Pimp My Apologetic
1 December 2006 by Raindogzilla
I may have my atheist card- similar to a ghetto pass but without the street cred and/or the bling, revoked for this but…
I was watching Charlie Rose last night- usually just as noise in the background and, without cable, the only alternative to the circus that passes for local news around here. Morgan Freeman’s on. He’s very cool, interesting, whatever. Then, Charlie introduces Gary Wills as a Northwestern University professor, an historian, and, I interpreted, based on a short list of his published works, a christian apologist.
I must confess, I groaned and was about to either change the channel or just turn the thing off, but I was, fortunately, a little slow in acting.
Gary’s out promoting his new book, What Paul Meant(a review by Richard Wightman Fox at Slate). I haven’t yet read the book but I’ll summarize some of the nuggets that Gary revealed in the interview(you can jump it forward from the Morgan Freeman part);
First, the Saul/Paul thing wasn’t the result of a conversion but, rather, the convention of the day for Jews to have one Jewish name and one Pagan(Roman)- just as Peter was also Cephas or Simon bar Jonah.
Second, the whole Damascus Road, flash of light thingie? Not so much. Paul was a Jew, a Pharisee, who came, over time- and a supposed viewing of the risen christ, to embrace Jesus as the Jewish Messiah. The conversion scene was dreamed up by whoever authored the “Gospel of Luke” and “Acts of the Apostles”, written long after Paul’s death.
Third, the accusations of anti-semitism leveled at him by Augustine and Martin Luther- for example, are patently ridiculous because Paul wasn’t out to win folks to christianity but to convince his fellow Jews that Jesus was the one they’d been waiting for. Paul was born and died a Jew
Fourth, and I don’t have the specifics here, Paul actually wrote only seven of the thirteen letters attributed to him. The misogynistic claptrap occurs only in the six(eg., Timothy) he didn’t write.
Fifth, apparently, Paul not only referred to his female co-missionaries in the same manner he did his male colleagues, he stated that women could participate in- and prophesy at, religious gatherings. He recognized Junia as an apostle as well- though her name would come to be corrupted to “Junias” and she would be identified as male(Wills deals with the controversy concerning the masculine gender of the Greek in the texts where she appears by reminding us that there is no mention of a male “Junias” anywhere else in contemporaneous writings- i.e., Junias wasn’t a Roman name at all).
Sixth, in his only reference to homosexuality, Paul is in the midst of refereeing a dispute between Jewish and Gentile followers of Jesus and he’s making the technical point that neither side is without sin- like “You all(to the Gentiles) didn’t stone the prophets but you slept with other men and you all(to the Jews) didn’t sleep with other men but you stoned the prophets”. He’s using homosexuality as an example here(Corinthians) because it’s against Jewish Law. And why is it against Jewish Law? Because it breaks the Holiness Code- you know, no meat mixed with dairy, no different fibres woven into cloth, no two seeds in one field, no two men together sexually(where one- remember this is three thousand year old thinking, is playing the role of a woman). The breaking of that code results in one being unclean.
Here’s the kicker; both Jesus and Paul declared those antiquated Holiness Codes no longer relevant- Jesus, himself, said that we were not made unclean by what we touch or consume but, rather, by what was in our hearts and what came out of our mouths. In simpler terms, for Dani and Frank, you lose- even on a scriptural basis, the justification for your bigotry. As a matter of fact, to Jesus- and Paul, the whole of the Law and the Prophets was to “Love god with your entire being and to love your neighbor as yourself” period. No more, no less. I’ll settle for one out of two.
Finally, Wills is still a Jesus apologist- if not one for the church itself, claiming as his evidence that Paul and 500 others supposedly saw the risen Jesus, so it must be true, and that we can’t scientifically prove he didn’t rise- remember extraordinary claims/proof? Obviously, he doesn’t have all his rational ducks in a row. But he believes that reason must play a part in faith and that’s a step in the right direction. He’s anti-Bush, pro-choice, pro-embryonic stemcell, pro-homosexual, pretty much anathema to the Dani’s and the Robert O’Brien’s of the world. And I can live with that.
1 December 2006, on 2:28 pm
Ooooh! This is so goooood! This Garry Wills fellow sounds like what Christians should be like today. At least I could tolerate their political objectives.
I bet there’s a good deal of Christians who are like Wills. They’re quiet, sitting somewhere in the background. If they’re out there, I wish they’d speak up.
1 December 2006, on 3:42 pm
drunkentune, I suppose the identifying characteristic of most moderates is not to speak up. They tend not to have causes, not to get involved, and not to want to rock the boat.
It’s frustrating because, honestly, we could shout from the hilltops or waterboard them up close and personal and the fundies won’t change their minds. No matter how persuasive the argument, no matter how peer-reviewed and irrefutable the science. As long as it’s coming from an atheist, it’s written off as some Satanic trickery or otherwise evil ploy.
Moderate Xians and Cists are really the only ones capable of reaching the whackjobs at their fringes. I’m pretty sure history, science, time, and death will eventually rid us of the meddlesome godbotherers but the Mods could surely hasten the process if they were somehow goaded into action- and I think, judging by the latest elections here in the States, maybe they’re starting to.
1 December 2006, on 4:29 pm
Great post, Raindog! This is the sort of clearer picture we will continue to get about humanity and religion the more rational
lyand scholarly our approach to research. Like you said, it’s also the kind of humanism and tolerance we need in all theists, and hopefully the type of reasonable leadership the oh-so-quiet mods will follow. They need to make their voice heard more frequently and loudly than the fundies’!1 December 2006, on 6:44 pm
Garry Wills’ views are not moderate. They are revolutionary in Catholic circles and not accepted or condoned by the “moderate” Catholic. He is an odd-ball.
