Mighty but so ignorant men

“So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence; and in this respect ministers of religion follow gospel authority more closely than in some others.”

These words by Bertrand Russell more or less summarise the religious hysteria gripping the country with the Mighty Men’s Conference of 60 000 men gathering to listen to the potato prophet Angus Buchan telling us how God can change their lives.

But with respect to Russell: not only the ministers follow gospel authority; the way the media have been going on about Buchan and the absolute nonsense he is propagating, reflects on the lack of rational thinking and scientific knowledge among many journalists.

Buchan, the farmer of the astonishing naive film Faith Like Potatoes, tells his captivated and totally uncritical audience how his God will change their lives, how miracles have saved him as a farmer. And on and on he goes.

What astonishes me, is the way one reporter from the Afrikaans daily Beeld, Neels Jackson, has become the cheer leader for this epitome of ignorance and irrational thinking. Shouldn’t a journalist have a baloney detector? And if Jackson has one, when was the last time he has switched it on?

Instead of asking critical questions about the miracles of God – against all natural laws – Buchan tells us about, why don’t Jackson and those 60 000 mighty men change the batteries of their baloney detectors? They are obviously flat.

Or maybe I am wrong. Is this not a classical example of the fact that the religious meme does not include a critical thinking faculty in human beings? They are mutually exclusive. That so many South African men truly believe Buchan is a messenger from God, emphasises Russell’s view that “dogma demands authority, rather than intelligent thought, as the source of opinion; it requires persecution of heretics and hostility to unbelievers.”

Why do I refer to the latter part of the quotation (“… it requires persecution of heretics and hostility to unbelievers”)?

Because the letter of Denker van Pretoria (Thinker from Pretoria), published in Beeld on 23 April (http://www.news24.com/Beeld/Opinie/Briewe/Home/0,,3-2085-73,00.html) led to a spate of letters, some even threats by Buchan supporters who do not want the newspaper to publish anything negative on their hero. I learnt that some writers even threatened the newspaper with an action similar to the anti-Deon Maas campaign against the Sunday paper Rapport.  

So much for freedom of speech and tolerance of other views. Why is this always the route that believers follow, to persecute others as heretics? Russell wrote “Heretical views arise when the truth is uncertain, and it is only when the truth is uncertain that censorship is invoked.”

Denker exposed the ridiculous hysteria created by Buchan and his followers. He or she  is not a heretic, rather someone who proves Russell’s wise words that “The fundamental cause of trouble in the world today is that the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.” Denker is the doubter, Buchan and his followers are the cocksure, the intolerant.

Those 60 000 men, Buchan and Jackson could only benefit from reading a little more (not the Bible, but modern science and philosophy), thinking a little more, and exposing themselves to a good dose of Russell.

He was right that “religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines.”

Unfortunately the 60 000 seem far away from moving a step upwards from the infancy of their intelligence. Not while Buchan and his prophet Jackson are around.