Category: Religion

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Is There Some Confusion Out There?

I just realized that a lot of Americans seem to believe that Mormonism is, like Pentecostalism and Roman Catholicism, a variation of Christianity, and, therefore, we don’t need to worry about Mitt Romney’s ultimate loyalties, the way we needed to worry about an Islamic Barack Obama. Or Tom Cruise or John Travolta.

Never assume anything. Here’s the hilarious part– liberals, who never felt it was right to raise questions about Obama’s religion anyway– don’t want to raise the issue of Mormonism against Romney.

Why not? Mormonism is not a religion: it is a demented cult. I define a cult as a set of beliefs that deliberately tries to exclude rational examination of it’s preconceptions and assumptions. Like Scientology. And the Tea Party. And I define “demented cult” as the same thing as “cult” but with silly narratives.

I have no problem with a Roman Catholic president: Catholicism is a deeply sophisticated, well-developed, and fearless set of beliefs which I disagree with, respectfully. Well, all right, the Catholics have moments of silliness too– check out Lourdes, or the pope-mobile. But I have a problem with someone who believes in the words of a man (Joseph Smith) described accurately, in my opinion, as “a fraud and conjurer” by Slate.

This is a man capable of rational analysis? Of weighing the facts and the issues and coming to wise decision? More importantly, can this man choose smart, rational people to head departments and offer sound advice?

I don’t think so.

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The Sentinelese: Leave us Alone

The Sentinelese live on an island at the west-ward tip of the Great Andaman Archipelago, which is in the Bay of Bengal, due east from India. You do not want to visit this place.

They don’t want us and they won’t have us. It is rather shocking to read, in this day and age, that there is yet an aboriginal culture that resists homogenization. Homogenization? They don’t even want to get to know us. When a pair of fisherman inadvertently drifted into their waters, the Sentinelese killed them. A helicopter was sent to retrieve their bodies: the Sentinelese drove it off with bows and arrows. Go away. The bodies remain unrecovered.

I find the existence of the Sentinelese reassuring. I don’t like the thought of travelling to the most obscure, distant corner of the earth, slashing my way through dense jungle, climbing through volcanic rock and vale, only to come upon a native child wearing a Nike swoosh and listening to music on his headphones, watching survivor on his portable satellite TV. The Sentinelese, surprisingly, don’t want any contact with our culture. Even more surprising is the fact that India, which has nominal control over the islands, has chosen not to press the point. This is in utter defiance of the sad, long history of encounters between different cultures, one of which is powerful and rich. Usually, we want to kill and enslave them.

They tried. They left gifts of cocoanuts. The Sentinelse accepted the gifts and refused to act grateful.

It was when they killed the fishermen and drove off the helicopter that the Indian government decided it was best to leave them alone. I think they should get some kind of big international prize for this decision.

They don’t want our medicine, our appliances, our toys, not even our agriculture (they fish and harvest native fruits from trees). They don’t want us to enlighten or frighten or amuse or confuse them.

They want to be left in peace.

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Exquisitely, Completely, Consummately Irreligious American Exceptionalism

The world looked at America, and lo, it saw this: obese children suckling mega-super-ultra-gigantic soft drinks and fries; men in camouflage shooting at helpless animals and beer cans; a city drowning in floods while the government stumbled around like drunken blind crippled men; children on motorized off-road vehicles tearing into the hillsides; cities draining; farmers growing gas; cosmetic surgeries; abandoned factories; Koran-burning pastors; pyramid marketing materialists; bunker-bussing survivalists; drug pushers on the streets; drug-pushers in the doctors offices; poverty and indifference to poverty; screaming hatred at “town hall” meetings.

And lo, America looked at itself in the mirror and did not see what the world saw. America looked at itself and saw that it was EXCEPTIONAL. And that the rules of the world, of fair play and mutual respect and cooperation, did not apply to them, for America was EXCEPTIONAL. And America was chosen by God to be the vessel of his or her grace, for America was EXCEPTIONAL. And he who does not embrace this ideology shall be accused of not loving America and if he does not embrace it, America will hold its breath until it turns blue in the face.

What is truly exceptional is how American politicians like Newt Gingrich have managed to take “I’m better than you are and I can do whatever I want to do because I’m special” and repackaged it as some kind of weird religious-patriotic mishmash expressed in a harmless sounding euphemism: “exceptionalism”.

