public schools, which were sup- disliked by the church. The fact that one chemical and ideological drugs altogether. posed to be strictly nonreligious. However, and the same doctrine can be used to con- We do not need religion to lead a clean, many affluent traditional families, as well as trary purposes suggests that it is incurably useful, and enjoyable life. What we need is poor recent immigrants, sent their children vague on many vital points. the freedom to enjoy life and to cultivate to Catholic schools. Friends of mine who In my experience there is no definite the natural feelings of empathy and fair- attended these schools were nearly as un- correlation between religious belief and ness. •

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met in an earlier section. In the words of W. Y. Evans-Wentz, the American anthro- The Case Against Reincarnation pologist who edited the English language version of the Tibetan Book, it is formed of matter in an invisible or Part 4 ethereal-like state [and) is an exact duplicate of the human body, from which it is In this, the final installment of his authoritative critique of reincarnation, Paul separated in the process of death. [p. 92) Edwards examines "the interregnum'-that mystical interval separating earthly incarnations—and he reviews Ian Stevenson's controversial studies of Asian The Bardo body has two of the supernatural children who claim to remember their past lives. attributes usually associated with astral travel. In the first place it can pass through material objects as if they did not exist. Since it is not "a body of gross matter," it has

the power to go right through any rock- masses, hills, boulders, earth, houses, and Mt. Meru itself without being impeded. [p. 158)

Paul Edwards Second, it can go anywhere instantaneously:

Thou art able in a moment to traverse the four continents round about Mt. Meru. he great majority of reincarnationists philosophers writing in support of reincarna- Or thou canst instantaneously arrive in Tbelieve that death is not immediately tion. Such a position is faced with the diffi- whatever place thou wishest. [p. 159] followed by reincarnation in the new body. culties deriving from the body-mind depen- In the Bhagavad-Gita the interval is spoken dence facts noted in the last section. There As was the case with George Ritchie's astral of as an "immensity of years," and in the is also the problem of how a pure mind, body it cannot be perceived by live human Republic Plato speaks of a thousand-year devoid of sense organs, could ever locate beings, but at least for a short period after cycle. In the cultures studied by Ian Steven- and choose the mother of the next incarna- death it can see and hear "all the weeping son the duration of the interval is much tion. Finally, once a reincarnationist com- and wailing of friends and relatives" al- smaller. Among the Tlingits of Alaska, for mits himself to the view that for certain though "they cannot hear him calling upon example, Stevenson found the median inter- periods a person exists without a bodily them" (p. 132). The Bardo body thus pos- val to be four years, and among his Lebanese foundation, his position loses one of its most sesses the remarkable ability to see, hear, cases it was no more than six months. I attractive advantages over the familiar and obtain other sensory information al- shall speak of this interval from now on as Western forms of belief in survival. though it has no physical sense-organs, "the interregnum." Of course the question The only alternative to the pure mind brain, or nervous system. at once arises as to just where and how seems to be some sort of astral body; and The view that during the interregnum people spend the interregnum and, more this is in fact the view preferred by most we are or have "etheric" or astral bodies has specifically, what they are like between in- reincarnationists. It is, for example, the posi- the wholehearted endorsement of Francis carnations. tion adopted in the Tibetan Book of the Story (1910-1971), who was perhaps the Dead, one of the sacred books of India, and leading apologist for Buddhism writing in Human Lives Between Incarnation a work much admired by such diverse figures recent years. It may be úf interest to note as C. G. Jung, Paul Tillich, Stanislav Grof, that Story was a close friend and associate There appear to be only two possible an- Timothy Leary, and Raymond Moody, Jr., of Ian Stevenson. He supplied many of swers and neither is very alluring. The first who sees in it an anticipation of his own Stevenson's cases during the first twelve is to say that a person exists as a disem- startling discoveries. The Tibetan Book is years of the latter's research and also assisted bodied or pure mind until he finds or primarily concerned with descriptions of the in their analysis. A number of Stevenson's chooses his new body. This is essentially the intermediate or "Bardo" world, and it offers articles list Story as coauthor. In his article view of Plato. In more recent times it has detailed advice about how a person is to "What Happens Between Incarnations?" to been held by J. M. E. McTaggart and C. J. comport himself there. The Bardo body is which I will return later on, he flatly asserts Ducasse, the two most renowned Western substantially the same as the astral body we that during the interregnum we have a "mentally formed body," which is "of a dif- Paul Edwards teaches philosophy at Brooklyn College and the New School for Social Re- ferent substance from the physical body," search. He is the editor-in-chief of The Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the author and editor and which "possibly exists on a slightly dif- of numerous books and articles. He contributed the articles on A. J. Ayer, Logical Positivism ferent vibrational level" (Rebirth As Doc- and Unbelief Wilhelm Reich, and Voltaire and wrote the Foreword to the recently published trine and Experience, Sri Lanka, 1975, p. Encyclopedia of Unbelief (Prometheus, 1986). His Heidegger und der Tod, which contains a 199). He bases this view on information critical discussion of Heidegger's views on death and "Being," was published in Germany in supplied by mediumistic controls, on the cir- 1985. Professor Edwards was awarded the Butler Silver Medal for Outstanding Contributions cumstances and contents of out-of-body to Philosophy by Columbia University in 1979. (OBE) experiences, and above all on the recollections of various people he knew in

46 FREE INQUIRY India and Sri Lanka who remembered not the dream Nancy Reagan just as he is in ture." Since images have spatial properties, only their previous lives on earth but also real life, and William Rehnquist will appear the same must be true of the mind "in" which what went on between incarnations. in front of the people sitting on the platform. they exist. The mind is thus "extended." It cannot be said that Stevenson has Such reflections lead Stevenson to the notion Minds, he writes, "exist in a space that we ignored problems connected with the inter- of mental space, which I will discuss later can call mental space" ("Can We Describe regnum. He seems convinced not only that on. This mental space, incidentally, seems the Mind?" in W. G. Roll and J. Beloff, they can be disposed of without any serious to be identical with the other "dimension of eds., Research in Parapsychology 1980, difficulty but that their solution is apt to which we are just beginning to form crude Metuchen, N.J., 1981, p. 133). There is no produce dramatic changes in some of our ideas," to which Stevenson referred during need to regard the notion of "mental space" basic concepts. Near the end of his article the BBC debate on Ryall. as "illogical" or paradoxical since it is no- "Research into the Evidence of Man's Sur- Stevenson concedes that this "hypothet- where written that "there can be only one vival After Death," which appeared in the ical intermediate body" must exist in some space." Stevenson is convinced that "our Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases state "of which we know almost nothing." mental patterns—not just our memories, but (1977), Stevenson observes that he has not He does not seem to regard this ignorance our purposes also—will persist after our attempted "any description of processes as beyond remedy, and he hints in various deaths" (p. 139). It may be noted in passing whereby a mind surviving death would per- places that his research and the research of that here, for once, Stevenson speaks with- sist in another, discarnate realm," adding other parapsychologists may gradually re- out any qualification in the first person as a that "such concepts" (by which he presum- move it. In any case, even in 1974 he thought believer in life after death. ably means the "discarnate realm" and the he knew quite a few things about the nature Before leaving this topic, I should ob- entities residing in it) "require extensive re- of this body. To begin with, it serve that Stevenson has in no way estab- visions of current ideas about the mind- lished what he evidently desires to show, brain relationship" (p. 167). His position is must be composed of elements quite dif- that the mind, i.e., the second body, exists not substantially different from that of Story ferent from those with which we are famil- in a space that is just as objective as physical or the Tibetan Book. In one of his two fullest iar both in our ordinary perceptions and space. The Ronald Reagan of my dreams in the abstractions of physicists. [ibid., p. discussions of this topic he refers to a remark does not have any more objective existence 407] by the Buddha that all speculation about than something utterly fantastic I may dream the nature of the intermediate entity is un- Because of this difference from our ordinary about, e.g., his flight to the moon by means profitable, adding that we would do well to bodies Stevenson calls it a "nonphysical of waving his arms. When the Ronald Rea- follow this injunction. He himself, however, body." Stevenson believes that it is "com- gan, the Nancy Reagan, and the William does not do so. For a variety of reasons, posed of some kind of matter," but it "must Rehnquist of my dreams disappear, so do some empirical and some philosophical, be matter quite different from what we usu- their spatial properties and relations. More Stevenson prefers a body to a pure mind as ally mean by that term." We must also generally, my dream-space disappears as the interim entity. In addition to transmitting "expect" that the interregnum body "will be soon as I stop dreaming. There is also of memories and also various skills and dispo- subject to quite different `laws' from those course no reason for regarding the mind as sitions to the new body without which we which govern our familiar physical bodies" literally a "container" or having a "struc- could hardly speak of the same person, the (ibid.). Stevenson does not speak of an ture." On a Humean view, saying that an interim entity must also be the bearer of etheric or astral "double," but it is difficult image is "in the mind" just means that it is certain purely "physical qualities." What to see how he can avoid believing in someone of the "impressions and ideas" whose Stevenson has in mind here are diseases from thing of the same kind, especially when we succession is a person's mind. I have already which both the new and the old bodies suffer reflect on the birthmarks of the new body explained why I find Hume's account inade- and above all "birth marks and deformities" appearing in the same locations as the scars quate, but talking about the mind as a "con- on the new body, which "correspond to or wounds on the old one. tainer" and more generally about a "thing" wounds or injuries" on the earlier one When I first read the remarks just quoted is not going to remove its inadequacies. ("Some Questions Related to Cases of the I could not help wondering where the inter- Unfortunately I do not have the space Reincarnation Type," p. 406). Stevenson mediate body came from. The answer to to report the numerous other claims, some remarks that the wounds must somehow be this question is given in Stevenson's 1980 of them altogether remarkable, found in "imprinted" on the interregnum body, which presidential address to the Parapsychological Stevenson's presidential address. I should, acts as a kind of stamp or "template" for Association, in which he reveals himself as however, briefly mention that he regards the the production of birthmarks and deformi- an out-and-out occultist. The second body, "attachment" of the mind to the brain as ties on the new body (p. 407). which we have available at death, is nothing "somewhat variable." The mind becomes Stevenson's philosophical reason is con- other than our mind, which we had or which "loosened" or "more detached" from the nected with his insistence that "images have we were all along. Stevenson is of course a brain during dreams, when it is under the extension" and that as such they cannot exist dualist, and he calls ,himself a "radical in- influence of hallucinogenic drugs, and also in an unextended Cartesian mind but only teractionist," but no dualistic interactionist during near-death experiences. He also quite "on or in something else that has extension." known to me among philosophers, of the explicitly advocates the view that sense In a dream—the illustration is mine but I Cartesian or the Humean variety, has ever organs are not necessary for what passes as believe it would have Stevenson's approval identified the mind with a body. We are sense perception. In support of this assertion, —objects have shapes and relative sizes and once again told that images have spatial he refers to certain OBE experiences in the positions. If I dream of Ronald Reagan location. Although he professes himself to course of which the subjects displayed "para- sitting on a platform next to Nancy Reagan be a Humean and to be a Buddhist, or at normal cognition" and, what is particularly while William Rehnquist is addressing the least to be highly sympathetic to Buddhism, relevant to our topic, to "the small number Daughters of the American Revolution, the Stevenson works with a picture of the mind of subjects who claim to remember events dream Ronald Reagan will look taller than as a "container" and an entity with a "struc- that they observed during an intermediate

