On page 117 of his book Believe, Ross Douthat suddenly announces that people should submit themselves to the moral commands of Christian churches. Why? Ross Douthat has provided no rational reason to think that religions have any moral authority. He just takes it for granted.
Even if we believe that gods exist, there is no reason in particular to believe that they are morally good. There certainly isn’t much reason to think that churches can be relied upon for moral leadership.
Not Everyone Believes, Ross Douthat.
We are now on page 116 and 117 of chapter 4 of the book Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious, by right wing Christian pundit Ross Douthat.
Here's where things get really unhealthy, in a social way.
The title of this section of the chapter is No Believer Is An Island, and it starts out nice, with the idea that if you become religious, you can have community. You can make friends.
The argument that he's making is all well and good, but you can make friends and have community in lots of different ways. You could join a club. You could go back to school. You could engage with the people at work, or what about the people in your neighborhood?
You don't have to have a religion in common to have community to make friends. You could try a new hobby. You could volunteer. There are so many ways to get involved in community without religion.
At the top page 117 is where this book really gets sketchy.
“The key argument for being part of a religious community, to whatever extent, in a fulsome form, if possible, but an attenuated form if that's all you can manage at the start, is that it makes you more likely to actively practice your religion, to take its dictates and admonitions seriously, to seek the will of Providence regularly, rather than intermittently, to live out the moral vision that the faith holds up.”
Whoah. The moral vision that the faith holds up, and dictates and admonitions, and the will of Providence?
This is all of a sudden, the will of Providence.
Ross Douthat said he was going to be reasonable about this. He said he was going to be rational and logical, but all of a sudden now he's talking about Providence, which is a Christian thing. Of course he's talking about Christianity. There's no real sense that he's talking about how you could become Bahai or Sufi or Buddhist. He's only talking about Christianity.
That's not what bothers me most about what he’s written on this page. He's saying you should join a community that's religious because you can make friends, and being with people is good… and also the morality and the dictates and admonitions that come from this invisible being that is magical and all powerful and all knowing, but nobody ever sees it.
Nobody ever sees this god, this Providence. It's like the Wizard of Oz, only it's not even behind the curtain. There's just nothing there.
Ross Douthat’s focus is about joining a community so that you can have a social network that then begins to give you admonitions and dictates, so that you take them seriously. It's telling you how to live, all of a sudden.
This is what's dangerous. It’s dangerous when you have people who need community, but then that community turns on you and tries to control your life.
This is not an unusual experience with religion. It is a common experience with religion.
If you happen to fit with that moral sensibility, well, I guess it works out for you, though it might not work out for your family, might not work out for your country.
What happens when we have a moralistic religion that tries to take control and forms very tight-knit social groups is that we have a lot of people who start to feel that Christianity isn't for them. They look at some of the moral decisions that go on and they feel queasy about it. They feel queasy about the judgment of outsiders, about the judgment of the way that people love and the way that people live and the things that they do. They look at the intertwining of that in religious communities with demands for money, and money, and more money, and more time, and more time, getting more and more involved, so that people are ending up giving their time and their money all the time. They have little life outside of the church.
Then they have moral qualms, and they want to leave, but now they've got to leave everyone that they know, everything that they have known, all of the investment that they've put in to that community. They lose it all. So, a lot of people will just stay.
A lot of people will just stay in the community of the church, even though they don't agree with it, because the social cost is just too high. That's a form of social control. It's a form of coercion.
We could talk about cults. People say, don't join a cult, because a cult will try to control you. A lot of Christian churches, not every one but a lot of them, will also try to control you.
People are told that there is absolute moral certainty that's given from an invisible being that you can't ever see, you can't ever talk to. And now, you have friends and family who are in the church, tight knit, and they're telling you you've got to stay there because there are also invisible evil spirits who will get you, if you leave.
It puts people in these really tight and twisted, unhealthy kinds of situations, and a lot of the time violence results.
Sometimes, your family just shuns you. Sometimes the people you thought were your friends, they just turn their backs on you when you want to leave religion. They make it really hard.
That puts to the test that claimed that this is a religion of love. When a person decides to leave a religion and your friends and family abandon you, turn their backs on you, that's not love. That's just mutual dependence.
It’s a trap. Even in this one sentence that I read to you, I’m going to read it to you again because I want you to listen for this thing.
Ross Douthat starts out saying, hey, you just start out doing whatever version you want, you know, and then where do we end up?
“The key argument for being part of a religious community, to whatever extent, in a fulsome form, if possible, but an attenuated form, if that's all you can manage at the start, is that it makes you more likely to actively practice your religion to take its dictates and admonitions seriously to seek the will of divine Providence regularly, rather than intermittently, to live out the moral vision that the faith holds up.”
In this one sentence from the beginning, you go from being like, hey, whatever you can manage to living out your entire life, according to the morality of this religion, to taking its dictates and admonitions. Ross Douthat just can't stop himself from doing that.
He tries over and over again to be appealing, to be accepting, to try to have an open door and just say, look, we're not gonna try to control you. You do whatever you want, and then by the very end of that same sentence, they've taken over your entire life.
At this point, I'm beginning to think that the title of this book is not honest: Believe, Why Everyone Should Be Religious. I think what Ross Douthat actually wants you to do is not to believe. He just wants you to be religious. He wants you to be part of a religious community. I think what Ross Douthat really wants is for Christian religion to have social control.
Halfway down the page, he’s talking about how religion is like soccer. If you read about soccer and you watch soccer on TV, you're not really into it. You have to join the team and you have to play consistently.
There we go again. You have to play consistently. You can't just join the team and be as involved as you want. You have to become a part of it. You have to go to soccer practice early in the morning and again at night and live and breathe soccer. You have to let it take over your whole life, but in a moral sense, not just in a physical exercise sense.
If you just read about soccer, he says, well, I don't believe that you really have shown an effort. So, if you don't get divine revelation and you don't see God, you don't see any miracles, well, that's just because you're not trying hard enough. You have to join all the way, even if you don't believe. This is what he's been saying over several pages now. Even if you don't believe, even you're like those Catholics, just be part of the church, just go to church all the time. Give the church your money. Go to every mass that you can. Just be involved, show the effort.
That's all he wants is for you to be under the church’s social control, and if you don't see any of the supernatural stuff that he promises you will see if only you hand over your entire life and let them tell you what kind of person to be and how to live, well, then it's your fault if the magical spirits don't show up because obviously you haven't been giving the effort.
There is no way you can win with this religion. I would not step anywhere close to that church. They want to control your life, and they don't care what you actually think just so long as you're there, obeying their commands and giving them your money.
That is why not everyone believes, Ross Douthat.