It is somewhere around the late 1800s; way, way far out in the Southwest Pacific. In places like New Guinea, Micronesia, Melanesia, and Fiji, as the white-skinned Europeans began their way into the lands of the indigenous peoples that populated these remote areas - whether it be for colonizing, missionary work or military purposes - the effect of these foreign visitors with their enormous flying machines, bizarre behavior, and plentiful and awe-inspiring cargo is very powerful stuff to the natives. Almost immediately, the natives take the things they have experienced and incorporate them into their religious views.
These things the white men bring with them, like food, clothing, machines, medicines, weapons, and whatever else, are items that the native people begin to desire very intensely.
For these native people, acquiring these things is something that can only be done through the practice of religious ritual.
They develop their belief system, centered around the idea that their ancestors are the only inhabitants of paradise, and add that their ancestors alone control the cargo. Sadly, the white man has cleverly, and through terrible manipulation, managed to deceive the ancestors into allowing the cargo to fall into the white man’s hands.
In order to remedy this situation, the natives believe that if they practice the proper rituals with a high enough level of consistency, eventually they will catch the attention of their ancestors and thus begin to receive the shipments of “holy” cargo they have always deserved.
During World War II, and after the establishment of an American military presence in Vanuatu (then New Hebrides), a myth began to gain weight around an American serviceman named John Frum. According to the story, John Frum was a man who told the Natives that he was the one they must follow, and that by following him they would insure that once Frum leaves them to go back to America, he will eventually return with their long-deserved cargo.
It makes a great deal of sense to suspect that the name John Frum was adapted from the terminology “John, from America,” which would have been a reasonable way for a native to refer to an American serviceman. Additionally, it needs to be mentioned that there are no records of a John Frum ever having served in the military at that time.
Once the idea of John Frum began to grow legs, the locals began to imitate the practices of the white people in order to attract the attention of the cargo planes, thereby diverting the cargo to its rightful destination – them.
The natives built bamboo and straw airplanes, runways, air towers, radios, and many other trappings of the white people.
They devised a specific day upon which Frum would return to them, cargo in hand. Their day was the 15th of February (the year never having been determined). And while the story goes that Frum would return soon after he left (in the 40s), the cult is still active, and they are still waiting patiently and dutifully for his return. In fact, February 15 in Vanuatu is still John Frum day.
In his amazing and (I believe) essential book, Richard Dawkins uses the story of the Cargo Cults to help explain, in part, how religions come about. He explains how these cults sprang up more-or-less around the same time, to groups of people that had no contact whatsoever with one another either physically or culturally.
Dawkins explains that this behavior is an example of the way in which people are easily capable of taking ideas, no matter how improbable, or perhaps due to their improbability and using them for the foundation of religious belief.
He argues quite convincingly that these sorts of events say a great deal about how human psychology is tailor-made to develop odd myth-based religious beliefs.
And best of all, while it might be easy to regard these people as delusional and downright silly, how far off is it to recognize that what these people believe is essentially no different than what we believe here in the West?
Is it not utter lunacy to believe, without anything close to convincing evidence, that there was once a man, born of a virgin, who also happened to be an omnipresent, omnipotent god? How about that this all-powerful god died as a mortal man, was entombed, and then miraculously escaped from his tomb, hung out for a while, and then ascended back to heaven to sit alongside his father, who just happens to also be himself?
Anyone still with me?
Smithsonian Magazine article on Frum
The above video was embedded from the Atheist Nation website, and you can watch its second part there as well. The video footage was added to Richard Dawkins’ section on Cargo Cults and the origins of religion from his excellent and devastating book, The God Delusion.
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31 Comments:
I have never understood why people think Scientology is so crazy and Christianity, for example, makes perfect sense.
The weight of history, I would imagine.
I recently watched Religulous which is pretty entertaining. I love it when he's interviewing an imam and the guy gets a cell phone call and his ring tone is Zeppelin's Kashmir.
The most lucid "holy men" in the flick are the Catholic priests --one who is an astronomer and the other who oddly enough seems just as astonished as Bill Maher at the ridiculousness of religion.
