Telltale the You Tube Atheist

 

I don’t just listen to wildly gesticulating pastors. I listen to the other fellows as well. I think the other fellows are also an object lesson in how not to do things. There is, for instance, a man who calls himself Telltale who recites in a dreary, nasal monotone all the things that are wrong with the tale of Noah’s ark and how prophets make predictions of things that don’t come to pass. Now I have no reason to think that Telltale is anything but a fine fellow. But, even he must wonder why, after having the fossil record explained to them for the millionth time, people STILL prefer the myths of the Hebrew Bible. Telltale and his fans must wonder if they are being too nice. Maybe they have not used irony, sarcasm, satire and contempt enough and they need to double down on these things to REALLY get their point across. Maybe their clear cut explanations of the problem of evil have not been clear cut enough and they need to refine them further. Perhaps SOCIETY has been too nice and people need to be hit over the head with scientific naturalism when they are little, before they get brainwashed and their minds are poisoned.  Perhaps…perhaps…well I can say one thing about this: people like flair, drama, rhetoric and poetry and in this department I will take Paula White over Telltale any day. People also like stories and if Telltale would only get out a bit more he would realize that most people will take a book of ancient tales over the abstract scientific discourse of university trained folk who live in a world that many of them can’t access anyway because in North America education is an expensive boutique item. Plus, in America, people expect to be entertained and in that department our pastors are WAY ahead of the game not only in their preaching but in their scandal ridden lives. No offense but who would follow a sex scandal involving Telltale over one involving Jerry Falwell Jr.?

All this is as much as to say that old problems about reason and revelation, philosophy and poetry are urgent political and social problems today. This is partly a class problem and today’s atheists don’t seem interested in the atheist Marx at all which is a pity. Poetry and prophecy are languages of protest employed by those who do not have access to more refined discourses. Telltale would like immiserated persons to invest heavily in certain kinds of ‘rational’ discourses when they have literally NO class interest in doing so because their water is going to be just as poisoned as before. Why be ‘rational’ when it won’t put a single penny more in your pocket and would just alienate you from your neighbors anyway? This is why I can’t accept the ‘Christians are stupid and/or mentally ill’ meme because I think many of them have taken a simple look at their lives and drawn a very direct, honest conclusion: whatever the values or benefits of ‘secularism’ are they are not for them but others. In this they are absolutely correct. Edmund Burke, who I realize is some sort of cartoon villain for American leftists (sorry I’m Canadian), said a marvelous thing. He pointed out that the people are often foolish and wrong about a host of things but about one thing they are never wrong and that is the basic conditions of their oppression. Immiserated whites in Alabama have nothing to sacrifice their religion for any more than the poor have EVER had reason to sacrifice their traditional consolations booze and tobacco.

For certain people of course this is not the issue as many of the ‘religious’ belong to the affluent class and some make a killing selling the ’Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism’ to people on the margins. These people also have little reason to go against their class interests and concern themselves with real, historic Christian values let alone scientific ones. Also, they know that for all the wealth and influence they accumulate they are doomed to be vulgar nouveaux riche and objects of profound snobbishness to their east and west coast betters. Part of the reason (I suspect) they are hell bent on accumulating jets and mansions is by way of compensation for the social prestige they can NEVER earn.  This is why they are delighted when the vulgarian Trump points out to old money with patrician manners that he can TOTALLY buy their asses. Money is not the only scarce good in North America; recognition and respect are even scarcer. At any rate Marx is surely correct here. ‘Reason’, as the rationalists construct it, can say whatever it wants. It can ridicule the myths and stories. It can find a discursive contradiction in an obscure verse of Chronicles. Reason, however, has nothing at all to say to class interest and, to be frank, the empty, formal ‘reason’ that can dissolve the myths is a class construct itself. To conclude then I would suggest that solving the problem of reason and religion in a satisfying way probably involves radical reform of our way of doing things and that science and myth will never find equilibrium in the soul or society if they are mere cyphers for divergent class interests.