It’s code. “Manifest Destiny” is back. Look out, boys. This time, they’re after your oil, your fish, and your water. And they’ve invented a new kind of morality to make it right. And they’ll kill you if you stand in their way.

Newt Gingrich has written an entire book which essentially argues that America, the exceptional, is like some titled noble to whom the rest of the world, a collection of lesser nobles, peasants, and slaves, must kowtow.

No, of course he doesn’t put it that way. They never do, do they? But no one should mistake the meaning of “exceptional” for anything else: we get to make our own rules and we have special access to the world’s wealth and resources because God said so.

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Newt Gangrene: America, America, America

“In America, religious belief is being challenged by a cultural elite trying to create a secularized America, in which God is driven out of public life.”

Never imagine that any kind of scurrilous, scumbag, divisive politics is beneath a Republican. Newt Gingrich has found Jesus. Just in time for 2012. Do even fellow Republicans buy this? Does anyone in the Republican Party ever acknowledge that the movement itself would be better off if it sounded a little less cynical and opportunistic?

Is there anything more that anyone needs to know about Newt Gingrich than that he is willing to stand in front of a crowd of Republicans and make the statement he made above, (at a gathering of the Ohio Right to Life) February 28, 2011?

Nobody can seriously believe that Newt actually believes this. If he does, America is far worse off than even I imagined. But it does magnify something that has become more apparent since 9/11: he doesn’t even care if you believe he believes it or not. It doesn’t matter.

How does one avoid being rude when observing what should be obvious but obviously isn’t? That New Gingrich, ready to make another run at the presidency, studied the polls and decided that Americans– actually, Republicans who vote in the primaries– want a leader with genuine religious convictions so, all right, we can do that. Here’s how: you say “In America, religious belief is being challenged by a cultural elite trying to create a secularized America, in which God is driven out of public life.” You say this in front of “Ohio Right to Life”. Just drink in the applause. Ahhhh. Feels good. It’s so easy. And the money keeps rolling in. And James Dobson is already behind you, on his knees, lips puckered.

It’s like “fiscal responsibility” and “no new taxes” and “strong military” and anything with “America” in the title, on a book– not that anyone will actually read it. They just need to know that you, like Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee and everyone else out there on the right, has not only read at least one book in your life but has also written one. Something like “Fighting for America”. Or “Finding the Real America”. Or, “America– the America of Americas”. Or “God and America”. Or “How Immigration is Ruining America” by Nancy McDougal and Sid Hofstetter.

Not that you could actually have ever been bothered to actually write the book. Gosh, that’s not time well-spent for God’s appointed leaders– that’s hack work, for what’s-his-name– the elite intellectual snob we hired just for this kind of work.

But conservatives don’t give a flying leap about whether you actually wrote a book you “authored”. That’s for those effeminate, liberal, snobbish eastern elites. People like Al Gore and Barack Obama. No, by God, a real leader just puts his name on it. Nor do they seem to give a damn about the rankest hypocrisy imaginable (see sidebar).

I suppose people should be reassured that Gingrich has discovered, thrillingly, if belatedly, that 2+2=4. We all look forward to the next miracle: how he will balance the budget, cut taxes for the rich, and increase military spending, without cutting any programs.

Aside from all that, isn’t Gingrich more or less openly saying that America should become a Christian Theocracy? If not, then what is he saying?

It’s really the Christians who have fallen down on this. Where are the church leaders who have any real religion? They would be standing up now, declaring that Christianity should not be exploited and tricked out in this way, and that politicians like Gingrich do more harm than good to real spirituality.

A lot of harm

Do Republicans ever hold any of themselves accountable for anything:

He [Newt Gingrich] also acknowledged having an extramarital affair with Callista Bisek, then a House staff member, while leading impeachment proceedings against Mr. Clinton for lying about his own sexual transgressions. NY Times, 2011-02-28

I don’t think they do hold themselves accountable. I think they believe they are special, touched by god, with wisdom so sublime and transcendent that mortal men cannot even begin to apprehend the audaciousness of their wisdom.

When you think you are so right that those who disagree with you are not mere political opponents but enemies of the state– nay, enemies of God!– foreigners, and subversives, consistency is truly the hobgoblin of little minds.