Summer 1987 47 existence between death and presumed re- sence of an entry. It should be remembered that in such a case it is likely that the child birth" (p. 138). Persons belonging to these that, if reincarnation is a fact, such womb will be neither physically nor mentally intact two groups have had visual experiences or invasions are occurring all the time, along in spite of the presence of the divinely cre- "visionlike experiences" in which neither with every pregnancy. ated soul. physical eyes nor "other parts of the body's The emptiness of all statements of this All these reflections can be applied muta- neural equipment were used" (ibid.). I will kind is also evident from the fact that the tis mutandis to the entities, whatever they discuss Stevenson's view on the memories reincarnation theory is not of the slightest are called, that, according to reincarnation- of life during the interregnum a little later. use to an embryologist. It is of no more use ists, invade the womb of the expecting Here I wish to remark that Stevenson does to him than the notion of Karma is to a mother. Whether it is the pure •mind of not produce the slightest evidence that, in geologist. A geologist cannot explain or pre- McTaggart and Ducasse, the astral body of dreams, during near-death experiences, or dict earthquakes any better if he believes in Story and the Tibetan Book, or Stevenson's in any of the other states on his list, con- the Law of Karma than if he does not. spiritual body, it surely makes no difference sciousness is any less dependent on the brain Similarly, an embryologist who believes in whatever to what the child will be like at than it is in the course of normal waking womb invasions by preexisting souls cannot birth. Once this is admitted it is obvious life. This contention is indeed a stock-in- explain or predict any embryological facts that reincarnationist claims about womb trade of occultism, but, to the best of my any better than one who does not. invasions are empirically vacuous and that knowledge, it does not have the endorsement The aforementioned Francis Story wrote they cannot possibly fill any gaps or be any of a single competent brain physiologist. extensively about the relations of Buddhist supplement to scientific knowledge. It might concepts to modern science, especially gene- perhaps be added that at least most Western tics. He asserted with some pride that Budd- reincarnationists would concede that biolog- Womb Invasions hist notions supplement "the stock of scien- ical accounts are quite sufficient to explain tific knowledge" without in any way "resort- the attributes animals have at birth, even I have already had my say about the disem- ing to the supernatural for an explanation" those fairly high in the evolutionary scale. If bodied mind and the astral body. In the (op. cit., p. 248). A little reflection, however, this is granted, it surely becomes extremely present context I am not particularly con- shows that the Buddhist notions Story has implausible to say that we need a different cerned to show that they do not or cannot in mind—the "etheric" body, "thought accre- type or kind of account for human beings, exist. Instead I would like to point out that, tions," and "mental energy potentials"—can since the attributes of human beings are only even if we allow their existence, reincarna- no more add to the "stock of scientific an extension of those already found in ani- tion becomes a metaphysical theory as soon knowledge" than any of the supernatural mals. as either of these are brought in as the inter- concepts of Christians and Jews. Let us for Reincarnationists constantly engage in regnum bearer of memories, skills, or any- a moment consider the traditional Christian pseudoempirical maneuvers. These usually thing else. Hence, contrary to the repeated view that at conception God infuses a soul involve the use of a familiar word that in a pronouncements of reincarnationists, the into the mother's womb that combines with reincarnationist context cannot have its ori- theory cannot serve as the scientific explana- the physical embryo to grow into a full- ginal sense. I earlier quoted Schopenhauer's tion of any phenomena. This becomes parti- fledged human being with its physical and remark that each of us is constantly meeting cularly obvious when we look more closely psychological attributes. Suppose that in a people known from previous lives but that at the supposed entry of the preexisting soul particular case God forgets to infuse a soul these meetings occur "incognito." Here into the womb of its prospective mother and into an embryo but that all biological condi- something odd has happened to the use of its "merger" or "fusion" with the physical tions are exceptionally well fulfilled the "incognito." A person is appearing incognito embryo. When I first read the Tibetan Book best possible genes are available (genes con- in the customary sense of this word if he and similar writings in which there are connected with physical health and strength and pretends to be somebody other than he is, stant references to the intermediate person's with a well-formed brain and nervous sys- i.e., if he conceals his true identity. This is a decision to enter a certain woman's womb tem) and along with them the best possible genuine incognito. It is part of the meaning and then to make every effort to stay there intrauterine environment. Surely, no intelli- of this word that it is in principle possible by closing the "door" of the womb, I felt gent and educated Christian, no matter how to penetrate the disguise and discover the like protesting such crass invasions of priva- theologically orthodox he may be, would true identity of the individual. Thus, in cy. Surely a woman has a right to determine deny that an embryo with such splendid Gustav Lortzing's opera Czar and Carpenter, who may and who may not enter her womb. biological equipment and environment Peter the Great is working on a wharf in However, on further reflection it was ob- would be born intact physically and men- the Dutch town of Saardam under the as- vious that no violation of First Amendment tally; and if this is granted the theory about sumed name of Peter Michaelow. At the rights had occurred and that the women the divine soul infusion will have been shown end of the opera Peter Michaelow's true whose wombs had supposedly been invaded to be superfluous, at least for the purpose identity is revealed; but, even if this had not were really not being victimized at all. For of scientific explanation. Let us next con- happened and even if the czar had suffered not only does the woman herself feel noth- sider the case in which God does not forget a brain injury as a result of which he came ing, but at the time of the supposed entry to infuse the soul but in which the biological to believe that he really was Peter Michae- no outside observer could notice anything material or the intrauterine environment or low, it was not logically impossible to pene- either. The invasion of the woman's womb both are seriously defective. As an illustra- trate his incognito. If, now, it is asserted by the reincarnating soul is obviously alto- tion we may take genes leading to Down's that all of us are always appearing incognito gether different from the insertion of a diag- syndrome or mental retardation or endog- in this familiar sense of the word, such a nostic or surgical instrument, which is both enous depression, or we may suppose that statement is simply false. Presumably Scho- experienced by her and observed by out- the pregnant mother is syphilitic or a heroin penhauer did not mean to assert this glar- siders. An entry that is not even in principle addict or afflicted with AIDS. Again, no ingly false proposition; but, if he did not, noticeable is indistinguishable from the ab- intelligent Christian on earth would deny what exactly did he assert? As far as I can

48 FREE INQUIRY see, the incognito Schopenhauer is talking address he admitted that such memories regnum world. It is noteworthy that Steven- about cannot in principle be penetrated, but "rarely contain anything verifiable," which son speaks in generalities. Does he seriously an incognito that is logically impenetrable is is not surprising since "the events narrated believe that during the interregnum some of not an incognito at all. We started with what are not always referrable to the world of the Thais and Burmese are offered either seems like an exciting and surprisingly em- physical objects and living persons" (p. 132, physical or astral apples whose consumption pirical assertion, but on reflection it turned my emphasis). I must protest that for the by their astral bodies produces forgetfulness? out to be quite vacuous. reasons just indicated such memories can If he does not seriously believe this, why is never contain anything verifiable and that he so reluctant to admit that these recollec- Memories of the Interregnum they cannot be "referrable" to the world of tions are illusions? physical objects and living persons. In any What Stevenson has never seen or what Are there any ostensible memories about the event Stevenson thinks that in certain cases he has tried not to see is the intrinsic absurd- interregnum and, if so, do they throw any of this kind we should "listen respectfully" ity of the entire notion of an interregnum light on what life there is like? Chiefly be- to what is claimed. He reasons that if the existence. He has rejected the notion that cause of lack of space, I will here ignore the recollections of a person about a previous human beings could exist as pure minds and memories of hypnotic subjects as reported life on earth turn out to be "authentic," then choose their next parents in such a state, by Helen Wambach, the futurologist and there is a good chance that his ostensible but he has not seen that the alternative of mass-regressionist mentioned earlier. I will memories about experiences during the in- an astral or spiritual body fares no better. also reluctantly omit any detailed account terregnum are also substantially correct. How, to raise one of the more troublesome of the recollections of Bridey Murphy. I will I do not imagine any reader will be sur- questions, are the scars and deformities of a dead physical only mention that Bridey distinctly recalled prised to hear that the experiences that are body transferred to a spiritual body, and how does the spiritual body in carrying on conversations although she had recalled usually correspond closely either to turn transmit them to the new physical body? neither a mouth nor vocal chords, which the habits of the "previous personalities" or Merely raising such questions opens up a must have been an altogether remarkable to expectations about the content of the can of worms. The reincarnationist's tribula- feat but quite in keeping with occultist afterlife based on the local religious and cul- tion is most obvious in the case of such notions of seeing without eyes and thinking tural traditions. Tlingits in Alaska tell of a clearly physical characteristics, but it equally without a brain. I will here confine myself ride across a lake in a canoe right after death applies to anything and everything that is to the views of Story and Stevenson. On and a subsequent return trip across the same supposedly transmitted via the intermediate this subject Story expresses himself with far lake just before rebirth. Indians, on the other body. We have here the problem or rather more caution. Story ends his article "What hand, recall meetings with Krishna or Lak- the absurdity of what might be called Happens Between Incarnations?" on an en- shmi. In Burma and Thailand such reports "world-crossings," an instance of which we tirely skeptical note. After relating a number are much more frequent than elsewhere. met once before in connection with the of cases from his own collection in which Stevenson describes some recurrent themes physical uniform worn by George Ritchie's the subjects had the most detailed memories in these reports. Quite commonly a meeting astral body. of their interregnum existence (all of them, is recalled with a sage dressed in white who One of my favorite examples of such an I should explain, being about concrete and acts as a friend and guide and helps the intrinsically absurd world-crossing or mixing physical meetings with human guides right interim entity in the search for new parents. of "planes" (to use a favorite occultist term) here on earth), Story concedes that "there is There are also frequent descriptions of a comes from a chapter entitled "I Was Wait- nothing evidential" in his reports and that fruit offered just before the new incarnation. ing to Be Born Again" in Richard Webb's "they are purely on an anecdotal level," This is the "fruit of forgetfulness," and those These Came Back (New York, 1974). Ivonne, adding that "we have no means of checking who eat it later remember nothing either a commercial artist living in Hollywood, is up on them as we have checked on the about earlier lives or about the interregnum. relating what is supposed to be a set of memories of previous earthly lives such as I The subjects who do remember the interreg- spontaneous memories: have helped Dr. Ian Stevenson collect" (p. num claim that they disobeyed the order to 199). Even those who do not share Story's eat the fruit. 1 assume that, because of their There I was, sitting on this fence waiting high opinion of the evidential value of the notorious gluttony, Westerners almost never to be born again.... I was born into this latter kind of case will readily see the enor- refuse the fruit of forgetfulness. I am sure that most sane and sober peo- body on a ranch in Las Cruces, New mous difference between ostensible memories Mexico.... I was a girl, and I knew 1 ple, including, I would hope, a number of of earthly happenings in a certain place at a would go into the body of the child that specified time and ostensible memories of believers in reincarnation, will have no hesi- would be born in that ranchhouse, so I existence in an unobservable realm whose tation in explaining these interregnum was waiting. I would walk around the inhabitants live either as pure minds or as memories as cultural artifacts that cannot place, sit on the fence, go into the house "spiritual" bodies and whose activities cannot be taken seriously as evidence for anything and see how things were coming along in principle be observed by anybody on except the way in which a person's education with my new mother. I picked my parents. ... It wasn't a dream.... While I was earth. and indoctrination shape his religious and sitting around waiting to be born, I had It is not clear that Stevenson appreciates metaphysical beliefs and various associated experiences. Stevenson is not at all prepared on some kind of loose robelike garment. this enormous difference. We already noted ... It was gray-white in color.... As far to accept such an explanation. "The merits that in his presidential address he referred as getting hungry, I knew I wasn't in a of such claims," he writes, "have to be judged to interregnum memories as evidence for the physical body and food wasn't important view that seeing can take place without separately in each case" (p. 413). Unfortu- to me.... I knew I couldn't be seen by physical eyes or any neural equipment. nately, he omits telling us by what criteria my new folks or any of the people who (Stevenson never explains whether he be- they are to be judged or how we could ever came to visit. . . . They were solid; I lieves in astral or nonphysical sense-organs overcome the evidential difficulties resulting wasn't.... When 1 was about to be born and nervous systems.) Earlier in the same from the total unobservability of the inter- ... my dad hitched up the team, put my

