Cable news and religious thinking

Amidst the ongoing laughable (and sad) politicization and screaming matches that have taken over cable news programming in the US, marketing guru Seth Godin recently pointed out the problem with cable news thinking:

It has nothing to do with fires or with politics. Instead, it amplifies the worst elements of emotional reaction:

Agreed. And to push the point, Seth then lists twelve of the specific faults behind the frothing pundits. It's an interesting look at the kind of thinking that undermines truthful reporting – and, I'll add, any efforts to arrive at truth, outside of journalism as well. 

In particular, I was immediately impressed by how the list maps almost perfectly to an outline of religious thinking. Here's Seth's list of the odorous characteristics of cable news thinking, with each item followed by a theological take:

1. Focus on the urgent instead of the important.

This opener is actually the tough one of the bunch to ascribe to religion. In fact, believers will be tempted to toss this one back at us: They're the ones focused on the all-important eternity, while we're the ones distracted by the temporary present, they say. Unfortunately, with zero evidence for that stuff about gods and heavens, it's impossible to take a typical sect's version of "the important" seriously.

This item perhaps suits religion best when tailored into an equally-foolish "Focus on the nonsensical instead of the important", or similarly, "Focus on the imaginary instead of the real". But don't worry; the rest of the list is spot-on: 

2. Vivid emotions and the visuals that go with them as a selector for what's important.

That's a specialty of religion right there. Sects appeal to emotions with practiced ease: Fear (of death or punishment), shame (over "sins" that often hurt no one), outrage (over imaginary crimes like "blasphemy"), ecstasy (over "finding Jesus" and martyrdom and otherwise serving the sect's goals), and on and on.

You want visuals? Religion boasts the master propagandist's touch, from the purloining of sunsets and waterfalls as visible "proof" of Creation, to icons and cathedrals calculated to awe and humble. 

3. Emphasis on noise over thoughtful analysis.

"Death to the infidel!" "Darwin leads to Hitler!" "Sin leads to Hell!" "Gays lead to... uh, more gays. Somehow." 

Thoughtful self-analysis would cause a religion to poof out of existence. So instead, it's noise on the menu.

(Don't let any believer feed you the line about how his religion is all about the product of thoughtful analysis. All the competing religions that contradict his faith make the same claim!)  

4. Unwillingness to reverse course and change one's mind.

Let's not claim that religions never change. They do revise doctrine – when they have to. No matter how they may have resisted, eventually the Catholic church had to admit that the sun does not circle the earth (and, later, that Limbo made no sense either); the Jehovah's Witnesses had to slink away from the "last generation from 1914" Armageddon timetable; the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had to overlook the "curse of Ham" and allow blacks into the priesthood. (Men only, of course; gotta save some shameful practices for future backtracking!)

But such changes are always about political expediency, avoiding controversy, maintaining appeal, or just being backed into a corner over something indefensible. How about doctrinal change not connected to pressure or need? Just a plain old "Hey, listen up, everyone! We were wrong about something!" And without hiding it behind weaselly excuses like "new revelations"?

How about these from a religion: "Sorry, we just used old misogynist scriptures to prop up chauvinism. We'll allow women priests now." "We admit there's no way to defend Old Testament massacres as moral acts. We will no longer consider the following Bible books to be divine scripture..." "Clearly, Muhammad could not have literally split the moon in two. Much of our Koran must be taken as human-created mythology." 

Are you laughing, just imagining that?

5. Xenophobic and jingoistic reactions (fear of outsiders).

Quick quiz: Take religion and take humanism (or just generic non-religious thought). In which of those will you find the words "blasphemer", "heretic", "infidel", "damned", "idolater", and "hell-bound"?

6. Defense of the status quo encouraged by an audience self-selected to be uniform.

Another arrow strikes home. A religion has an audience – the "congregation", "flock", "members", "believers", etc. – and neither the religion nor the audience itself tolerates much in the way of free-wheeling criticism from audience members. Religion has words for what happens to such outspoken or different thinkers: "Excommunicated", "apostate", "disfellowshipped", "expelled", "shunned", and so on. To label more severe cases of non-uniform behavior, refer to #5 above.

7. Things become important merely because others have decided they are important.

"Others". Your priests, elders, cardinals, rabbis, imams, and so on. Or what the hell, think bigger: Let these "others" be the sect's marquee prophets and messiahs or even God Himself. Religion can almost be defined as a system of letting someone else decide for you what is important. 

8. Top down messaging encourages an echo chamber (agree with this edict or change the channel).

Well, you can't get much more top-down than God or Allah, can you now. Holy books and divine revelations are literally top-down, descending from the heavens. And does anyone think the Pope is open to revising Eucharistic theology based on some good bottom-up ideas discussed in open committees and subjected to peer review? 

9. Ill-informed about history and this particular issue.

"God made people and stuff 6000 years ago, and He did it in this order, unless you read the other retelling in Genesis, in which case He did it in that order... And then there was a big flood that killed the dinosaurs and made the Grand Canyon, and later a good bearded guy walked on water and died and came alive again. Then a bad bearded guy said species evolve from other species, even though there aren't any crocoducks, and that's why Hitler killed so many people."

Ill-informed enough for you?

10. Confusing opinion with the truth.

It's the dirty not-so-secret of religion: There is no truth; it's all opinion.

Don't take my word for that. Let's ask religion what's the truth:

"Accept Jesus!" "No, Muhammed!" "No, neither of those!" "Faith, not works!! "Works, not faith!" "Both works and faith!" "Creation was real!" "God is real, but Creation was an allegory!" "God? Don't you mean gods?" "Death to gays!" "Death to gays... back then, but not any more." "Love everyone, including gays!" "Okay, love gays, but don't let them become priests." "Yes, let them! And women too!" "What? Heresy!" "Infidel!" "Blasphemer!"

That's an accurate representation of religion describing "truth". But what do you call "truth" that can't come to an agreement on any single point? Pure, 100% opinion. 

11. Revising facts to fit a point of view.

Again, this practically is religion. Creationism would be the shining poster child here, just bursting with factless claims: "There are no transitional fossils!" "Radioactive dating is always wrong!" "Darwin said we must kill the weak!"

It's a whole other reality out there in the pews.

12. Unwillingness to review past mistakes in light of history and use those to do better next time.

This last one is pretty similar to #4. It may be that a sect forced into a doctrinal change doesn't typically lapse back (although, as one example of refusing to learn, the Jehovah's Witnesses still keep trying to hold onto their "coming real soon!" apocrypha as predicted dates keep failing). But whether religions learn from the mistakes they've freely and wholeheartedly admitted to... I don't know, as I can't think of any examples of such voluntary admission. (Anyone?) 

All right then. Twelve points that define the sorry state of cable news, of which at least ten are equally accurate (and damning) depictions of religious thinking. Am I on track with that? What do you think?  

Seth adds this comment at the end of his list:

If I wanted to hobble an organization or even a country, I'd wish these twelve traits on them.

Well, those flaws have hardly hobbled religion in terms of ballooning into a huge force, something that's true of cable news as well. But in terms of ability to uncover and present truth, yep, both cable news and religion are downright crippled by that ugly thinking.