Bronze Age Embarrassment

Now is an embarrassing time to be an Australian. If you turn on the TV, read the newspaper or even go into the city you see Australia embracing the bronze age with open arms. There are a bunch of obvious objections to Australia’s acceptance of Mr Pope which are being well-made all over the new and old media. He’s a relic from the past. He’s not relevant. He’s a bigot. He’s dangerous. He’s expensive. The new regulations are curtailing our civil liberties. We wouldn’t do the same for heads of other organisations with similar beliefs. This is all true, but I want to talk about it with a personal slant.

I was walking through Civic, the center of Canberra, on Sunday. On the way in I’d seen a couple of tour buses parked near the legislative assembly – I guessed it was WYD related, but I wasn’t overly interested. As I walked on I discovered that groups of ‘pilgrims’, usually dressed in the colours of a country and sometimes waving flags, were roaming the city’s central streets. As me and a couple of friends were leaving we were approached by one such group of about 4 people.

What struck me immediately was that their obviously rehearsed spiel was copied straight from con-artists 101. The group of four, ostensibly a family unit, consisted prominently of ‘dad’ who did all the talking and ‘the oldest daughter’ who did a lot of eye-lid bating. As a non-WYD-related passer-by observed, all the groups featured young women to grab the attention of potential male converts. I’m sure Jesus would approve of the methodology. We were walking past the group when ‘dad’ said ‘excuse me can I talk to you for a moment’ or something to that effect. My friends, in usual ‘run away from beggars’ mode kept walking. I figured this could be interesting, so I stopped, forcing my friends to do the same. Dad continued by explaining that he’s not trying to sell us anything and he doesn’t want our money. That’s sort of like a doctor saying ‘this won’t hurt a bit’. If someone has to inform you that they don’t want your money, it’s pretty much a promise that they’re going to want your money. His opening disclaimer actually went on for an oddly long time, he explained three or four times that he didn’t want any money – I’d been hoping this would be fast. Once the disclaimer was done he started on the Jesus loves you pitch… awesome.

Having confirmed that they were in fact WYD pilgrims and they had stopped me to explain that they believed the bronze age notion of a magic man in the sky who loves us so much that he makes us suffer, I figured I’d gained license to talk back. I explained briefly that God isn’t real, to which he started repeating the word ‘bible’. So I explained, again briefly, that the bible was written by men without divine inspiration to manipulate and control people. Obviously I wasn’t going to convert anyone on the sidewalk, and I wasn’t silly enough to try, so I headed on my way. One of my friends chimed in with his 2 cents that he was gay and he didn’t appreciate their ‘beliefs’ on the matter. As we walked off the afore mentioned non-WYD-related passer by stopped to congratulate us and pitch in some of his own Catholic heckling.

The generally cited objection, and certainly the main gripe of our new friend, was that the pilgrims were wasting people’s time. People generally seem to have a massive problem with people pulling you over or knocking on your door or phoning you up to try and tell you what they believe. For my part, I’m not so sure that’s bad. In fact, I think it’s a very good thing that others express their beliefs. If someone figured out that smoking was bad or that seat belts saved lives, and the decided not to phone anyone or knock on any doors – the world would be an awful place. I think if you invent the cure to cancer you should try and tell as many people as possible – you need to get the word out.

My problem with these pilgrims/con-artists is not with the desire to tell others their beliefs, but with the content of the belief and the paradigm it’s set it. Your knowledge about smoking or seat belts exists in a paradigm where evidence, discussion and logic are useful. If you say one thing about seat belts and someone says something else, you can resolve the discussion. In the process you can have reference to the world in ways which you broadly agree upon. In that sort of situation you can and should pimp your idea as much as possible provided your ideas are a dynamic enough to change the best fit of your observations.

The pilgrims are aware that they don’t exist in a functional paradigm. That’s why they’ve adopted the methodology of the salesman or con-artists. The failings of the religious paradigm are essentially twofold. First, it fails to interact with other paradigms; second, it fails to govern interaction within the paradigm. The first point is almost deductive, and not a very strong argument. Paradigms are different ways of thinking, it’s hardly surprising that interaction between them is fraught. Perhaps it is ignorant to judge someone negatively just because they’re in a different paradigm. The telling point is that the religious paradigm isn’t internally functional. Where there is a problem or a debate inside a religion, religious reasoning fails to resolve it. The prime example, and the one raised by my friend, is homosexuality. When one religious group asserts that homosexuality should be embraced or tolerated and another group continues to assert that it’s an evil sin – no progress can be made. The intellectual gridlock is immediate. There are no mechanisms for bringing debate to the table or settling conflicts – religion just isn’t at all helpful.

So when the pilgrims come up and talk to me, not only does communication fail because we’re operating in different paradigms, even if I did listen to them and adopt their belief system I wouldn’t be any closer to resolving any problems or gaining any truth.

~ by Greg Sadler on Tuesday 15 July 2008.