High on Spirits

It never ceases to fascinate me how people can rationalize virtually anything that happens to fit their needs. No doubt this is some kind of evolutionarily useful development. After all, the ability to ignore what appears to be hopeless and press on can have certain uses. No doubt many successful inventors, researchers and investors can look back at a time in their lives when they pushed ahead with something that seemed utterly hopeless, and yet they managed to find a way around the bottleneck and ultimately succeed. In retrospect, we can even see what exactly it was that they figured out and marvel at their vision and determination. Of course, this process of learning through experience requires a certain respect for empirical evidence if it's going to yield objective results.

Two recent stories in the news have led me to think about this: the autopsy results for Terri Shiavo, and some of the comments made by the mother of the girl who has disappeared on the island of Aruba.

Shiavo's autopsy report rather clearly shows that her brain was about half the size it should have been, that she was blind, and that her brain damage certainly was sufficient to result in a permanent vegetative state. Case closed, right? Nope. Her parents, no doubt fueled by their belief system, are still insisting that their daughter could "interact" with them. Does it ever cross their minds that their perceptions could be flawed? Could their lack of understanding of profound brain damage have led them to misinterpret things? Of course not. Theology and rationalization trump scientific fact.

Then there's Beth Holloway Twitty of Alabamastan, mother of Natalee Holloway. While I would love to see it turn out that Natalee is healthy and happy somewhere else (perhaps she chartered a boat one evening to escape from her overly religious mother and is now enjoying a new life elsewhere) -- I have my serious doubts. She's probably dead, perhaps murdered by some combination of the three kids now in jail. Hopefully, they'll be identified and punished.

But what I find so interesting is how Beth falls back on the ill-tempered and vindictive "god" of the Old Testament --- and the fact that no one in the media is even a little tempted to point out how irrational this is. Two comments that I've really liked are:

"I have no choice but to stay strong. I was somehow chosen for this [situation] and I've got to see it to the end."

Then, just a few minutes ago on the news, I heard her being quoted as having said that until "god" told her otherwise, she was going to assume that her daughter was alive.

Earth to Beth!: If your "god" would orchestrate this kind of hellish experience, perhaps you ought to seriously think about whether or not this "god" is as good as his press releases claim. What could possibly be more sadistic than taking a child from a mother, letting the mother suffer for weeks, and then ultimately informing the mother that the child is dead? If any living being did this, we'd consider this criminal behavior. Yet the faithful can somehow twist their minds to believe that their loving "god" has a good reason for doing this. In fact, they can point to other stories of "god" in a mood (i.e. the stories of Job and Abraham/Isaac in the OT) to "prove" that events like this are to "test" their faith or some other such flapdoodle.

I have no doubt that the faithful (perhaps even someone reading this -- assuming anyone does) could come up with a splendid rationalizations for any of the above-described behavior. Maybe it's a psychological defense mechanism that makes it easier to get through life. However, if we're going to continue to not only allow but also publically glorify this kind of irrational thinking, I think we should - if only out of fairness - end the war on drugs (a.k.a. the war on the Bill of Rights). After all, if one can legally warp reality with religion, how is that substantively different from getting high?