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Here and There: Neo-Puritanism and the Dutch

I am prompted by this ridiculous story about a young woman training to become a teacher. She had once posted a picture of herself drinking, wearing a pirate hat, at a party, on her Myspace page. later in life, while in placement as a prospective teacher, her supervisor googled her and spotted the picture and expressed his deep, solemn, disapproval. He and the dean of Millersville University School of Education, in their ultimate, beneficent, instructional piety and wisdom, decided that Ms. Stacy Snyder was thereby not worthy of a teaching job, and denied her a teaching degree.

Ms. Snyder went to court and, stunningly– to me– lost. (Of course, this was a U.S. court, where judges are elected by the same people who made Britney Spears a household name). The ruling was that this was not an infringement of her right to “free speech”. Is that what they thought the issue was?

How dare they? How dare those puritanical, self-righteous, stupid zealots deprive this young woman of her dreamed-of career because she didn’t meet their fanatical standards of purity and innocence?

I’ll bet those gentleman are patriotic. I’ll bet they are pious. I’ll bet they are believers. I’ll bet they would feel far more comfortable living with a bunch of Islamic extremists than they could ever imagine. I’ll bet that deep down in their tiny, crispy, blackened little hearts, they would love to force Ms. Snyder to wear a burka.

* * *

One thing I’ve always liked about the Dutch– and one reason a lot of people don’t like them– is this kind of pragmatism that was apparently too rational and sensible for the delicate Americans.

July 9, 2010

[I’m going to note in fairness here that getting accurate, detailed information about this well-worn story about the six-year-old kissing his classmate is difficult, and there are websites out there that believe the offense was more serious than just one kiss. On the balance of things, however, I still think giving the six-year-old a suspension was a tacit confession that the adults in charge had no clue about their jobs, children, or life. While I’m at it, let me note that as for the woman who sued McDonald’s because the coffee was too hot– I’m on her side. There’s a lot more to that story than the media generally admits. It’s become a stalking-horse for conservatives who want to relieve corporations of liability for their defective or dangerous products.]

Speaking of alleged urban myths… has there been a single confirmed use of the “date rape” drug yet?

We appear to have quietly entered an era of Neo-Puritanism in North America. While you can show any kind of violence, blood-letting, torture, cruelty, dismemberment, and murder on television or movies at any time or place, we have become extremely weak-minded and hysterical at the idea of sex.

Part of this is due to the unfortunate, unholy alliance between feminist psychology and Christian fundamentalism in the 1980’s. Off-hand, you might think these two cultural streams had very little in common. They did. But there was one thing they shared: an almost frantic paranoia about sexuality. The result: a kindergarten student is suspended for kissing a classmate on the cheek. Another student is taken away in handcuffs are drawing pictures of weapons. And another student is busted for waving a chicken-finger like a gun.

But the most egregious sins of this ilk are committed by middling managers– people who have some authority because they are astute suck-ups with a bit of education who can fill in forms and transfer money to consultants. They are afraid to make real decision and, therefore, not really smart enough to evaluate advice either. They always tell you, “the consultant said…”, or “the expert said…” So they see the 6-year-old kissing a classmate and they are too crumblingly stupid to realize that this was not ever what was intended by the term “sexual harassment”. * * *

What if your school day consisted of playing guitar, making papier-mâché “aliens” for your Mars project, dropping eggs from the roof to see how they splattered, and learning how to create puppets? Insanity, right? That’s how St. Ann’s School in Brooklyn Heights operates.

I don’t know why it’s taken me 54 years, but I have finally begun to realize just how arbitrary so many of our social and cultural institutions are. In the 60’s and 70’s, we often talked about how schools basically train us to be mindless consumer drones, but, only a few years later, we began to “realize” how impractical it would have been do things otherwise.

And here is St. Ann’s, a towering affront to conventional wisdom. St. Ann’s does not award grades. There are few rules. Students are encouraged to explore their creative sides. And the kids are all right– they go on to good colleges and universities. The sky does not fall in on them.

I have no problem believing that a school like this would be quite successful, and that the students who spend all of their high school years in this institution would be capable, accomplished, and competent, and ready to take on the world.

I think thirty years ago I would have believed the products of this system would be nearly illiterate. Just as I would have believed that someone without access to surgery would die young. Or that a nation without a military (like Costa Rica) would be invaded by its neighbors.

