Implausible Beliefs

In the Bible, Astrology, and UFOs

Allan Mazur

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781412847544
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351513210
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Why do people accept ideas that are contradicted by science or logic? In Implausible Beliefs, Allan Mazur offers a comparative look at the nature of irrational belief systems, their social roots, and their cultural and political impact. He begins by providing standards for judging beliefs implausible and assessing the impact of such belief systems onpolitics and social policy in the US. Mazur describes and defends commonsense criteria for establishing that certain views should not be sustained in the face of present-day understanding. He presents a statistical portrait of implausible beliefs rampant in the US, and who tends to accept them.Mazur applies criteria for implausibility to the Bible, astrology, and visitation to Earth of intelligent beings from other worlds. Pointing out that everyone "knows" the Bible but few actually read it, the author scrolls through the first five books of the text, noting points that undermine the scripture's natural history and moral guidance. Working on the assumption that implausible religious views are fundamentally no different from implausible secular views, he critiques secular beliefs in astrology and UFOs. Mazur concludes the volume with an attempt to explain why most people accept implausibility'some more than others despite evidence and logic that refute them.Looking to mainstream sociology and psychology, Mazur shows how children are socialized into such beliefs, and how adults are influenced by spouses and friends. Personality is also a factor, sometimes abetted by stressful or lonely life situations. Lucidly written, this is a provocative and informative contribution to social psychology, sociology, religion, political science, and American studies.

Part 1

Implausible Beliefs

1

Why Are We So Gullible?

People should be free to believe whatever they want. On the other hand, we expect university students to understand that the value of π = 3.14…, not 3.0; that the world is round, not flat; that Earth orbits the sun once a year and is not the center of the universe; that our planet is billions of years old, not 6,000; that humans have lived on it for hundreds of thousands of years, having evolved from earlier primate species; and that the Grand Canyon is far older than the alleged era of Noah’s flood. These are facts, not seriously open to scientific dispute.

There are, in addition, purely subjective values, wholly without scientific basis, that have become so broadly accepted in the modern world that few object to their inclusion in the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights: All humans are born free and equal in dignity and rights, without distinction of any kind, whether by race, sex, religion, national or social origin, or on the basis of the country or territory to which a person belongs. All people have the right to freedom of religion, or to change religions, either alone or with others, and to practice their religion. No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel or degrading punishment. Slavery in any form is prohibited. Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses; men and women are entitled to equal rights during marriage and at its dissolution. Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law, and any individual charged with a penal offense should be presumed innocent until proven guilty.

None of these moral positions is implied by a full and literal reading of the Bible or the Koran, which, to the contrary, have been cited to justify exactly the opposite positions. The only way to bring the corpus of holy writings into line with modern Western morality is to selectively ignore or radically reinterpret passages that condone if not require enslavement, racism, wholesale slaughter, collective guilt, polygamy and sexual inequality, and the stoning or burning to death of people who promote other religions.

The Literal Bible and Other Implausible Beliefs

Why do so many educated, intelligent Americans believe the Bible is the inerrant word of God, literally word for word? Why do we accept so many other implausible beliefs—about UFOs, abduction by space aliens, the accuracy of horoscopes?

For most of Judeo-Christian history, the exact wording of scriptures was not of great interest to most followers because they could not read. Those who could knew that the hand-copied writings then in circulation contained errors and deviated from one another. In the second century CE, the pagan critic Celsus complained that Christians changed their texts at will, and his Christian opponent Origen acknowledged the great number of differences among the manuscripts. Pope Damasus was sufficiently concerned about variant wordings that in 382 CE he commissioned his secretary, Jerome, to produce a standardized translation of the New Testament in Latin. Working for twenty years, Jerome compared numerous texts in Hebrew, Aramaic, Latin, and Greek before settling on his own version, later known as the Vulgate Bible, the first book printed by Gutenberg and to this day the official text of the Roman Catholic Church.

The Vulgate solidified a canon that had evolved over the first four centuries of the Christian era. It included four gospels from among the many circulating at the time. Some writings were excluded because they were inconsistent with orthodox doctrine as it had developed. The recently restored and authenticated Gospel of Judas, for example, wholly reverses the standard view of Judas Iscariot as treacherous betrayer. Here he is portrayed as the most trusted of the original disciples, asked by Jesus to instigate the chain of events that would free the Spirit of Christ from its physical constraints (Kasser et al. 2006).

Aware of divergences in theme and wording even within the canon, the Catholic position was, and continues to be, that the Bible is properly understood in the context of the apostolic tradition, and the Church alone can pronounce the meaning of scripture and its dogmas. When Martin Luther led the Protestant Reformation, he opposed this idea, dismissing the authority of the corrupt Catholic hierarchy and insisting that faith could be based solely on reading the Bible. This dispute revived interest in the accuracy of the Testaments, that is, the degree to which the now-printed book—known to be a copy of older copies, whose originals and earliest copies are all lost—exactly reflected the words of the first writers. Scholars of the seventeenth century, comparing extant New Testament writings, located tens of thousands of variations, and far more are known today.

