The societies with the world's highest child mortality rates correlate strongly with the world's most religious societies. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that virtually all of the parents of these ten million babies are believers and that they pray intensely for a god or gods to save their babies during the most desperate moments. Understand, we are not talking about praying for a promotion at work or to make an A on a math test. I would think that prayers to a god in the form of a mother's plea to save her suffering and dying child must be among the most powerful and valuable words ever uttered. In my view, this is the best test of prayer we can ever hope for. And prayer fails.
Nations with the highest rates of nonbelief—Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Japan, Canada, and the UK, for example—have the world's lowest child mortality rates. It's reasonable to assume that this means significantly fewer prayers for a baby's good health are spoken or thought by all these nonbelieving mothers. But in places where virtually all the mothers are praying like mad for a god to give their babies good health, babies suffer and die by the millions.
In 2011, the charity organization Save the Children released its rankings of the best and worst places to be a mother on planet Earth. Again, the pattern of prayer not seeming to do much for children is evident:
A prayer advocate's response to the challenge of dying babies and their praying mothers might be that child mortality rates are determined by the state of local economies and are impacted by poor or nonexistent healthcare and sanitation. But that would be the secular answer for why ten million babies die in the arms of praying mothers each year. Prayer, according to most of those who believe in it, is supposed to be able to transcend details such as the availability of clean water and antibiotics. Why would a prayer have to be reconciled with earthly economic conditions and doctor-patient ratios?
When we look back over history and consider all the natural disasters, famines, wars, and other dire circumstances people have found themselves in, it is clear that countless trillions of desperate and sincere prayers for help were sent up to the heavens but never answered as hoped. I suppose one could argue that the gods of these various religions are unimaginably cruel and simply ignore such pleas. However, another possible explanation is that the gods hear no prayers for the simple reason that they do not exist in the first place.
GO DEEPER…
Barker, Dan. Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America's Leading Atheists. Berkeley: Ulysses Press, 2008.
Harris, Sam. The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values. New York: Free Press, 2010.
Harrison, Guy P. 50 Reasons People Give for Believing in a God. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2008.
Stenger, Victor J. The New Atheism: Taking a Stand for Science and Reason. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2009.
It's a comforting feeling to think that it could never happen to you.
—Deborah Layton, Jonestown survivor
I avoid using the term cult and advise others to as well. The general public and news media use this label inconsistently and illogically. The result is that unpopular, weak, or unusual groups are denigrated unfairly. It is wrong, for example, when larger and older religions slander smaller and newer religions as “cults,” especially when most well-established religions were once condemned as cults before achieving mainstream acceptance. But there is another reason not to use the term cult that is even more important than basic logic and fairness.
The primary reason the cult label is a bad one is because it too often gets in the way of opportunities to learn important lessons when bad things happen. Imagining a separate and distinct beast called “cults” suggests that we don't need to be on guard against any and all groups that exercise excessive control over members, encourage fanaticism and irrational belief, and are led by people who are abusive and power crazed. It is dangerous to believe that one only has to steer clear of “those evil, weird cults” and that it's OK to let your guard down around popular groups and organizations. The safer way is to always be cautious and skeptical.
THE LOST LESSON OF JONESTOWN
In 1978, more than nine hundred people died in “Jonestown,” the jungle community built in Guyana by members of an organization called the Peoples Temple that was headquartered in San Francisco. Today most people think of the Jonestown event as a mass suicide by crazy, brainwashed cult members who willingly drank cyanide-laced Kool-Aid® because their leader, Jim Jones, told them they had to in order to go to heaven. The phrase “drink the Kool-Aid” even became entrenched as a pop-culture reference to blind loyalty to anything weird or untrue and is still heard often today.
Rarely, if ever, is Jonestown described as an event in which the Reverend Jim Jones, head of a popular Christian organization, forced more than nine hundred people to their deaths. But that would be a more accurate description of what happened. I learned this thanks to a long interview with a Jonestown survivor, a woman who escaped that nightmare jungle shortly before the end. She knew what was coming and tried unsuccessfully to warn the world.
“Nobody joined Peoples Temple thinking they were going to be taken to South America and killed,” explained Deborah Layton, a seven-year member of the People's Temple.1 She said that Jim Jones was a prominent and respected preacher in California and a member of a human rights commission who received positive coverage from the news media.
“Nobody joins a cult,” she said. “You join a religious group. You join a political organization. You join a self-help group. Then things change gradually and at some point you stop and ask, ‘What am I in?’ It is OK to use the word cult in the dictionary, but not when discussing various religions that are active now.”
Layton's perspective on the 1978 deaths at Jonestown is significantly different from the popular version of the tragedy:
[Large] groups of people do not commit suicide. Children do not take their own lives. In Jonestown, two hundred babies and children died first. Mothers were holding onto their babies. They had no idea what else to do. [Imagine] if someone has a gun on you and your family, you try to think like they do and figure out how you can escape. Those people at Jonestown did not commit suicide. They were coerced. They were frightened by guards with guns pointing at them. [You think,] “OK, I'll run into the forest. But wait, what if I get shot in the back and my baby will be pulled from my arms, screaming and crying? Do I stay here and hold my baby? Do I give my child these last few moments with me holding him?” So many chaotic thoughts go through your head that by the time you figure it out it's too late.