At the same time, the Obama Administration is pushing the Bush educational program: teaching to the tests. Firing teachers and principals if a school does not meet the minimum average. Not an iota of effort made in the direction of teaching children how to actually think: we’ve gone back to the 1950’s where we only want them to read, write, and show up at the assembly line– or, more likely, Walmart, for their minimum wage jobs– and consume, consume, consume.

Go into debt — the modern form of indentured servitude.

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The Harper Valley PTA

When I was very, very young, I actually kind of liked this song, even though it was country, and obviously a little cheesy.

The Harper Valley PTA sends a note home with a little girl. It’s addressed to her mother. The Harper Valley PTA has decided to take it upon itself to correct Mrs. Johnson’s approach to parenting. Mrs. Johnson, it seems, has been going around with men, drinking, and just generally “going wild”. She wears her dresses “way too high”.

The PTA just happens to be meeting that afternoon and Mrs. Johnson struts right over to the meeting and walks up to the front and lays it on the line for the Harper Valley PTA:

Well, there’s Bobby Taylor sittin’ there and seven times he’s asked me for a date
Mrs. Taylor sure seems to use a lot of ice whenever he’s away
And Mr. Baker, can you tell us why your secretary had to leave this town?
And shouldn’t widow Jones be told to keep her window shades all pulled completely down?

Well, well. I really do like the wrap-up:

And you have the nerve to tell me that you think that as a mother I’m not fit.
Well this is just a little Peyton Place and you’re all Harper Valley Hypocrites.

I liked that “as a mother, I’m not fit”– punchy and thunky. Wow. You almost feel sorry for this mythical institution, the Harper Valley PTA. I liked the song. Everybody did– it was a huge cross-over hit. I dare say I thought, there, that will be the end of hypocrisy in the world. Now that we’ve all agreed about how contemptible it is.

The funny thing, you just know that the thousands of Harper Valley PTA’s across the country all loved the song too. They all probably sang along, snapping their fingers, and shaking their heads at those hypocrites.

It calls to mind Jon Stewart’s joke at the Oscars in 2008: listing the films that dealt with important social issues, he closes with “and none of those issues was ever a problem again.”

Or fat, pant-suited, middle-aged women in Las Vegas joyfully singing along as Kenny Rogers contemplates putting Ruby “in the ground”.

There was a brief flurry of songs about hypocrisy in the early 1970’s and Joe South– improbably– won a Grammy with “Games People Play” in 1968.   There was “Signs” by Five Man Electrical Band and “Indian Reservation” by the Raiders.  There was “Billy Don’t be a Hero”.   and “One Tin Soldier”.

It was a veritable orgy of righteousness and purity.

It was real trend!

Don’t forget– this is the year the “Little Green Apples” beat “Hey Jude” as “Song of the Year”.

The New Seekers had a worldwide hit with a Coke jingle (“I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing”). How sad is that? Wow. Makes me wish I could go back in time just so I could hate that song even more than I did.

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There is a War: Necessary Evils

“Perhaps,” he added, “they should clarify it. We were in the middle of a war, and there was no teaching on that. But the church only gives general moral guidance, and people of good faith have to interpret that guidance.”

Reverend Brian W. Harrison, Catholic Apologist for Torture, NY Times, February 26, 2010.

That’s lie number 1. Reverend Harrison, defending a Catholic defender of water-boarding, rather glibly qualifies his stance: we were in a war. In a war, torture is allowed. In a war, water-boarding is not torture. In a war, human dignity doesn’t count. In a war, all the things we live for, all the things of the greatest spiritual and moral significance, don’t matter.

No, it’s just torture. Torture is torture is torture. Torture is the act of a savage, a barbarian, of a people so utterly bereft of morality and spirituality and ethics, that they should be sponged off the face of the earth. I say “sponged”– not killed or beaten or abused or– heaven forbid– tortured. Sponged– sucked out of government and institutions; squeezed out of positions of authority and influence. Torture is what we, in that remarkable compact called “society” and “culture” and “democracy”, cannot abide, and the right to be treated with dignity at all times– no matter what the suspicion or crime or act– cannot be abridged.

It’s too late to undo much of the damage now. When America’s enemies capture a soldier or a scientist or journalist– why not torture? Reverend Brian W. Harrison, defending the American government, has declared that torture is morally acceptable, as long as it is necessary, and by God, when America attacks us, whether we are Muslims or communists or negroes, it is necessary.

