Earlier this year, I lost a friend.
I didn't lose him to accident, disease, or even age. I lost him to cowardice. It was over a simple matter of soap.
My friend's wife makes soap. She apparently makes some very high quality soap; it has all natural ingredients, with no harmful chemicals and no harmful byproducts. It is good for your body and good for the planet and she's no doubt worked very hard to follow strictly "green" guidelines in her manufacturing process. As I said, it's apparently very good soap.
It also is infused with Reiki blessings of good fortune. It says so right on the label.
A photo of my friend's wife's soap was posted online and I asked him about how the Reiki blessings helped exactly. What, I wondered, was she actually selling. She seemed to have some very fine soap, as I've said, but it seemed odd to me that she chose to combine her soap with the widely-debunked ideas of vitalism. It seemed odd to me that such fine soap would need the addition of supernatural voodoo juice as a selling point. To which he responded: what harm could it do?
Well, I pointed out, as a selling point for me, nothing. It adds no additional benefit to me, seeing as the idea that waving hands over a batch of bubbling soap can focus the unseen positive powers of the universe into it is, to say the least, not something I'm likely to find appealing. I did point out, however, that a great many people out there might find the idea of soap with special invisible powers to be a prime selling point. I asked the question: how is selling this any different than the charlatans of old selling "snake oil" miracle cures?
This was, apparently, a rather unpersuasive line of questioning (esp. in a forum that his wife could also read). "So you believe my wife is a charlatan!?" he asked heatedly. I'm just wondering if there is a difference and if so, could you demonstrate it, I replied. And then poof! He was gone. He'd excommunicated me. Gone I was from his Facebook friend list. Banished evermore into the void where his wife's strange religion could no longer be questioned and her soap would retain its untarnished reputation among its undoubtedly loyal vitalist fans.
I found this entire turn of events both amusing and sad at the same time. My friend, who had on countless occasions, told me of his beliefs in reason, in his skepticism of religions, of his anger toward how manipulative Christianity in particular was, was forced (in his mind anyway) to choose between the beliefs of the woman he loved and of those around him, and when in doubt, chose to run to comfort his wife, rather than to find comfort in his own beliefs and reason.
This was rather confusing to me until I remembered a day when we were roommates back in college and he'd fallen in love with a born-again Christian. In the weeks that followed, he transformed himself into what she wanted him to be: just like her. The fellow who used to love the whimsical celebration of Halloween so much that we often kept our apartment decorated for the holiday many months before and after the actual event, now found himself unable to enjoy it because of its un-Christian connotations. The fellow who used to love Metallica was forced by conscience to give away his extensive CD collection of such music and keep his ears clean of such evil. Eventually, they were married and he and I parted company, he bound for glory and I for whatever awaited sinners such as myself.
In the years that followed, we lost contact, but through the "magic" of Facebook were reconnected a couple of years ago. I learned that things had not worked out for him and his Christian bride and that he'd learned that he'd felt he'd made a big mistake by allowing his personal attachments to define his morality and guide his reason. He said he was now in a relationship with a level-headed woman and had eschewed the supernatural for a more relaxed life, where his reason and intellect could roam free. He made a few references to how he now identified more with Eastern religions, which I interpreted to mean the ideas of enlightenment, Buddhism, etc.
And then came the soap.
And then came the realization that my friend's morality simply isn't built on reason. Like so many of his kind, his reason is built on the sandy foundation of personal comfort. Suddenly, his references to Eastern religions made sense. His wife believes in Reiki, therefore he must. His beliefs cannot stand alone and he is attracted to those who need him to conform to their beliefs.
What it really comes down to is this: some people need love so bad that they will simply abdicate their own personal beliefs and replace them with whatever those who will give them love believe, no matter how weak or unstable the foundations of these beliefs may be. When he decided he didn't want to be my friend any more because I'd questioned the magical properties of his wife's soap, the conflict within him was simply too much to bear. The weakness of his position was exposed and he once again chose the path of least resistance: silence the voice of reason by cutting off all ties with it...just as he had done earlier when he embraced Christianity.