Most variations are trivial errors in copying, but sometimes the copyist, whether purposively or not, changed the meaning of the text. Professor Bart Ehrman at the University of North Carolina raises several questions that are answered differently depending on which New Testament manuscript is consulted:

Was Jesus an angry man? Was he completely distraught in the face of death? Did he tell his disciples that they could drink poison without being harmed? Did he let an adulteress off the hook with nothing but a mild warning? Is the doctrine of the Trinity explicitly taught in the New Testament? Is Jesus actually called the ‘unique God’ there? Does the New Testament indicate that even the Son of God himself does not know when the end will come? The questions go on and on, and all of them are related to how one resolves difficulties in the manuscript tradition as it has come down to us.

Ancient manuscripts of the New Testament also take different positions on the nature of Christ, the role of women in the church, and the treachery of the Jews (Ehrman 2005: 208).

Extant copies of the Gospel of Matthew may contain variations intended to reconcile Jesus’s paternal lineage with his mother’s virginity. Because the earliest Christians were all Jews, it was important to show that Jesus fulfilled Old Testament expectations for a messiah, including descent from King David. Matthew opens with a genealogy of Jesus, giving each father-to-father link from Abraham through King David and finally through “Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born” (1:16). This mention of Mary is an anomaly, the only female in the lineage. Did Matthew modify an earlier genealogy, creating an “in-law link” to preserve descent from King David in a way that is consistent with virgin birth?¹

Joseph intended to break his engagement when he learned his intended wife was pregnant, but an angel assured him that the child was conceived by the Holy Spirit, and this occurred to fulfill words spoken by the Lord though the prophet Isaiah: “Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son” (Matthew 1:23). But Isaiah (7:23) is misquoted. His Hebrew word alma, meaning “young woman” without any implication of virginity, is replaced in Greek translation by parthenos, which can mean either a young woman or a virgin (Schowalter 1993). That is not to say that the doctrine of virgin birth is the result of a mistranslation, but that one cannot trust a literal word-for-word reading of the Bible.

The traditional English Bible is the King James Version of 1611. So many serious defects were known by the mid-nineteenth century that a full revision was published in 1901. The twentieth century saw many newer English translations, each claiming improvements over prior work. No doubt the process will continue. But since all original sources and the earliest copies are lost, there is no way to unequivocally determine the words or meanings of the first writers, or to resolve inconsistencies that appear in today’s best translations. Mark writes that Jesus was crucified the day after the Passover meal was eaten (14:18-43, 15:25), but John says he died the day before (19:14). After Jesus’s birth in Bethlehem, according to Luke, Joseph and Mary returned to Nazareth (2:39), but according to Matthew they fled to Egypt (2:13-14). Paul says that after his conversion on the road to Damascus he did not go to Jerusalem to see those who were apostles before him (Gal. 1:16-17), but Acts says that he did go to Jerusalem after leaving Damascus (9:26). Which if any of these choices is the inerrant word of God?

Since the nineteenth century, Americans have been among the most literal of Bible believers. According to the General Social Surveys, administered from 1984 to 2006, 34 percent of American adults feel “The Bible is the actual word of God and it is to be taken literally, word for word” (http://sda.berkeley.edu/archive.htm). Fundamentalist religiosity is enmeshed in U.S. politics and Middle East politics. It is the basis of America’s present “God war,” pitting Dan Brown’s mega-selling The Da Vinci Code and Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion against the phenomenally successful Left Behind series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins. It is the basis for attempts to undermine the teaching of evolution in high school.

In this most technologically-advanced nation, why do so many people profess beliefs that are contradicted by science and logic? There is no point limiting the question to religion. We get a broader fix by asking why so many Americans believe other implausibilities as well. For that reason I compare biblical literalism to belief in astrology, and to faith that flying saucers are visiting our world from deep space. Half of Americans think there is some truth to astrology, a credulousness that has extended to the White House. Nancy Reagan, fearful after the assassination attempt on her husband, regularly consulted astrologer Joan Quigley about fortuitous timing of President Reagan’s affairs. The Reagans had dealt with astrologers for years before reaching Washington (Reeves 2005).

Most believers in the implausible are normal, lawful citizens, but there is a dark side we cannot ignore. The attack of September 11, 2001, was the work of fanatic Islamists, motivated by literalist interpretations of the Koran. In 1994 Timothy McVeigh, protesting government limits on public access, trespassed into Area 51, the restricted Air Force installation near Las Vegas, rumored to be the repository for crashed UFOs. The next year he bombed the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people. On both occasions McVeigh was acting on his deep belief in arcane conspiracy theories and government cover-ups. Awaiting execution, he watched the movie Contact, about communication with space aliens, six times in two days (Barkun 2003; Michel and Herbeck 2001).

