Andrew On "The Importance of Knowing the Difference Between Fiction and Reality"

The Importance of Knowing the Difference Between Fiction and Reality

When I began the third grade, I started at a new school and became friends with two boys who were caught up playing a game in which they pretended to be chasing after some kind of comic-book style villain. The one who had obviously invented this game wanted me to play along with them, which I did at first. I don’t remember much, but supposedly this villain had different colored motorcycles, one for each day of the week. Every day he would invent new bad things this villain had supposedly done or was about to do, and clues that he had supposedly left behind that we could use to help us to stop him. After a few weeks or so, I quit because it had never been very relevant or entertaining. The whole thing struck me as being kind of stupid. After all, it was totally obvious he didn’t exist, and the targets of his plots were just as fictional. When I told him I wasn't interested in his imaginary villain anymore, he insisted that he was NOT imaginary. After several more weeks, he came around and finally admitted he had made it all up and agreed to stop playing this game so that we could be friends again. Either I was a little more mature than they were at the time, or else I was just a big party pooper.

I’ve never been into comic books myself, but I have been to see many of the movies in recent years based on them.  The difference is, whether they are just colored drawings or extremely lifelike up on the big screen with all the special effects, everybody knows that Batman and Joker are just fictional characters. Although some may continue to read comic books into adulthood, they don’t usually take time out of their day to look for ways to help Batman foil any of his enemies. They also don’t go to Travelocity.com and try to book a flight from their local airport to Gotham International. Most people don’t run into problems from consuming fictional stories because they have no problem distinguishing fiction from reality.

I suppose the first religion developed in the same way the motorcycle villain did, which is to say, some guy just invented it one day. It gave people a certain sense of security to believe that wild animals, the weather, and natural disasters were controlled by various people with extraordinary powers, and if you appeased them , they wouldn’t attack. It didn’t matter that the whole thing was made up, it meant there was something they could do to protect themselves. It gave people the feeling they could understand why bad things happened and that they could have some control over what would otherwise be random and uncontrollable disasters. Using science and technology, today we understand our environment so much better that we accept that natural disasters are truly random, although insurance companies still refer to them as acts of “god.” Polytheism has mostly outlived its usefulness, so most people now think it’s about as stupid as our motorcycle villain.

Mostly, but not completely. There are still many relics of these ancient religions around us today. Friday 13th, Halloween, ghosts, zombies, dowsing rods, astrology, palm reading, and other superstitions still persist. After all, it’s probably safer to avoid the curse at the bottom of that chain letter by forwarding it to ten of your friends, just to be on the safe side.

Perhaps the most widespread superstition to have persisted is called monotheism. Its success right up to the present day can probably be attributed to the fact that it has proved useful for giving believers a meaning and purpose for their lives. It doesn’t matter that there is no evidence that this meaning and purpose is not pure fiction, it still gives people the feeling that they can understand what is really happening and why they exist.

Whether it’s a villain imagined by a third-grader, ancient pagan gods, or else a single, all powerful super hero in the sky and his evil archnemesis, these are all “games” in which people either failed or refused to distinguish between fiction and reality. I’m somewhat ashamed to admit that I although I never fell for the first two “games,” in the case of the third one, I played along for decades before realizing that I had failed to distinguish between fiction and reality.

So, what if the failure to distinguish between fiction and reality means that adults engage in a little immaturity, playing a few childish games? What’s the harm?

We already have a human government that makes a tangled web of laws so intricate that it is impossible for even a lawyer to know all of them all, let alone obey them. Many of them are silly, others are even contradictory. When adults are caught up playing the game of religion, it includes having to support an entire second government of man as well, except they call it, “the government of god.” Under the administration of these men, it includes another impossible tangle of often silly and contradictory laws, yet more taxes, and yet more control. But since they tell you their religion has “set you free,” you don’t notice that you’re twice the slave you were before. If religion were something that was just between you and god, it wouldn’t be so bad.

Doesn’t religion teach you the principles of how to live? Sure, but the big principles of how to live are not unique to religion. The Golden Rule, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” was ubiquitous throughout the ancient world; it was even a part of Hammurabi’s civil code.

If religion only contained such pithy and profound wisdom as the Golden Rule, it wouldn’t seem so silly, but it doesn’t. It also imposes many useless, irrelevant, and sometimes downright bizarre practices, all of which are considered to be on the same level as the Golden Rule in terms of appeasing the anger of the god. Sure, I admit there’s some baby in there, but unfortunately, there’s an enormous amount of “holy” bathwater too, and the superstitious nature of religion makes it sacrilege to throw any of it out.

Isn’t religion a force for good, giving people the incentive to be moral people? German parents used to tell their children that if they misbehaved, fairies would kidnap them. That sure gave those children an incentive to behave too, but does anyone think this is also a good idea? As an adult, are you so weak that you need a “big brother” figure, spying on you 24-7 to guilt you into civilized behavior? Are you so small-minded that you need a hobgoblin to scare you into being a good person?

Also, whether morality is a force for good or bad depends upon what your definition of morality is. Islamist suicide bombers believe that murdering infidels is part of being a good, moral person because of the specifics of their religion. In response to such “morality,” Michael Shermer, the publisher of Skeptic Magazine, cites the case of superstitious Iraqi officials who bought 1,500 ADE 651 bomb detecting dowsing rods (at a cost of $40,000 each) to screen for explosives at checkpoints. Because the ADE 651 is as useful as a banana at detecting explosives, Shermer makes the point that sometimes, being unable to distinguish between fiction and reality costs lives. Religion is just another kind of superstition, and sometimes it costs lives too.

When William Miller, Herbert Armstrong, Harold Camping, Ron Weinland, and many others besides predict that an invisible man in the sky will sweep down and rapture the faithful away very soon, their followers don’t save for retirement. This superstition leaves the faithful destitute in their old age. Not only that, but seriously believing in such ideas is almost like going online to try to buy an airline ticket to Gotham International Airport.

Believing in an Armstrongist superstition also means wasting a great portion of your life in devotion to an imaginary man in the sky, week in, week out, year in, year out. Religious leaders will tell you that you can’t get divorced when you’ve made a mistake, and if you do, you can’t get remarried ever again. They tell you it is sinful to see a doctor when you have a life-threatening illness, so people die unnecessarily from treatable illnesses. All this and more because people can’t distinguish between fiction and reality.

It’s one thing if children want to play make believe games, but it’s entirely another when adults play such games. When we grow up, we really ought to put away such superstitions and concern ourselves with reality. Not to do so is not only juvenile, it is dangerous. Fiction of any kind is simply a bad foundation upon which to build a life or a society.

Andrew