I wish my friend well. I hope that he finds happiness. I'm sorry to see that he doesn't have enough courage to stand for what he believes in, what reason calculates as right, and instead chooses to believe in what will make him happy. My wife and I don't see eye-to-eye on everything, but we don't have to. We're both complete people who believe that one plus one equals two and so we don't need to believe in what the other believes in, or see things the same way in order to be happy together.
My hope for my friend is that he might figure out that equation for himself someday.
Thursday, October 7, 2010
The Question WBC is Never Asked
The Westboro Baptist Church has an interesting view of the Bible. As I've written before, the WBC has a pretty interesting interpretation of the scriptures. After reading the scriptures thoroughly, Fred Phelps (in his own sociopathic way) has arrived on an interpretation that actually seems to hold up under scrutiny for those in his church:
God Hates The World.
If you really read the Bible, it's not hard to imagine why they think this. I mean, it pretty much is painted all over the Old Testament about how wrathful God is, how he "hates" various people, etc. I've heard Fred's daughter say that God is the most intolerant person ever. Not that I would endorse their teachings, but if you want to understand WBC's position, they make a pretty good case for it on their website.
One presumes that in the WBC, they are thoroughly indoctrinated into this belief system. They sing songs about it to with their children. They live life every day with the notion that God literally is trying to punish everyone on the planet but them...because He literally hates them.
Faced with this premise; however, they make what I consider an astounding leap of morality: that because God created the Earth and all its people, that whatever he does with it is totally morally justified. Their logic basically is; because God is too big for us to stand against, we must accept his morality and do his bidding or face his wrath. Put simply: might makes right.
Since Thrasymachus and Socrates, we've had some insight into this idea of justice and morality and throughout time we've seen just how immoral the strong can be to the weak. I don't believe that we should base our morality, our ideas of good and evil, on whether or not some bully will harm us if we say the wrong thing. Morality is derived from reason, not from some threat of physical (or spiritual) harm. The logical flaws should be self-evident here. If I told someone to believe that the sky was purple or I would harm them, and they believed in my abilities to harm them earnestly enough, I could probably convince them eventually to actually believe that the sky was purple, but the problem is that the sky would still be blue! Their acquiescence to my demands notwithstanding, physics just won't budge on this one. You can't bully morality any more than you can physics.
How then, does WBC never get asked this simple question: If you really believe that your god will punish you for believing in treating people with kindness, with decency, with tolerance and love, why do you follow him?
Maybe it's because the answer is self-evident: it's because they are cowards. It's because they are afraid to stand up for what's truly moral from fear that they will be punished by the lunatic invisible fiend that Fred Phelps has shackled them with.
Cowards, every one.
God Hates The World.
If you really read the Bible, it's not hard to imagine why they think this. I mean, it pretty much is painted all over the Old Testament about how wrathful God is, how he "hates" various people, etc. I've heard Fred's daughter say that God is the most intolerant person ever. Not that I would endorse their teachings, but if you want to understand WBC's position, they make a pretty good case for it on their website.
One presumes that in the WBC, they are thoroughly indoctrinated into this belief system. They sing songs about it to with their children. They live life every day with the notion that God literally is trying to punish everyone on the planet but them...because He literally hates them.
Faced with this premise; however, they make what I consider an astounding leap of morality: that because God created the Earth and all its people, that whatever he does with it is totally morally justified. Their logic basically is; because God is too big for us to stand against, we must accept his morality and do his bidding or face his wrath. Put simply: might makes right.
