Rev. Pat Robertson appears to have isolated the reason for the decline in miracles and faith in general — education. In a recent answer to why there are more miracles in places like Africa, Robertson explained that in places like Africa people are “simple, humble” and just accept what you tell them.
A viewer named Ken asked Robertson about the miracle gap with Africa and other parts of the world:
Why do amazing miracles (people raised from the dead, blind eyes open, lame people walking) happen with great frequency in places like Africa, and not here in the USA? What can we do to encourage those things to happen here? Is America too far gone for miracles like this? — KEN
Pat Robertson explained that people are ruined by over-education:
“Those people overseas didn’t go to Ivy League schools. Well, we’re so sophisticated, we think we’ve got everything figured out, we know about evolution, we know about Darwin, we know about all these things that says God isn’t real, we know about all this stuff. And if we’d be in many schools, the more advanced schools, we have been inundated with skepticism and secularism. Overseas they’re simple, humble. You tell them God loves them, and they say ‘ok, he loves me’. You say ‘God will do miracles’ and they say ‘okay, we believe him.’ And that’s what God’s looking for, that’s why they have miracles.”
It is a truly embarrassing suggestion that education undermines religion. According to Robertson, religion needs less educated people who simply believe what they are told by people like Robertson.
Preacher Pat is totally correct. Why one only has to look to our own history and culture. Miracle On 34th Street is a prime example. Only in a place like New York could people be dumb enough to swallow the Santa apCray. Or was the miracle on 32nd Street? I get my turdy turds and a turd confused.
Education might count as a cause, but I think it is more that people who are warm, well fed and rich have much less reason to put their faith in god than those who are poor, cold and hungry.
Education is a good thing, because it moves people from the latter category to the former, but as a consequence, there is less need for miracles.
That said, we still have Matthew 19:23-26:
23 Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Truly I tell you, it is hard for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. 24 Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”
25 When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and asked, “Who then can be saved?”
26 Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”
I thought the invention of video tape had a big impact in the event of miracles. The ubiquity of cell phone cameras and tools to spot editing should just about be the nail in the coffin.
Maybe that’s why he has been blessed with so many million miracles….. Keep em coming baby….. Live simple….send your dough to me…. I gotta go…. Jesus loves you, you know….don’t forget to send the dough,….. Amen….
rafflaw,
If he did go to Yale, they probably aren’t advertising the fact much
There’s something awful about this that everyone else has failed to touch on as yet…the fact that Robertson still sees Africa as a continent full of nothing but ignorant, superstitious, gullible people, period. Not to mention that in his eyes, they’re “simple”–as in simple-minded. Now why would he believe that? Couldn’t be because so many of them are…black?
“It is a truly embarrassing suggestion that education undermines religion.”
************************
Embarrassing perhaps, but demonstrably true.
The question of religious belief among US scientists has been debated since early in the century. Our latest survey finds that, among the top natural scientists, disbelief is greater than ever — almost total.
Research on this topic began with the eminent US psychologist James H. Leuba and his landmark survey of 1914. He found that 58% of 1,000 randomly selected US scientists expressed disbelief or doubt in the existence of God, and that this figure rose to near 70% among the 400 “greater” scientists within his sample [1]. Leuba repeated his survey in somewhat different form 20 years later, and found that these percentages had increased to 67 and 85, respectively [2].
In 1996, we repeated Leuba’s 1914 survey and reported our results in Nature [3]. We found little change from 1914 for American scientists generally, with 60.7% expressing disbelief or doubt. This year, we closely imitated the second phase of Leuba’s 1914 survey to gauge belief among “greater” scientists, and find the rate of belief lower than ever — a mere 7% of respondents.
Leuba attributed the higher level of disbelief and doubt among “greater” scientists to their “superior knowledge, understanding, and experience” [3]. Similarly, Oxford University scientist Peter Atkins commented on our 1996 survey, “You clearly can be a scientist and have religious beliefs. But I don’t think you can be a real scientist in the deepest sense of the word because they are such alien categories of knowledge.” [4] Such comments led us to repeat the second phase of Leuba’s study for an up-to-date comparison of the religious beliefs of “greater” and “lesser” scientists.
Our chosen group of “greater” scientists were members of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). Our survey found near universal rejection of the transcendent by NAS natural scientists. Disbelief in God and immortality among NAS biological scientists was 65.2% and 69.0%, respectively, and among NAS physical scientists it was 79.0% and 76.3%. Most of the rest were agnostics on both issues, with few believers. We found the highest percentage of belief among NAS mathematicians (14.3% in God, 15.0% in immortality). Biological scientists had the lowest rate of belief (5.5% in God, 7.1% in immortality), with physicists and astronomers slightly higher (7.5% in God, 7.5% in immortality).
~Nature, Vol. 394, No. 6691, p. 313 (1998)
Education should always undermine superstition. It’s its job.
raff,
I think this link will clear everything up…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Crouch#Controversy
Wait… They can raise the dead over there?
Darren,
Who or what was that? That was some serious hair on that woman!
The false prophets and plutocrats benefit from an uneducated, disempowered populace. What country does that remind you of right now?
Darren
that diamond heart bling around her neck would make a rapper blush.
ignorance= miracles
Look what the cat dragged in
There seems to be no shortage of “less educated, simple, and humble” people in America who continue to send this Shylock money.
We don’t need no education! It is amazing to me tha people still listen to this mean, irrational man. They send him money and some follow his word.
Maybe Reverend Robertson can show the example by moving to Africa and living in a straw hut without money or luxury; living the simple life. Maybe he will then experience a bona fide miracle.
lol
What Bob K. said.
“There’s a sucker born every minute.” – P.T. Barnum
Robertson has never knowingly told the truth in his career. It’s startling to see him tell the absolute truth about magical thinking vs. education.
Invisible friends, mass conspiracy theories, UFO abductions and magical thinking in general, aren’t subscribed to by most educated people.
How kind of him to point this out.
“Only abysmally ignorant people would believe anything I tell them.”
Thanks, Pat.
He’s alive and Carl Sagan is not. Do we need further evidence that we’re on our own?
Robertson needs people to be stupid in order that they will still send him money! What a total dirtbag. Didn’t he go to Yale Law school?