Perhaps the most amazing facet of Reverend Brian Harrison’s remarkable hubris is the astonishing arrogance of it: I have the authority to proclaim that God himself approves of one of us violating the most sacred right of another of us, to deprive him of dignity, to extract whatever information he will give, to enact a sadism, an indignity, a violence, a cruelty beyond imagination for most of us.

Ye humble sinners: cower before Brian Harrison and quake with tremulous awed appreciation! Then go forth and torture, because it is something, according to Harrison, that Jesus would do, if necessary, and if Jesus were here today, he would find it necessary.

Reverend Harrison, like most apologists for torture, falls back on the canard that lives can be saved through torture. He proposes that a terrorist exists who knows where a bomb is located and when it will go off and he is caught and interrogated and refuses to hand over the information voluntarily and we will know when he hands over accurate information after we beat or cut or electrocute or nearly drown him. All we have to do is beat, or cut, or electrocute or almost drown him. God will forgive us because we will have saved lives. End of movie.

There is the argument that this actual scenario is extremely unlikely. How often do we find out a bomb has been planted and then catch one of the people who planted it? How likely is that? 

It’s possible. Just not at all very likely, except in the TV program “24”, a homage to the art of torture.

I suppose it’s possible. It’s one of those nice little moral arguments that college students like to play with, just to see how far the logic applies. What if you had to abort the baby to save the life of the mother?

It strikes me that Harrison might not like the argument that without an abortion, a vulnerable young woman might commit suicide, or physically abuse her child. Not really very likely, right? Not a good basis upon which to decide whether or not abortion should be legal. No, it’s not, is it?

Are we in a war, which justifies the use of torture, according to Harrison and many other torture apologists? Only if you define “war” as something that we are perpetually in. And if we are always in a war, than torture is approved– said the Mad Hatter.

We are not in a war. There will always be criminals out there willing to commit criminal acts. That is completely different from an organized, national government committing the resources and manpower at their disposal to an attack on another sovereign state. 9/11 was no different than dozens of other criminal attacks that have occurred over the past 25 years, other than the remarkable profile it gained through sheer spectacle.

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Anatomy of Cultural Irrelevance

Why do Christians keep doing it? Shooting themselves in the foot by posting reviews like this of the 1959 movie “Anatomy of a Murder” starring Jimmy Stewart?

It doesn’t matter that this is one of the best courtroom dramas ever filmed, or that it is extremely unusual in it’s honesty about the our system of justice, the compromises, the cheating that goes on, or that it is well-acted and superbly written, or that George C. Scott and Lee Remick give startlingly good performances. It doesn’t matter that this is one of the most thoughtful courtroom dramas ever made, and that it was based on a real case, and that it offers a wealth of psychological insights into the minds of a killer, a neglected wife, an ambitious attorney, a not-so-ambitious attorney. Oh no. That all doesn’t matter.

What matters is that the word “pantie” was used. In public! And that Jimmy Stewart’s dad was so mortified by the movie that he took out an ad in the newspaper urging people not to see it.

Jimmy Stewart, by the way, turned down the role of “Atticus Finch” because he thought the film was too liberal.

It doesn’t matter. The American Film Institute rates this as the 7th best Courtroom Drama of all time.

As good a film as it is, apparently it does not do justice to a pivotal scene in the book wherein the defense attorney absolutely shreds the testimony of a psychiatrist who didn’t even interview the subject of his “expert” opinion.

It is so unusual to find a film that tries to give viewers a realistic grasp of court proceedings that I kept wondering about the director. What possessed Otto Preminger to do it? He couldn’t have been hoping to broaden his audience.

It tells you a lot about the state of Hollywood that the last explanation I could think of was that he wanted to make a great film.

A Christian posts a Review of the pernicious “Anatomy of a Murder”.

There are other Christian websites that not nearly as Pollyannaish as the one above.

 

Some Great Courtroom Dramas

12 Angry Men
To Kill a Mockingbird
The Verdict
Witness for the Prosecution
Anatomy of a Murder

A fascinating paragraph on manipulation of testimony, from Wikipedia.