Religious Tolerance

The United States has from its outset been tolerant of diverse religions. But how tolerant should one be of suicide bombers who believe they are going to paradise? Mohammed Atta, leader of the 9/11 hijackers, wrote a letter to his colleagues which was later found in his luggage:

Continue to pray throughout this night. Continue to recite the Koran…. Purify your heart and clean it from all earthly matters…. The time of judgment has arrived. Hence we need to utilize those few hours to ask God for forgiveness… From there you will begin to live the happy life, the infinite paradise. Be optimistic. The prophet was always optimistic….

Everybody hates death, fears death. But only those, the believers who know the life after death and the reward after death, would be the ones who will be seeking death….

Keep a very open mind, keep a very open heart of what you are to face. You will be entering paradise. You will be entering the happiest life, everlasting life….

Check all of your items—your bag, your clothes, knives, your will, your IDs, your passport, all your papers. Check your safety before you leave…. Make sure that nobody is following you…. Make sure that you are clean, your clothes are clean, including your shoes….

In the morning, try to pray the morning prayer with an open heart. Don’t leave but when you have washed for the prayer. Continue to pray….

When you enter the plane: Oh God, open all doors for me. Oh God who answers prayers and answers those who ask you, I am asking you for your help. I am asking you for forgiveness. I am asking you to lighten my way. I am asking you to lift the burden I feel….

God, I trust in you. God, I lay myself in your hands. I ask with the light of your faith that has lit the whole world and lightened all darkness on this earth, to guide me until you approve of me. And once you do, that’s my ultimate goal….

There is no God but God. There is no God who is the God of the highest throne; there is no God but God, the God of all earth and skies. There is no God but God, I being a sinner. We are of God, and to God we return.

Like the United States, Israel too asserts tolerance for other religions. Between 1948 and 1967, when Jordan occupied the Old City of Jerusalem, Jews were blocked from access to the Western Wall of Herod’s Temple, the holiest site in Judaism. After winning control of the Temple Mount in the Six Day War, Israel guaranteed Muslim access to the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque, together the third holiest site in Islam, which lies literally atop the Western Wall. Yet at the same time, Jewish fundamentalists insisted that God gave them everlasting possession of all the land between the Nile and Mesopotamia. For decades after 1967, this was a major justification for Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, home to millions of Palestinians.

Both Jewish and Muslim governments support schools that promote nationalistic assertions from the Bible or the Koran. These governments pursue policies that contradict the UN Declaration of Human Rights but are consistent with religious scriptures. Muslim and Jewish governments discriminate even against co-religionists of a denomination different than what is in power. In Israel, rabbis of Reform or Conservative denominations are not officially recognized and cannot perform marriages. The Muslim world is rife with denominational discrimination, most obviously the antipathy between Sunnis and Shiites.

None of this is unusual from an historic perspective. Traditional societies recognized no separation between their own religion and their political order, so the governments of the Middle East, indeed many of today’s Third World and predominately Catholic nations, tread a well-worn road paved with religion-based laws. Even the atheistic behemoths of the twentieth century, the Soviet Union and China, imposed their irreligion on their polities. It was post-Enlightenment Holland, the United States, and France that fell out of step by allowing either full toleration of non-established sects or full separation of church from state, doctrines that more or less spread among the industrial democracies.²

What are the limits of religious tolerance? Surely there are limits, as there are restraints on freedom of speech, which disallow a shout of “fire” in a crowded theater, or libeling a living person, or inciting a riot, or threatening the assassination of a president. Both the United States and individual states have occasionally imposed religious restrictions, as against Mormon polygamy, or the African practice of female genital mutilation, or the handling of snakes in Pentecostal church services. Certain “hate crimes” are illegal, whether in or out of a religious context. On the other side, how far should one push the separation of church from state? Few people, whether atheist or believer, deeply care that our coins and dollars carry “In God We Trust,” or that the Pledge of Allegiance contains the phrase “under God.” Surely there are better causes for our time, money, and political capital than erasing these traces of religion from public life.

American Fundamentalism and Politics

Many American Christians who immediately recognize the fanaticism of Islamist or Jewish extremists are slower to see the fault in their own fervid fundamentalists. After the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were attacked on September 11, 2001, the popular televangelist Pat Robertson announced that it was because of God’s displeasure with secular immorality (Phillips 2006: 219). When the people of Dover, Pennsylvania voted out of office those members of the school board who mandated that intelligent design be taught in science classes, Robertson denounced the voters for rejecting God and warne...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Part 1: Implausible Beliefs
• Part 2: Is the Bible Inerrant?
• Part 3: Secular Implausibilities
• Part 4: Why Do We Believe These Things?
• References
• Index