EDITORIAL
Tragedy on the tube
is not entertainment
As if ihn Amy Fisher trilogy wasn't enough, television
networks, bastions of creativity, are preparing to bring us
even more inspiring, true-life dramas.
CBS has paid $500,000 to James and Jennifer Stolpa.
the couple who, with their baby, was caught in a Neva
da snowstorm. A few weeks later. Rob and Dee Dubin
got lost during an Aspen cross county ski trip. They've
since signed with the William Morris Agency and are
awaiting offers
Is this the new career for the 1990s? Get stupid, get
lost, get rich?
While those movies may be simply stupid, the gen
uine tragedy based shows border on tasteless. The Amy
lisher tyiog\ is tho
most sordid oxamplo of
tolovision gorus bad.
Does America really
n»?ed six hours of a
whinv New York teen
age brat shooting a
woman in the head?
Apparently so. it you
look at the ratings. All
three movies rated in
the top 15 for the week
they ran. It's not clear
which is more distress
ing — the networks for
CBS has paid
$500,000 to a
couple who were
caught in a
snowstorm. Is this
the new career for
the 1990s? Get
stupid, get lost, get
rich?
vor to bring us this trash, or our apparent desire to watch
it.
In the past three months, networks have given us sto
ries about the 11192 Oakland Hills fire and the H)B‘> San
{•'rant isco earthquake. And to give the movies that added
sense of credibility, the producers used actual video
footage o! the disasters. Creativity at its grandest.
Hut now, straight out of today's headlines, NBC is
preparing to bring us the stories of the Wacko, er. Waco
cull standoff and the World Trade Center bombing.
The Waco story will be told on In The Line of Duty:
Assault in tVnco. (Perhaps a better title would be How
Not to Serve a Search Warrant.) The show itself is a
weekly series that focuses on law enforcement officials
who have been killed in the line of duty. Now there’s
family entertainment.
The Trade Center story will be titled Terror in the
Towers. Actually, if NBC could just rerun The Tower
ing Inferno, complete with dubbed New York accents,
they would only need to film a segment dealing with the
actual blowing up of the van. Dateline NBC probably has
some footage thoy could uso.
Unfortunately, as long as the public watches these
shows, the networks will continue to make them. It’s
almost enough to make a person watch PBS during a
pledge drive.
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COMMENTARY
Academia should test beliefs
By Ron Rousseve
s ail applied psychologist
in the twilight years of
X X.M1S academii career. I
remain concerned alioiit the per
vasive problem ol ‘'cognitive
compart mental Station" among
human lieings.
In short, from a mental health
perspective. I contend that the
intellectual partitioning that
stems from our early religious
indoctrination must lie confront
ed with critical candor in the
interest of psyc hological consis
tency and personal integrity.
Regarding an interpretive
scaffold for the observations that
follow, the kind of doctrinal reli
gion I have in mind can he
defined as "u system of beliefs
that looks to devine supernatur
al forces for the meaning of
human existence and for the
rules of behavior designed to
cope with existential anxieties
Moreover, this commentary is
anchored to the conviction that
in the dispassionate search for
knowledge and truth to which
the academic community is
committed, we cannot endorse
an "anything goes" attitude or
the notion of "self-authenticat
ing" personal experience and
lielief In other words, hypothe
ses. draft explanatory propose
turns and tentative beliefs must
he subjei ted to tests of valida
tion.
Accordingly, during my
\oung adult years as I learned to
think si ientifically. I gradually
i .-uu^jn the realization that there
is insufficient evidence for belief
in the existence of God and a
realm of transcendent. supenyp
ural forces
The notion of "virgin birth" is
a contradiction in terms. And
there is no satisfactory way of
reconciling the image of ail all
knowing. all-good, all-powerful
God with the reality of natural
evil ill the world, e g. cvclones.
volcanic eruptions, earthquakes
that annihilate innocent victims.
(To assert that "God works in
mysterious ways" is. of course, a
non-response to the enigma nt
evil in nature.)
When one is no longer capa
ble of ignoring the absence of
plausible evidence, intellei fual
integrity thou requires that one
abandon a stance of uncritical
belief in propositions that do not
meet the tests of verifiable intel
ligibility.
Claims of "divine revelation"
are completely uncorroborated
— and therefore traditional reli
gious literature is best regarded
as the mythological expressions
of human beings hungering for a
sense of ultimate meaning amid
the unanswered questions of
existence, and the absurdities
and tribulations encountered in
life
There is no conclusive evi
dence of any ethereal afterlife
for humankind — and therefore
the religious story of
humankind’s fall from God’s
grace and eventual redemption
through a sacrificial savior
seems to lie a strangely comfort
ing illusion fed by the wish for
immortality.
Without any validated ratio
nal basis for the assertion that a
transcendental deity fashioned
the universe, the belief that a
Godly rescuer does indeed exist
can only rest on a peculiar
"faith” that is disc onnei ted
from reason and science — and
the real world, as scholars have
come to know it in modern
times.
Readers whose personal iiehef
systems arc- still based, in part,
on religious faith will undoubt
edly express reservations alnnit
the foregoing critique offered hv
a post-Christian agnostic How
ever, religious propositions
should not be regarded as
immune to critical rational
scrutiny.
Moreover, those of us whose
professional work is flavored hv
a high regard for scientific vali
dation cannot maintain our
integrity if we uncritically
acquiesc e to belief systems for
which no adequate verification
exists Such "intellec tual parti
tioning" smacks of psychology
cal shallowness and conflicts
with uur professed commitment
to healthy operational consis
tency.
These reflections point to the
continuing conflict between the
supernatural religious world
view and the world view of nat
uralistic humanism. The two
orientations are cognitively
irrecont ilable, and attempting to
straddle" these conflicting par
adigms only fosters incongruent
t ompartmentalization.
It follows that if the inconsis
tent. dichotomous partitioning
discussed in this essay h. to he
resolved, critically informed
i hoice will have to be consid
ered It is on that basis that I
have evolved into a "post-Chris
tian existential humanist.”
Perhaps a concluding tangible
example can be cited here to
flesh out more fully the conflict
m question Many human beings
continue to acknowledge their
belief in some ethereal form of
personal existence after death.
However, evidence now tends to
support the claim that mind or
consciousness is a function of
the brain.
This contemporary stance is
clearly incompatible with the
old "dualism" of physical body
and immortal soul The logical
implication is that if the bruin is
the seat of our conscious aware
ness, then when death occurs
and brain activity ceases, we. as
personal entities, also must
cease to exist In short, the prob
abilitv is that self-hood is lull)
extinguished when the body
dies
In sum, propositions that are
not hacked up by ev ident e and
credible validation proi ttdures
do not constitute genuine
knowledge, but merely unsub
stantiated belief.
Disciplined rational scrutiny
undermines religious mytholo
KV
Hon /fou.sseve is o professor in
counseling psychology ut the
University