Dumbing Down Jesus

 

Dumbing Down Jesus

 

Photo by Ed Robertson on Unsplash

 

The Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines intellect as: the power of knowing as distinguished from the power to feel and to will: the capacity for knowledge; the capacity for rational or intelligent thought especially when highly developed; a person with great intellectual powers.

That person and that power have come under fire in this postmodern, post-truth America and in many of the world’s advanced techno-industrial nations. American political and religious leadership have turned toward a belief that intelligence is anathema to the new American nationalist worldview. The extreme right-wing with its cancel culture and obsession with censorship have taken hostage the Grand Old Party and turned it into the fascist pursuit of one nation, one party, one mind modeled after the regimes of Il Duce in Italy and the German Third Reich.

Leading the charge in the recent anti-democracy campaign is evangelical Christianity.

One of the most influential figures in the early history of Christianity, Augustine of Hippo (354-430 CE), warned against the danger of intellectual curiosity: “There is another form of temptation, even more fraught with danger. This is the disease of curiosity… It is this which drives us to try and discover the secrets of nature, those secrets which are beyond our understanding, which can avail us nothing and which man should not wish to learn.” ¹

That line of thinking set the tone for populist Christian anti-intellectualism for the next 1,500 years

At his first address to Congress, George Washington offered a bundle of securities worth over $20,000 to establish a national university. Congress refused to involve itself in the project for fear that it would be seen as a rejection of colleges found by religious institutions. ² Thus began the new nation’s foray into state-sanctioned ignorance that began with Augustine’s institutionalization of anti-intellectualism and found a home in an American colonial government via the Maryland Toleration Act of September 21, 1649. That legislation, enacted by the Province of Maryland to protect minority Catholic settlers from Protestant persecution, included articles to put to death anyone who denied the divinity of Jesus-- not a noble beginning for a country that would come into existence over a century later and founded on the principles of the Age of Enlightenment.

Americans share a binary, either-or, black-and-white thinking known as “splitting” ³ that lends itself well to visual media and to hysterical, emotion-triggering news and information media. That manic presence in our lives that reaches into our homes and workplaces every day is an endless stream feeding the split, demanding that we take a side, commit to it, and do not stray from the path of truth that the “fair and balanced” machine has laid out for us.

 

Christian nationalists, Christo-fascists, and evangelicals base their authoritarianism, misogyny, racism, and cruelty toward immigrants and “the Other” on their religion, yet most American adults cannot name the four Synoptic Gospels or identify Genesis as the first book of the Bible ⁴ This might not reflect as negatively on Americans as the raw data would suggest: It could indicate that Americans have moved on from the doctrines and superstitions of Christianity to look for a more logical and believable God. But, and it is an epic “But,” given the intelligence shown by extremists of all stripes, we cannot at this time hope for this improvement in the critical thinking capacity of the American people.

Nothing said here should be taken as a diatribe against Christians in general. Many adherents of that worldview conduct their lives with quiet meditative grace that attracts rather than repels the skeptic and arouses his curiosity about the cause of that sure-footed maneuvering through a treacherous world. One such Christian was Lutheran minister, Dietrich Bonhoeffer,⁵ who gave us fair warning about the effects of stupidity on a nation’s politics and social structures. These effects show up in statistics such as:

·       Twenty percent of the American people believe in the literal interpretation of the Bible. The good news: The number of Americans who believe that the Bible is the literal word of God is now half the percentage of those who believed the same in 1984—20 percent now versus 40 percent then.⁶

·       “A third of Americans mistakenly believe that there is substantial disagreement about evolution among scientists.”⁶

·       Seventeen percent of the American people reject the science of evolution in any form⁷

·       64 percent of Americans want creationism taught alongside of evolution in public schools. 48 percent accept any form of evolution—even theistic evolution. 26 percent accept Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection. 42 percent believe all life have existed in their present form since the beginning of time.⁸ (That number dropped to 33 percent according to a 2013 Pew Research Center analysis. The number of people who thought that “humans and other living things have evolved over time went from 48 percent to 60 percent.)

·       “Majority Still Credits God for Humankind, but Not Creationism. New high of 24% say God not involved in human origins; new 37% low say God created humans in present form.” “Creationist Belief Linked to More Religious, Less Educated, More Conservative Americans.”⁸

·       Contrast that with the 27 percent of college graduates believe all life has remained unchanged.⁹

·       Nearly 6 in 10 American adults “believe that the bloody predictions of the Book of Revelations—which involve the massacre of everyone who has not accepted Jesus as the Messiah—will come true.¹⁰

·       “Don’t be stupid about intelligent design. President George W. Bush and Senate majority leader Bill Frist have recently publicly advocated teaching intelligent design in science classes.”¹¹

·      “President George W. Bush and Senate majority leader Bill Frist have recently publicly advocated teaching intelligent design in science classes. Their endorsement of a discredited, nonscientific view could signal a huge step backward for scientific education. It is time for educated, motivated scientists to get involved and to educate others.”12

·       “George W. Bush, an advocate for Dumbing Down America, said in a 2005 interview, ‘both sides ought to be properly taught, so people can understand what the debate is about.’”^{12 (} Bush obviously did not understand what the debate is about.)