49 Summer 1987 mother in the wagon and off they went of a new embryo, and unites with it to form the parents, who are usually vital informants. ... to my grandparents' place.... I went a full-fledged human being; although the In many cases, too, there was or easily could along, too. Not in the wagon, but staying person who died may have been an adult above it, around it.... All 1 remember of have been contact between the parents and and indeed quite old, when he is reborn he the birth was that I was outside my grand- persons connected with the "previous per- parents' house, just sort of hanging begins a new life with the intellectual and sonality" about whose life the child had ac- emotional attitudes of a baby; finally, many around. Then everything seemed to grow curate recollections (Mind Out of Time, op. hazy and dim—and then suddenly it was of the people born in this way did not cit., pp. 58-60). just as though the lights went out. That previously live on the earth, but (depending In this connection one of the findings by was the end—and the beginning. [pp. on which version of reincarnation one sub- William G. Roll deserves to be mentioned. 116-118] scribes to) in other planes or on other planets Roll, who is a professor of psychology at from which they migrate (invisibly of West Georgia College, a lay Zen monk, and The incoherence of this story is obvious: course), most of them preferring to enter a leading figure in American parapsychol- How does a nonphysical body sit on a fence, the wombs of mothers in poor and over- ogy, appears to be an admirer of Steven- how does it walk around, and how does it populated countries where their lives are son's research. Nevertheless he cannot refrain wear a robelike garment? Stevenson would likely to be wretched. The collateral assump- from calling attention to certain grounds for probably smile at the absurdity of this tions listed so far are implied by practically skepticism. In his extremely erudite article "recollection," but his own position is no all forms of reincarnationism, but in Steven- "The Changing Perspectives on Life after better. He avoids such obvious nonsense son's case there is the additional implication Death," in Advances in Parapsychological only by being vague and elusive on questions that the memories and skills that the entity Research, edited by Stanley Krippner (vol. of detail. The imprinting of scars on and by took over from the person who died and 3, New York, 1982), Roll notes that only in his spiritual body is the same incoherent that are transmitted to the new regular body seven of Stevenson's cases were the child's world-crossing as the sitting on a physical appear there for a relatively short time dur- statements about a previous life recorded fence or the wearing of a robe by an astral ing childhood to disappear forever after. prior to the attempts at verification. Steven- body. I would invert Stevenson's remark that If Stevenson's reports are evidence for son has himself admitted that where this is we should listen attentively to a subject's reincarnation they must also be evidence for not done subsequent developments may lead recollections of his interim existence if his the collateral assumptions just mentioned. to embellishments of what the child is sup- memories of his earlier lives on earth are These assumptions are surely fantastic if not posed to have said. Yet, in all these seven (supposedly) authentic: If he has any ostensi- indeed pure nonsense; and, even in the ab- cases, the child lived "within the geograph- ble recollections of an interim existence at sence of a demonstration of specific flaws, a ical or social circumference of the previous all, this is sufficient to undermine the trust- rational person will conclude either that personality." The "close connection" between worthiness of his other reincarnation Stevenson's reports are seriously defective the children and the surviving friends and memories. or that his alleged facts can be explained relatives of the previous personality "raises without bringing in reincarnation. An ac- questions of sensory cues" (p. 199), by which Stevenson and His Children ceptance of the collateral assumptions would, Roll of course means "normal sources of to borrow a phrase from Kierkegaard, information." He charitably "assumes" that 1 said earlier that I cannot adequately deal amount to the "crucifixion" of our under- Stevenson's investigations have ruled out with Stevenson's evidence derived from the standing. such normal channels. Skeptics will not be recollections of children until certain So much for the general objections. De- ready to grant this, and the lack of confir- general objections to reincarnation are tailed criticisms of Stevenson's investigations mation of Stevenson's results, which I will spelled out. What I had primarily in mind are not wanting, but they are not nearly as describe later, tends to confirm their doubts. were Tertullian's argument, the population well known as Stevenson's own work. I will One of the skeptics is Professor Chari, objection, the difficulties connected with the very briefly summarize some of the criticisms an Indian philosopher, now retired from interregnum (and the choice of parents), and offered by Ian Wilson, Professor C. T. K. Madras Christian University, who is not a above all the dependence of consciousness Chari, and D. Scott Rogo. Ian Wilson has Western materialist or positivist but a Hindu on the brain. What these objections enable emphasized that Stevenson generally dis- and a well-known parapsychologist. Profes- us to see is that somebody who opts for misses on the flimsiest grounds the possi- sor Chari does not reject reincarnation, but reincarnation is committed to a host of bility of fraud on the part of the children, he believes that Stevenson is incredibly naive collateral assumptions, the most important their parents, and other interested parties. and that his reports have no evidential value. of which I will now enumerate. When a Stevenson maintains that no motive for In a number of articles Chari has given human being dies he continues to exist not fraud exists, when such motives are only us some insight into the way Indian cases on the earth but in a region we know not too evident. Wilson has pointed out that "suggestive of reincarnation" are manufac- where as a "pure" disembodied mind or else several of the children remembered belong- tured. He points out that cases of the kind as an astral or some other kind of "non- ing to a higher caste in their previous lives Stevenson has collected occur mostly in cul- physical" body; although deprived of his and seem to have been motivated by a wish tures in which there is a deeply ingrained brain he retains memories of life on earth as for better living conditions. In one case, for belief in reincarnation and, what is equally well as some of his characteristic skills and example, a boy asked for one-third of the significant, the type of reincarnation claimed traits; after a period varying from a few land of his past-life father, showing no in- fits in with the peculiar form of reincarnation months to hundreds of years, this pure mind terest in his previous incarnation when this belief prevalent in a given area. Stevenson or nonphysical body, which lacks not only former "father" lost his fortune and became cannot deny these facts and counters that, a brain but also any physical sense-organs, poorer than his father in the present life. while cultural factors influence the details, picks out a suitable woman on earth as its Wilson also calls attention to the fact that they do not "generate" the cases themselves. mother in the next incarnation, invades this Stevenson invariably tells us exceedingly lit- Chari insists that they are cultural artifacts, woman's womb at the moment of conception tle about the character and background of pure and simple. "A reincarnationist fantasy

50 FREE INQUIRY in the small Asian child," he writes, "starts discussion in his 1974 article Stevenson first kindergarten teachers for extended periods, typically in play or a gamelike situation" flatly denies that cases of the type featured and they never noticed any such thing. I ("Reincarnation Research: Method and In- in his books do not occur in the West. He knew the great and unforgettable A. S. Neill, terpretation," in M. Ebon, ed., Signet Hand- asserts that he "now" has forty cases of the founder of Summerhill. Neill was the book of Parapsychology, p. 319). It is then children in the continental United States. last man on earth to ridicule a child for promoted (or retarded) by the conscious or He admits, however, that such cases are re- saying strange things or behaving in an unconscious beliefs, attitudes, and responses ported much less frequently in cultures where unusual way and yet, in the fifty-four years of parents, guardians, and interested by- the population does not believe in reincarna- he headed the school, he did not once come standers. Chari calls this fantasy the Asian tion, but he strongly emphasizes that this across a Stevensonian case. I don't doubt counterpart of the "imaginary playmate" or admission applies only to reported cases. We that if Summerhill had been in a certain "fictitious companion" that has been dis- have no valid information, he writes, "about region of India or Thailand or Alaska a closed in many Western studies of childhood. the actual incidence of cases," and he once number of children with the appropriate He offers the guess that we have here "two again expresses his suspicion that many reincarnation behavior would have been ways of a child's reaching out to the world: parents refrain from reporting signs of rein- noticed. As far as I can tell, "thè long night one by having an idealized object (the imag- carnation behavior on the part of their chil- of suppression" Stevenson talks about exists inary playmate) and the other by being an dren for fear of ostracism and ridicule (p. only in his imagination. idealized object (an earlier life on earth)" (p. 396, Stevenson's italics). In any event Stevenson concedes that 320). Stevenson mentioned his forty Western "suppression" does not tell the whole story Chari describes several cases he has stu- cases over twelve years ago, and a book and that "other factors may come into play." died that were generated in this way. In one about them was promised at that time. To At this stage we are treated to one of his case, which is far more fanciful than any of the best of my knowledge not one of these extravaganzas. Stevenson evidently lives in those studied by Stevenson and in which cases has been published, and I cannot help a cloud-cuckoo-land, and he regards the reincarnationist claims were nevertheless suspecting that the reason has to do with wildest and most fanciful assumptions, many fully "verified," a little girl had "visions" of the higher critical standards in the West. of which are of questionable conceptual the Lord Krishna, who disclosed certain For one thing, we do not here have a host coherence, as being on an equal footing with details of her earlier life. Here there was not of witnesses with an ardent belief in rein- straightforward empirical hypotheses. He even any recall on the part of the girl, and carnation who will manufacture the neces- resorts to such extravaganzas whenever the in the beginning no "proofs" were available. sary "proofs"; and, if any such proofs were specter of cultural factors accounting for However, after the girl's grandmother ex- manufactured, we have numerous skeptics reincarnation beliefs raises its menacing pressed some doubts, "reincarnationist right on the spot who would subject them head. If, he reasons, Westerners do in fact proofs" satisfying all parties were promptly to a much more elaborate and searching reincarnate they would almost certainly not provided. "The socio-cultural influence," scrutiny than any undertaken by Stevenson, have believed in reincarnation in their previ- Chari concludes, "generates the whole plot, Story, and their associates. Stevenson's re- ous lives, which, Stevenson assumes, were the presence or absence of personal recall, marks about the probable occurrence of also in the West. This lack of belief in rein- and much else besides" (p. 321). Chari adds reincarnation cases among Western children carnation would have two effects on the that he must "lament the generally lax will come as a total surprise to child psy- reincarnated Westerner. In the first place, standards in India. Few bother about rigor- chologists and teachers in the West, who disbelief in reincarnation naturally includes ous proofs of rebirth which is a cultural would presumably notice such claims and a denial that anybody can remember an commitment (pace, Stevenson) even without behavior. Several of my closest friends were earlier life, and "this could act as a powerful proofs." In any critical reader of Stevenson's books and articles the question almost irre- Give a subscription to FREE INQUIRY to relatives, friends, sistibly arises why the kind of case that seems and your library. to occur with such frequency in India and other countries in which reincarnation is part Please enter a one-year gift subscription at $20.00 for: of the accepted religion does not also occur in the West. Stevenson has dealt with this Name question in his introduction to Ryall's book and in the article "Some Questions Related Address to Cases of the Reincarnation Type" (1974), to which I have referred on several occa- City State Zip sions. In the former discussion Stevenson tells us that he values the publication of Additional gifts of FREE INQUIRY can be purchased at a 30% discount on the regular Ryan's book not only because of its "in- subscription price. (Please use a separate sheet.) trinsic merit" but also because its publication My name. may give courage "to other persons who feel inclined to expose what seemed to them Address- memories of previous lives, but fear unplea- Total $ ❑ Check or money order enclosed sant consequences if they do so" (p. 29). ❑ MasterCard Exp Cases like Ryall's will end "the long night of Charge my o VISA suppression of reincarnation cases in the ❑ Please send a gift card in my name. West," a "night" that has lasted "more than Return to: FREE INQUIRY, Box 5, Buffalo, NY 14215-0005 716-834-2921 fourteen centuries." In the more extended