In protracted litigation, confabulated memory – filling in the blanks and recreating memories – is common, and research has documented the tendency. Repetitive and suggestive questioning tends to plant the seeds of memory.[12] This book and the movie are among the most cogent examples of the lawyers’ dance. “Horse shedding” of witnesses is well known, if controversial and potentially unethical; it is not just an occasion to directly orchestrate perjury. More problematic, it is probable to reach a point where “if you believe it, then it isn’t a lie.” Thus, even letter-perfect bona fide certainty of belief is not equivalent to a certification of accuracy or even truthfulness. This process is called “horse shedding,” “sandpapering” or “wood shedding” – the first and last names relating to the place of the “collaboration.”[13]

“Horse shedding” comes from a practice in the 19th century in New York in which lawyers would hide witnesses in a literal horse shed to “prepare” them for testimony in the court house next door.

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Irreducible Complexity

It’s a red herring.

The main problem with the argument of irreducible complexity, as advanced by Michael Behe, for example, is far simpler than I think most respondents have described.

What Behe and others do is look at a complex organism the way you could look at an arrangement of thousands of marbles on a gym floor. You look at this arrangement, marvel at it, admire the different colours and patterns that are displayed, and then ask yourself, what kind of force could have placed all these marbles in exactly these locations?

It’s unimaginable: the effort, planning, and skill required to have every marble end up in exactly the place it ended up in! How could anyone believe that it was the result of a random process?

Behe implicitly assumes that the marbles were somehow destined to be in exactly the locations they ended up in. The goal of history was to put each marble in exactly that one place and no other. That is because he implicitly assumes there was a “creator” who intended all of the marbles to be exactly where they were. And he assumes that we humans, exactly as we are, are exactly what the end result of creation or evolution was intended to be all along.

But evolution doesn’t hold the view that the process of natural selection was designed or destined to produce a human being with all the characteristics we now have. The marbles ended up where they were through the process of being spilled onto the floor, hitting each other, bouncing a certain height, rolling and colliding with each other. Evolution holds that innumerable factors under extremely diverse conditions with almost infinite combinations of effects influenced the development of species in ways that may not have been consciously “designed” in a human sense.

Or might have been. Evolution does not claim to know why the marbles rolled onto the floor. They might have been rolled there by God, after all. Evolution doesn’t and couldn’t claim to know that. That is the purview of religion.

I said “human sense” because I don’t believe there is the slightest obstacle, in evolution, to a belief in God, who may well have created the world in exactly the way science suggests it was created: with a big bang millions of years ago, with simple life forms adapting and growing more complex and splattering into diversity as conditions changed, and “evolving” into what we now call human, with the miracle of consciousness, and the inexplicable: a sense of humour, memories, music, and a capacity for tears. Where’s the problem, for the believer? There is none, except, ironically, for the limitations of human knowledge, demonstrated most vividly in the Intelligent Design movement which tries to solve a problem that does not exist.

How constricted is the Intelligent Design hypothesis? What is more amazing, and reflects more vividly the glory of God: the stunning diversity of life forms and geological shapes of the earth? Or those prudish zealots with their black markers and their wagging fingers who don’t know that they don’t know what the act of creation looks like.

I have a solution to the whole problem of religion vs. science on the issue of evolution.

The Bible says that God “created” the world. I hope that even devout, conservative, Bush-loving Christians might agree that the meaning of the word “create” is, at heart, a bit of a mystery. When we say someone “created” a house, we don’t mean he invented wood and glass. We mean he obtained or created a design, gathered all the necessary material components, assembled a crew, and put everything together into a “house”. It beggars, for example, the question of who created glass.

When we say God “created” the world, however, we mean he created the design and assembled the parts, but he also created the parts– from nothing.

We have as much reason to believe that he did it in one literal instant in a human sense as we have for the belief that he did it over billions of years, from a single point in space, outwards, and in a single point of time, outwards. Space did not even exist in a meaningful sense, nor did time, until God filled it.

How dare Michael Behe insist that he knows that “create” means “in the exact space and time in which we now live”?

Obviously, God willed creation into existence. What is the obstacle, then, to believing that science is merely the systematic study of the evidence of that act of creation? Science is the study of how God “created” the world. I would say that we know now that God probably did not make everything appear everywhere (where it is today) in one instant. He appears to have started the act of creation in one specific location, and the event spread outwards from there– and still spreads outwards today.