Layton's view from the inside of Jonestown left no doubt in her mind that most people are vulnerable to becoming trapped by dangerous people and dangerous groups. The process of seduction and capture is deceptive. She believes it may comfort people to believe that it could never happen to them, but the reality is that it can:
One of the ways we do a real disservice to our kids is that when something like Jonestown happens we tell them that they were just a bunch of nuts. This sets up our children to one day be in a situation that is a little bit weird and think, “Oh, it can't happen to me.” Their antennas won't be up. But if we tell our kids that this kind of thing can happen to the best of us, then they will be aware.
Layton is also annoyed by what she feels is a common misconception that the Jonestown victims were “just a bunch of uneducated black people.” That's just not true, she says. According to her, many of the black members were well educated. There were also highly educated white people who died, including her own mother.
WATCH OUT FOR DANGERS, NOT LABELS
Layton warns against belonging to a group or organization that discourages questions or forbids dissent. Other signs of danger she cites include being told that if you leave the group you can never come back or that you must separate from family members who do not join. “I think the most dangerous [groups] tell you that their way is the only way,” she said. “I know that a lot of mainstream organizations fit this description, but it is dangerous fo
r so many of them to be willing to just cut out so many people. To say, for example, that if you are not ‘born again,’ you will burn in hell. I also think that it is very dangerous when the only enlightened person is the leader of the organization and to question him or her is forbidden. That is a huge warning sign. Dissent is imperative.”
Layton's comments offer an important warning for all of us. If ever you find yourself seduced by a person or an organization that has all the answers, perhaps it is only because you have failed to ask enough questions. We should always maintain awareness and caution, not only toward fringe groups that may be considered weird, but also toward powerful and popular organizations as well. Some of the most respected organizations in the United States and the world have by any reasonable measure controlled their members excessively, exploited people, stolen from them, abused them, and even killed them in some cases. When it comes to risky allegiances, it is not the cult label that matters; it's the danger. If I had to, I would choose an odd but safe cult over a respected but dangerous religious organization. Wouldn't you?
GO DEEPER…
Haught, James. Holy Horrors: An Illustrated History of Religious Murder and Madness. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1999.
Layton, Deborah. Seductive Poison: A Jonestown Survivor's Story of Life and Death in the Peoples Temple. New York: Anchor, 1999.
If history and science have taught us anything, it's that passion and desire are not the same as truth.
—Edward O. Wilson,
Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge
Many years ago I remember watching a documentary about Noah's ark. The program made the claim that remains of the ark had been found on Mount Aratat in Turkey. Obviously those filmmakers were either incompetent or dishonest because no such discovery has ever been made.
In the years since that documentary aired, I have seen many more such claims come and go. Aside from shoddy documentaries, the ark is a popular topic with believers. Whenever someone tells me that the ark or parts of it have been found, I always ask them for details about the discovery. But they never have any. This is a dead giveaway. Trust me, if a team of university archaeologists, a Christian expedition, or some lost hiker ever finds a five-thousand-year-old wooden ship with fossilized dinosaur feces inside of it and Noah's name carved in the hull somewhere, you will hear about it in great detail. It will be a media sensation. The reality, however, is that the story in Genesis is all we have to go on. But that's enough for many millions of people when it comes to this popular belief.
The basics of the story are well known to almost everyone. The God of Abraham was disappointed with the humans he created, so he decided to murder them all and start from scratch. Noah was the last good man on Earth, so he and his family were to be spared. But God gave him a chore to do, a big one. Noah had to build a massive ship and take care of two animals of every “kind” onboard while God drowned the world. After forty days of rain and months of drifting, the water finally receded and the ark came to rest on top of a mountain. Noah and his family disembarked along with the animals and proceeded to repopulate Earth.
There are numerous problems with this story that should be obvious. But that doesn't stop hundreds of millions of people from believing that it's true. An ABC News poll found that 60 percent of Americans believe that it happened exactly as described in Genesis.1 The Noah's ark story is one of those beliefs that easily generate endless debate over minor details that never lead anywhere. As one who has wasted far too much time discussing the lesser aspects of the story, I recommend sticking to the big issues. For example, could all the land on Earth have been completely flooded only five thousand years or so ago? Impossible, say all credible geologists, climatologists, physicists, historians, archaeologists, and marine scientists. Could Noah have saved enough animals on his ark to have repopulated the entire animal kingdom within the time frame claimed by believers? Impossible, say all credible biologists, zoologists, and geneticists. Could an eight-member family give rise to numerous cultures, civilizations, and a global population of seven billion people alive today in less than six thousand years? Impossible, say all credible archaeologists, anthropologists, historians, and geneticists.
