Sam Smith is the Editor of "The Progressive Review"........PEACE.........Scott
http://prorev.com
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Sam Smith
The mythological miasma in which America finds itself and its inability
to face reality or use common sense has many contributing sources
including advertising and propaganda, the entertainment industry,
endless military fantasies and an intelligentsia that can't distinguish
between theory and fact.
But America's denial of the real is also being fueled by a media driven
conviction that faith is a superior route to the truth than evidence,
history or experience,
As a result, the religions that are soaring in the public's mind are
those that extend faith's turf beyond matters unknown or unprovable in
the secular world and that treat spiritual conviction as a more than
adequate substitute for reason, empirical analysis or scientific
conclusions.
The great irony is that this is happening even as we loudly and
repeatedly declare our major enemies to be those who have taken
precisely the same approach towards their own Muslim faith.
This is not to say there is no place for faith, but only to accept the
dictionary definition that faith is a "belief that does not rest on
logical proof or material evidence." Such a belief can fairly exist only
when proof and evidence are unattainable and not when they are plainly
visible on each night's evening news.
As a one-time anthropology major, I am far less hostile to faith -
including religious faith - than many of my cynical ilk. Once, while
visiting Italy, I found myself staying in a room with a picture of the
Pope over the bed. My reaction was a multicultural truce; I simply
removed the picture after the house cleaner had left and put it back
before she returned the next morning. I have also left the mezuzah on
the front door jam of the house we bought some years ago just to be on
the safe side.
I know of no culture and no time that has done without faith.
Journalists, for example, put almost religious faith in what they call
objectivity. And even Einstein had a horseshoe over his door, explaining
to a friend that while he did not believe in it, "they tell me it
works."
The fair use of faith fills the gaps of human knowledge with beliefs
that help people keep going without harming others. These beliefs can
create wonderful children or they can deny them needed medicines. They
can create honorable, caring people and communities or they can lead to
wars and cruel prejudice.
Without some form of faith, many humans easily become depressed,
anti-social, confused, immoral or suicidal. Faith may be no more than a
natural form of Prozac, but if it works for the individual and doesn't
hurt the believer or others, it's a respectable way to get through life.
It is also true - and overwhelmingly ignored by the media and
politicians - that religious belief is only one variety of faith. The
poker player can have a completely secular form of faith as can the
basketball player or hard working individuals whose faith is based on
the effort they have expended. People can be guided by deep faith in
their family, community, nation, moral standards, teachings and
philosophies, art or music. And one of the most common forms of faith
among politicians is in themselves rather than in the God of whom they
speak so often. Restricting faith to its religious manifestations thus
is one more way the media has trivialized and distorted the topic.
The media has also widely accepted the notion that there are
identifiable "people of faith" - again meaning only explicitly expressed
religious faith. These people supposedly stand taller because of their
belief in a certain God. And the media accepts without argument that
having faith is more important than witnessing it, an assumption that
gives the fundamentalist religions a leg up, say, on activist Jews and
Presbyterians or Catholic practitioners of liberation theology. In
short, the media has been suckered into a trite and provincial
definition of faith useful primarily to slimy politicians and
evangelical hustlers.
A recent example of this toadying to certain religious assumptions was a
recent Anderson Cooper show that included the following:
RANDI KAYE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Sometime between the last
campaign and this one, the Democratic Party woke up and saw the light. .
.
MARA VANDERSLICE, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: It was almost like it was a
joke, that you couldn't be a Christian and be a Democrat.
KAYE: These days, she's on the vanguard of Democrats' expanding effort
to connect with people of faith. The reason? A big God gap between the
parties.
A big God gap between Democrats and Republicans? It's hard to have more
biased media coverage than that.