Summer 1987 51 suggestion inhibiting the carry-over of actual print on the subject on two separate occa- (Journal of the Society for Psychical Re- memories from one life to another" (p. 396). sions. One of these was a letter in the search, January 1986, p. 237). The October Nevertheless, memories of a previous life Journal of Parapsychology (1979, pp. 1986 issue of the same periodical contains a may "break through" the "negative sugges- 268-269). The other was a joint publication further exchange between Rogo and Steven- tion" stemming from disbelief. This brings with Pasricha dealing with the case of son. Rogo reaffirms all his original charges. us to the second inhibiting factor. Because Rakesh Gaur in the European Journal of Barker, he writes, asserted that "he had three of his disbelief (and I suppose his ignorance), Parapsychology in 1981. In the letter, Barker negative reports on reincarnation cases in a Westerner is clearly at a grave disadvan- described the Gaur case as "the most au- the works, but Stevenson was trying to pre- tage in such a situation compared with a thentic, evidential and thoroughly investi- vent him from publishing any of them" (p. Hindu, a Buddhist, or a Druse. All of them gated" of fifty-nine cases he had studied with 470, Rogo's italics). Rogo again reports have "frameworks of belief" that make their Pasricha, and he concludes that it is "best Barker as claiming that legal threats were memories intelligible. This is true even of interpreted as a result of Indian social psy- part of Stevenson's pressure. For his part children in the East. In India, for example, chology rather than parapsychology." Stevenson again flatly denies that he ever children are exposed to the teaching of rein- The 1981 article consists of three parts. tried to interfere with Barker's freedom to carnation at a very early age. By the time, The first is a report of interviews conducted express his views. In a further rejoinder, therefore, they have memories of previous by both authors, and this is followed by which has not been published but which he lives, between the ages of three and five, two separate evaluations. Rakesh Gaur was is circulating to interested parties, Rogo Hindu and Buddhist children "can accept born in 1969 and claimed to recall his life remarks that Stevenson has a habit of using the memories for what they seem to be in- and death as Bithal Das in the town of Tonk. legal threats and informs his readers that he stead of rejecting them as alien and unlikely The major portions of the report deal with has filed details of four such incidents with to be true" (p. 397). It may nevertheless hap- the journey by Rakesh, accompanied by his the editors of the Journal of the Society for pen that even in the East parents have father, who was an enthusiastic champion Psychical Research. At this stage it is Rogo's omitted telling a child about reincarnation. of the case, to Tonk to make the appro- word against Stevenson's, and I can only In the East this would not be fatal. For in priate identifications. Pasricha was greatly express the hope that it will be possible to his previous life the child was in all likeli- impressed by the evidential value of the case. locate Barker and urge him to publish his hood a believer in reincarnation, and hence Despite undeniable "discrepancies in the own account in a neutral forum. I under- he may remember not only events of the testimonies of the informants" she concluded stand that he was so shaken by the entire previous life but also enough of his previous that "Rakesh had somehow obtained his episode that he has left the field of parapsy- belief-system to accept the memories as information about Bithal Das through some chology. "natural." If I had more space I would paranormal process" (pp. 405-406). In his present a number of similar extravaganzas. section, Barker offered detailed reasons for The Ransom Report Stevenson usually writes in the third person the skeptical conclusion he had already men- in such contexts, telling us merely that this tioned earlier in his letter. Anybody suffi- The second of Rogo's revelations is, on the is how a believer in reincarnation could ciently interested should read all three parts face of it, extremely damaging. According account for the facts in question, but there of the article. I have no doubt that, unless to Rogo, Stevenson hired a lawyer by the is little doubt that he is such a believer and one is already a passionate believer in rein- name of Champe Ransom in the early 1970s that he himself accepts the reincarnationist carnation, one will find Barker's conclusion to assist in the analysis of his cases. Ransom explanations. vastly more reasonable. I should add that adopted the simple and reasonable approach Pasricha strikes me as a person of truly stag- of dividing the statements made by each The Case of Dr. Barker gering credulity, almost reaching the world- child into two groups. The first consisted of champion level of Dr. Kübler-Ross, who those that the child could easily have come I now come to two of the disturbing facts to incidentally has recently become a great to know by normal means. The second con- which Rogo called attention in chapter 4 of Stevenson fan. The "identifications" per- tained the statements that were candidates his Search for Yesterday (Englewood Cliffs, formed by Rakesh remind one of nothing for a paranormal explanation. Ransom N.J. 1985). Both relate to "replications" of more than the identification scenes in The found that the witnesses on whom Stevenson Stevenson's investigations, something that Return of Martin Guerre in which the relied generally agreed in the case of the Stevenson claims to welcome. I will first charming imposter Pensette is "recognized" first group that the statements had in fact relate the story of Dr. David Read Barker's by most of the townspeople as the missing been made by the children at the time men- negative findings. Barker has a Ph.D. in Martin Guerre and in turn "recognizes" tioned in the reports. In the case of the state- anthropology and did the research for his them, on the whole more successfully, after ments belonging to the second group, how- doctoral dissertation in India. Stevenson they have introduced themselves. The entire ever, there was no consensus. Here the wit- hired Barker to assist him in the analysis of 1981 article is highly instructive because it nesses were frequently confused both about some of his cases and also to undertake clearly illustrates Chari's view that the kind what was said and, equally important, when investigations of other cases in conjunction of case investigated by Stevenson is a cul- it was said. Ransom eventually became with Satwant Pasricha, a true and tried tural artifact and nothing else. Pasricha skeptical about the entire enterprise and believer and disciple. Barker could not find writes like a slightly more uninhibited double composed a report detailing his objections a single case in which there was convincing of Stevenson, and the shortcomings of his to Stevenson's methods. Rogo then adds that evidence of the presence of a paranormal "methodology" are transparently obvious Stevenson asked Ransom not to circulate process. According to Rogo's account Barker here. or publish his report. Rogo admitted that told him in August 1978 that Stevenson was Since the publication of Rogo's book he had not seen the report himself. I should pressuring him to keep silent about his re- Stevenson has denied ever exerting any pres- add that these events preceded the Barker sults. Whether or not Barker was in fact sure on Barker. He also downgrades the episode and that Barker deliberately em- under pressure to keep silent, he did go into extent of Barker's investigative activities ployed Ransom's method, which yielded the

52 FREE INQUIRY same negative results in his investigations. description of it is inaccurate. If I can locate There can be not doubt that, of all the Ransom's. address I will send the present numerous criticisms contained in Rogo's series of articles to him and urge him to FROM THE book, his account of the Ransom episode is publish his report so that all of us will at by far the most significant. If Rogo's account last know what is in it. SUBSCRIBER is substantially accurate the Ransom report Perhaps Dr. Eugene Brody, the editor would seem to undermine the evidential of the Journal of Nervous and Mental SERVICE value of the entire corpus of Stevenson's Diseases who thought sufficiently highly of work. Yet in the January 1986 issue of the Stevenson's research to open the pages of DEPARTMENT Journal, Stevenson's comments, which run his journal to two of his articles, can be Difficulties with your subscription often can to six long pages, contain only one para- induced to publish it. If it is not as deva- be avoided by simply knowing how a maga- graph devoted to this event. I reproduce it stating as Rogo's informants maintain, Stev- zine works. in full: enson has nothing to fear; and, in any case Here are answers to some questions you he will certainly not be prevented from re- may have about your subscription to FREE INQUIRY. Rogo's suggestion that I tried to stop plying to it. I daresay that the Ransom Champe Ransom from circulating his cri- report does not contain any diplomatic Inquiries ticisms is fiction. I have a note and a letter secrets. Since Stevenson has access to it, he When writing to us about your subscrip- in my files that prove, on the contrary, could tell us about its content in some detail that I encouraged Ransom to show (with tion, please attach the current mailing label. even before Ransom himself is requested to his critique) some comments I had made It helps us to identify your account and publish it. provide much faster service. on them, and Ransom readily agreed to this reasonable request. Rogo, although Ian Wilson ends his highly critical chap- Address change admitting he has never seen a copy of ter of Stevenson with the remark that, in If you plan to change your address, Ransom's critique but only talked with spite of all the objections he has raised, please notify us six weeks before the change, someone who had read it, nevertheless "Stevenson may yet prove himself the Gali- due to our advanced addressing schedule. offers his readers an account of what leo of reincarnation" (op. cit., p. 63) I do Ransom said. This account is wrong and not see any danger of that. What is unfor- Expiration Date once more shows Rogo's imagination in tunately very likely is that for a long time to If you'd like to check on your expiration play. [p. 237] come ignorant and superstitious people all date, simply look at your mailing label. The over the world will continue to refer to date of the last issue of your subscription appears as the middle four digits of the top Stevenson as the man who has provided In his October 1986 response Rogo again line (e.g., 8806 = June, 1988). admits that he has not actually read the strong scientific evidence, if not indeed con- Ransom report but asserts that he has spok- clusive proof, of reincarnation. Missing or late issues en to two people who have seen it and who You will receive the first issue of your agree about its scope and content. According Note: In the first of these articles I dis- subscription within eight weeks of order re- to Rogo, both considered it devastating. cussed the case of Edward Ryall, an English- ceipt. man who claimed to remember living as Stevenson once again insists that Rogo has Duplicate copies misrepresented Ransom's criticisms. He also John Fletcher in Western Zoyland in the If you receive two copies of an issue, seventeenth century. In citing the evidence asserts that he has no objections to the dis- compare mailing labels. Any difference, tribution of Ransom's critique, provided that demolishing Ryall's claim, I referred to cor- however minor, could cause the problem. his reply is distributed with it. He adds that respondence he had with Michael Green, the Please send us both labels and tell us which Ransom did publish a severe criticism of Inspector of Ancient Monuments and one is correct. We'll correct the situation at experimental parapsychology and remarks Historic Buildings for the Department of once; however, due to our addressing schedule, this problem may linger for one or two that if Ransom's comments were so deva- Environment in London. In replying to issues. If this happens, please pass the addi- Green's request to mark on a large-scale map stating, it is surprising that he has never tional copies on to a friend with our com- tried to publish them also (p. 472). the location of his seventeenth-century lands, pliments. I can no more confirm Rogo's statements Ryall placed them on a spot that, according about the Ransom report than his assertions to Green, had been open marshland until Duplicate bills/Renewals about Barker's treatment. However, as a 1800. In his abovementioned article in the Occasionally, we receive subscriber pay- critical outsider, I cannot help noting the January 1986 issue of the Journal of the ments and renewal instructions after we have sent second notices. If this happens to following facts. First of all, the world at Society for Psychical Research, which I had you, simply disregard the second notice. large would be entirely ignorant of the exis- not seen when I wrote the first installment, tence of the Ransom study if it were not for Ian Stevenson reports that he has obtained Invitation to subscribe Rogo's discussion in his book. Stevenson a contrary opinion on this subject from Dr. We often purchase the mailing lists of does not deny that Ransom's report was Robert W. Dunning, editor of the Victoria other magazines and organizations, and you written in the early 1970s; but, as far as I History of Somerset. According to Dr. may receive an invitation to subscribe to know, it has not been mentioned a single Dunning, it is quite possible that in the last FREE INQUIRY if your name is on one of these lists. Please simply disregard this un- time in his voluminous writings since then. half of the seventeenth century a farm ex- avoidable duplication. Second, although Stevenson has now twice isted at the edge of Western Zoyland at the declared that Rogo's description of the site indicated by Ryall. In fairness to Ryall FREE INQUIRY Ransom report is wrong, he has not spelled and also to Stevenson this opinion should out in what ways it is wrong. Stevenson's be mentioned, but it is quite insufficient to Box 5, Buffalo, NY 14215-0005 silence makes one wonder whether the report alter the negative verdict on this case war- (716) 834-2921 is not extremely damaging even if Rogo's ranted by the total evidence. •

