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It should come as no great shock to think that possibly all those that
came
before us, save one, have missed the true vision so far. - Michael
Armstrong
Motivation for False Dogma
1989-12-5
by
Wade Frazier
I tend to
agree with the sentiment that you have to see what the payoff may be to
sniff out possible potential ulterior motivation. Following the money has
always been a great way to sniff out motivation...if the trail isn't covered
up, for obvious reasons. But money isn't the only reason. Fame also is a
motivation. Also, there is fear, like stepping out of line and
contradicting dogma, like the inquisitorial behavior of Ale Hrdlicka had on
dating when humans first came to the Americas. I have seen many scientist's
careers ruined when they came up with answers the establishment didn't want
to hear. I have seen it in spades in cancer research and treatment, but
there is an obvious economic incentive there. What about what happened to
the career of geologist Virginia Steen-McIntyre when her geology team dated
American artifacts to 250,000 years ago? I admittedly have seen only one
side of that debate, but I have seen too many situations like hers to easily
conclude she got blackballed because she was "outrageous." It looks like
only her findings were outrageous.
On the fame
angle, it is instructive to see what happened in the Catholic Church and its
priesthood. By about 1200 A.D. the Catholic Church had immense inbred
corruption with priests literally gambling with dice with their parishioners
over their penances (double or nothing?), and opening taverns with the
cleric collar as the tavern sign ( I suppose with names like "Father
Gregory's Watering Hole."). There were attempts at reform, with limited
success. Then the event happened which radically changed the direction of
the Church. The Cathars were quite successful with their ascetic ways, and
a large part of today's France adopted catharism and abandoned the Catholic
Church. The church power and revenues were declining fast in the area, and
they had to do something about the situation. With my business background I
can appreciate their response. Al Capone could have scarcely come up with a
better plan. They put cement shoes on the competition while simultaneously
marketing their own ersatz version of the product.
The
"Christian" armies had been Crusading into the Holy Land for over a hundred
years, and Pope Innocent (there is an oxymoronic name) called in a Crusade
on France. The Albigensian Crusade killed around a million people, and
wiped out the heresy in that part of the world. But that wasn't all.
The Church
also began building its infrastructure to make sure it wouldn't happen
again. It initiated the Inquisition at that time. And it did one more
thing. It initiated the mendicant orders, like the
Franciscans and
Dominicans, who took vows of poverty. It was a conscious decision to ape
the Cathars, who had made a pretty good attempt to emulate the life and
teachings of Jesus. The Dominicans and Franciscans were also the orders who
mainly ran the Inquisition.
Because the economic incentive of the priesthood was taken away with the
poverty vows of the mendicant orders, it was able to stave off corruption to
a degree, at least the open corruption of dicing for penances and priests
opening taverns. But human nature couldn't be thwarted that easily. There
are many instances of those vows being broken to get clandestinely rich or
have wives and children, but I think those were exceptions, though not that
exceptional during certain times and places, like in colonial New Spain.
With the
economic incentive gone, I suppose there were more "sincere" priests in
their ranks. But there was one area of ambition that many focused their
aspirations on: becoming a saint. Becoming a saint was the home run of the
priesthood, and the stories of some of them show how their "saintly"
activities had nothing to do with their "love of humanity" but their desire
to make it into the Christian pantheon. I attended a grammar school named
after padre Junipero Serra, the man who founded the California mission
system, and who has been beatified and is up for sainthood. In fourth grade
I took a field trip to the mission in town and watched a film on his holy
life, as he selflessly brought the good word and salvation to those
benighted savages.
In my adult
years I have been researching that piece of history as part of my upcoming
book. I now have found out that those lovingly preserved missions were the
professional ancestors of places like Dachau, and Serra was its commandant.
Serra was fired with the idea, from a young age, to become a saint and
"converting" the heathen masses. And he got his chance. He was the most
pious of his fellow friars. But reading of his piosity is a nauseating
exercise. He regularly beat himself with chains, stones, and burned himself
with candles. He was such a fanatic he would stick wire in his clothing to
torture his flesh while he spent his day on his great labors. His ardor
eventually got him the position of chief inquisitor of northern Mexico.
Reading of his life and career, it probably qualifies for sainthood (When
they can find a miracle he performed), but it is equally true that he had no
regard for the well being of those he converted. Without Spanish soldiers
literally enforcing his preachings, he would have gone nowhere. Those
mission were instruments of genocide, which even contemporary observers
noted, but Serra was fired up with the zeal to become a saint, and the
natives of the California coast were exterminated to make his dream come
true. So the lure of sainthood had no economic incentive behind it, but it
propelled many into careers as priests.
There is even
a contemporary example of that phenomena. Christopher Hitchens is probably
going straight to hell for a book he wrote in 1995 about Mother Teresa,
titled The Missionary Position, Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice. It
chronicles her career in a way the newspapers never have. For all her
vaunted virtue, Teresa had an amazing list of unsavory dictators she hung
out with. Her famous houses for the dying were just that. People in her
care were supposed to die, and fast. It was an assembly line to heaven, and
the people in her care practically never got pain killer for their last
hours. One nurse who worked there said it reminded her of the atmosphere of
a death
camp. Her
orphanages practically never had any child adopted into a home.
She was
even used by people like Robert Maxwell and Charles Keating in fund raising
and publicity schemes. In one very telling clue of Teresa's motivation,
Charles Keating (that poster boy of the S & L meltdown) gave Teresa's
organization over a million dollars (essentially stolen from the American
people). What it did get him besides publicity was Teresa writing a letter
to the court when Keating was being tried for fraud. Teresa said how kind
he had been to the poor (with the public's money), and asked the judge to
consider that when dealing with Keating's case. The prosecutor wrote back
to Teresa and told her that the generous donation Keating gave her ministry
was money stolen from the American people, and asked her to give the money
back. They never heard back from Mother Teresa. Anyway, Hitchens'
monograph greatly challenges the popular image of Mother Teresa, and shows
fairly convincingly that her image was largely the result of public
relations, and it seems the predominant motivation for her tireless years
was to become a saint. Her devotion to humanity isn't obvious. And she'll
probably be sainted.
Anyway, there
are other motivations besides the lure of money, and I don't know how much
they might motivate people in paleontology. |