My sister is contradictory like this. She is an evangelical living in rural China. The stories she tells me of what some of these folks do based on superstition and ritual is pretty ridiculous. But then, there she is -all the way across the world- for what I think is a fairly ridiculous reason.
On the flip side, growing up Catholic I never felt we were supposed to believe any of it at face value although there were plenty of sheepish folks around who appeared to. Many religious people in my family and surroundings were clearly intelligent philosophical people. I found the discussions on an intellectual level to be fascinating and worthy. The discussion of the trinity, the three whole beings making up the one to be a very healthy study for a young brain.
My point here is that it is all scrambled up. There is nothing in secular belief that demonstrates any more intelligence (I give you pop music par example) than what can (key word "can") be extracted from a religious life.
Bill Maher says a few strong things in the documentary that make him appear to be zealous to an opposite degree making him look just as susceptible to the problems he sees in religion: that is narrowmindedness and an unwillingness towards empathy.
Pop music is a fairly meaningless example of secularism being no more intelligent than theistic belief.What's wrong with pop music anyway? I don't really get why intelligence needs to be a part of this point anyway. The issue isn't intellectual capacity, the issue is veracity of one's system of belief. Neither side of the god argument has closed the book, but anyone who believes that a belief in a christian god is even remotely plausible given the growing body of evidence that continues to develop improbability is no better off than someone who thinks that the same god told them to kill their baby (at least in terms of reason).
You mean the belief in a Christian god based on physical laws and historical evidence, but I mean as mental exercise.
Secular thought offers no more meaningful basis for living than a religious basis. People find some pretty ridiculous things to base their life on as either witnessed by or exemplified in pop music.
People use god to reason for a lot of weird things but conceptually what else is there. It's open to interpretation but even just on an intellectual level s/he/it's the biggest thing going.
You could use damn near anything as mental exercise, you don't need fairies to work it out. I agree that it's a fun exercise, but if that's all it's good for, who needs that?
As far as a meaningful basis for living, what atheist would ever agree with what you are saying? God isn't the biggest thing going at all. What about reality? Or, how about the universe, or science, or love, or everything but god? And, that includes an intellectual level. I think it's better to say that god is the most obnoxious thing going, the biggest bully, and the most invasive form of silliness there is. So, in those ways perhaps, yes, I agree. Otherwise, I'm lost too now.
Well a lot of nasty things have been done in the name of science. If we all sit down and agree that there is no god but science are we going to be better off on that level? And what is reality, I'd like to know?
I'm not referring to any specific god but to that idea you have to give a name to if you are attempting to contribute some wacked out actions to a greater power.
Playing god's advocate over here.
I know you are.
I would never claim science to be infallible. That's equally ridiculous. Nor would I claim it takes the place of god. What I would say, however, is that regardless of how much one believes in god, there simply is no way to prove that there actually is one by almost any sane definition. Science doesn't replace god. What science does is help define understanding of things like life, existence, etc... in a way that begins to unravel many of the tacit but highly implausible precepts of theistic belief.
I am in no position to give you anything more than a terrible idea of what reality is. What I meant was, since I don't see much rational reason to believe in a supreme anything (well, except the Whopper), and since I see god as being almost certainly unreal, I would rather deal with everything else - namely reality. I can't define what is is, but for me, god is not real.
Well maybe we are god which is one way to describe the belief that science is leading towards a complete undressing of monotheism or anytheism which is another way to interpret the new testament. God is man.
I respectfully and totally disagree with that business about man being god as a logical conclusion to the process of science heaping mountains of improbability on top of theism. You seem to want to assert that science is trying to take the place of god which is utterly absurd to me. What science does, indirectly, is build up evidence that makes the idea of a sentient omnipotent and omnipresent creator less and less likely, and thus, less and less likely to believe.
There may never be a slam dunk argument, but there may never have to be one. Eventually man might be able to grow into a place that doesn't need myth and the supernatural to explain the unknown.
Making man sentient omnipotent and omnipresent creatures is science's ultimate goal.
I salute you for having the conversation, especially over a blog.
You really like Burger King?
I believe there are things that we can't see that run our lives. Like gravity. Whose to say what else there is that is unseen and a force of nature?
That's as far as I've gotten in the religion game. Or God game.
There does seem to be some evidence towards the power of positive thinking and/or prayer. That is interesting.