Summer 1987 53 him, he said he could not talk to her while she was Leonard's client. Besides, he insisted, Books he already knew what she wanted to say. When she tried to verify what he claimed to know, he hung up. The nightmare grew worse. The Cult of Objectivism But Plasil's doubt and anger also grew when she discovered that Leonard's other female clients had had similar experiences. After four and a half years of therapy, with outrage piled upon outrage, she decided to fight back. She terminated her therapy, and, Nathaniel Branden with several other of Leonard's victims, she initiated legal action against him. Not surprisingly, shortly afterward Leonard announced that he was giving up his practice. Plasil was then accused by his other clients of causing irreparable harm to a great man. I had a similar experience when I broke Therapist, by Ellen Plasil (New York: St. with Ayn Rand. I had left the New York Martin's/Marek, 1985) 513.95. circle of objectivists in the late 1960s, years before the events in this book took place. I herapist is Ellen Plasil's account of her (This is quite different from the more fa- did not know Dr. Leonard, but I did help four and a half years of treatment by a milar story of a psychotherapist who be- to launch Dr. Blumenthal's career. Although prominent New York "objectivist" psychia- comes infatuated with his client and has an 1 repudiated him many years ago (we repu- trist. Her book is of special interest to me affair with her.) Plasil's dependency on diated each other, you might say), I confess because of my past association with Ayn Leonard made her submissive and com- I read this story with embarrassment and Rand and the objectivist subculture. pliant. sadness for having played even a small part The author was raised by objectivist The author by this time had left her hus- in it. But perhaps, from one perspective, my parents. Almost from the day she was born band. Her social contacts in New York were part was not really so small. Did I not, to- they abused her physically and mentally in limited almost entirely to fellow-patients of gether with Rand, help to create the kind of an appalling number of ways, including sex- Leonard, and they all apparently worshiped subculture in which irrationality and inhu- ually, and at the same time lectured her on him. She moved in a world where a person's manity could exist (even if, to repeat, we "reason," "independence," and all the other most insignificant actions and preferences would have been horrified at this particular routine clichés used by Ayn Rand's professed were scrutinized to determine whether he or manifestation)? Blumenthal may protest that admirers without any true appreciation of she was a "good objectivist." Tastes in art, Leonard is not his creature, but I am not their meaning. novels, and films were evaluated from the quite comfortable in protesting that Blumen- In 1972, at twenty-one, Plasil found her- standpoint of Ayn Rand's personal likes and thal is not mine. The bad judgments of our self in an unhappy marriage and suffering dislikes. In objectivist circles, Leonard en- past do come back to haunt us. from depression, and she moved to New joyed a God-like status. Plasil did not feel Plasil won her case, and Dr. Leonard York City in search of psychiatric treatment. safe in discussing her growing anxiety and settled out of court. He is now working as a She put herself in the hands of Dr. Lonni doubts. She would have been accused of beekeeper in Florida. She has remarried Leonard, who had been recommended to treason. happily and is working toward a law degree. her by Dr. Allen Blumenthal, a leading Of course not all enthusiasts of objec- Therapist is written with great simplicity, objectivist psychiatrist. tivism manifest this foolishness; the majority clarity, and dignity, and I recommend it to In the course of her treatment, Leonard of them are independent, decent, clear- anyone interested in the psychology of cult- informed her that he was the "healthiest" thinking human beings. But there is an irra- ism and how individuals can be led to man he had ever known and that an impor- tional, cultish tendency in many intellectual suspend their moral judgment and their tant indicator of a woman's own "health" movements, and objectivism, alas, is no ex- common sense in the name of idealism and was whether or not she responded to him ception. Ayn Rand's personal obsession with loyalty—and out of an overzealous desire "romantically." From there it was only a loyalty did little to discourage this trend, to belong somewhere. Plasil has something short step to insisting that Plasil satisfy him even though she doubtless would have been important to say to all of us. • sexually. But she was instructed never to horrified by Dr. Leonard's practices. Rand allow herself to imagine that she was having had often protested, "Protect me from my Nathaniel Branden is executive director of an affair with him. She was merely to satisfy followers!" the Biocentric Institute in Beverly Hills, him and thereby be fulfilled. It would be Finally, after many months of struggling California. proof of her feminity. Using the authority with the question of whether Leonard had a of his position, Leonard intimidated, threat- legitimate purpose for his bizarre behavior ened, and abused her. He called her "scum," at the therapy sessions (for example, greeting Gordon Stein is associate editor of FREE and, for all practical purposes, he raped her. her stark naked, videotaping her in a similar INQUIRY and editor of An Anthology of In other words, he recreated the nightmare state, spread-eagled on the floor, and so on), Atheism and Rationalism and The Ency- of her childhood, while telling her repeatedly Plasil telephoned Dr. Blumenthal. When she clopedia of Unbelief (Prometheus Books). that he was her only hope for salvation. attempted to discuss her misgivings with

54 FREE INQUIRY off-limits. Only one outlook is presented, because only one outlook is allowed. And any evidence that a student trangresses these limits is grounds for "demerits." Indeed, there is no conceivable way in which new Propaganda Before Education ideas can enter the life of the school. Teachers, students, and parents must sign a series of pledges that bind them to orthodoxy. So what is the appeal of these schools Gordon Stein for the students and their parents? Even though most of the students seem to have been forced to go to the school by their God's Choice: The Total World of a Funda- is no easy task; the amount of effort required parents, they say they value what the school mentalist Christian School, by Alan Peshkin is enormous. Peshkin reports that Bethany offers because it teaches them how to get to (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), students are monitored every minute of their heaven. Public schools, they say, lack "spir- 349 pp., $24.95. school day by born-again Christian adults ituality." and kept as busy as possible during the rest Peshkin notes that all of Bethany's stu- any of us have wondered what goes of the time. The penalties for not following dents are entirely orthodox. On the sly, Mon inside fundamentalist Christian the dress, behavior, or any of the other codes many rebel by going to movies, listening to private schools. They have been springing are severe, including expulsion. Why such rock music, or suggesting that a belief in up all over the country at a rapid rate: In strictness and discipline? To prevent any God is not a prerequisite for being a good 1981 there were approximately 450,000 chil- "worldly" (non-Christian) ideas from getting American. In general, however, Bethany dren in such schools; by now the figure is into the students' minds. Indeed, the mind students scorn the idea of religious pluralism probably more than double that. control Peshkin describes is stronger and and envision a happy millennium, when the Until Alan Peshkin wrote God's Choice, more thorough than any I am aware of in one true religion—theirs—will govern the there was no reliable way of knowing what the United States. land. Above and beyond Bethany's religious actually happened in these schools. To be While some propagandizing does go on and political indoctrination I found one sure, there were glowing reports from the in the public schools, God's Choice demon- thing even more alarming: Bethany students fundamentalists, and there were horror strates that Bethany's curriculum is prac- are morally and intellectually lazy. So con- stories coming from "unbelievers." The ex- tically nothing but propaganda—much of cerned with adhering to the wishes of God plicit bias of both groups, however, makes it, by the way, without any scriptural basis. and Jesus, they have failed to make any their reports less than reliable. Peshkin—a Extreme conservatism in politics, the arts, serious decisions about their lives for them- professor of education at the University of and dress is made to seem the only correct selves. They believe that whatever happens Illinois—was able to spend eighteen months path for the Christian. Doing "what God in their lives is determined by God—for their as an observer in a Baptist school in South- wants" is the sole criterion for judging be- actions they take neither credit nor responsi- ern Illinois. He was trusted—after a while, havior, but almost always it is the very bility. anyway—and he has repaid that trust by human faculty or administration who decides God's Choice depicts a world quite giving a fair and balanced account of what what God wants. foreign to nonfundamentalists, one moti- went on there. Because Bethany believes that "guarding vated by fear, by an inability to tolerate Peshkin calls the high school he studied the minds" of its students requires hiding all differences of opinion, and by a conviction "Bethany Baptist Academy." Its curriculum nonfundamentalist doctrine from them, that education begins with propaganda. It's comprises such standard courses as English, many books and movies are pronounced a scary world, and it's expanding. • Mathematics, Science, Social Studies, Speech/ Drama, Physical Education, and Announcing Music. While a Bible class is also compul- sory, religious indoctrination is not limited FREE INQUIRY's Six Year Index to that one class—it pervades all classes. Includes Volume 1, Number 1 (Winter 1980/81) to Volume 6, Number 4 (Fall The course objectives are instructive: "Sci- 1986). Total: $8.95 ($10.00 with postage and handling) ence: To develop a Christian mind so that ❑ Check or Money 0rder enclosed kids see everything from God's viewpoint. Social Studies: To make sure they are living Charge my ❑ Visa ❑ MasterCard # Exp closer to the Lord and to make sure I get my subject across to them.... Speech and Name Drama: It's not to put students on the stage ut to get them to be more effective witnesses Address for the Lord. Mathematics: Spiritual growth, self-discipline, and then achievement in the City State Zip subject matter." Clearly, this school's first priority is not Telephone # to educate its children but to make them Return to: FREE INQUIRY, Box 5, Buffalo, NY 14215-0005 • 716-834-2921 7/3 into good Christians. And it seems that this

55 These periodic population shortfalls encouraged what was left of the urban population to go out, conquer, and enslave foreign tribes, whose cultural, linguistic, and racial characteristics then intermingled with those of their captors. "I must confess," McNeill Critiquing the Old Unities writes, "that my vision of the past differs a good deal from the received version of class- ical and medieval history, affected as that was and is by nineteenth-century nation- alistic notions and preconceptions. Some- how, we fasten attention on the privileged hiiMMM 21111 citizen body of Athens and Rome, forgetting the foreigners and slaves who also lived in those cities in their days of imperial great- ness.... The great Latin authors, who all date from Rome's imperial and Golden age, looked backward to the pristine virtues of Robert Basil the early republic with such unanimity as to give that phase of Roman history a normative quality that moderns, affected by their own nationalist proclivities, tended to accept Polyethnicity and National Unity in World English-speaking? I was in the crowd of a at face value." History, by William H. McNeill (Toronto: quarter-million people when Charles De According to McNeill, the modern idea University of Toronto Press, 1986), 85 pp., Gaulle made his controversial visit to the of nationalism coalesced with the French $14.95, cloth; $7.95, paper. Canadian International Exposition in 1967 Revolution in 1789. "The consequences were to proclaim: "Vive le Quebec Libre!" My considerable, not least of which was a quan- Criticism and Truth, by Roland Barthes English-speaking uncles flew into rages, but tum leap in the effective power of a govern- (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, they were in a minority. Within a few years, ment able to draft entire age classes of young 1987), translated and edited by Katrine Pit- they had moved their families out of Quebec. men for military service in defense of the cher Keunemanm, 119 pp., $25.00, cloth; The "separatists," led by the Parti Quebecois, patrie. France's revolutionary success im- $10.95, paper. had legislated a "pure" Quebec, a French pelled other European governments to re- Quebec; its divisive slogan was emblazoned model themselves on a nationalist base inso- The Closing of the American Mind, by Allan on new license plates—"Je me souviens" (I far as possible." Bloom (New York: Simon and Schuster, remember). But this ideal of ethnic homogeneity 1987), Foreword by Saul Bellow, 392 pp., Professor McNeill challenges that within a particular geographic territory ruled $18.95. memory and elegantly reproves those who by one government "was timebound and consecrate ethnocentrism as a perfect cul- evanescent—inevitably so—a victim of its olyethnicity and National Unity in tural model. The impulse toward this ideal own success in much the same way the class- PWorld History is a sharp little treatise that has been shown in Canada, McNeill ical ideal of heroic and homogeneous citi- by William H. McNeill that inaugurated claims, has been generally destructive on a zenry also collapsed when first Athens, then "The Donald G. Creighton Lectures" at the world scale. National unity and ethnic purity, Macedon, and finally Rome lived up to the University of Toronto two years ago. In so he says, have only recently been considered ideal so successfully as to create an empire doing, it demonstrated a voracious kind of ideals. The historical record shows that over others." chutzpah on the part of McNeill. The late civilized societies have tended to thrive when McNeill employs a clever method to Donald Creighton had devoted his life at- these lines of purity are crossed—i.e., when argue his point: He shows that his subver- tempting to define Canadian "national iden- languages blend, when peoples miscegenate. sive agenda is actually older and more time- tity." This task, which McNeill heartily Ethnic unity has usually been maintained honored than the "nationalist" one most opposes here, was problematic in a number only by "barbarous" tribes. "Until after the people take to be "traditional." If, however, of ways: How can the United States's north- middle of the nineteenth century," he writes, polyethnicity used to be assured through ern neighbor resist that superpower's cultural "cities were incapable of sustaining them- recurrent waves of disease and conquest, imperialism? Should Canada try to protect selves demographically for very long without today's and tomorrow's race-mixing will be its particular ethnic and historical mixture? an influx of newcomers from the country- a function of communications technology, There was an even more pressing ques- side. When endemic diseases did not regu- global military service, and the multinational tion: How could French-speaking Quebec, larly kill off more children than were born business communities. so fiercely committed to its linguistic and within the city itself, epidemics came at Gallic roots, ever share a national purpose irregular intervals to cut back city popula- uch of McNeill's achievement has with provinces that are predominantly tions drastically. . . . Rural communities Mbeen to expose the often uncon- could suffer epidemics too, of course, but sciously ideological assumptions behind exposure was greater in towns because words like purity, identity, and unity. These Robert Basil is assistant editor of FREE human contacts were more various and con- words have not been hallowed by God or INQUIRY. taminated food and water affected large nature, as some propagandists for patriotism numbers." and imperialism would claim—they were

