I Hate Midi-chlorians and Religious Fundamentalism

Now that I have "come out" as a humanist rather than as a biblical moralist, I can imagine being accused of "throwing the baby out with the bathwater." I disagree, and in fact I think it is this very tendancy to preserve things that are obviously wrong that gets us into difficulties in the first place. If people were more willing to be honest about what the text of the Bible is really saying, the words would be genuinely more useful. For my part, I am willing to say that the Bible contains truth without saying that it is truth. To help frame this all in terms that make things clearer to more people in my peer group, I'm going to discuss something more relevant to everyone: Star Wars.

It may seem odd, but a series of movies can inspire something that is almost like a religion. Star Wars is probably the greatest example, and I can confirm I was converted when I was a young'un.

I think I have the materials at home to test my own midi-chlorian level.

I expect that anyone should be able to guess that, as a boy growing up in the eighties, I was a Star Wars fan. I had a bin full of space Lego that I used to build starships, I had a Millenium Falcon, and I even slept on Star Wars bed sheets.

Gina won't let me use these now.

This all means that I have spent the adult years of my life fuming over all the things that George Lucas has been doing to destroy my fond childhood memories. First, he started mucking with the original movies, completely ruining Han Solo's swagger by having him shoot Greedo in retaliation. Then he went to work on undermining the entire series by releasing a set of prequels that thrust upon us the maddening Jar Jar Binks, the unwelcomed "Yippee!"-ing of pod-racing little kid, and the atrocious acting of Hayden Christensen. But one of the worst fouls I believe he committed was when he introduced us to midi-chlorians. For those of you that need some background, here you go:

In the first part of this video, we have the unfortunately named Qui Gon Jinn explaining to little Darth Vader, (er... Anakin Skywalker) how the Force comes from midi-chlorians. If you're like me, you find yourself wishing at this point that his cellphone would ring and that the caller would be his daughter, informing him of her present kidnapping. Unfortunately, that doesn't happen. Within an hour we are all relieved when Neeson's character dies, releasing him from this disaster before he has to do two more of them. The second part of the clip is from the original Star Wars movie, showing Obi-Wan Kenobi explaining the Force to a bratty Luke Skywalker, son of the aforementioned Anakin.

"I'm so happy to be here and not on Tatooine! I'm still going to kill you, though !"

In the original movies, there was no "pseudo-scientific" explanation for the Force - it simply is what it is. A very poetic idea, the invisible Force moves through all beings, directing them, and directed by them. Characters debate whether one should be on the Good Side, or the Dark Side, or whether the mysterious Force even exists at all. But for the viewer, there is no need for uncertainty in our minds - the narrative makes it clear to us that the Jedi way is right, and that the Dark Side is the wrong way to go. In the end we know that we are watching a movie - a work of fiction - and the suspension of disbelief is enough for us to get behind Luke and recognize the evil that the Emperor represents.

For some reason beyond imagination, Lucas must have thought that the viewers lacked faith, because he felt the need to introduce some kind of mechanics to explain this Force. An explanation that tries to sound scientific, but fails miserably to anyone that has any understanding of real science. This cheapens the experience greatly, and honestly affected my ability to buy into "the Force" from that point on.

I'll admit that I was disappointed that the romance that I had with the Force was now gone, but it is not the end of the world. After all, a motion picture, even a from a sacred franchise like Star Wars, is still a mundane thing. But thinking about this has given me an idea about something meaningful that follows a similar pattern. I see a lot of harm to be done in this world by people that honestly believe they are in the right, and these beliefs that drive them come from another mystical source - the Bible. Although most of us have moved on, apparently some people did not get the memo that the stories in it didn't really happen.

I'm not going to argue in depth for why I say this, as that would require me to explain a lot about science, archaeology, history, and literature, and textual analysis to an audience that may not be interested in any of those fields. Perhaps that can be in a future post. I think it should suffice to say that if humankind was not created only 6000 years ago in 7 days with two individuals being formed from dirt (which it wasn't), and if we acknowledge that there is no evidence of a global flood and the prohibitive difficulties of gathering all the animals of the world into a boat for a few weeks (to then let them all migrate from the Middle East, with both of the kangaroos hopping all the way across the Indian Ocean to Australia before they started making baby kangaroos), I think we can safely say that the authors of the Bible are prone to telling tales.

And what is wrong with that? Why are people so unwilling to acknowledge that? It's as if admitting that the book is not a history textbook means that it is no longer useful. Frankly, I have difficulty enjoying the Bible for this very reason. I think mythologies are fantastic, and I love the stories of Greek or Norse mythology. But I also have never had anyone threaten me that Zeus or Thor are going to strike me down with lightning. If one is to call the Bible what it really is, that person will promptly be told by some zealot that he or she is going to Hell. Hey, yeah - thanks for showing the love of Christ.

What is worse, though - and this draws me to my point - is that people feel the need to justify and add rationalizations to what is written in the Bible. Rather than simply examining it and considering a rational reading of the text, people make up the biblical equivalent of "midi-chlorians" - details that are designed to sound like real science or history to justify their irrational reading of the text. There is a whole organization called "Answers in Genesys" led by the Australian Ken Ham, that uses this pseudo-science and pseudo-history in an attempt to reconcile the narrative of the Bible with reality. Or maybe better to say to reconcile reality with the Bible, since there is a total unwillingness to modify the group's accepted interpretation of the Bible in favour of facts.

Ken Ham. Never trust a man with a chinstrap unless he is riding a horse-cart or wearing a top hat.

What is really unfortunate is the attempts to make children believe this stuff by trying to get it taught in schools. This kind of pseudo-scientific nonsense holds back public education and discourse. It prevents future researchers and medical professionals (i.e. our kids) from getting the education required to save and improve lives in the future. Additionally, the skepticism of real science caused by these ideas causes people to eschew vaccinations, and to dismiss the climate change emergency; these are things that affect us right now. AIDS is being spread in Africa because the Catholic Church takes the nearly 2000 year old words of Paul to mean they should prohibit condom use. LGBT teens are committing suicide because their peers, who have been indoctrinated with a hateful and unnatural morality, are harassing them. People with bad information have trouble shaking it, and end up making bad decisions. And this is often (dare I say frequently) by people who haven't even read the book themselves, but are relying on others to tell them what it says!

(NOTE: All of my criticisms would likely apply to the Koran, or any other book that is held up as holy. I simply am not familiar with those texts the way I am with the Bible, so I cannot discuss them in detail. However the very existence of these other ancient holy books, with their own adherents and contradictory accounts of history, should really just add to my case. )

I have trouble enjoying the Bible these days. When I read it, I am thinking about what kind of crazy ideas some other person might get from the passage I'm seeing. I worry that at the very moment, someone is doing ill to humanity because he or she believes these words are literal and directive. In Star Wars, a character would be urged to, "Use the Force!" You know what is true. When we put parameters around the Force, when the rules about how the force abides are declared, it loses it's magic. But the Force cannot be explained without invoking magic. As it is with the Bible. Do us all a favor -  do not expect the world to conform to a contrived interpretation of the foreign translation of words written in a dead language in a collection of books that was expressed in the stories and poetry and intended for peoples that have long since passed from this earth. When the text is wrong, we must admit it, we must correct it - we cannot change reality to fit. When our beliefs are wrong, we must adjust.

Unless it's the Force. We can believe in the Force; but we don't live in the Star Wars universe, we live in this one.

Feel free to tell me off for trampling on your beloved ideas. That's why I do this in the first place - I'm looking for feedback. Comments and private messages are welcome.