Mark Twain defined "faith" as believing in something you know damned well ain't so.

And irreverent as his definition is, it pretty well parallels lexicographers' and theologians definitions as a belief unsupported by objective empirical proof. I've heard many sermons in my life which extolled the virtues of faith, which invariably point out that there is no virtue in believing that which is objectively and objectively provable, and indeed, it is most virtuous when the faith flies in the face of evidence to the contrary.

Faith Is Denial?

On the other hand, psychologists have another term for that: denial. Faith ain't just a river in Egypt.

Last night on Twitter, @esposimi pointed out that "A pessimist is a man who thinks all women are bad. An optimist is a man who hopes they are." In the same vein, a fundamentalist Christian would point out admiringly that Franklin Graham is a man of faith - and the atheist, alarmed at Graham's attitude towards Islam, would emphatically agree!

Faith is Bigotry?

In fact, one could quite reasonably call Graham bigoted against Islam. One would, of course, have to examine the definition of a bigot. It does not mean someone who is evil, and hates black folk. It means someone whose attitudes are strongly held, inflexibly so. My way or the highway. A man of faith, by God. In fact, the word bigot seems to have morphed from the Norman oath "bi got".

Programmers are familiar with the word in the non-perjorative sense. It's not uncommon for someone to announce himself a "Java bigot" or some such variant. When programmers work together, they must of course work together, and that means someone gets to work with his favorite technology, and others must temporarily forego theirs. Since we think in terms of languages, computer programmers tend to be very possessive of the languages that best conform to their way of thinking.

Faith=Programming Language?

The C programming language is concise, almost a shorthand, compared to other programming languages. In COBOL, you would write "POSTINCREMENT LOOPINDEX BY 1" but in C, one writes "i++;" It's been called a "write-only" language, by those critical of the language, and even a "C bigot" will concede there's some merit to that criticism. On the other hand, C is popular with bold programmers, because it grants programmers "the freedom to shoot yourself in the foot." You can do things in C that are difficult or impossible to do in other languages.

And it might be wise for religious bigots to claim ownership of the word bigot as a crown of thorns. It was theirs in the first place.

Faith=Too Tired?

To a large degree, the right wing of American politics consists of bigots. Robert A. Heinlein said that it's astounding how much mature wisdom seems to look like "being too tired." The Bellamy Brothers' "Old Hippie" lyrics sing of "He ain't trying to change nobody. He's just trying real hard to adjust."

That's not saying that the left doesn't have its own bigotry. Few people are arguing that the climate isn't changing. The argument is mostly whether it's caused by man made CO2 emissions, and the Al Gore side mostly argues "because some people say so". That's a faith-based argument, not a science-based argument; the heart of science is a skeptical attitude, demanding the ability to predict. The global warming mathematical models keep changing to better predict the past, and have proven utter failures in predicting the future.

Faith=Miranda?

On the other hand, the majority of the right embraces faith-based politics. There are screams of panic that extending Miranda protections to terrorists will limit our ability to prosecute, in spite of evidence to the contrary. Our prisons contain a much larger percentage of the population than before Miranda vs. Arizona was decided in 1963. Miranda himself was retried, without using his confession, with exactly the same results as the original trial. Belief that Miranda is weakening us is belief in the face of contrary evidence.

Another Arizona legal notion, S.B. 1070, doesn't just allow police officers to arrest anyone if the officer suspects that person to be an illegal alien. It makes curbside recruitment of day laborers, the primary way agricultural workers are hired in Arizona, illegal. It's almost as if they were charging a tax on latino accents.

Faith=Clinging?

Doesn't this remind you of Eddy Arnold singing, "What's he doing in my world?" Stop the world, I want to get off. The heart of conservative doctrine has always been clinging to the tried and true. When Barack Obama said that scared old folk cling to their guns and their religion, he was castigated by the right, but recently, Sarah Palin has been announcing that her followers cling to their ways, and she's not been criticized by the Rushites for that.

And I'm not arguing that "clinging" is term to beware of. My grandmother's favorite hymn sang of clinging to the old rugged cross. It's an attribute of faith, bi got! But it's also a characteristic of the old, part of what Alvin Toffler called Future Shock.

Faith=Excuses?

Winston Churchill said that if you weren't a liberal when young, you had no heart, and if you weren't conservative when you were old, you had no head. He, of course, was not young when he said that and he was defending himself against attacks for changing political parties. One might equally point out that the right wing is the politics of hardened arteries and reduced testosterone.

Politics tend to be generational, with the left wing consisting of angry young men and the right wing consisting of dead white guys. The 2008 presidential election was even more pronounced, with support for Obama coming from those wet behind their ears, support for McCain coming from the geezers.

Faith=Acrimony?

And the battles are starting to look really strange. The complaints against Dubya were often that he was trampling the Constitution, while the complaints against Obama are often that he's trampling the Constitution. It's not that the opposition party, whichever you consider the opposition to be, opposes the Constitution; it's that both parties are struggling to preserve the particular freedoms they value.

As acrimonious as the arguments get, I suspect that Americans are almost unanimous in agreeing that we want the government powerful enough to protect us, and weak enough not to threaten us, that we want to pay for essential government and no more.

Faith=Vulnerability?

Teenagers think they are immortal. By the time one reaches my age, one thinks of all the friends, acquaintances, relatives, co-workers, and neighbors who've died, and wonders, "Why them and not me? When am I going to be the one called home?" And if there are no atheists in a foxhole, well, the statistics show that the younger one is, the more likely he is to be unchurched.

Originally, the GOP was the party of the farmer, the small businessman, the professional, and other self-employed people, while the Democrats were the party of the employee. Self-employed people are self-reliant; employees depend on their boss to give them instructions and provide their support. That's a significant difference in how each party views life and politics.

Faith=Seed?

But it also takes a leap of faith to plant seeds and broadcast fertilizer in the spring, in expectations of gathering a harvest in the fall. To the employee, it's "meet the new boss, same as the old boss"; they, like The Who, won't be fooled again, bi got.

If we understood each other better, we wouldn't be fighting so much, but would be talking about finding solutions together.

Other Bloggers On Related Topics:
Bellamy Brothers - bigot - climate change - denial - Eddy Arnold - faith - Franklin Graham - generational - illegal aliens - Mark Twain - Miranda - programming languages - Rush Limbaugh - The Who - Winston Churchill