56 FREE INQUIRY invented by men and women; they are at- humanity's "old unity," but now, given over In Brief tached to economic and class interests; and, to the contingencies of modern life, they in a profound and sneaky way, they can have become hives of vulgarity. Students, Bertrand Russell On God and Religion, threaten the globe we live on. Roland he writes, are zombies. "As long as they edited by Al Seckel (Buffalo: Prometheus Barthes's recently translated Criticism and have the Walkman on, they cannot hear Books, 1986), 350 pp., paper, $12.95. Truth, originally conceived as a defense of what the great tradition has to say. And, his controversial book on Jean Racine, has after its prolonged use, when they take it Bertrand Russell On Ethics, Sex, and Mar- ended up being a marvelously charged and off, they find they are deaf." By "reading riage, edited by Al Seckel (Buffalo: Prome- witty dissection of these assumptions. Too Plato and Shakespeare," however, they could theus Books, 1987), 349 pp., paper, $14.95. often, says Barthes, we consider them to be find themselves "participating in essential the ground of humanistic culture, when being and forgetting their accidental lives." ertrand Russell's lucid, penetrating actually they "bear a kind of ideological For Barthes and McNeill, Bloom's con- Bwritings on religion, ethics, and social stamp. They plunge into that ambiguous cept of an "old unity" has been thoroughly institutions made him this century's best- area of culture where something unfailingly discredited. The academic disciplines, ac- known philosopher. Although Russell pub- political, though separate from the political cording to their view, should attend to the lished a large number of books, many of his choices of the day, infiltrates judgment and ways in which "human nature" has been richest essays have been hidden in pam- language." irrevocably remolded by technology, mass phlets, out-of-print periodicals, and hard- Before we can make astute and healthy culture, and the nuclear threat. Instead of to-find volumes. Now, Al Seckel—a noted political decisions, Barthes notes—before we ("encouraging students to forget these realities, authority on Russell and a historian of can even responsibly act—we must subject modern academia ought to be directed science—has rescued the best of these essays the very language we use to rigorous critical toward the improvement and enlightenment from obscurity and assembled them into two of the historically influenced "accidental engaging collections. As Seckel notes in his lives" Bloom dismisses so disdainfully. But "Allan Bloom cannot see how any elements lively introduction to On God and Religion, of contemporary culture can be embraced Bloom cannot see how any elements of con- "Bertrand Russell believed in reason, and by the thoughtful person. Our world is but temporary culture can be embraced by the he demanded that every proposed rule of an 'intellectual desert'—where feminism thoughtful person. Our world is but an "in- conduct pass the test of reason. The most strives pathetically to go against 'nature' tellectual desert"—where feminism strives intense human suffering, he thought, is due and rock-and-roll music excites Nazi-like pathetically to go against "nature" and to mankind's failures to adhere to rational frenzies among the young." rock-and-roll music excites Nazi-like frenzies principles." among the young. It is to Bloom's credit that he recognizes The Debates in the Federal Convention of inquiry, and, where necessary, "dethrone" his bias against open and tolerant debate. 1787 (2 vols.), reported by James Madison it. Words historians and critics employ to Nostalgic for bygone eras in which learning (Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1986), 670 pp., describe our culture always contain within and power rested unchallenged within the cloth, $59.99. them a political bias that "was born at a upper echelons of a stratified society, Bloom time when the upper classes hoped—in ac- writes: "Neither aristocrats nor priests, the This handsome two-volume set of James cordance with a well-known ideological natural bearers of high intellectual tradition, Madison's Debates is to be applauded in practice—to convert the particularity of exist in any meaningful sense in America. this year of the Constitution's bicentennial. their writing into a universal idiom" and to The greatest of thoughts were in our political Madison, the "father of the Constitution," persuade people that their logic was abso- principles but were never embodied, hence recorded with a precise pen the brilliant lute, "natural" logic. To Barthes, this is not living, in a class of men." That the arguments that were distilled into our great linguistic tyranny, and it marshals all its American Revolution fervently attacked this document of human government and free- power to strike dumb any thinking that notion of ecclesiastical and aristocratic dom. The voices of Alexander Hamilton, questions the status quo or addresses new "natural right" Bloom refuses to admit. Benjamin Franklin, Madison himself, and political and economic realities. The barbs There is no question that the banality many others come through with an immedi- of Barthes take on a Marxist poison: "This pervading so much higher education is acy that is startling. • universality, which is nothing but current alarming. Bloom's decision to return to the usage, is faked ... it is universality appro- works of the great classic humanists— priated by the class of property owners." Socrates, Aristotle, Shakespeare, Goethe— makes intellectual as well as emotional sense. SECULAR HUMANIST r, in this country, we might say that Yet the thinkers and writers from whom DECLARATION 0 the right to decide universality has Bloom seeks solace and instruction were been appropriated by some tenured profes- unhobbled by inaccurate visions of earlier Endorsed by 58 leaders of thought. Now sors. Allan Bloom, professor in the Commit- golden ages. Their times, like our own, were available in handsome booklet form. tee of Social Thought at the University of chaotic. But they responded by eagerly giv- $2.95 each (plus 75 cents for postage Chicago, has written The Closing of the ing shape to the chaos and presenting their and handling) American Mind, a sermon rich in value for world with new pictures of itself. Paralyzed readers of the books discussed above. by his disgust, the pictures Bloom's book Order in bulk: 10 or more copies at It has been a good while since I picked extols are antiquated and warped ones. He 40% discount (plus $3.00 for postage). up something so completely beholden to an no doubt hoped Closing would be a wide- ossified picture of the past. Professor ranging critique of modern life; it has S.H.D. Bloom's argument is simple: Our nation's amounted to little more than invective im- Box 5 Central Park Station universities used to be the stronghold of pelled by fright. Buffalo, N.Y. 14215

Summer 1987 57 (Letters, Coned from p. 3) Corliss Lamont writes that "Christian wine cheers God and man, John 2:9, where troversy about abortion may be inflamed humanist" is a contradiction of terms. I dis- Jesus converts water to wine, Matthew 11:19, by disagreements about sexuality, but its agree, and will go two steps further: A per- which identifies Jesus as a "winebibber," essence is a dispute about what constitutes son can be an agnostic, atheistic, or Chris- Ecclesiastes 9:7, which tells us to drink wine personhood and how we should adjudicate tian humanist. with a merry heart, 1 Timothy 5:23, which conflicting personal rights. (Those of us who The first term refers to knowledge. Since suggests that it's better to drink wine than don't believe that the fetus is a person must no one knows whether a god exists, all peo- water, and Matthew 26:29, which suggests still address the problem of disagreements ple are agnostic. The second term refers to that wine is consumed in Heaven. between the parents.) What's upsetting about belief. People who believe there is a god are The inclusion of the Song of Solomon "infidelity" isn't necessarily the sexual act theists. People who feel they have no basis in the Bible makes it hard to believe that but the act of deception. Is there any aspect for such a belief are atheists. biblical authors and compilers opposed of "sexual morality" that is not encompassed A Christian is one who follows the teach- pornography. If they had, they would of by broader ethical categories? ings of Christ. A virgin birth, the resurrec- course have been opposed to their own book. 3. We need to examine the implications tion, the second coming, a tripartite god, Reactionary Christians often claim that of the more radical statement that physical and other mythical baggage carried by the Matthew 5:28 is a statement against por- pleasure has moral value. Why not begin churches have nothing to do with the teach- nography, but Romans 13:14 clarifies that with the forthright assertion that sexual ings of Christ. it is the intention of seduction (not admira- pleasure is a positive good? Certainly sexual A humanist is ... well, you know what tion of the female form) that constitutes pleasure may be superseded by other phys- a humanist is. lustful thoughts for a Christian. One does ical goods (e.g., food and sleep); similarly A cult is a group that forms a religion not seduce pictures or prose. the search for sexual pleasure must be around a charismatic leader, has a great Now, I am not endorsing (or condemn- limited by a moral principle like the respect devotion to that leader, and may consider ing) any of the behaviors that the reactionary for the rights of others. But if we go farther, that person a god. Agnostic, atheistic, Chris- churches call un-Christian. My point is that if we hedge and imply that sexual activity tian humanists generally do not belong to these churches have created their own reli- must be justified by such high-flown goals these popular cults. gion, one antithetical to biblical teaching. as "enhancement of spiritual freedom," aren't Further evidence for this opinion is that we allowing ourselves to be victimized by a Wayne H. Davis some of the behaviors that actually are con- cultural history that connects "holiness" with Lexington, Ky. demned in the Bible are considered perfectly all manner of self-denial, e.g., fasting, sleep- acceptable by the reactionary churches. None less vigils, self-flagellation, seclusion from of these churches opposes the accumulation human society? We need a scholarly discus- Remedial Bible Instruction of wealth despite passages such as Matthew sion of this history; a philosophical reply to 19:23, Matthew 25:40-46, Luke 6:24, and the dualism that condemns physical pleasure In her excellent article "Anti-abortion and Luke 18:25, which claim that rich people as inferior, anthropological and philosoph- Religion" (FI, Winter 1986/87) Betty Mc- will not be admitted into heaven. Most ical insight into the consequences of a posi- Collister pointed out that the Bible in no reactionary churches have a liberal attitude tive valuation of physical pleasure. way condemns abortion. I would like to add toward remarriage after divorce despite the I can only hope—fervently!—that the that, with the exception of homosexuality biblical passages prohibiting it (Matt. 5:32 statements you'll publish in future issues will between males, the Bible does not condemn and Rom. 7:3). Biblical passages like Mat- address these vital questions. any of the other behaviors that the reac- thew 6:14-15, Matthew 7:9-12, Luke 6:27- tionary American churches have labeled 38, and Romans 12:10-21 instruct Christians Molleen Matsumura "un-Christian." to be kind to others, yet one sees little Berkeley, Calif. All of these churches oppose the use of evidence of kindness on the part of "Chris- narcotics, conveniently ignoring passages like tians" who pray for the deaths of judges More on Naturalistic Humanism Genesis 1:29 and Psalms 104:14, which state and homosexuals. that God gave man all the herbs (including Corliss Lamont defines his philosophy, in the narcotic ones), and Genesis 30:16 where Brian Stedjei part, as a "way of life that rejects all belief Jacob uses the narcotic mandrake for aphro- Modesto, Calif. in the supernatural" ("Naturalistic Human- disiac purposes. ism," FI, Winter 1986/87). In my view this Reactionary Baptists try to tell us that is a negative and ineffectual way to begin to communism is un-Christian despite the fact Atheism, Communism, and build a philosophy. What in the world can that chapter 2, verses 44, 45, and chapter 4, Humanism be wrong with inspirational meetings? Are verses 32, 34, 35, and 37, in the Book of Acts they somehow tainted by the supernatural? make it clear that communism—not capital- It is unfortunate that Howard Radest in his Are humanists so strong that they can't use ism—was the economic system of the article "Atheism Is Not Humanism: Reflec- a little inspiration? If humanism's main apostles. The Marxist motto, "From each tions on a Visit to the Soviet Union" (FI, thrust is to put down God and immortality, according to his ability, to each according Winter 1986/87) does not seem to compre- then humanists may be the center of atten- to his need," actually sounds as if it had hend the essential nature of Marxism and tion, but they will never develop the popu- been plagiarized from Acts 2:45. communism. I am an atheist and consider lar support needed to sell reason, democracy, Mormons, Seventh-day Adventists, Pen- myself a humanist, but also know that the and compassion. tecostals and Baptists consider alcohol use so-called scientific atheism of communism un-Christian despite passages like Psalms is just another fraudulent part of Marxist Robert O. Delzell 104:15, which states that wine makes man's totalitarianism. Mr. Radest does not realize Burlingame, Calif. heart glad, Judges 9:13, which claims that that communism (or Marxism, if you prefer)