      Great minds have warned us of the dangers of allowing religion to govern a civil society. British philosopher A.C. Graying told us, “The really surprising thing about ID (Intelligent Design) theorists is that they miss the larger point about explanation, which is that to explain something by invoking something itself unexplained is to provide no explanation at all.”¹³  From philosopher of science Karl Popper we get the truism that, “a theory that explains everything—and says nothing can refute it—explains nothing.” Man created the omni-cubed god to cut off all counterarguments before they could even get off the ground. A perfect god is one who cannot be refuted. “God did it” is not an explanation any thinking person could rationally accept.

       TheThe last word belongs to American conservative philosopher, Sidney Hook: “How can anyone who eschews intelligence or reason know or describe what he has faith in.”¹⁴

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Notes

¹ The quote appeared on the epigraph page of Charles Freeman’s The Closing of the Western Mind. (2002) and again in Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion (2006). Some controversy arose regarding the accuracy of the quote, with some bloggers and online commentors claiming it as a fake quote. A search of Augustine’s Confessions (written in the late 4^th century CE) and his City of God (written in the 5^th century) did not turn find those words; however it did find this quote:

"In addition to this there is another form of temptation, more complex in its peril.. For besides that concupiscence of the flesh which lieth in the gratification of all senses and pleasures, wherein its slaves who 'are far from Thee perish,' there pertaineth to the soul, through the same senses of the body, a certain vain and curious longing, cloaked under the name of knowledge and learning, not of having pleasure in the flesh, but of making experiment through the flesh. This longing, since it originates in an appetite for knowledge, and the sight being the chief amongst the senses in the acquisition of knowledge, is called in divine language, 'the lust of the eyes.'

The quote used by Freeman and Dawkins reads like a paraphrase of the one found in The Confessions.

² Adolphe E. Meyer, An Educational History of the American People, (New York, McGraw Hill Book Co., 1957), 103, Internet Archive, https://archive.org/details/educationalhisto00meye_0/page/102/mode/2up, (Accessed April, 8, 2026)

(The full speech by George Washington is at: First Annual Address to Congress, January 08, 1790, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/first-annual-address-congress-0)

³ Ilana Redstone, “Splitting: The Psychology Behind Binary Thinking And How It Limits A Diversity Of Opinions”, Forbes, Jan 11, 2021, https://www.forbes.com/sites/ilanaredstone/2021/01/11/splitting-the-psychology-behind-binary-thinking-and-how-it-limits-a-diversity-of-opinions/ (Accessed 30 March 2026)

⁴ Pew Research Center, ^“Religious Literacy: What Every American Should Know,” December 3, 2007, https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2007/12/03/religious-literacy-what-every-american-should-know/ (Accessed April 4, 2026)

⁵ On the Wing, “BONHOEFFER: On stupidity,” https://nsjonline.com/article/2021/12/bonhoeffer-on-stupidity/, December 3, 2021, (Accessed April 1, 2026). See also, https://www.onthewing.org/user/Bonhoeffer%20-%20Theory%20of%20Stupidity.pdf

⁶ Frank Newport, “Fewer in U.S. Now See Bible as Literal Word of God,“ Gallup, https://news.gallup.com/poll/394262/fewer-bible-literal-word-god.aspx July 6, July 6,2022, (Accessed March 30, 2026)

⁷ National Center for Science Education, “Vast majority of Americans accept human evolution, new survey finds,” National Center for Science Education, https://ncse.ngo/vast-majority-americans-accept-human-evolution-new-survey-finds https://ncse.ngo/vast-majority-americans-accept-human-evolution-new-survey-finds February 28, 2025 (Accessed March 30, 2026)

⁸ Pew Research Center, “Public Divided on Origins of Life,” Pew Research Center, https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2005/08/30/public-divided-on-origins-of-life/, August 30, 2005 (Accessed April 5, 2026)

⁹ Frank Newport, “In U.S., 42% Believe Creationist View of Human Origins,” Gallup, https://news.gallup.com/poll/170822/believe-creationist-view-human-origins.aspx , June 2, 2014 (Accessed March 26, 2026)

¹⁰ Nancy Gibbs, “Apocalypse Now,” Time, July 1, 2002, quoted in Susan Jacoby, The Age of American Unreason, (Pantheon Books, 2008), 19.

¹¹ Ushma S Neill,  "Don’t be stupid about intelligent design,”, Pub Med Central https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1236706/, October 1, 2005, (Accessed February 2, 2026)

¹² Charles P. Pierce, Idiot America: How stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free (New York: Anchor Books, 2010) 48-9.

¹³ A.C. Grayling, The God Argument: The Case Against Religion and for Humanism, (New York: Bloomsbury USA, 2014), 111

¹⁴ Hook, Sidney, “Modern Knowledge and the Concept of God,” July, 1959, In Critiques of God, ed, Peter A. Angeles, 29-30, Amherst NY: Prometheus Books, 1997, 29-30.