WE'RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BOAT
The vessel's dimensions are not known precisely, but most ark believers seem to agree that it was around four hundred to five hundred feet long. That's a fairly big boat, for sure, but not nearly large enough to house two representatives of every land species in the entire animal kingdom. Excluding plants and aquatic life, there is still a staggering amount of life Noah would have had to board and care for on his ship. In fact, no one today can even guess how many because we are still discovering new species all the time. Millions await discovery, say biologists. There may be more than twenty million unnamed species alone! Clearly we can't know how big Noah's boat would have to have been because we don't know how many pairs of species representatives would have needed a place on it. I'm guessing the ship would have to be about as big as the continents of Africa or Australia to do the job.
Speaking of continents, how did animals from different continents make it to the ship for boarding and how did animals disperse to various continents after the flood? Challenges of a peaceful and timely boarding and disembarking process aside, it seems very unlikely that two representatives of millions of mammal, bird, and reptile species could live aboard a five-hundred-foot ship for nearly a year. Many believers recognize these basic problems and don't even try to explain them. They prefer to call it a miracle and leave it at that. Supernatural herding of animals and magical violations of population breeding requirements are one thing, but everyone should be aware that the laws of nature and scientific evidence do not support this story in any way. In fact, virtually everything we know undermines it. There simply is no compelling case for the entire planet being flooded four or five thousand years ago, and all of today's land life, including humans, being descended from the passengers of a single boat.
It is important to note that having doubts or outright rejecting the flood story does not mean one must necessarily abandon one's religion. While some do argue that every detail of this story and others must be believed, the fact is there are hundreds of millions of sincere Christians, Jews, and Muslims around the world who do not accept the flood story as literally true and yet still adhere to their religion. Those believers who insist that one must believe every line of every story in a holy book in order to be a credible follower of a particular belief system are expressing an opinion and nothing more.
I have learned over the years that ark believers can be very clever in defending their claims. Most young Earth creationists say dinosaurs were on the ark, a stunning claim given the size of many dinosaur species. But believers have explained to me that larger dinosaurs such as argentinosaurus, sauroposeiden, and spinosaurus may have been taken aboard as smaller juveniles or even in unhatched eggs. A neat answer, indeed, but I'm still not convinced.
Perhaps the weirdest aspect of the ark story is the way many believers present it as a positive and inspirational event that should be admired and shared with children. I have seen many children's books, for example, that depict the flood as happy and upbeat, complete with smiling animals and cheery old Noah waving from the deck of the ark. Let's not kid ourselves, if the Noah's ark story really happened, it would have to rank as one of the most horrible events in history. According to Genesis, God flooded the entire world for the specific purpose of killing everyone on it—babies included. In addition to people, however, the collateral damage would have been horrifying. Imagine all the puppies, kittens, and cute bunny rabbits bobbing in the water, kicking frantically until they exhausted themselves and sank beneath the surface to cruel deaths. Even if every adult on every continent was sufficiently evil to warrant death by drowning, surely at least a few children here and there weren't so evil to deserve death by drowning. Imagine the screams that would have filled the air as people struggled in the raging waters before dying. Re
member the terrible tsunamis of 2004 and 2011? Imagine that sort of death and destruction striking everywhere on Earth. Not a cheerful story, definitely not a children's story, in my opinion.
NOAH'S ARK DISCOVERED—NOT!
Although reports pop up from time to time about someone claiming to have found Noah's ark, no one has to date. But you might be able to see and board the famous ship anyway. A group linked to the antiscience Creation Museum in Kentucky plans to build a $125 million “Ark Encounter” theme park nearby. The centerpiece will be a $24 million full-size replica of the ship. The ark will be “perfectly proportioned” and allow visitors inside to explore where they can see both live and animatronic animals. The developers expect the attraction to draw 1.6 million people in its first year and make a $4 billion economic impact in the region over ten years. Donations to fund the project are currently being sought from the public. If interested, you can even sponsor an official wooden ark peg for $100, a plank for $1,000, or a beam for $5,000. The purpose of the ark, say organizers, is to show people how Noah lived and how he built the ark.2 No word yet if they plan to have thousands of animatronic twitching victims in the surrounding waters and bloated corpses littered about the property to further enhance the realism.
GO DEEPER…
Asimov, Isaac. Asimov's Guide to the Bible. New York: Wings, 1981.
Asimov, Isaac. In the Beginning: Science Faces God in the Book of Genesis. New York: Crown, 1988.
Archaeology has confirmed many of our church's claims.
—A Mormon interviewed by the author
Thanks to a dry climate and long streak of human habitation, the Middle East offers an abundance of both historic and prehistoric treasures. Certainly no archaeologist would dispute that. People have been living in that region for many thousands of years and left behind a wealth of artifacts that help illuminate their cultures for us today. Stick a trowel in the ground just about anywhere in this region and there is a good chance you will come up with something.
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