58 FREE INQUIRY is an absolutist millennial religion. The naturalism are different is a logical absurdity. part/whole relationship, e.g., the (logical) major difference between it and Ayatollah "So the meanings carried by atheism are by class of atheists includes the (logical) class Khomeini's brand of Islam is that it is a no means the same as those carried by of communists; the (logical) class of atheists, secular religion; Allah (or God) is included naturalism. They do intersect in a common however, includes only some who belong to in one creed but not in the other. The term denial of an extranatural reality, but they the (logical) class of humanists. Hence, there secular religion comes from an essay, "The depart widely from each other after that," are some Xs who are members of three Case Against Religiosity," by Dr. Albert writes Radest. In fact, it is that very denial nonexclusive classes (e.g., atheist! comm- Ellis. As he states: "Devout secular religion- of extranatural realities that defines atheism unist/humanist), some Xs who are members ists are often much more interested in the —nothing more. of two of the three (e.g., atheist/humanist), propagation of absolutistic creeds (e.g., If Mr. Radest would like to see how a and some Xs who are members of only one Maoism) than they are in intimately relating truly atheist nation lives, then I suggest a of the three (e.g., atheist); further, if X is a to and collaboratively helping humans." This trip to New Zealand is in order. Religion is member of the (logical) class communist then should be a useful reminder for anyone just about extinct Down Under. X is a member of the (logical) class atheist, hearing the oxymoron "Marxist humanism." but the obverse does not follow, etc. "Mean- The so-called scientific atheism intro- Joe T. Penrod ings, "however, include connotations and not duced to Mr. Radest is just one little part of Phoenix, Ariz. just strict implications. Meanings are derived the Marxist creed. Just as some Christians from semantic, psychological, political, and recite a little creed of twelve or so parts, historical sources. Only mathematical lan- including, "I believe in one god, etc.," so the guages derive meaning solely from defini- It must have come as quite a surprise to Marxists have a similar part: "I believe in tions, axioms, postulates, and rules. My Howard B. Radest to discover that "atheism no god, etc." However, it is still part of an point, therefore, was that humanists are fall- is not humanism." Unfortunately, I fear that absolutistic totalitarian creed, violently op- ing into a fundamentalist trap by ignoring it has led him to the erroneous conclusion posed to freedom and humanism. Thus athe- the meanings of atheism and that militant that an "atheist" may not be a "humanist." ism, like other beneficial insights, can also "atheism" is its symptom. Exhibiting that Of couse, if one assumes, as Mr. Radest be used for evil ends. The atheism of most consequence is the Soviet experience .. . appears to, that atheism as it is practiced by Americans is of a different nature. Atheism hence the point of my article. the government of the Soviet Union is repre- is not even the heart of my beliefs or world- Naturalism is an ontological implication sentative of atheism in general, then it is not view. It is a natural result of my belief in of humanism. Hence, any claim of non- difficult to see how he arrives at that con- the scientific approach to life. All reality, natural existence (extra-natural, super- clusion. However, in so doing, he falls prey inner and outer, can be examined and ex- natural, supra-natural—all three have been to the same error that our fundamentalist plained in terms of itself, with no recourse around) contradicts humanist metaphysics. brethren make when they equate atheism However, there have been claims for a to any imagined supernatural deity or deities. with communism (i.e., "communism is an The atavistic and irrational beliefs in deities naturalistic deity (e.g., seventeenth- and atheistic philosophy; you are an atheist; eighteenth-century deists and rationalists) still with us are relics from the prescientific therefore, you must be a communist"). Mr. that, while unconvincing to me, cannot sim- era. Radest's logic is equally flawed when he ply be ruled out of court. Further, it is asserts: This is the way atheism operates in George Rowell simply not the case that "science" rules out the Soviet Union, You are an atheist. There- New York, N.Y. god or gods, although some well-established fore, this must be the way you want to scientific theories rule out some well- operate. established views of god, e.g., as in the Howard B. Radest doesn't know the first Atheism is simply disbelief in the exis- creation! evolution controversy. We really thing about atheism. In his article, we are tence of a supreme being. One may, of have to "talk" a lot more carefully than we informed that, "indeed, as I've tried to sug- course, be as dogmatic and doctrinaire about do. gest, [atheism] seems more comfortable with a disbelief as a belief, and I am well aware As to the epistemology of the matter, fundamentalism than with liberation. Athe- that there are atheists who approach the "atheism" is not simply a denial, in the light ism is not the same as naturalism either. It issue (god/ no god) with the same dogmatic of what we know, of extra-natural realities. is instead a narrowly drawn mirror-image certainty that they are so quick to condemn It carries—and historically has carried—the of its opponents. in religious fundamentalists. The Soviet Union is no more an atheist weight of a final conclusion without the possibility of appeal to further evidence. In nation than it is a union of "republics." The George A. Ricker that sense it is dogma. This is why perfectly Communist Party uses atheism as a cover Palm Bay, Fla. for its true agenda. It does not further un- respectable humanists have been wary of the belief and freethought. Instead it replaces term and why they have used agnosticism, God and religion with the Party itself as the Howard Radest replies: nontheism, and naturalism to describe the object of veneration and blind faith. To this position. end, the Party claims for itself the very Joe Penrod and Robert Ricker suggest that Humanists deny that moral responsibility attributes most believers impute to their I am illiterate about humanism, atheism, and can be assigned elsewhere. But there are gods: infallibility and omniscience. communism. Since ad hotninem remarks views of god or gods that leave the human As to the true nature of atheism, it is don't deserve reply, I won't. being morally free and morally responsible. simply a lack of belief. The fact that I do They both read selectively. For example, So atheism is not a necessary consequence not believe in any gods or a supernatural I did not conclude that an "atheist" may of humanist ethics, although rejection of realm makes me an atheist. This says abso- not be a "humanist," nor did I equate athe- gods that take the ethical burden away from lutely nothing about those affirmative beliefs ism with communism. Logically, your cor- human beings is. that I do hold. The claim that atheism and respondents don't seem to understand the Finally, we must be a bit less quick to

Summer 1987 59 confuse Marxism with Stalinism or identify name as well as an established doctrine. I No Accounting for Televangelists all socialism with the Soviet experience. always thought of people like. ourselves as There are many variations, e.g., Marxist freethinkers, or agnostics, atheists, deists, Apropos the recent articles in FREE INQUIRY humanism (which is not an "oxymoron') as humanists, or whatever label might fit such on faith-healing, readers might be interested developed by some Yugoslavian philosophers individuals as Mark Twain, Thomas Jeffer- to know that Pat Robertson revealed on his (Markovic, Stojanovic). The reference to son, James Madison, Robert Ingersoll, show that his wife was diagnosed as having "secular religion" and the Ellis article is less Clarence Darrow, Voltaire, Charles Darwin, breast cancer. In sharing this information than helpful since it ignores the complexity John Stuart Mill, and a host of others. Now with his audience, Robertson didn't seem to of Soviet thought and practice, e.g., Lenin the question becomes "What is the doctrine find it at all odd that this information came and Stalin were by no means identical with of all the individualists?" or "What are all not as a "word of knowledge" from God Krushchev, who in turn was rather different the nonconformists thinking today?" but as a result of a routine mammogram. from Gorbachev. It would seem a humanist A few years ago I began to notice that Equally odd is that, instead of asking for requirement to pay attention to history and people of strong religious persuasion were prayer for her recovery, Mrs. Robertson was not to use misleading oversimplifications. It railing against "secular humanism" as though rushed, post-haste, to a surgeon. is simply untrue, by the way, that "the Com- it were a doctrine established by the devil. I A related medical item is the right-wing munist Party uses atheism as a cover for its wondered whether they had made up the and religious position on AIDS. Religious true agenda. "In fact, a more Machiavellian terms secular humanist and secular human- fundamentalists often object to laws requir- strategy, e.g., in Poland, in the Middle East, ism, but now FREE INQUIRY and the Secular ing that children be inoculated against com- might opt for using "theism." Whatever my Humanist Declaration inform me differently. mon childhood diseases (measles, mumps, views of Soviet policy and communist Also, I now grasp what a nice target you etc.) as an undue infringement of their liber- authoritarianism, I'm convinced that Marx- folks have made of all us freethinkers. The ty. Now, however, many religious funda- ists are serious about their atheism and are religious cults are having a ball! mentalists and other right-wingers seem to not playing games with it. That, too, was It's not that I disagree (if that is still favor severe restrictions on the liberties of the point of my article. permitted) with more than a small part of AIDS victims—despite the fact that AIDS No doubt your correspondents will not the Declaration, or that I think it should be is far less contagious than childhood be happy with this reply. So be it. kept under cover, or that fifty-nine scholars diseases, and despite the fact that religious and writers should not have produced a fundamentalists, if they obey what they're statement upon which they as individuals told by their preachers, have virtually no Humanism's Strategy could agree. But why this "secular humanist" chance of developing AIDS. What a curious monicker? Even more startling, there is an bunch these fundamentalists are! The three new paths for humanism stated American Humanist Association that has a by Paul Kurtz (FI, Winter 1986/87), are "religious tax-exemption," against which Howard A. Karten positive and excellent. However, they prob- Paul Kurtz had the wit to object most Randolph, Mass. ably cannot overcome the craving most strongly. All the arguments in the world that Americans have for a supernatural Higher the AHA is not religious despite its religious Authority. As long as we have the clergy exemption are not going to dissuade its taking advantage of that craving, humanism critics. If we are, as some would profess, "our can capture the hearts of only a minority, Fortunately, however, it now turns out brothers' keepers," it follows then that ac- except in a few enlightened societies, such that humanists are not the only ones prone countability is implied. The religious "huck- as in the Netherlands. That is why it is to self-destruction. Jimmy Bakker had a fling sters" who collectively bilk viewers out of necessary to continue a relentless assault on with a saucy church secretary at about the billions annually are indeed unaccountable. organized religion. same time the secular humanists were draw- No statement of financial operations is The only way to influence the majority ing up the Declaration; more recently, Oral flashed across the screen, no accounting to of people today is through television, which Roberts and his wife had to physically sub- the flock of where the money goes. The precludes, however, any popular discussion due the Devil, who had sneaked into their faithful are entertained with deceitful reli- of religion on the basis of reason or logic. home; and Roberts's extravagance might gious chicanery and repetitive fallacious Although television is wed to the church, it cause his empire to collapse, which could logic. can still respond to controversy as "news." cause God to strike him dead even though Televangelism focuses on a serious flaw For example, there has been much talk he has raised the $8 million. in the First Amendment. Freedom to believe about religious "healers" in FREE INQUIRY, It will be interesting to see how all this is one thing, but freedom to commit fraud but who will take action by filing a lawsuit sorts out, and whether the religious extrem- is another. The men who drafted the Con- against a state medical board for refusing to ists and rip-off artists get shoved back into stitution did not intend or imply that this jail television preachers for practicing medi- that Pandora's box from which they were instrument was to become a license to cheat cine without a license? released during the administrations of born- the gullible faithful. Because the First again Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, Amendment has been interpreted to mean Wesley W. Wise who sent a Bible to the Ayatollah Khomeini, full vent to all religious endeavors, there is White Plains, N.Y. of all people. If that happens, and the secular blatant evidence to support the view that humanists can get themselves shaped up, we are on the road to modernized, updated some good old-fashioned free-thinking might sacral government. Tax-free monies are a This seems to be an epoch of shooting our- rise again from this hilarious circus. potent political tool. selves in the foot. First, there is the Secular Humanist Declaration of 1980, which gives James L. Busey Leonard A. Goymerac fifty-nine scholars and writers a unifying Manitou Springs, Colo. Redlands, Calif.