I need a name for this. How about: “Scientific Creationism”? “Ontological Intelligence”? Then I need to create a private Foundation and a text book and find some fat donors and give some speeches at gatherings of Republican Christians where I rail against homosexuality and gun control and those arrogant educated elites who think they’re smarter than us and the sins our age that are all the result of scientific atheism.

I will soon be rich.

Thank you.

Wiki on Irreducible Complexity

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John Maxwell’s Useless and Ephemeral Leadership “Wisdom”

There is only one real irrefutable law of leadership: Anyone who doesn’t already have what it takes to be a good leader will not know what it is they need in order to become a good leader.

And the obvious corollary: anyone who already is a good leader does not need leadership training and would be better off spending this time productively… doing something. Like have a sex change operation if you are a woman, because Maxwell doesn’t ever refer to a good leader as “she” or “her”.

Here it is — in the simplest possible terms: all “leadership training” sounds great in the workshop and works perfectly as long as you don’t let reality intrude. That’s all there is to it. The minute you leave the seminar and immerse yourself into the real world again you will find that your problems are no simpler and the answers are no clearer. And if you had weaknesses as a leader before the seminar, you will have the same weaknesses afterwards. I guarantee that.

However, a considerable number of people make a considerable amount of money trying to persuade middle managers and executives otherwise.

Almost without exception, none of these “leaders” have any real-world accomplishments: they are all preachers, essentially, or what they used to call “snake-oil salesmen”: glib speakers who charm and amuse you and persuade you that you can purchase that glib goodness itself and take it back to your place of employment and do magical things that you could never have done otherwise.

Not only are they unashamed of their lack of real world accomplishments — they sometimes seem to revel in it.

Have any of these geniuses ever actually accomplished anything in the real world? You would think a few would– just for PR value. Just to convince us that someone, somewhere actually used these principles in a real workplace with real problems and actually succeeded because of them. Just to show us that some people care about whether or not people who preach a lot of leadership actually know what they’re doing, in the real world.

Come on– do it! Just to prove– and here’s the most important thing– that the examples given in these workshops and presentations are not simplistic and unrealistic. In other words, nothing like the real problems real leaders will face in a real world.

Not one.

Well…. if you include celebrities like football coaches and Oliver North… But that sort of proves the point, doesn’t it? How wonderful it would be if you could run your company like a football team? Your team accomplishes exactly what your individual players are capable of accomplishing, and you get to credit yourself with some abstraction called “leadership” that miraculously appropriates your players’ talents.

How wonderful if you are a successful athlete– born with a gift– and people will pay to hear you talk about how you invented the gift, nurtured it, developed it, with your hard work and determination. What you have with these people is an attempt to cash in on their celebrity.

Maxwell gives Churchill as an example of a great leader. Why? Because he stood up for democracy and human rights? No. Because he defied the most efficient and powerful military machine in Europe? No. Because he was determined to win. Well, so was Hitler, and so was Custer, and Marc Antony, and Lee.

John Maxwell is at his most offensive when he tells you that the only way to cultivate effective leadership in your church is… surprise! By buying more and more John Maxwell books and video tapes. No– wait– even better! By subscribing to his various leadership clubs so that you receive something in the mail every month– along with expensive ongoing subscriptions.

It is a tribute to Maxwell’s charm, I guess, that he can get away with these blatantly self-serving stratagems in front of an audience that has paid to hear him speak! Wow. That is leadership!

It is even more wildly amazing that while telling this audience that leaders can’t be herded like cats because they think for themselves and ask critical questions and think outside the box…. he insists they all need to buy his tapes and books and videos, and they all nod obediently and scribble down the names of the stuff they need to buy from John Maxwell to realize their potential.

The real purpose of all this stuff? To make you feel entitled to your position. To give you the illusion of authority and influence. To convince you that you are really more necessary and more valuable than the people who actually produce products and ideas but don’t know how to suck up to those in authority.

The results from all this “training”? Mission Statements that consist of a platitudinous enunciation of the obvious, and Strategic Plans (a redundancy: a “plan plan”).

And I imagine that most of them probably do. They reach their potential. Just as you will and I will.

John Maxwell does not take questions. Real world issues must not intrude, because they introduce complexity that reveals the utter uselessness of most of his “wisdom”. John Maxwell does not take questions, but he probably could– because this audience does indeed look like sheep.