Since Thrasymachus and Socrates, we've had some insight into this idea of justice and morality and throughout time we've seen just how immoral the strong can be to the weak. I don't believe that we should base our morality, our ideas of good and evil, on whether or not some bully will harm us if we say the wrong thing. Morality is derived from reason, not from some threat of physical (or spiritual) harm. The logical flaws should be self-evident here. If I told someone to believe that the sky was purple or I would harm them, and they believed in my abilities to harm them earnestly enough, I could probably convince them eventually to actually believe that the sky was purple, but the problem is that the sky would still be blue! Their acquiescence to my demands notwithstanding, physics just won't budge on this one. You can't bully morality any more than you can physics.
How then, does WBC never get asked this simple question: If you really believe that your god will punish you for believing in treating people with kindness, with decency, with tolerance and love, why do you follow him?
Maybe it's because the answer is self-evident: it's because they are cowards. It's because they are afraid to stand up for what's truly moral from fear that they will be punished by the lunatic invisible fiend that Fred Phelps has shackled them with.
Cowards, every one.
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Faith Doesn't Mean What You Think It Means
It never fails that you start a conversation with someone about religious faith and the conversation moves to the notion that because the entire universe isn't completely understood by science, that much of science is built on postulates that have not been proven and that are often found to be at odds with observations, then science is based on "faith". I was asked a question the other day that went,
"Do you have faith that the light will come on when you flip the light switch?"
I'm always amazed how easily people get mixed up about what the word "faith" means, especially educated people. In fact, it's usually about this point in the conversation that I begin to suspect they may be purposely trying to manipulate the semantics of the conversation in order to purposefully confuse the issue, but I usually try to give them the benefit of the doubt because the two meanings of "faith" are quite similar. You see, in the English language, it's very common for two words to sound alike and even be spelled the same, but have different meanings; broadly speaking, these are homonyms, but they can be broken down much further.
You see, "faith" can mean several completely different things, as any dictionary can confirm. Though your dictionary may phrase them differently, among the many possible definitions for "faith (n.)" that it will list, the following (in no particular order) are of interest to us here:
These two are of of particular relevance to the religious when talking about their belief in beings that inhabit an inaccessible realm. Here's how they use them:
1. A belief that is not based on evidence.
This is seriously important for Christianity. The Bible goes out of its way to let people know that this is a serious virtue. In fact, the Bible describes this very specifically.
Science hates this type of "faith". In fact, science demands just the opposite; in the realm of science, one must have a valid reason to believe in something that is based on more than just a desire for it to be true. Scientists do not have this type of faith.
2. Something that is believed with strong convictions.
Basically, this is synonymous with having "confidence" in a person or thing to be as one expects it to be. Everybody feels this type of faith about some things, but sometimes for different reasons.
In the context of religion, Christians believe strongly in the existence of God without evidence because, as we just saw, they're directly instructed to! It's part of the deal. In fact, the more strongly you believe in that which you have no evidence for, the Christians say, the "stronger your faith". If you give your life over to the teachings of the Bible completely and believe everything it says is true and divinely inspired, it is said that you have "great faith". During times of turmoil, when a person starts to doubt that God is watching over them, Christians would say that person is experiencing a "crisis of faith". In this context, Christians both "believe strongly in something" and do so "without any evidence".
Outside of the context of religion, well, we all pretty much use this second definition the same way. We typically only believe strongly in things where we we have direct or indirect evidence to support our belief. We humans are learning machines and we see the world through the lens of our own observations. We are continually testing and retesting of the consistency of our experiences and seeking patterns. Every time we reach for the light switch, it's a small science experiment in our minds. Our hypothesis is that the light will come on when the switch is flipped (this is why we typically reach for them) and this is based on thousands of direct observations about the normal effects of flipping a light switch. It's likely most people have a handful of experiences where this didn't hold true, but these data outliers are unusual and infrequent to the point where we normally believe, with a fairly strong conviction, based on our own direct observations and experiences, that when we flip on a light switch, that it will electrically connect a device in the vicinity that is capable of producing visible light. We do not "strongly believe in" that the light switch will turn on a light "without evidence", on the contrary, we have a huge amount of evidence for this, which is why we believe it so strongly.