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61 Summer 1987 girl Bilhah "as a wife" to her husband, and two sons were born. Her sister, Leah, fol- IN THE NAME OF GOD lowed suit and gave her slave girl Zilpah "to Jacob as a wife, "and two sons were born of that surrogate wife. The Baby M affair might be accepted by society if seen as an arrangement with a Pandemonium Takes Over Biblical Precedents for Parents surrogate wife. It will probably never be accepted if seen as an arrangement for a the Prayer Room surrogate mother. A woman who sells the One of the earliest recorded cases of "surro- fruit of her womb can hardly be called a gate" parenting is in Genesis 16:1-16. Abra- VICTORIA, B. C.—All hell broke loose this surrogate mother. But a child by a surrogate ham's wife, Sarah, could bear no children. April in the British Columbia Legislature's wife has a longer tradition. (Robert F. So Sarah had the idea of a surrogate wife prayer room. Lyons, in a letter to the New York Times) There were dueling prayers. People spoke to get a child. "Sarah took Hagar, her in tongues. Some people sang hymns. Others Egyptian slave girl, and gave her to Abra- chanted mantras. ham as his wife." Moral Education The prayer room was established by a Abraham went to Hagar, and she con- group of fundamentalist, evangelical Chris- ceived a son. At that point, Sarah treated Robert Billings, the headmaster of Riverdale tians called Prayer Canada to pray for mem- the surrogate wife so badly that Hagar ran Baptist School in upper Marboro, Maryland, bers of the Legislature. away. But Yahweh intervened and assured and formerly the executive director of the Moral Majority and a top official in the But the room also was occupied by non- her she would have a son with descendants Christians, including Moslems, pagans, and too numerous to be counted. U.S. Department of Education, received a doctoral degree from a Tennessee school that a Sufi—a member of an Islamic sect whose Abraham was eighty six when his surro- was later closed for failing to meet minimum goal is communion with God through con- gate wife bore him Ishmael. Sarah later bore state educational criteria. He says that he templation and ecstasy. a son with Abraham named Isaac. The sur- chose the school because he wanted a doc- "What are these people doing here?" one rogate wife and her son, Ishmael, were torate and its program was "convenient" older woman asked her friend. "We just came driven out again, and he made his home as that he write a 50,000-word dissertation. He here to pray," she told reporters as she "a wild-ass of a man" in the wilderness. visited the school once, on graduation day. peered into the room. Rachel made the same surrogate arrange- "In hindsight, I would go a different route" A woman who gave her name as Tara ment so that she and Jacob could have for a degree, he says. (Wall Street Journal) said she was from the Holly and Oak pagan children (Genesis 30:1-13). She gave her slave group. Kate Sandilands said she is a witch who believes "divinity is in everything." Prayer Canada's Ray Jansen tried to wrest control from the others when he arrived telling the group that because the room is in the Legislature, prayers could be offered only to "our Lord, Jesus Christ." Fundamentalist A woman who identified herself only as Epidemiology: This bright-red-lettered sign, Brenda and said she "came with Jesus" of- which can be spotted on fered a prayer, but then stepped in to try to Interstate 12 in southern stop another woman from praying. Louisiana, proclaims "I'm in charge here," said Jansen. "AIDS ... JUDGMENT HAS COME!" The sign "God is in charge here, "the unidentified was erected by Loretta woman replied. Boswell, who, in a letter "You're under the jurisdiction of the to the St. Tammany province of British Columbia," Jansen said. News-Banner, wrote: "Sin is bringing down "I'm under the jurisdiction of God," she God's righteous replied. judgment, and my sign is Suddenly some women started chanting a plea to all people to —"praying without words" was what Yvonne repent of their sins. I Owens called it. know how deep in sin I was, and Jesus, in love "The prayer room is closed, "said Jansen. and mercy, totally "I call it closed," he said above the shouts forgave me. I am urging of others. others to repent and be A security guard arrived and watched saved." helplessly as arguments raged and others prayed above the din. Jansen eventually dropped to his knees and buried his head in hands until the meeting ended.... (AP)

62 FREE INQUIRY The Academy of Humanism The Academy of Humanism was established to recognize distinguished humanists and disseminate humanistic ideals and beliefs. The members of the Academy, listed below, are nontheists who are (1) devoted to free inquiry in all fields of human endeavor, (2) committed to a scientific outlook and the use of the scientific method in acquiring knowledge, and (3) upholders of humanist ethical values and principles. The Academy's goals include furthering respect for human rights and freedom and the dignity of the individual, tolerance of various viewpoints and willingness to compromise, commitment to social justice, a universalistic perspective that transcends national, ethnic, religious, sexual, and racial barriers, and belief in a free and open pluralistic and democratic society. Humanist Laureates: Isaac Asimov, author; Sir Alfred J. Ayer, fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford University; Brand Blanshard, Sterling Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, Yale University; Sir Hermann Bondi, professor of applied mathematics, King's College, University of London; Bonnie Bullough, dean of nursing, State University of New York at Buffalo; Mario Bunge, Frothingham Professor of Foundations and Philosophy of Science, McGill University; Bernard Crick, professor of politics, Birkbeck College, University of London; Francis Crick, Nobel Laureate in Physiology, Salk Institute; Joseph Delgado, professor and chairperson in the Department of Neuropsychiatry, University of Madrid; Milovan Djilas, author, former vice-president of Yugoslavia; Jean Dommanget, director of the Royal Observatory of Belgium; Sir Raymond Firth, professor emeritus of anthropology, University of London; Joseph Fletcher, theologian, professor emeritus of medical ethics, University of Virginia Medical School; Yves Galifret, professor of physiology at the Sorbonne and director of l'Union Rationaliste; John Galtung, professor of sociology, University of 0slo; Stephen Jay Gould, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University; Adolf Grünbaum, professor of philosophy, University of Pittsburgh; Alberto Hidalgo, president of the Sociedad Asturian de Filosofía, 0viedo, Spain; Donald Johanson, Institute of Human Jo 0rigins; Lawrence Kohlberg, professor of psychology, Harvard University; Franco Lombardi, professor of philosophy, University of Rome; li Lombardi, organizer of the New University (laic) for the Third Age; André Lwolf, Nobel Laureate in Physiology and professor of science, College de France; Paul MacCready, Kremer Prize winner for aeronautical achievements; John Passmore, professor of philosophy, Australian National University; Jean-Claude Pecker, professor of astrophysics, College de France, Academie des Sciences; Wardell Baxter Pomeroy, psychotherapist and author; Sir Karl Popper, professor emeritus of logic and scientific method, University of London; W. V. Quine, professor of philosophy, Harvard University; Max Rood, professor of law and former Minister of Justice in Holland; Carl Sagan, astronomer, Cornell University; Andrei Sakharov, physicist, Nobel Peace Prize winner; Svetozar Stojanovic, professor of philosophy, University of Belgrade; Thomas Szasz, professor of psychiatry, State University of New York Medical School (Syracuse); V. M. Tarkunde, chairman, Indian Radical Humanist Association; Richard Taylor, professor of philosophy, Union College; G. A. Wells, professor of German, Birkbeck College, University of London; Edward O. Wilson, professor of sociobiology, Harvard University; Lady Barbara Wootton, former Deputy Speaker, House of Lords. Deceased: George O. Abell, Ernest Nagel, George Olincy, Chaim Perelman. Secretariat: Vern Bullough, dean of natural and social sciences, State University of New York College at Buffalo; Antony Flew, professor of philosophy, Reading University (England); Sidney Hook, professor emeritus of philosophy, New York University; Paul Kurtz, professor of philosophy, State University of New York at Buffalo, editor of FREE INQUIRY; Gerald Larue, professor emeritus of archaeology and biblical studies, University of Southern California at Los Angeles. Executive Director: Steven L. Mitchell. Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion (CSER) The Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion was developed to examine the claims of Eastern and Western religions and of well- established and newer sects and denominations in the light of scientific inquiry. The Committee is interdisciplinary, including specialists in biblical scholarship, archaeology, linguistics, anthropology, the social sciences, and philosophy who represent differing secular and religious traditions. Committee members are dedicated to impartial scholarship and the use of objective methods of inquiry. John Allegro, Gerald Larue (Chairman), professor emeritus of archaeology and biblical studies, University of Southern California at Los Angeles; former lecturer in Near Eastern and 0ld Testament Studies, University of Manchester (England); Robert S. Alley, professor of humanities, University of Richmond; Michael Arnheim, professor of ancient history, University of Witwatersrand (South Africa); Joseph Barnhart, professor of philosophy, North Texas State University; Paul Beattie, president, Fellowship of Religious Humanists; H. James Birx, chairman of Anthropology/ Sociology Department, Canisius College; Vern Bullough, dean of natural and social sciences, State University of New York College at Buffalo; Joseph Fletcher, theologian, professor emeritus of medical ethics, University of Virginia Medical School; Antony Flew, professor of philosophy, Reading University (England); Van Harvey, professor of religion, Stanford University; Sidney Hook, professor emeritus of philosophy, New York University; Paul Kurtz, professor of philosophy, State University of New York at Buffalo; William V. Mayer, director, Biological Sciences Curriculum Study, University of Colorado; Delos McKown, professor of philosophy, Auburn University; Lee Nisbet, associate professor of philosophy, Medaille College; George Smith, president, Signature Books; A. T. Steegman, professor of anthropology, State University of New York at Buffalo; G. A. Wells, professor of German, Birkbeck College, University of London (England); Steven L. Mitchell (ex officio). Biblical Criticism Research Project (CSER Subcommittee) The Biblical Criticism Research Project (Subcommittee) was founded to help disseminate the results of biblical scholarship—studies in comparative religion, folklore, scientific archaeology, and literary analysis. It investigates the claim that the Bible is divinely inspired; the historical evidence for Jesus and other Bible personalities; the role of religious myth, symbol, and ritual; and the possibility of basing morality upon reason and experience instead of biblical doctrine. The Research Project's goals include compiling bibliographies of the best sources of information about the Bible, publishing articles and monographs about different facets of biblical research, and convening seminars and conferences. R. Joseph Hoffmann (Chairman), Department of Philosophy and Religion, Hartwick College; David Noel Freedman, professor of 0ld Testament, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor; Randel Helms, professor of English, Arizona State University; Robert Joly, professor of philosophy, Centre Interdisciplinaire d'Etudes Philosophiques de l'Universite de Mons (Belgium); Carol Meyers, professor of religion, Duke University; James Robinson, director, Institute for Antiquity and Christianity, Claremont College; John F. Priest, professor and chairman, Department of Religion, Florida State University; Morton Smith, professor of history, Columbia University. Faith-Healing Investigation Project (CSER Subcommittee) Luis W. Alvarez, professor David Alexander, Southern California Skeptics; Robert S. Alley, professor of humanities, University of Richmond; emeritus of physics, University of California; Stephen Barrett, M.D., consumer health advocate; Dr. Bonnie Bullough, R.N. dean, School of Nursing, SUNY at Buffalo; Dr. Joseph Fletcher, professor emeritus of medical ethics, Univerity of Virginia Medical School; William Jarvis, chairman, Department of Public Health Science, School of Allied Health Professionals, Loma Linda University, California; Richard H. Lange, M.D., chief of nuclear medicine, Schenectady, N.Y.; Gary Posner, M.D., St. Petersburg, Florida; Wallace I. Sampson, M.D., Stanford University; Dr. AI Seckel, Executive Director, Southern California Skeptics; Robert Steiner, Chairman, Occult Committee, Society of American Magicians; Rita Swan, President, Children's Health Care Is a Legal Duty, Sioux City, Iowa. Coordinating Council: Joseph Barnhart, Paul Kurtz, Gerald Larue, and James Randi, conjurer and principal investigator of the Project. The Affirmations of Humanism: A Statement of Principles and Values

• We are committed to the application of reason and science to the understanding of the uniVerse and to the solving of human problems. • We deplore efforts to denigrate human intelligence, to seek to explain the world in supernatural terms, and to look outside nature for salvation. • We believe that scientific discovery and technology can contribute to the betterment of human life. • We believe in an open and pluralistic society and that democracy is the best guarantee of protecting human rights from authoritarian elites and repressive majorities. • We are committed to the principle of the separation of church and state. • We cultivate the arts of negotiation and compromise as a means of resolving differences and achieving mutual understanding. • We are concerned with securing justice and fairness in society and with eliminating dis- crimination and intolerance. • We believe in supporting the disadVantaged and the handicapped so that they will be able to help themselves. • We attempt to transcend divisive parochial loyalties based on race, religion, nationality, creed, class, or ethnicity, and strive to work together for the common good of humanity. • We want to protect and enhance the earth, to preserve it for future generations, and to avoid inflicting needless suffering on other species. • We believe in enjoying life here and now and in developing our creative talents to their fullest. • We believe in the cultivation of moral excellence. • We respect the right to privacy. Mature adults should be allowed to fulfill their aspirations, to express their sexual preferences, to exercise reproductive freedom, to haVe access to comprehensive and informed health-care, and to die with dignity. • We believe in the common moral decencies: altruism, integrity, honesty, truthfulness, responsibility. Humanist ethics is amenable to critical, rational guidance. There are normative standards that we discover together. Moral principles are tested by their consequences. • We are deeply concerned with the moral education of our children. We want to nourish reason and compassion. • We are engaged by the arts no less than by the sciences. • We are citizens of the universe and are excited by discoveries still to be made in the cosmos. • We are skeptical of untested claims to knowledge, and we are open to noVel ideas and seek new departures in our thinking. • We affirm humanism as a realistic alternative to theologies of despair and ideologies of violence and as a source of rich personal significance and genuine satisfaction in the service to others. • We believe in optimism rather than pessimism, hope rather than despair, learning in the place of dogma, truth instead of ignorance, joy rather than guilt or sin, tolerance in the place of fear, love instead of hatred, compassion oVer selfishness, beauty instead of ugliness, and reason rather than blind faith or irrationality. • We believe in the fullest realization of the best and noblest that we are capable of as human beings.