The Book of Mormon recently swept the Tony Awards. Rumor has it that Mitt Romney, the famously Mormon presidential candidate (Jon Huntsman is one too, but less identifiably so), might even attend. But I confess I enjoyed it mostly because at its core, it was a good old-fashioned musical.
In fact, I'm not quite sure if it was a show about religion or a show about musicals themselves. Though we laugh at its songs, The Book of Mormon's "Turn it Off," which tells us to be positive and oblivious, in fact highlights the attitude expressed in songs like The King and I's timeless "Whistle a Happy Tune, " which says that "You may be as brave as you make believe you are."
This uplifting attitude is of course a key feature of religious experience as well. Although the romp purports to be about Mormonism, its most striking revelation is perhaps about how much organized religion and musicals share.
The tremendous energy and commitment of the cast illuminated the connection for me. When leaving the theater, it seemed that everyone in the audience was praising the performers for appearing to truly believe in what they said and sang, never winking or sneering at the material. Both religions and musicals work best with energetic and committed believers. Cynicism or detachment would have destroyed the magic -- something true of religion too.
A musical, like most religions, provides the audience or followers with a sense of belonging. Religious services, on the other hand, with their staged performances, invigorating songs, popular wisdom and shared experience, are almost a form of community theater.
In debates about the role of religion (or amateur theater), it might help to recognize that one major attraction of religion is community. For this, many will adhere to beliefs even in the face of contradictory (or missing) evidence. Organized religion and musicals present tenets to live by that don't entirely make sense but, on the whole, make people who believe them secure, thus giving an appearance of inclusiveness.
There is at least one difference, however. Although The Book of Mormon dismisses contradictions in its religions by attributing their meaning to metaphor -- which works fine for musicals -- religion has a greater challenge. The text of the actual Book of Mormon certainly has some story aspects that sound farfetched, yet which believers may well take literally. And in "debates" over, say, intelligent design, we hear from people who take the word of the Bible so literally as to infringe on what science tells us.
People who dismiss science in favor of religion sometimes confuse the challenge of rigorously understanding the world with a deliberate intellectual exclusion that leads them to mistrust scientists and, to their detriment, what they discover. Yet oddly enough, this exclusion of nonbelievers is more manifest in religions, such as Mormonism, that promise only the faithful a desired fate.
But there is a problem even for those who don't follow the literal word of scripture. Even the many religious believers who are more liberal in their faith nevertheless trust in a deity or spiritual entity that influences the world and our behavior in ways that extend beyond the domain of science.
Science, on the other hand, attributes such phenomena exclusively to the workings of the universe or our biological makeup. It relies on the assumption that material elements influence each other through physical forces that leave physical imprints that we can try to measure. Yes, measurements can be challenging. But there is no evidence yet that this doesn't work.
Conversely, religious thinking usually involves an unmeasurable supernatural foundation. Another distinction is that religious practices tend to involve a great deal of food.
Nonetheless, the differences notwithstanding, the The Book of Mormon can help us reflect on the relationship between musicals and religion as well as on musicals themselves. And while the show might have been only a little about Mormonism, as a work that reflects on musicals and the features they share with religion, it's an unqualified success.
This post has been revised from its original version.
Ravenna Michalsen: Songs About the Buddha-to-Be (AUDIO)
Nicole Neroulias: Why Muslims Should Take a Page From The Book of Mormon
Cathleen Falsani: At Church of Beethoven, Music is the Message
Derek Flood: Why Faith Is a Story, Not Doctrine
Hey, you're right! Musical theater is just like religion.