In fact, the NY Times recently published a statistical analysis of how
the God gap has actually changed in the Congress over the past forty
years. Here is the real politics of religion as it has played out in a
body supposedly equal to the White House in power. In Congress, between
1964 and 2006:
Roman Catholics have increased 46
Jews have increased 26
Baptists have increased 12
All others have increased 12
Mormons have increased 5
Lutherans have stayed the same
United Church of Christ have declined 17
Episcopalians have declined 31
Presbyterians have declined 32
Methodists have declined 33
When was the last time you heard any media discussion of the increase in
Catholic or Jewish power in Congress? Or that the off-beat and
non-believers are doing as well as the Baptists?
Now take a look at the Supreme Court. Five of the nine justices are
Catholic, two are Jewish and the other two are Protestant. There are no
Southern Baptists on the court. The Catholics on the court represent 45%
of all Catholics ever to sit there, again suggesting that the topic
deserves at least as much attention from the press as does pimping for
Protestant preachers of the evangelical right.
The media's faith fraud adds to a fantasy that the only things that
matter politically are those that don't matter in real life. Loudly
speculate on what's going to happen after you die and you will get far
better coverage than knowing what to do in Iraq or with the economy next
month.
As for the politicians, whether it is the sanctimonious pomposity of
Obama or the sleazy hypocrisy of Clinton, it is hard to see why any sane
religious person would fall for such cynical professions of belief. In
fact those raised deeply in a faith usually don't talk about it all that
much. John Edwards, for example, has been far more restrained on the
topic than the two front-runners.
Asked about gay marriage, Edwards mentioned his personal reservations
but added that it was "absolutely wrong as president to use faith to
deny anyone their rights and I will not do that when I'm president."
Alone among the major candidates, Edwards seems to understand the line
between faith and reality. Obama and Clinton, on the other hand, are
perfectly willing to trade the latter for the former whenever it looks
like it'll add a few more votes.
It is the line between religious faith and reason - not the line between
religious faith and non-belief - that ultimately matters. The question
is not one's faith but whether it is used to override, ignore or pervert
the facts and whether it is used to help or hurt others. We have had
more than enough pain and suffering due to the abusive application of
faith substituting for reason and decency. What this country needs now
is not more people of faith but more people of reality and common sense.
Especially among those running for office.
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Sam Smith
The mythological miasma in which America finds itself and its inability
to face reality or use common sense has many contributing sources
including advertising and propaganda, the entertainment industry,
endless military fantasies and an intelligentsia that can't distinguish
between theory and fact.
But America's denial of the real is also being fueled by a media driven
conviction that faith is a superior route to the truth than evidence,
history or experience,
As a result, the religions that are soaring in the public's mind are
those that extend faith's turf beyond matters unknown or unprovable in
the secular world and that treat spiritual conviction as a more than
adequate substitute for reason, empirical analysis or scientific
conclusions.
The great irony is that this is happening even as we loudly and
repeatedly declare our major enemies to be those who have taken
precisely the same approach towards their own Muslim faith.
This is not to say there is no place for faith, but only to accept the
dictionary definition that faith is a "belief that does not rest on
logical proof or material evidence." Such a belief can fairly exist only
when proof and evidence are unattainable and not when they are plainly
visible on each night's evening news.
As a one-time anthropology major, I am far less hostile to faith -
including religious faith - than many of my cynical ilk. Once, while
visiting Italy, I found myself staying in a room with a picture of the
Pope over the bed. My reaction was a multicultural truce; I simply
removed the picture after the house cleaner had left and put it back
before she returned the next morning. I have also left the mezuzah on
the front door jam of the house we bought some years ago just to be on
the safe side.
I know of no culture and no time that has done without faith.
Journalists, for example, put almost religious faith in what they call
objectivity. And even Einstein had a horseshoe over his door, explaining
to a friend that while he did not believe in it, "they tell me it
works."
The fair use of faith fills the gaps of human knowledge with beliefs
that help people keep going without harming others. These beliefs can
create wonderful children or they can deny them needed medicines. They
can create honorable, caring people and communities or they can lead to
wars and cruel prejudice.