There are scientists who are religious and vice versa, and that is interesting too.
Of course it all comes back to science fiction and Heinlein. (That's a joke.) However, his books are the some of the ones I read to contemplate religion, if I want to take them that direction. His later stuff, by the way.
Leaving things open so that any possible incoming facts can be put in is the way I tend to operate.
Um, I don't think any scientist would ever try and claim that that is the goal of science.
I would have to guess that there is no ultimate goal of science, no end result. I think it makes more sense to think of science as having a purpose and always moving in many directions, and not towards an ultimate end; and I believe that purpose to be to seek understanding and knowledge.
It's completely wrong to bestow supernatural abilities to the rigors of science. As for being sentient, omnipotent, and omnipresent, I think it would be safe to say that we are sentient already, science or no science!
Well maybe a scientist would argue the omnipotent part. That's where the engineer comes in.
I assume you're joking because otherwise that's mental.
You don't think the goal of science is to be all knowing? So maybe a noble scientist doesn't desire necessarily to be all powerful, however the engineer takes what the scientist knows and applies it.
Scientists are allowed to grow and change when new facts and information are brought on board. They are encouraged to admit errors in thinking, so that there can be progress. I have always seen the term "All Knowing" as derogatory. It implies a frigid and inflexible violence of personality. Scientists do work toward "knowing everything", but I don't think they would ever claim to know it all at any stage of the game. Without going into the whole "can anything truly be known" realm- I think it is safe to say, that religious faith has operated and been successful because it has no flexibility at all. Which brings us back to the violence stemming from "all knowing".
Anyone can jump in and adopt a set of beliefs and have an army of support without having to own any kind of intelligence at all. People own their cars with more investment and sensibilities than they own their faith.
No, I don't think that. I think the goal of science is to know more. To know all would imply that all could ever be known, which I have never heard any sane scientist claim was possible.
I see the idea of omniscience as being a purely theoretical one. We get the idea of all because to have all of something works for us on a certain level. Being inquisitive, we make what I suspect is the mistake of thinking that we can somehow apply the idea of all to the world of knowledge in a tangible way. Therefore, we think that it must be possible to somehow know everything.
There is no evidence whatsoever to support that everything is knowable in the way that we know we ate all our dinner, or spent all our money. It's more an illusion than anything, another red herring.
Scientists on an individual basis can be as petty controlling and egotistical as the best of them. Many canons of scientific thought held sway for years before being shot down. Some of these canons were thought to be scientific fundamentals.
Churches are seen as rigid but so are scientific institutions. Churches also aren't really all that rigid --all faiths are incredibly divided internally. Great debates work themselves out within these institutions and by forces from without.
Religion has been around a long time but you can't say the history of religion is one long unyielding thing.
Are you willing to make the impossibility of knowing everything a canon of scientific law? That sounds more like a religious belief.
I'm not entirely sure what you're getting at here to be honest. I'm not going to make any categorical statements about science as I'm not a scientist.
I do know that scientists are petty because people are petty, not because science is petty.
If certain institutions are rigid, that's one thing, but it's unfair to claim that science is rigid by proxy (not to mention, again, goofy).
Certain churches are extremely rigid. And the thing about religion is that it is predicated on the belief of something for which there is no concrete evidence at all.
Worse, defending the historically malignant history of religion over science as if that's the host of bad human behavior is nonsense and you must know it and are simply being a piss-taker.
One thing I will never attempt to do is make anything a canon of scientific law. Even I am not that stupid.
Again, omniscience is the province of religion, not science. It is the church which claims the existence of omniscience in the eternal being of a supreme creator. Science is a process, not a religion. To ever claim otherwise seems regressive and reactionary.
EVERYONE can be petty and controlling and egotistical no matter what their formula for reconciling their existence or satisfying their curiosity. And so I give you WAR.
Science has failed us all over and over again since the dawn of time. That is Science's job. To fail us but never stop asking why or how. It has failed us inside and outside of all that we "know" and even though it's stewards can be unapologetic bastards when it comes to erring-I still find that there is a hunger for intelligence in the science community that is different from the kind of energy invested in devotion to a God within most Planetary faiths- that almost seem depressed and resigned to learning or asking. To be clear, I haven't been to Nirvana- and I can't say that it's masculine appeal... appeals to me.
