The God Virus: How Religion Infects Our Lives and Culture (11 page)

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An alcoholic, McCarthy's lies, manipulations and deceit caused havoc in the country and hurt many careers. Ultimately, he was called to task by the Senate and censured. This was only the third time in Senate history that a Senator has been censured.

The new civil religion in this country has adopted these two tactics. First, the virus attacks the immune system. Second, it infects the political body. Anyone who questions this new civil religion is called ungodly, anti-Christian and unpatriotic. This freezes the immune response, renders the opposition helpless and eliminates rational debate based on science or reason. Ann Coulter, the ultra right wing talk show hostess, has used this tactic continuously. Her book,
Godless: The Church of Liberalism,
is a good example.

Michele Bachmann, Republican congresswoman from Minnesota, successfully won her congressional seat by continually referring to her opponent’s lack of religious belief and patriotism, even as she hid her own fundamentalist beliefs and associations. She is an extremely conservative Christian who advocates promoting religious curriculum in public schools, religious home schooling at public expense, teaching creationism in the classroom and many other stealth efforts to assist the civil virus in taking over public monies for education. She denied connections with fundamentalist groups who supported her but gave speeches at their conferences. Her law degree is from Oral Roberts University, something she was reluctant to disclose and tried to keep under wraps during her early career. Religion drives her politics even as she denies it.
¹⁵
When asked about her religious beliefs mixing with her politics, Bachmann responded, “I believe in God. But that is not really relevant.” Bachmann is just one example of many who gained their seat in Congress with stealth tactics and a clear religious agenda.

The Kansas Republican Party effectively used the same two tactics to get a slate of candidates elected to the State Board of Education twice.
Once elected, these individuals proceeded to work hard to infect the entire educational system with the civil virus. Their antics included redefining science so intelligent design could be taught in the public schools.

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City Pages,
Somebody Say Oh Lord!
[article on-line] (23 February 2005, accessed 21 November 2008); available from
http://citypages.com/databank/26/1264/article12984.asp
; Internet.

In any society with a strong god virus, code words and phrases are often used to trigger behavioral responses. Communism, sex education, same-sex marriage and prayer in school have all been code words used to activate viral behavior in the infected. Once activated, the virus controls the discussion. During the 30-years war, 1618-1648, Catholics used “godless Protestantism” and Protestants used “papist” as code words to rally the infected. In Plymouth Bay colony in the late 1600s, Puritan settlers used the code words “papist,” “witchcraft,” “corruption of youth” and “wrath of god.” In all these cases, the code words trigger unthinking behavioral responses in defense or advancement of the god virus.

The key is for the god virus to disable rational discussion and appeal to the primitive fears of those who are already programmed to respond strongly to viral threats. When large groups within the electorate are infected with more parasitic or aggressive viruses, it is easier to evoke strong responses. There is no doubt that Moral Majority, Focus on the Family or 700 Club
¹⁶
members are infected with an aggressive god virus. The leaders of these groups take the already programmed followers and train them to respond in more specific and politically focused ways.

At the individual level, the god virus disables the ability to think critically about one’s own religion. At the civil level, the virus disables the ability to have reasonable and rational discussion of national issues. As we will see in Chapter 5, the primary focus of any major virus is to control biological reproduction, sex and marriage. This is true whether the religion is Islam, Hindu, Christian or any number of others. The new civil religion virus focuses on this as well. James Dobson’s Focus on the Family is a good
example. The focus is on the family as a vehicle for propagation of the new civil religion. It does not focus on all families, only on families that are best fit to perpetuate the virus.

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James Dobson and Pat Robertson’s respective national religious organizations. Both have an underlying political focus similar to the Moral Majority.

To better understand how this works, let’s look at the concept of viral load in biology.

Viral load refers to the concentration of virus found in the system; that is, the amount of virus the body is supporting and feeding. When viral load becomes heavy enough, symptoms appear and pathology becomes evident.

Most societies contain some religious viral load. Attacks on the U.S. immune system in recent decades have left it vulnerable to viral infection in ways not seen since the founding of the nation.

The power of the new civil religion is so strong that presidential candidates are required to wear their religious credentials on their sleeves. Do people today condemn deist Thomas Jefferson for his unabashed refusal to endorse a day of Thanksgiving and prayer? He was blatantly called an Atheist, which he did not deny, yet he served with distinction as the author of the Declaration of Independence, ambassador to France and secretary of state, and was elected twice to the presidency. Could that happen today? Do people condemn Lincoln’s derision of most religion and refusal to join any religion? Did anyone care about Teddy Roosevelt’s church attendance? Did anyone care if Woodrow Wilson or Franklin Roosevelt prayed every day? None of these past presidents would pass muster with the civil virus today. The viral load is heavy in the political nervous system. The infection is chronic and will affect the political discourse of the nation for decades to come.