In her justifiable attempt to play a safe hand, your contributor ignores the most basic difference
between the hypotheses of Science and Religion - their respective vulnerablities to the potential
of randomness -
Consider "a loaf of bread on a table"
Potentially, that loaf could; (A) have been 1 gram heavier / lighter, (B) been placed on the table
1 second earlier / later, (C) been 1mm further from / closer to that table's nearest edge - whilst
in all those cases still remaining consistent with description "a loaf of bread on a table"
And here, having observed the factual "loaf on the table" and reflected upon the randomness of parameters (A), (B) and (C) Science would just shrug "So what...? Randomness of (A), (B) and
(C) isn't in conflict with any of our laws"
Now suppose that Religion claims "a loaf of bread on a table" has been "created out of nothing"
through an (allegedly) supernatural Act. Will the potential for randomness amongst parameters
(A), (B) and (C) diminish as a result of that claim? No, it can't.
Hence, would not the (supposed) Act of choosing one FACTUAL set of random parameters (A),
(B) and (C) from POTENTIALLY innumerable sets of random parameters - all of which produce
the same oucome, be in conflict with the essence of Religion?
Sincerely,
Mark Gendala
Melbourne, Australia
www.ssotu.com
(C) from
Look, having been advancing my argument - with spectacular lack of success I
must admit - for some 18 years now, I've become quite familiar with all possible
rebuttals...
For what it's worth, your rebuttal relies on the standard creationist Clockmaker Argument I've already dealt with a thousand times -
This goes a follows... "If you find a Clock on the Beach, you must conclude this Clock couldn't have existed without a Clockmaker first making it. Etc.. etc... "
My response? "If you find a Clock on the Beach - examine its material structure then ask yourself -
1. Given that the Clock's working mechanism is based on numerical parameters
you're now seeing before your eyes - would that mechanism work differently if its parameters were say, 1/1000th of a millimeter "lager" or "smaller"?
2. Since the Clock's mechanism would clearly have worked in the same manner
within such POTENTIAL "larger / smaller" parameters, aren't the parameters you now see before your eyes the outcomes of a RANDOM CHOICE?"
So, we're back to square #1 - a Clock on the Beach could only have been made
to CHANCE measurements... Is your (alleged) God acting by CHANCE?
Bests Regards,
Mark
How could the clock on the beach be made to chance measurements if the parts all work properly together and are sized to work together as they are intended. Even if all the parts of a clock (hands, timing mechanism, face, etc.) randomly grew on the beach, they would have developed in different sizes (because of statistical improbability of them being sized perfectly). I'm still not sure I understand your point, however, I'm still blown away by the massive improbability of beautifully operating systems randomly finding their way together, and that happening over and over in each creature, and for all the different creatures on this earth. Even w/ the billions of years that are supposedly involved it is unbelievably likely that even one would develop randomly, let alone thousands of amazingly designed living creatures.
But before we go skipping down the path and thinking that religion is as happy and harmless as a musical, we must remember the huge and disturbing difference between the two. People don't bring musicals into the voting booth.
You might think I'm being hyperbolic when I say that humanity is in a fight for survival, but history is littered with seemingly invincible civilizations that collapsed and disappeared after they consumed all of their basic resources, most notably by irrigating their farmland until it crusted over with salt.
Our technology is horrendously deceiving. Capitalist-driven technology is so spectacularly effective at extracting resources that it presents the illusion that the resources are limitless. But make no mistake - technology only extracts, processes and distributes resources, it does not create new resources out of nothing (marginally debatable with nuclear). Religious belief in the divine creation of resources is deadly-dangerous gasoline being poured onto humanity's suicidal collision course with limited resources. We are past peak oil, past peak gold, ocean fisheries are in steep decline and farmland is crusting over with salt. Meanwhile the profiteers from this delusional and suicidal notion of infinite growth on a finite planet are busy as bees - funding attacks on the science that reveals these issues.
Religion must be stopped at all cost. You might respond with apologies for the less-fundamental flavors of christianity, but these less barbaric forms invariable provide cover for the fundamentalists.
My view toward religion mirrors that of H.L. Mencken who once wrote: "I have nothing against religion, as long as it is honest."
When it enters the realm of existing purely for tax write-off purposes and taking advantage of the unwashed by plastering 1-800 numbers on religious TV channels to take every last dime from them that the Wall Streeters neglected to confiscate . . . then I draw the line.
