Getting ready to take on monsters next. I'm waiting on some research responses for the ghost chapter, so it might even be the last one to get written. But monsters is what I'm going to tackle, when I'm done wading through the Good Book.
Of all the stuff in this book I would most like to be real, I'd like for it to be monsters. And, I suppose, in a way, they are. New species are uncovered all the time - but that's not the same as an honest-to-goodness mythical monster. Monsters and ghosts were my first foray into the "paranormal." And when I'm out in the woods I still keep alert for Bigfoot.
I have a plan for the day I run into Bigfoot. Everyone who sees him is terrified of Bigfoot. If they have a gun, they never shoot him - if they have a camera they always seem too afraid to snap a good photo. Not me. When I see Bigfoot I'm going to come at him like white on rice! I'm going to leap on Bigfoot and throttle him with my barehands. Then I'm going to load him into the trunk of my car and drive back to Washington, and right up the middle of the National Mall, honking my horn and shouting - with cops trailing behind just like in the Blues Brothers.
And then I'm going to drive right up the steps of National Museum of Natural History and dump Bigfoot's corpse in front of those big brass doors and demand my goddamned Nobel Prize.
Harsh, you might say? Yes. But I'm sick of screwing around with Bigfoot. He's so damned cute and coy, sneaking around like he does. Thousands of people have seen him and he's left behind tantalizing hair and poop samples and, of course, those giant footprints. But that's it!! No fossils, no bones, no hard evidence. Well, if Bigfoot runs into Jerry, his days are numbered! I want my Nobel Prize!
OK. Time to calm down...back to monsters. The key difference between "monster hunters" - or cryptozoologists, as they like to be called - and "real" scientists is, of course, faith. The monster hunters believe that what they're looking for is real. They have faith that the thing is out there - they've made up their minds that Bigfoot or Nessie is a real creature and they've convinced themselves that if they just look hard enough, they'll be the one to find them. In this respect, they're just like the Biblical archaeologists that search for Noah's ark - they have faith that the events of the Bible are real, therefore the ark simply has to be out there somewhere.
Of course, science doesn't work that way. Scientists study a holistic environmental system - whether it's unexplored caves or unexplored island jungles. They are accumulating knowledge about a whole host of intellectual concerns, and if they find a new species as a result, bonus points!! Cryptozologists are trying to prove a point - they're tring to affirm their faith into reality. That's why monsters deserve a chapter in a book on faith.
But as for Bigfoot - I'm watching you, dude.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Taking on the Bible
It's been awhile, I see, since I last updated. Been busy as hell actually researching and writing the book! It's going a bit slower than I'd like, as I had a little bit of health trouble for a month or so and I'm in the middle of moving out of our big house and into an apartment in Alexandria. Never mind all that - there's always reasons for not getting a thing done, but it's getting done and I'm quite proud of the end result. But I will be happy to have the third chapter behind me this week. The rest will come much faster and easier.
The first three chapters have largely been about religion. Religion is the mother of all faith-based thinking. I spend a lot of time delving into the science behind religion and why we have evolved to believe the way we believe. I take the "New Atheists" to task in these chapters. They argue that religion is a delusion and an intellectual aberration - but I make the opposite argument. Religion is an evolved norm. Just because the stuff people believe isn't factual, doesn't mean there's not a good reason for believing it. I try to unpack the reasons behind belief in a way that appeals to the everyday reader. Cognition is my thing, so it was a bit tough getting that into laymen's terms.
Right now I'm taking on the Bible. It's a challenge - not because the Bible is hard to refute, but because it's so damn easy to refute. There's absolutely NO archaeological or documentary evidence to support virtually all of the major events in the Bible. Heck - the Jews didn't even invade Canaan. Modern evidence indicates that the Jews, themselves, were Canaanites and they created their origin story around their shared belief in YHWH while they were held in captivity in Babylon.
My Bible chapter, for the most part, could be one page long - or a thousand. How minutely do you refute every unsubstantiated story in the Good Book? How do you deal with the existence of a historical Jesus - after all, there's no evidence that he even lived. As historians we need evidence to make a case, but in the case of Biblical history, we take it all on face value.
My guess is, it would surprise even non-believers how little evidence actually exists in support of the historical events of the Bible. Will that stop people believing in it all? Nope.
Belief is about hope and trust. It doesn't matter what you believe in - you're putting your faith in something bigger than yourself. It's my job as a skeptical historian and as an expert in the psychology of epistemology to help people understand why they believe what they believe. Those folks who believe that literally every word in the Bible (or the Koran, for that matter) is totally factual really are deluded. The Bible, itself, makes it obvious that there are contradictions within the text. The Bible is a mythical history. My goal is to help readers understand that.
The first three chapters have largely been about religion. Religion is the mother of all faith-based thinking. I spend a lot of time delving into the science behind religion and why we have evolved to believe the way we believe. I take the "New Atheists" to task in these chapters. They argue that religion is a delusion and an intellectual aberration - but I make the opposite argument. Religion is an evolved norm. Just because the stuff people believe isn't factual, doesn't mean there's not a good reason for believing it. I try to unpack the reasons behind belief in a way that appeals to the everyday reader. Cognition is my thing, so it was a bit tough getting that into laymen's terms.
Right now I'm taking on the Bible. It's a challenge - not because the Bible is hard to refute, but because it's so damn easy to refute. There's absolutely NO archaeological or documentary evidence to support virtually all of the major events in the Bible. Heck - the Jews didn't even invade Canaan. Modern evidence indicates that the Jews, themselves, were Canaanites and they created their origin story around their shared belief in YHWH while they were held in captivity in Babylon.
My Bible chapter, for the most part, could be one page long - or a thousand. How minutely do you refute every unsubstantiated story in the Good Book? How do you deal with the existence of a historical Jesus - after all, there's no evidence that he even lived. As historians we need evidence to make a case, but in the case of Biblical history, we take it all on face value.
My guess is, it would surprise even non-believers how little evidence actually exists in support of the historical events of the Bible. Will that stop people believing in it all? Nope.
Belief is about hope and trust. It doesn't matter what you believe in - you're putting your faith in something bigger than yourself. It's my job as a skeptical historian and as an expert in the psychology of epistemology to help people understand why they believe what they believe. Those folks who believe that literally every word in the Bible (or the Koran, for that matter) is totally factual really are deluded. The Bible, itself, makes it obvious that there are contradictions within the text. The Bible is a mythical history. My goal is to help readers understand that.
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