Man is a failure if he believes or doesn't believe, and I don't question this fact. All I have to do is hold up to the light the terrors that the combination of faith and science has done for humanity in the way of mental health practices- and I am good for eternity when it comes to damning BOTH.
I will say that religion has been given a bum rap by me for being the cause of misery and war and genocide.. It really isn't religion at all. It's us. And we created religion. But we DIDN'T create science. Science just is.
Science built the bomb and religion dropped it...?
Well perhaps it is not a great idea to debate the merits of science over religion directly, although science is often offered as an alternative. And I think you might be arguing that if we all applied a scientific belief system the world would be better off.
I'd say science is as rigid as any church could possibly be even though science is not one entity the way say the Catholic church is. If the world decided to abandon all religious faith and dedicate human ambition to scientific study, what we'd have would be something very akin to monastic life with a lot of people at the bottom of the rung doing extremely menial and boring tasks for a greater good.
As I recall there already have been a couple of fairly large-sized countries sophisticated enough to declare religion dead and attempt to create atheistic states. It hasn't worked out any better to say the least.
You can't possibly be serious in claiming religion to be flexible in the face of "rigid" science, can you?
To predicate an entire system of belief on the belief in something no more real than the Hobbit isn't just a bad idea, it's totally insane.
Religion is rooted in something that is supposedly immutable. What could be more rigid than that? Plus, it is done without the slightest shred of proof. Worst of all, there isn't any compelling evidence either. Being true isn't even relevant, and that is directly due to its rigidity.
That monastic feudal hierarchy you are claiming in the expression of some sort of bizarre atheistic science-nation is so offbeat to me I can't even respond to it without thinking you're joking.
Show me the examples of failed atheistic states, explain how atheism is the reason they failed. I'm all ears.
And there is centuries of overwhelming evidence that supports the argument that religion has done more harm to humanity than anything else. Inquisitions, pogroms, wars, genocide, the spread and re-spread of disease due to fundamentalist intolerance, etc... ad-infinitum. Religion is merciless, unyielding, polarizing, and malevolent. I no likey.
The rules of science are very rigid and demanding. In fact, few people choose to become scientist because it is so demanding. Lab work is tedious and requires hermetic attention. And most lab work isn't done by high-level scientist but by their long suffering apprentices.
The Roman Catholic church, for example, has changed a lot over the two thousand year course of its history. It certainly reached an apex of power and corruption but it hasn't been a rigid history and doctrine itself has changed many times. If you look at religion not as one entity but as a whole then it is certainly not rigid.
What was the last war based on religious grounds? We get bogged down by news from the Middle East but how much of what is going on there is truly religious? The Israeli conflict is more a racist thing and extremely complicated at that. Iraq was a secular state. Religious terrorists like the Ku Klux Klan thrive in an era/geography of bleakness. The Massively destructive wars going back as far as you could care to go are not religiously based: Vietnam, the Civil War, WWII, WWI. More people were killed in Juarez Mexico due to secular drug wars in 2008 then all the people killed in Baghdad in the same year (not that the killing in Baghdad is religiously motivated either).
Genocide is usually racially motivated. The Jews weren't persecuted for their faith as much as their race. Everybody is Muslim in Sudan but they still kill each other with pleasure.
I don't know what you mean by the spread and re-spread of disease being a religious issue. Maybe because the Catholic church doesn't approve of condoms? But that's only part of what they do believe and if Catholic beliefs were applied to these regions it would probably limit the spread of disease. Do you really think people have sex with multiple partners, monkeys and things but don't use condoms for religious reasons? Or is it because Mother Teresa wasn't such a great healer after all? She still wasn't a symptom.
The Soviet Union and Nazi Germany are failed atheist states. I do think they failed because of intolerance towards religion (among other intolerances) and also because they had too much fervored faith in applied science.
Scientific rigor is utterly incomparable to the claimed immutable authority of divine power. Scientific laws are in place as a reflection of the natural world in which science takes place, they aren't arbitrarily created to enforce the authority of the holy word such as in religion. There are natural laws that govern the practice of scientific inquiry. We don't make this shit up for the purpose of controlling people.