Cultural infection is not necessarily inevitable or permanent. European countries have much weaker if non-existent civil religions. Cultures can disinfect themselves to some degree. The following is a joke that circulates in the once devoutly Catholic areas of Belgium, “People go to church four times in their life, and they must be carried in two of them.” The average person
in Europe is a non-believer or a nominal believer.
¹⁷
As a result, religion does not play as big a part in European politics as it does in the United States. European culture effectively uncoupled from religion after WWII. Where religion was once a dividing line between people, it now is non-existent. Catholics, Protestants and Jews all intermarry, whereas they once fought interminable wars.

A 2005 lead story in
USA Today
was headlined “Religion takes a back seat in Western Europe.”
¹⁸
Even in Ireland, the most religious country, church attendance has fallen from 85% to 60% since 1975. Other countries have seen even greater declines. A 2000 Swedish-based study of western European countries shows that 60% of the French say they “never” or “practically never” attend church. In Britain it was 55%, other countries ranged from 29% to 48%. In contrast, the United States shows only 16% saying they never or practically never attend church.

It took two world wars for the Europeans to realize that the prayers of millions of people were not answered. It doesn’t take much intelligence to see that the god isn’t working too well when 92 million people die in two world wars,
¹⁹
or to see the complicity and cooperation of the Pope, Lutheran clergy and Christians with Hitler during WWII.
²⁰

This dramatic uncoupling of religion from culture has reduced the influence of the Pope and various religious leaders. It has also left Europeans wondering what causes Americans to be so easily influenced and manipulated by such leaders. Many find it difficult to understand why U.S. presidents and politicians have to display their religious credentials to get elected.

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This is changing in some areas with a high influx of Muslim immigrants. In this case, the Muslim virus is beginning to exert influence.

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USA Today,
Religion takes a back seat in Western Europe
[article on-line] (11 August 2005, accessed 21 November 2008); available from
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2005-08-10-europe-religion-cover_x.htm
; Internet.

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Estimates of the dead in WWI are 20 million and WWII, 72 million.

20
John Cornwell,
Hitler’s Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII
(Viking, 1999). Daniel Goldhagen,
Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust
(Vintage, 1997).

Today, Europe faces a new challenge with the influx of Muslim immigrants. From British Muslims demanding recognition of Shariah law, to veils being worn by government female employees, to demands that Islamic creationism be taught, Islam has started the process of infecting European culture. It looks remarkably like the demands American fundamentalists make in the U.S. political arena. Muslims are demanding recognition of their religious practices and beliefs in the public domain without respect for secular law or long-standing church-state separation principles.

Ironically, the U.S. creationist movement worked closely with the fundamentalist Islamists in Turkey to force the teaching of creationism in Turkish public schools.
²¹
This amazing alliance has now fostered a movement in Europe with Islamists demanding that creationism be taught in European schools. In the coming years, Europe will find itself in a new struggle with the Islamic god virus, a struggle similar to fundamentalist infection of the American political system.

The Ayatollahs of Iran are not too concerned with Iran’s economic prosperity. Fundamentalist Islam would take a culture back to the Stone Age if it allowed more successful propagation. This is something that well-educated, less virally infected individuals in the West do not understand. How can someone not be concerned with economic progress? Just read a few verses in the New Testament to get a clue:

Sell all that ye have, and give alms; provide yourselves bags which wax not old, a treasure in the heavens that faileth not, where no thief approacheth, neither moth corrupteth.

-Luke 12:33

It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.

-Mark 10:25

For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.

-1 Timothy 6:10

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In the 1980s, Duane Gish and John Morris of the Institute for Creation Research traveled to Turkey to help Islamists develop a creationist curriculum for Turkish public schools. The curriculum was adopted in the early 1990s.

Look at the economic model of Mohammed! In Islam, usury
²²
is a sin. The same was true in the Catholicism of the Middle Ages.
²³
Indeed, it continued to be a sin until recent times. What kind of an economic model prohibits charging interest? Interest is a fundamental principle of capitalism. Religions generally have very primitive economic models. The virus is primarily interested in propagation economics. To illustrate this, let's look specifically at Christian church economics and budgets.

When people give to their religious organization, they are frequently reminded of the good their money will do. If we examine the “good” objectively, we need to ask, Where does the money actually go? For our discussion I will define “good” as a result that gives more food, resources or functional information to a target needy group. Examples would be an African village that receives equipment and training to generate their own electricity or regenerate their farmland for better, more sustainable agriculture. It could also be functional schooling for children who would otherwise not gain an education. The term “functional schooling” refers to education that teaches real-world skills like math, languages, reading, writing, financial management or vocational skills – as opposed to memorization of the Koran or the Bible.

Using this definition, a Madrasah that spends 80% of its recourses teaching the Koran to children and 20% teaching them to read and do math would, at best, be providing 20% of a functional education. A Christian school that spends 30% of its resources teaching the Bible and religion is only 70% functional.

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The practice of charging interest on loans - not the modern definition of excessive interest, although that was a problem in the Middle Ages as well.