Belief in religion is absurd in itself. To call something “absurd” means to call something “illogical” since belief in that which can’t be proven is certainly part of the definition of “faith” ontologically religion is absurd. Yet, many are loathe to use the adjective because of it’s other connotation which is “ridiculous”–giving the impression that faith is for the stupid, the childish, and the slow-witted.
As I said in my previous post, most atheistic arguments come off this way. The atheist tends to get smug and condescending as the religious gets…well about the same but angrier. What I liked about Hitchens is that more often than not the religious masses are viewed by him almost as victims of a charade being perpetrated on them by followers of the desert monotheisms (Judaism, Christianity, Islam). Nonetheless, he also views such followers as being gullible having bought into something that they wouldn’t have if the institution of the population into religion was postponed until the age of reason. It’s not just that the masses are tricked but that they also refuse to look at the trick and figure it out themselves. So we come to the absurdities.
Hitchens isn’t without admiration of the achievements of those people that were religious, for instance he laudes praise on the Jewish archaeologists who have combed the desert of the middle east and have come up with many interesting and ancient finds. He then points out that despite the stories in the history of the three monotheisms large important events have not left even the trace of evidence that they occured. The wandering in the desert of the Jews after their flight from Egypt is doubted to the extent that it is completely discounted. This lack of evidence is confirmed from both Jewish archaeologists and Egyptian archaeologists. The former not being able to find traces of a large group of nomadic people wandering a swath of the world which is odd given that there is a book allegedly chronicling their locations and deeds. The slaughter by the Levites should have been discoverred given the amount of people that Moses commanded them to kill. Those working the Egyptian angle cannot locate any mention of a slave uprising or exodus, nor of a mass murder of the first born infants. Odd, considering the mention of the pharaoh losing his son in popular tellings of the story. Or the case of Noah’s ark, where every couple of years some expedition sets out to mount Ararat to find the ark but comes up empty.
This should be enough, he says, but then hints at the likely response, “…yet.” The evidence hasn’t been found yet, which is a claim that is unfalsifiable. “Unfalsifiable” doesn’t mean “true” it means that it is a claim that is beyond proof, it can’t be given a truth value which makes it weak, so weak that in science it is considerred “not even wrong.” Yet this story makes up the basis for the beliefs of a majority of the world’s religious.
His second important absurdity seems to focus on the personhood of the individuals for whom the divine revelation occurs. Moses, Muhammad, Buddha, Joseph Smith are said to be those for whom the absolute has had direct contact. The disbelief at this centers around their capabilities and social standing. If god is so omnipotent and omniscient, why is it chosing people that seem to be the least off? Why not allow for a leader or someone with authority to carry the message thus gaining the largest amount of people with the least amount of effort? God apparently is not an economist. In the case of Muhammed we are presented with a person who was illiterate, told by the angel Gabriel to “read,” who then has to transliterate the word of Allah and spread it to the masses. Joseph Smith, a charlatan and convicted criminal, is given golden tablets by the same angel; Moses was admittedly the less intelligent between him and his brother yet it is he, not Aaron that is charged with leading the Jews from servitude. Hitchens asks, “what is this if not populism?” Simply it doesn’t make sense as to why the poor and uneducated are given this charge where, again, it would be simpler to reveal the truth to everyone–a task not unfit for an all powerful absolute.
The rest of the absurdities take place in the form of simple questions: if Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead why is there no record of what eventually happened to him? Why are his experiences not recorded? Lazarus would be the only person to have charted Hamlet’s “undiscoverred country” but no one seems to make a big deal of it afterward.
Or my personal favorite regards Judas and the prophecy regarding the Messiah. Judas had to betray Jesus according to the prophets, but how could he? Jesus, a man well known to the local Jewish authorities as they had confronted him many times, who were actively looking for him, needed someone to point him out to the guards.
Despite all of this the religious still cling to their beliefs. Which makes Hitchens’s job all the more frustrating. He tries to show the power of the rational mind, of the fact that atmoic theory is millenia old derived from the power of reason rather than revelation, but none of this matters. Faith, it seems, the power of belief is stronger than anything else.
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