The doctrinal changes within the histories of religion adapt only in the face of growing evidence that openly and directly challenges the artificial nature of theologic authority. When it is obvious that virgin birth is scientifically impossible the immutable word suddenly becomes a parable. It goes on and on. This is not growth in the sense that religion is willing to grow, it is a survival tactic, openly chosen, in order to perpetuate a system of control and falsehood.
I am not defending the side of science over religion in some sort of doctrinal war, as hard as you seem to want to steer this towards that direction.
I am saying that there is nothing that religion provides man that he can not achieve without religion. Beyond that, the very ideas upon which religious belief is predicated are dubious at best and heading down a path that can not be comforting for those who still cling to their myths and their fairies.
Science changes because it is growing healthily. Religion grows like a tumor on the history of the world.
In Africa, the use of western medicine to control disease is regularly stopped under the guise of divine threat.
The catholic church sold indulgences for fuck's sake; this alone is inexcusable. And what about the papal collusion with Hitler? Not about religion? The Catholics will forever blame the Jews for killing Jesus. So religion plays a huge role in WWII. Besides, race and religion are intertwined in the case of Judaism.
WWI also had deep religious undertones from the very outset with the murder of Ferdinand.
What about Bosnia? Straight-up religious war.
The Wahabist jihadi attacks on Western targets?
The crusades?
And, the battle for Palestine is most certainly a religious war. Again, race is inseparable from religion in the Middle East.
While Soviet Russia was an atheist state, I think it's harder to completely make that case in Hitler's Germany. And using your own angle, Russia was more about authoritarian rule then the denial of a god. In fact, while Stalin was inarguably an atheist, he was more importantly a power hungry dictator.
Are you trying to use the Stalin and Hitler were atheists so atheism is bad argument? That's a bad idea. If not, what is your point? Are you claiming that religion is at worst a quaint conceit for those who don't believe, and that theistic belief as a basis for national order is not only a pleasant mind-game but also the only reasonable way to run a country? Is America a theocracy to you? Should it be one?
What is your point to all this anyway? Are you advocating the practice of religion as something to adhere to, or as something silly but necessary?
Actually, I'm not sure what you're trying to say at this point.
What am I saying? Religion and god get a raw deal. Both religion and science when applied have similar outcomes. However this did go down a dead end track in that I don't think they are alternatives for one another.
Who got pissed off at the indulgences? One of the most spiritual men of his time that's who.
I think we're pretty close in thought on most of this actually. Now if you will excuse me I have to go watch Chicago cops and firemen beat each other to a pulp at a local high school gym.
The nicest thing I'll say about religion is that when it is applied nothing actually happens.
Who came up with the indulgences? Catholic dickwads, that's who.
At least you know that if you get mugged and set on fire you're good!
The ever-pleasing Bono chimes in.
Wait, you just said that religion and god get a "raw deal"?! You're making me cry. Poor, neglected religion. If only people still believed in it. How lonely it must be believing in god. Has anyone in the history of man ever been dealt a hand worse than that of the irreligious and openly godless?
my biggest issue with religion isn't even their nonexistent god. it's their overt and obnoxious way of shoving it down my throat everywhere I turn. TV, the papers. street signs, loud proselytizing cultish fundamentalists, athletes, politicians, every damn where you turn it is utterly impossible to avoid the clutches of the "faithful." I despise the sanctimonious harassment. I would love, as in fucking love, a world without it.
And that in no way implies we all turn into Stalin. That is such a hyperbolic load of crap. It's not immoral to not believe in god, it's immoral to do bad things. Stalin did both. Stalin also ate dinner. I do that too but that doesn't mean we drink from the same fountain.
How's that for commenting way past the shelf life? Heh...
Pretty good. Let's keep this going as our own limbo.
I don't think in our culture that the overwhelming oppression is religious. I think the devout feel equally harassed. In the greater West (including Europe) religion is way on the out anyway.
But I was talking about right here in this post. You give religion powers it doesn't have. What you are describing is the capacity for man to manipulation and that can come in many forms eventually floating to the top because there is nothing mightier than the concept of god - no matter what or who or if that is. Religion will always be because there is always the concept of god.
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