Otherwise they would lose many paying customers to the supposed better after life.
The only intelligent design is by those who use religion to line their pockets.
Maybe debates wouldn't be "debates" if you engaged in them.
This is only one of dozens of very very basic and elemental concepts of natural selection that you won't hear about in your church, but they are step one in ecology 101.
Science conferences are fully open to the public, anyone with reproducible evidence and valid methods can contribute to science. If you think a scientific precept is wrong, find the evidence and change it. The process couldn't be more open and transparent. There are millions of acres of public lands with fossils and rocks. If you can even find ONE that doesn't fit the pattern of gradual evolution you will be instantly famous in the scientific community.
But evidence is not what you seek, you instead begin with your desperate need to believe the christian fairy tales, and then you latch onto these ridiculous talking points and propaganda. Again, science is an entirely open process. It's not about belief, it's about finding and documenting the evidence.
Davidson et al. 2003, "450 million years of hemostasis," Journal of Thrombosis and Haemostasis
http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/postmonth/feb97.html
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12482404?dopt=Abstract
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12624623?dopt=Abstract
http://www.millerandlevine.com/km/evol/DI/Clotting.html
http://www.jstor.org/pss/188646
"I would also like to see how the assumption is made for benign mutations when the ones we see in reality are almost always destructive."
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=positive-selection-mutations-human-evolution
"Also, I'd love to see an explanation of why we don't see lots of semi-complete processes in animals that are waiting to get all the parts to be useful."
(historical/fossil record) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_transitional_fossils
(current, placenta development in skinks and transitional cecal valves) http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jmor.10877/abstract;jsessionid=B7666761E2EBEC658C4B47DD712EB3C0.d02t01
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/04/080421-lizard-evolution.html
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1095-8312.2001.tb01382.x/abstract
The difference between ID and evolutionary *science* is that, in one field, papers are peer reviewed and tested against other research having to meet standards of methodology and accuracy (HINT: it's not ID).
1st-Critique of Behe, trying to blind us w/ how smart he is using big words i.e. homology when similarity would work just as well. Then you get to the end and you realize that after the insults he still didn't answer the questions that Behe has raised. Nice.
2nd-- Not a valid link
3rd-- Short article that notes the similarities in the clotting sequences of different species (ummm... they do the same thing) but in the end doesn't show how the clotting cascade in one species happpened to have working parts in it replaced with (out of the millions of proteins, etc. that could have replaced them) a perfect replacement parts that work better for the the species they are now in; no transitional forms from one irreducibly complex system to the next. Also, an article using "may have benefitted" and "support the possibility" not exactly a smoking gun.
6th-- The title of the article is "Accentuating the Positive: Researchers Closer to Pinpointing Beneficial Evolutionary Mutations in the Human Genome" and that's the point of the article-- not yet, but scientist believe that soon they will find the beneficial mutations. Based, of course on what they think they are even though scientists don't know what everything in the genetic sequence actually does. OK, your point is?
Keep your faith, buddy! Your faith in science will help you last through the decades of no evidence.
and you have a problem with mormons?
Religious fervor knows no bounds.
For many years I considered myself an Atheist. About 8 years ago that started to change. I tried for a long time to see myself as a Christian. It never fit. I then found this site on Deism. I'm not trying to convert you. I will never care what you believe. As American we are all free to believe as we wish. The great thing about Deism, there is no attempt to convert you. We gain nothing if you change your belief, we lose nothing if you don't. In fact we don't care one way or the other.
http://www.deism.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oppHeMlaLVM
their beliefs ?????...ooohh noooo !!!!!!
This statement is totally wrong when applied to Mormons. I have heard many other sects state that only believers will go to heaven. This is not the case with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. In fact we commend those of other faiths or no faith who do good in the world.
What would you think of that
Nice to see you branching out Ms. Randall. It's plainly evident you have skills as a critic, too. Now about the Higgs bosons and Kaluza-Klein particles. . .