Laputans to the rescue!

Religion, evidently, is the culprit. So they say. Religion, what with fanatical jihadists and patriarchal Muslim-baiting Papists, is responsible for leading us to the brink of geo-political ruin. To the rescue: enter the Laputans -- the self-appointed spokesmen for the Age of Reason: the Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion (CSER).

Note the word "SCIENTIFIC." We're talking serious wild turkey Voodoo here. Remember Marx's "scientific socialism" and the splendid Stalinist and Maoist societies it gave us? Oh, but that was a wee little mistake. Marx was an ideologue. He let his ideological biases distort his theories. But we're talking SCIENTIFIC REASON here. Genuine whoop-ass wild turkey voodoo science.

The good news is that you can rest a little more easily now and sleep a little more soundly tonight, because the Laputan Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion has just published its flagship issue of the CSER Review Vol. 1, No. 1 (Fall 2006)! (This is evidently the step-child of the promised Quarterly Review for the Scientific Examination of Religion, with its CSER Quarterly Live, featuring an online news and reviews page to be updated monthly, which, to date, has not yet materialized.) But Hark! The Herald Chairman and Founder of the Center for Inquiry/Transnational declareth (in his opening editorial):

There is a pressing need today for the careful and scientific examination of religion. [Note that word "SCIENTIFIC" again!] ...

In today's world, there is a violent confrontation between different revelatory traditions. Consider the importance of the Rapture for Protestant fundamentalists ... or the intense interest of the devotees of Islam ... which promises heaven for those martyrs who engage in jihad.

Objective, scholarly, and scientific inquiry [ah, those reassuring words!]--independent of theological commitments [can't have any believing scientists, of course: might prejudice their research!] --needs to be pursued today as never before and made available not only to the scholarly community but to the broader public. Hence, we are pleased to announce the launching of a new journal, the CSER REVIEW, published by the Center for Inquiry/Transnational and devoted to the careful and critical examination of religin. The Center is interested in extending science, reason, and free inquiry to every area of human interest. (p. 3)

Does anyone hear in these summons an echo of that "self-limitation of reason" that Benedict XVI took to task in his Regensburg Address? You know, that "self-limitation of reason" that is both the product of Kantian Critical philosophy and the general pathology modernity -- a pathology exhibited, for instance, in the de-hellenization of Christianity found in the modernist historical-critical reading to the biblical text, which leaves you with a risen "Christ of Faith" you can personally choose to believe in even if the SCIENTIFICALLY CERTIFIED "Jesus of History" is dead? Of the consequences of this view, Benedict wrote: "The subject then decides, on the basis of his experiences, what he considers tenable in matters of religion, and the subjective 'conscience' becomes the sole arbiter of what is ethical. In this way, though, ethics and religion lose their power to create a community and become a completely personal matter. This is a dangerous state of affairs for humanity, as we see from the disturbing pathologies of religion and reason which necessarily erupt when reason is so reduced that questions of religion and ethics no longer concern it. Attempts to constuct an ethic from the rules of evolution or from psychology and sociology, end up being simply inadequate."

In his "Welcome to the SCER Rreview," current Chair of CSER, R. Joseph Hoffmann writes:

There has never been a greater need for a review shuch as this. The rise of fundamentalism gnaws at the fabric of American democracy and liberal and secular movements throughout the world. In a disturbing recent poll by the Barna Group, as many as 45 percent of the adult American Christian populatin can be classified as "born-again Christians" ... apreciably up from the 31 percent figurerecorded in 1983 when the first such poll was taken [The Christians are coming! The Christians are coming! Lord, save us from them Christians!].

While Rome burns, the megachurch phenomenon sizzles.... School boards waste taxpayers' money by debating scientific issues about which they are largely illiterate ... [while we alone have the competence to tell you the objective unadulterated absolute TRUTH about SCIENTIFC FACT]. According to a depressing recent survey, as many as ... 85 percent [of Americans] in a literal heaven and hell. More recenly, the American administration has secured the appointment of justices to the Supreme Court chosen specifically for their solidity of their religious ideology rather than the quality of their jurisprudence [i.e., jurisprudence from the point of view of nowhere]. God and Caesar have never been more at odds over which tribute belongs to whom.

Hoffmann tells us that the acronym, CSER, by which the Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion is better known, is pronounced caesar. Rather imperial, I should say. But why should he think that the tribute claimed by Caesar should not also belong, ultimately, to God? Such dualizations and pigionholes. How quaint.

What is the CSER, finally? Let me translate: the Committee for the Anti-supernaturalistic Explanation of Supernaturalistic Claims. The chief audacity lies in this: in presuming to do this without pre-theoretical pre-commitments.