Without some form of faith, many humans easily become depressed,
anti-social, confused, immoral or suicidal. Faith may be no more than a
natural form of Prozac, but if it works for the individual and doesn't
hurt the believer or others, it's a respectable way to get through life.
It is also true - and overwhelmingly ignored by the media and
politicians - that religious belief is only one variety of faith. The
poker player can have a completely secular form of faith as can the
basketball player or hard working individuals whose faith is based on
the effort they have expended. People can be guided by deep faith in
their family, community, nation, moral standards, teachings and
philosophies, art or music. And one of the most common forms of faith
among politicians is in themselves rather than in the God of whom they
speak so often. Restricting faith to its religious manifestations thus
is one more way the media has trivialized and distorted the topic.
The media has also widely accepted the notion that there are
identifiable "people of faith" - again meaning only explicitly expressed
religious faith. These people supposedly stand taller because of their
belief in a certain God. And the media accepts without argument that
having faith is more important than witnessing it, an assumption that
gives the fundamentalist religions a leg up, say, on activist Jews and
Presbyterians or Catholic practitioners of liberation theology. In
short, the media has been suckered into a trite and provincial
definition of faith useful primarily to slimy politicians and
evangelical hustlers.
A recent example of this toadying to certain religious assumptions was a
recent Anderson Cooper show that included the following:
RANDI KAYE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Sometime between the last
campaign and this one, the Democratic Party woke up and saw the light. .
.
MARA VANDERSLICE, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: It was almost like it was a
joke, that you couldn't be a Christian and be a Democrat.
KAYE: These days, she's on the vanguard of Democrats' expanding effort
to connect with people of faith. The reason? A big God gap between the
parties.
A big God gap between Democrats and Republicans? It's hard to have more
biased media coverage than that.
In fact, the NY Times recently published a statistical analysis of how
the God gap has actually changed in the Congress over the past forty
years. Here is the real politics of religion as it has played out in a
body supposedly equal to the White House in power. In Congress, between
1964 and 2006:
Roman Catholics have increased 46
Jews have increased 26
Baptists have increased 12
All others have increased 12
Mormons have increased 5
Lutherans have stayed the same
United Church of Christ have declined 17
Episcopalians have declined 31
Presbyterians have declined 32
Methodists have declined 33
When was the last time you heard any media discussion of the increase in
Catholic or Jewish power in Congress? Or that the off-beat and
non-believers are doing as well as the Baptists?
Now take a look at the Supreme Court. Five of the nine justices are
Catholic, two are Jewish and the other two are Protestant. There are no
Southern Baptists on the court. The Catholics on the court represent 45%
of all Catholics ever to sit there, again suggesting that the topic
deserves at least as much attention from the press as does pimping for
Protestant preachers of the evangelical right.
The media's faith fraud adds to a fantasy that the only things that
matter politically are those that don't matter in real life. Loudly
speculate on what's going to happen after you die and you will get far
better coverage than knowing what to do in Iraq or with the economy next
month.
As for the politicians, whether it is the sanctimonious pomposity of
Obama or the sleazy hypocrisy of Clinton, it is hard to see why any sane
religious person would fall for such cynical professions of belief. In
fact those raised deeply in a faith usually don't talk about it all that
much. John Edwards, for example, has been far more restrained on the
topic than the two front-runners.
Asked about gay marriage, Edwards mentioned his personal reservations
but added that it was "absolutely wrong as president to use faith to
deny anyone their rights and I will not do that when I'm president."
Alone among the major candidates, Edwards seems to understand the line
between faith and reality. Obama and Clinton, on the other hand, are
perfectly willing to trade the latter for the former whenever it looks
like it'll add a few more votes.
It is the line between religious faith and reason - not the line between
religious faith and non-belief - that ultimately matters. The question
is not one's faith but whether it is used to override, ignore or pervert
the facts and whether it is used to help or hurt others. We have had
more than enough pain and suffering due to the abusive application of
faith substituting for reason and decency. What this country needs now
is not more people of faith but more people of reality and common sense.
Especially among those running for office.
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