Thinking the Irrational, Living the Irrational

Last night, I was listening to a recent edition of NPR's This American Life (absolutely one of the best things on American radio, and if you don't listen, you should), the episode called Heretics. It focuses on the story of Carlton Pearson, an incredibly successful evangelical pastor who, after a career built on his powerful and charming preaching style, had stopped believing in hell. The story takes us from his beginnings, living in a world in which "demons" are literally "cast out" of people - something which I've always assumed to be a sort of collective psychosis - to his development into a close member of the Oral Roberts television empire, and then, finally to his own "mega-church" in Oklahoma.

Those of you who read this blog with any regularity are now probably wondering... why is he telling us this? It's because of the twist that comes next: the pastor, who has taken the time to really learn about the origins of the bible, who understands where it came from and even the times from which it emerged, stops believing in "hell" as a literal place of torment, and decides that the real meaning of the bible is that all people, no matter what, will go to heaven, and that it isn't fair that some people go to some eternal torment, carried out by a vengeful deity. He decides, through his own "revelation" (I don't believe in the bicameral mind, so I assume that he was really just talking to himself), that no matter who or what you are - no matter the religion, ethnicity, orientation, or whatever else, that everyone would go to some sort of "heaven", rather than being tormented if they made the wrong choice, and rewarded only if they made the right one.

In the course of explainin this, he makes a point that we've heard somewhere before: "The god we've been preaching... he's a monster." Which I believe has been said by someone else, namely Richard Dawkins, in The God Delusion.

When he started preaching this in his mega-church, the predictable reaction occurred. People became offended, said that he wasn't "preaching the word of god" (which they assumed to be the King James translation of the bible), and left. Some went off to form their own churches. Most just left to go somewhere else where, presumably, people were damned to torment and agony, as their benevolent and loving creator intended.

And all of these "good" people, all of these kind, christian people - they now talk about Pearson as though he were dead. In a world where people's opening conversational gambit of "what church do you go to?" somehow doesn't seem intrusive, bullying, or flatly inappropriate, still being associated with Pearson's church makes the members target for discussion, scorn, and ridicule.

It's funny, but intrinsically sad, that people have to live this way. Religious people seem to often describe themselves as "living in the light", but in the light of what? Does ignorance and superstition have a light, or is it more likely, as Carl Sagan suggested in The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, darkness? Is it really, as I would contend, one of the most monumental wastes of time and energy that the human race has ever devised for itself?

What struck me most about this segment was the treatment of the world as though it really were infested by demons - that demons were around every corner, waiting to suck the unwary in and consume them. If you live like that, now, are you really any better off than you might have been living in the 12th century? If you only think irrationally, you have no choice but to live irrationally.

At any rate, it's a fascinating piece, and if you're so inclined, take an hour out of your day to listen to it. You can find it here, or on iTunes.