"Blessed are the peacemakers"

"Suspicion, intolerance, and mistrust are driving us apart..."

- Queen Rania Al Abdullah of Jordan

Earlier today I watched the movie Religulous. It was pretty much exactly what I expected it to be: a cynical atheist pointing out how funny and weird and ignorant and dangerous religious people are. I laughed along with it quite a bit, and I agreed with many of Bill Maher's points, but I didn't think the movie was very compelling. Many other atheists take a similar approach as Maher as they argue against religion. "These people think they're drinking the literal blood of a dead guy who was born from a virgin and will take them to a happy place in the sky when they die" [Cue wild, enthusiastic laughter]. 

Man, those religious folks sure are crazy, right? They sure are ignorant, right? Their ridiculous beliefs surely don't have a place in today's world, right? They can be dangerous, right? They are wild and crazy and stupid and deadly, right? And they can't be reasoned with, right? They are the enemy, right?

Okay, maybe people like Maher don't exactly go that far in their arguments. But I do think people who take the approach Maher takes in Religulous are headed in that direction, towards the ugly old Us vs. Them world-view that causes oh so many problems. 

They identify an opposing side (i.e. religious people) and then make them out to be grossly ignorant and irrational and crazy. They do not attempt to understand the other side. (Or, rather, they make no attempt to help their audience understand the other side.)

Let's say a Christian approaches me and tells me "God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve!" Am I going to say, "Oh, wow, you're right. That makes sense. I'm going to completely change my lifestyle and beliefs now"? 

No. There is no chance whatsoever that that will happen. What really will happen is that I will get pissed because I feel insulted. That person will be appalled that I don't listen because what he's saying makes such perfect sense to him. And he will walk away smug, knowing he tried to talk some sense into me but I am just too much of a fool to listen. Be we can see in this case that he is clearly the foolish one. 

He demonstrated no respect for or understanding of my perspective. His argument was not catered towards my perspective. His argument was catered towards himself, to reassure him of his own views.

So, let's say an atheist approaches some religious people and tries to explain how ridiculous those people's views are. He asks them, "C'mon, do you really believe that wafer of bread is the body of some dead dude? That's ridiculous." How is anyone going to respond to someone who just rolls his eyes in response to everything that's contrary to his own views?

One scene in Religulous shows a crowd of Christians watching a reenactment of the Crucifixion of Christ. Jesus is drenched in blood, being mercilessly whipped by Roman soldiers, as he carries massive beams of wood on his shoulders. Each time he stumbles, the audience applauds and jeers. They are watching a display of hideous brutality, and they relish it. What the hell is wrong with them? the movie implicitly asks. These are some seriously messed up people, right?

So, I'll explain what is likely going on in their heads. They understand that Jesus accepted this brutal death. He easily could have escaped it, if he so desired. But he remained silent during his sentencing, and he never called any angels to his side to defend him. Jesus believes that by giving up his life, humans will be allowed to be forgiven for their sins. Every step he takes with the cross on his shoulders, he does so out of love for the very people who are jeering at him, whipping him, tormenting him. Every step he takes, he is forgiving them.

The Christian audience accepts that they themselves are sinners, and that by their own faults they have caused others to suffer. Therefore, they associate themselves with the Roman guards and the cruel onlookers who mock Jesus. They feel shame and guilt for the pain they have caused Jesus by hurting other people, yet they see that Jesus still loves and forgives them even as he's subjected to their most barbaric cruelty. The Christian audience feels deeply moved and comforted by this display of love and are reminded that they too should love and forgive their own enemies. Is this horrible and crazy and unreasonable?

How are we supposed to make progress if we don't try to understand the other side? If we treat the other side with fear and contempt without trying to understand their perspective, is there any doubt that we're going to make them out to be so much worse than they actually are? So much simpler than they actually are?

I'd like to highlight an excellent article by Jonathan Haidt, a Professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia. In this article he examines the divide between the liberal and the conservative frame of mind. As an illustration of one of his points, he describes a trip he once took to India:

I brought with me two incompatible identities. On the one hand, I was a 29 year old liberal atheist who had spent his politically conscious life despising Republican presidents, and I was charged up by the culture wars that intensified in the 1990s. On the other hand, I wanted to be like those tolerant anthropologists I had read so much about.

My first few weeks in Bhubaneswar were therefore filled with feelings of shock and confusion. I dined with men whose wives silently served us and then retreated to the kitchen. My hosts gave me a servant of my own and told me to stop thanking him when he served me. I watched people bathe in and cook with visibly polluted water that was held to be sacred. In short, I was immersed in a sex-segregated, hierarchically stratified, devoutly religious society, and I was committed to understanding it on its own terms, not on mine.

It only took a few weeks for my shock to disappear, not because I was a natural anthropologist but because the normal human capacity for empathy kicked in. I liked these people who were hosting me, helping me, and teaching me. And once I liked them (remember that first principle of moral psychology) it was easy to take their perspective and to consider with an open mind the virtues they thought they were enacting. Rather than automatically rejecting the men as sexist oppressors and pitying the women, children, and servants as helpless victims, I was able to see a moral world in which families, not individuals, are the basic unit of society, and the members of each extended family (including its servants) are intensely interdependent. In this world, equality and personal autonomy were not sacred values. Honoring elders, gods, and guests, and fulfilling one's role-based duties, were more important. Looking at America from this vantage point, what I saw now seemed overly individualistic and self-focused. For example, when I boarded the plane to fly back to Chicago I heard a loud voice saying "Look, you tell him that this is the compartment over MY seat, and I have a RIGHT to use it."

I would also like to draw your attention to what Queen Rania Al Abdulla of Jordan has been attempting on YouTube. Queen Rania created her own YouTube channel and asked viewers to "send me your stereotypes" about the Arab world so that she and others could attempt to break them down and discuss them. I highly encourage you to watch several of the videos on her channel.

We will not get far by simply demonizing that which we do not understand and are not familiar with. It is so easy for a person to lapse into the Us vs. Them mentality, but we ought to remember that one of the most influential humans to ever live once said, "Blessed are the peacemakers..."