The God Virus: How Religion Infects Our Lives and Culture (24 page)

11
“… and the tombs were opened; and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised; and coming out of the tombs after His resurrection they entered the holy city and appeared to many” (Matthew 27:52).

Every new mutation strives for viral purity. The evangelical virus is no exception; it has the power to cross former denominational lines and infect much wider groups.

From the earliest times of Tertullian, Origen, Augustine, and Benedict, to Pat Robertson or James Hagee, the theme is always viral purity with a call to go back to an ideal past. Back to the Bible, back to the primitive church, back to the church Jesus founded – the implication is that there is some objective evidence of this ideal past. They believe there was a time when Christianity was pure. When and where is never specified except through New Testament quotes, yet even a cursory reading reveals a time of anything but love, light and purity.
¹³
Paul’s letters as well as Timothy, Peter, John and others are full of efforts to stem heresy and ensure purity as groups were straying all over the place. From the beginning, there was little agreement on the basics. Many new mutations arose from the nascent Christian virus. Never was there a time in the first three centuries when there was a pure Christianity. Instead, there were dozens of competing viruses. Some eventually won; others went underground, died or lived on in other forms.

The focus on a past that never existed is pervasive in all fundamentaist groups – whether Christian, Hindu or Muslim. It is a most effective way to prevent critical examination of history and effectively colors perceptions of today’s events as well. It is hard to look forward with clear vision when you are trying to recreate something that never existed. Today, many fundamentalist Islamic groups seek a return to the days when their religion was pure. Of course, their definitions of pure can differ quite dramatically and continues to lead to wars and conflict within Islam – Shii’a against Sunni, Al Qaeda against Sunni and Shii’a.

The Christian evangelical virus is so powerful that it sedates the infected to any inquiry about Christian beginnings. The haphazard way in which the
New Testament was created is of no concern. There is no need for inquiry about huge contradictions in almost every book of the New Testament. No interest in the major theological debates of the Ante-Nicene Fathers or other beliefs of the early church that were snuffed out by Catholicism. It is as if the past did not happen. One extremely well-educated physician who is quite infected once told me, “All I know is what I learn in Sunday School and church and read in my Bible. I don’t need to learn anything else.”

12
Associated Baptist Press,
Missouri Baptist Convention ousts 19 churches over ties to moderates
[article on-line] (31 October 2006, accessed 22 November 2008); available from
http://www.abpnews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1582&Itemid=119
; Internet.

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I Corinthians 11:19, Galatians 1:6, I John 2:19-23

Over the years, I have talked with intelligent but infected friends who are deeply interested in history. They will debate for hours about the causes of the French Revolution, the economic consequences of WWI on Europe or the cultures of the ancient world, but when questioned about early church history in the second and third centuries, they do not know or care. They appear to have no curiosity about one of the most important times in the history of their religion.

What would make an otherwise educated and curious person totally uninterested in something so obviously important? The virus effectively blocks curiosity and questioning in any area that might be a threat. Yet, the same person, if told about the chaotic early days of Islam, will quickly see the holes in the Islamic view of the world and history. An understanding of the similar beginnings in Christianity is apparently unavailable to him.

Today’s so-called culture wars are not really wars about culture. It is a conflict of religion as it attempts to couple with the culture. Western culture has been largely uncoupled from religion for some time. Unlike Islamic countries where religion is closely bound, U.S. culture develops more independently of religion. As long as culture is free to develop independently, the virus will encounter constant challenges to its existence. It does not have the cocoon of safety that a culture wholly captured provides.

A simple comparison illustrates the dilemma of an uncoupled god virus. How secure is Islam in an Afghan village? How secure is Christianity in New York City? Islam will not be dislodged from Afghanistan any time soon, but any god virus in New York City has a tenuous hold. The evangelical virus is the answer to this problem. It seeks to do what no god virus has ever done, capture the political and cultural structure of the United States.

The pressure to bind is always present. Once the virus gets one hook into the culture, it has the means to place many more. In this case a hook might be reestablishing prayer in schools, which could lead to reading Bible verses in classrooms, which quickly leads to using schools for religious instruction, and so on. A culture that is bound with religion soon becomes an oppressive and toxic place for those who are not infected with the god virus.

We began this chapter with the story of Carrie and her deep evangelical infection. Carrie is but one of millions who found comfort and solace in the new evangelism. The tools we have discussed, music, prayer meetings, mass hypnosis, all played a role in keeping Carrie and her family sedated and unquestioning. While she successfully identified her infection and eliminated it, her family and friends have not. As a result, Carrie has worked to establish other relationships that are not based on the god virus. One of her children has been supportive of her, though not to the point of giving up her religion. Her other child continues to be distant and reluctant to communicate with her mother.

Carrie also reports that one of her best friends has not only been supportive but has begun reading and reflecting on her own religious infection. They now spend their Sunday mornings walking and discussing instead of going to church. She says, “It is a much better and rewarding use of my time and has drawn me closer to an incredible friend. I no longer feel the influence of the god stuff in our relationship. We just relate to one another as people without the complications of religion.”