I would not assume that the quiet Xians are not in possession of fundamentalist views. They may not try to hit you over the head with them, but they do allow those beliefs to influence their voting habits. This was not over-looked by the Democrats in the bi-election when they took significant steps (according to media reports I read) to appeal to their religious constituents.
1 December 2006, on 7:53 pm
Thank you for pointing that out, Lynda; you have a great knack for noticing and knowing aspects I haven’t paid attention to or researched. I guess Wills seems like a moderate to some of us because some of what he says appears to mirror our thinking.
I noticed the Democrats’ “appeal to believers,” too; I must say that as a political strategy, it worked. I guess that as long as the US has a majority of its population at least describing itself as “religious,” we’ll have to stay on our toes.
1 December 2006, on 10:04 pm
Gary Wills’ views are revolutionary only in the confines of the patriarchal and institutionalized church. Even if one is buying into, say, transubstantiation, an infallible pope, a celibate clergy, etc. on the quiet, that hardly strikes me as moderate. Wills’ takes on the papacy- “Papal Sin”, the messiah- “What Jesus Meant”, and Paul- see above, qualify him as a moderate human being- if not a moderate in terms of catholicism.
I disagree that what little pandering to the religious that the Dems did this cycle had much of an effect on the election. The powers that be within the party may hold to such a position- and it may, in fact, behoove us to play nice with the religious moderates, but the one lesson that we take from Nov. 7 is; that the Rovian strategy of dancing with them what brung you- counting on the enthusiasm and universal turnout of your base, fails, when the independents are annoyed into action.
Perhaps more importantly- going into ‘08; as good a job as Howard Dean has done with his 50 state strategy- pouring resources into strengthening individual state parties, we weren’t so much voted in this time around as they were voted out.
By the next presidential primaries, the Abramoff/DeLay/Cunningham/Safavian/Libby/Ney fallout and the Foley crap will have fallen off of most folks’ radar and, without a coherent vision of our own, we’ll be left to keep beating the Iraq mess in glorious monotony.
1 December 2006, on 11:54 pm
Yes, Raindog, I think you’re quite right about the success of the Dems having more to do with rejection of the Republicans, and particularly Bush, than a fondness for Democrats.
I’m not sure I comprehend your description “moderate human being”. It seems to suggest there might be a fanatical human being, which really has me scratching my head. Doesn’t one need to qualify the moderate or fanatic with a belief system? Being human is not a belief system, although being humane could be.
Howard Dean is in Canada working with the Liberal Party at their leadership convention this week. The success of the Dems in the USA has bolstered their hopes that the next time Canadians go to the polls they will kick Stephen Harper out on his church-pew-hardened ass.
2 December 2006, on 1:16 am
Maybe “reasonable” is a better word for what I’m trying to get across about Wills, Lynda. While I don’t find your garden variety catholic to be necessarily reasonable, I find him to be very much so from what I know. That’s all.
2 December 2006, on 8:08 am
Wills can’t prove that Herakles didn’t rise from the dead and go up in the sky to be with Zeus either. He also can’t prove that Mohammed didn’t ride off into the sky on a white horse.
How dumb do you have to be to offer such moronic arguments as Wills does?
2 December 2006, on 11:49 am
Bernarda, no question that the supernatural claims by Wills are ridiculous but at least he doesn’t see the buybull as something to be taken literally or as inerrant. He made a point on Charlie Rose that, in the 18th century, it was almost impossible to raise an argument against slavery because the buybull appeared to approve it in both testaments. It took some Quakers to step forward and offer a more reasoned reading of the scripture, taking the “do unto others”- nobody wishes to be enslaved, bit from Jeebus as overriding the pro-slavery stuff.
These fundie extremists- of whatever stripe, are not just gonna wake up one day and see their entire worldview as ultimately silly(that would probably drive them to thorazine). Baby steps to tolerance, baby steps to women’s rights, baby steps to post-theism.
In terms of the efficacy of coddling mods, an extreme social conservative like Rick Santorum would never listen to a word someone like Michael Moore said. He might, however, listen to a Rudy Giuliani.
2 December 2006, on 11:50 am
Besides, Heracles did rise from the dead and go off to be with Zeus…G-Zeus!
2 December 2006, on 3:36 pm
raindogzilla, I can see that you are a reasonable person. I am glad to find someone who agrees with me on Herakles.
2 December 2006, on 10:13 pm
Baby steps are good, Raindog, and necessary. No one starts walking straight out of the womb, unless you’re a gazelle. It was a theist, Thomas Paine, who convinced me that the Bible was not the word of god. That was one of my first baby steps. If Garry Wills helps initiate baby steps away from the Roman Catholic church for some Catholics then he deserves to be applauded. However he could be a Martin Luther type and merely lead Catholics into a more rigid and fanatical religion, such as Protestantism where all our fanatical Fundies originated.
4 December 2006, on 11:04 am
Sorry, RDZ, I think you do need your card revoked for even listening to this crap
To posit that jeebus had the “authority” to revoke the OT laws concedes that he was the son of gawd and had the same powers. Clearly not the case if he couldn’t prevent the Romans from crucifying him.
I’m more of the mind that jeebus was a political activist of the time, and the only way he could get people to listen was to claim to be the messiah, and to revoke all those nasty laws that must surely have been distasteful to people at the time. After all when gawd says “and for all time” when applied to a law, that’s pretty cut and dried.
I can’t listen to an apologist any more than I can a fundie, it’s the same old garbage, just rehashed and turned about a bit.
Brian: Alright I AM the messiah!! Now, FUCK OFF!!!