In the eccentric 1950 hit film Harvey, Jimmy Stewart plays an affable drunk named Elwood whose best friend and boon companion is a six-foot-three invisible rabbit. Naturally enough, people thought he was nuts.
Today, if only Elwood would call his invisible friend Yaweh he could get elected to Congress. Why? Not just because Americans are religious. We've always been that. In the past, however, we generally stuck by the maxim "God helps those who help themselves."
Today, however, encouraged by promise-the-world preachers, we Americans seem increasingly ready to leave our civic duties and personal responsibilities in God's hands. Joel Osteen actually goes so far as to compare God to a GPS system, constantly recalibrating and rerouting our lives as we go astray. That would merely make for a bad metaphor -- if people took it that way. But the evidence shows that all too many of us are happy to give it up to the Big Guy.
Reviewing the results of two national surveys, Scott Schieman, a sociology professor at the University of Toronto, found that more than two-thirds of Americans believe that God is personally involved in their lives.
Now, in one sense, that might not be troubling. As I've written before, if you regard God as the personification of love or hope, that's cool. But the same survey data imply that 71 percent of Americans believe that whatever happens to them is just part of God's plan. That's not cool. That's fatalism. And fatalism can be deadly!
Democracy depends on capable adults ready to shoulder responsibility for the public weal. When at the end of long and arduous constitutional negotiations, Benjamin Franklin stepped out of Independence Hall, a local woman asked him, "Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?" Franklin responded, "A republic, if you can keep it."
Can we? Not if we shun reality in favor of reality shows. Not if we let magical beliefs dominate reason. Not if we elect politicians based on how they interpret God's will.
Could it be that reality is so hard that we have to give up any responsibility for it ? Surely not. For all our difficulties, we have it better than any generation before us. This downturn may be tough, but it's a Sunday picnic compared with the Great Depression. The War on Terror may be vicious, but it's peanuts compared with the Cold War and its spinoffs. AIDS may be awful, but it's nowhere near as devastating as the tuberculosis epidemic was, not to mention smallpox. Why, then, are we so unwilling to grow up and accept the burden of responsibility?
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What does the Bible say about gay marriage / same sex marriage?
Yes, it can. However, do you have evidence to support your charge that Americans, inspired by religion (or, specifically, their view of God), are behaving in a dangerously fatalistic fashion? Beyond what the survey data implies to you? That's the difference between making a case and imagining one.
Ditto for letting "magical beliefs dominate reason." We only have your word that this is happening, and for the reasons you believe the survey implies. Not very scientific.
In his books about "ancient astronauts" and such, Erich von Daniken used the deceptive technique of speculating about something (e.g., Could aliens have aided in the building of the pyramids?), and then proceeding as if the question had been answered. Much like you're doing.
All the same, people who make claims should back them up. I'm no exception. In the first place, then, I refer you back to the Schieman study I discussed. Its finding that two-thirds of Americans believe God is personally involved in their lives is prima facie evidence of magical belief dominating reason. In the second place, there is, as I cited above, the growing reliance of GOP elected officials on divine soothsaying in place of rational policymaking. Polls and election results suggest that they are rewarded for doing this.
It's not just about religion, of course. As I've written in other columns, there is the growing escapist fantasy that global warming is not real, or if real it is not our problem but just some natural event that will sort itself out. See, for example, http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/25/pew-poll-global-warming-dead-last-down-from-last-year/.
If you need more evidence of the rising tide of superstition, paranoia, and blather in our society, you can't do better than to lift a rock and look at the Census refusers:
http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message510912/pg2
I hope this helps.
-- Clay
The more people feel things are out of their control, the more they will tend toward superstition. This is true of magic ritual, lucky charms in sports, and the poor buying lotto tickets.
"self-help" philosophy feeds off of this, getting people who feel they've lost control to buy into mind-over-matter approaches while spending good money on empty words. There's also the "prosperity faith", which gets poor people to send money under a promise that God will give more. Con-artists prey on the poor. Politicians use fear of outsider enemies to distract them from the barriers they actually face. But it all starts with a loss of control.
I think it's wrong to suggest the opposite, as the author seems to: that these preachers are the ones who cause this loss of control. They capitalize on it, in reality.
The fact is that people live in fear because they see no rational way out of their situation.
If you are talking about the ability of many faithful to deny the plights of the poor (or say it is justice) and deny the environmental threats to our existence... even that I wouldn't root in faith. That is rationalization, pure and simple.
Of course the low locus of control amongst the poor makes them willing ears for these rationalizations.
The rationalizations of the rich and the superstition of the poor... deadly combination.
Also egotistical is the idea that your "soul" literally lives on after you die.
and taking responsibility for your actions....I too believe in that big
old Invisible Rabbit.
Also, I am utterly befuddled by non-theists who claim that we religious folk "need" God (ie: imaginary friend in the sky) in the way you describe. I do believe that we need God as the divine spirit present in all living things (and no that's not really a Christian position: Surprise! we're not all as dogmatic as Jerry Falwell). However, this is not the same need you describe; a need for a determinative, watchful, and paternalistic figure. I would be very grateful if you would elaborate on why so many non-theists are under the impression that theists have this sort of dependence on God.
Exactly. But I suspect this is a matter of wrapping data around a presumption vice thinking critically about that data. Surveys are often accessories to such irrationality. It's too bad.