American evangelism is rooted in the Lutheran Reformation, but it is a mutation adapted to survival in the literate, urban and mobile culture of the United States today. The evangelical god virus has made a revolutionary jump from communal to individual and has become a meta virus capable of supplanting old denominational differences. The completion of this genetic transition can be seen in the last half of the twentieth century as a revolutionary decoupling of the virus and community to an individualized and highly mobile form. The new mutation spreads without the encumbrances of village or community. Sophisticated and skilled vectors use time-tested psychological techniques to attract people to mega churches where they receive an endorphin fix from well-designed services with scripted music and hypnotic vocal cadences. The infected hosts (church members) gain guilt and fear messages that bind them to the god virus and create viral purity.

In reality, today’s culture wars are attempts by the god virus to bind with the culture in the interest of its own security.

“Most people would rather die than think; in fact, they do so.”

-Bertrand Russell

What are some of the differences between theists and non-theists? What is the scientific research that might shed some light on how and who religion seems to infect? In the current climate of rising fundamentalism, what can we as non-theists do to encourage rational discussion and identify the impact of religion on ourselves as well as others?

A 1999 report in
Scientific American
found that 90% of the general population believes in a personal god and a life after death. Only 40% of bachelor-level scientists had such a belief and 90% of eminent scientists had no belief in a god or an afterlife. It seems the more intelligent and educated the less belief, at least within the scientific world. Another study in
Nature
¹
found that 72% of members of the National Academy of Sciences are outright Atheists, 21% are agnostic and only 7
%
admit to a belief in a personal god.

But perhaps this is just a characteristic of scientists. Stepping outside of science into the general population, what relationship is there between religiosity and intelligence? In a study of religiosity and intelligence, professor Helmuth Nyborg, intelligence researcher at Aarhus University, Denmark, estimated from a sample of 7,000 subjects that Atheists’ IQs, on average, were 5.8 points higher than those of religious people. His study naturally raised some controversy, but peer reviews revealed no errors in his research.
²
A review in
Free Inquiry
³
found 31 different studies of IQ and
religiosity dating from 1927. Every study found a negative correlation between religiosity and intelligence. No peer-reviewed study to date has found anything to indicate that religiosity enhances intelligence. In fact, it seems to have the opposite effect, which leads us to the hypothesis that the intelligence of otherwise intelligent people may be suppressed or inhibited by the constrictions of religiosity.

1
Ed Larson and Larry Witham, “Leading scientists still reject God,”
Nature, 394(6691)
(23 July 1998):313 and Ed Larson and Larry Witham, “Scientists and Religion in America,”
Scientific American
(September 1999).

2
Richard Lynn, John Harvey and Helmuth Nyborg,
Average intelligence predicts atheism rates across 137 nations
[article on-line](4 March 2008, accessed 23 November 2008); available from
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6W4M-4SD1KNR-1&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_ fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_useri d=10&md5=82c88cd709652a9a24d1a902d8106a8f
; Internet.

3
Burnham P. Beckwith, “The Effect of Intelligence on Religious Faith,”
Free Inquiry
(Spring 1986).

This is treading in a sensitive area so let me be clear. Intelligent people populate the full spectrum of religiosity from theist to the non-theist. What I would argue is that intelligence is highly related to pattern recognition. People who are more intelligent tend to see patterns more easily and act on them more effectively than the less intelligent. Less intelligent people may be more easily infected by religion because they don’t see the patterns as clearly – inconsistencies, contradictions and outright manipulations – and have more difficulty throwing it off once they are infected.
⁴
At the same time, if a person of average intelligence is given the tools of critical analysis, or is not infected early in life, she is often able to ward off infection as an adult.

In most cases, intelligence and critical thinking seem to disappear at the church door. After years of attending and teaching in church settings, I found that the basic issues are no different than they were when Thomas Aquinas wrote
Summa Theological
in 1273 or when Augustine wrote his
City of God
in the early 400s. There is nothing new under the sun (Ecclesiastes 1:9-14) where Christian dogma is concerned. Nothing seems more pitiable than otherwise intelligent people gathering every Sunday to struggle ever so hard to understand something that is unintelligible.

Intelligence is one factor that might explain the difference in religiosity in America, but there is more to be considered.

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Rev. Joan Campbell, general secretary of the National Council of Churches, once asked the great astronomer Carl Sagan, “You’re so smart, why don’t you believe in God?” Sagan responded, “You’re so smart, why do you believe in God?”

Biological viruses use various strategies to open the cell wall to infection. If your body has defenses against a particular strategy, you will not get the virus. Another virus may come along that has a strategy for which you have no defenses. In that case you will get infected.

Personality may play a similar role in how one catches religious infection, but it is not a straightforward relationship. Different personality types may be more or less vulnerable to a certain god virus. One personality characteristic may leave a person open to infection by a particular type of religion but not another. Young people are the easiest to hook, since they experience insecurity and anxiety as they pass through puberty. Youth also have fewer intellectual tools with which to resist infection. If a religion calms their natural fears and anxieties, infection may follow regardless of personality.