So, is all faith a virtue? It depends where you stand, but moreover, it depends what you mean by "faith". Not all "faith" is the same. Science is okay with some faith. No scientist is going to say they don't have "faith" in the sense of a strongly-held belief that electricity works and is real; even though they can't see electrons moving directly, their presence can be demonstrated in dramatic fashion and their behavior is so consistent that we have developed complex mathematical and practical frameworks around how to harness their power to do things like wake us up for 6am for work or display blog posts on our computer monitors to read. Of course, science wouldn't say that all strongly-held beliefs are of equal virtue and neither would you. If someone claimed to you to strongly believe that they could do something ludicrous, like walk on water, you probably would not lend that persons belief any credence at all merely on the basis of the strength of their belief. No matter how strongly they believed they could do it, our experience would tell us that it takes a lot more than a particular belief to make something physically possible.
Most people would agree than simply believing something without any reason to believe it is not a virtue at all, but is, in fact, some sort of strange unnatural state of being. Christians, on the other hand, suspend this notion in the context of religious doctrine, but even they embrace it everywhere else and would probably call anyone who claimed to actually be their messiah crazy until he actually performed a miracle in their presence.
No, not all "faith" is the same. The problem is that these two meanings are -so- closely related in the context of religion that it's often difficult to tell which one people are using. Maybe it would be better if when we stopped using this word altogether. I propose that henceforth when someone wants to say "you believe in something strongly", they say "a high degree of confidence" instead of "faith". "Confidence" is neutral and doesn't have an alternate meaning that means "confidence without any rational reason" like "faith" does. When people mean, "faith" as in a "belief without evidence", how about instead of "faith", we use the phrase "an irrational belief". We can add "strong" as a modifier to the latter in the case of religion if you like:
Some examples:
"You have faith that the sun will come up tomorrow."
...would become...
"You have a high degree of confidence that the sun will come up tomorrow."
"I have faith that I can perform brain surgery on myself."
...would become...
"I have an irrational belief that I can perform brain surgery on myself."
"I have faith that a spaceship is following the Hale-Bopp comet and we should all kill ourselves in order to evacuate the planet and join the spaceship!"
...would become...
"I have an irrational belief that a spaceship is following the Hale-Bopp comet and we should all kill ourselves in order to evacuate the planet and join the spaceship!"
"I have a lot of faith that God is real."
...would become...
"I have a strong irrational belief that God is real."
No?
"Do you have faith that the light will come on when you flip the light switch?"
I'm always amazed how easily people get mixed up about what the word "faith" means, especially educated people. In fact, it's usually about this point in the conversation that I begin to suspect they may be purposely trying to manipulate the semantics of the conversation in order to purposefully confuse the issue, but I usually try to give them the benefit of the doubt because the two meanings of "faith" are quite similar. You see, in the English language, it's very common for two words to sound alike and even be spelled the same, but have different meanings; broadly speaking, these are homonyms, but they can be broken down much further.
You see, "faith" can mean several completely different things, as any dictionary can confirm. Though your dictionary may phrase them differently, among the many possible definitions for "faith (n.)" that it will list, the following (in no particular order) are of interest to us here:
- A belief that is not based on evidence.
- Something that is believed with strong convictions.
These two are of of particular relevance to the religious when talking about their belief in beings that inhabit an inaccessible realm. Here's how they use them:
1. A belief that is not based on evidence.
This is seriously important for Christianity. The Bible goes out of its way to let people know that this is a serious virtue. In fact, the Bible describes this very specifically.
- In John 20:29, Jesus has just convinced "doubting" Thomas (who doubted he had actually come back from the dead) by allowing him to touch his wounds. Having convinced Thomas only by direct evidence, Jesus makes it clear that he would have much preferred people just take his word for it and says plainly "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe."
- In Hebrews 11:1 it says that faith is "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen".
Science hates this type of "faith". In fact, science demands just the opposite; in the realm of science, one must have a valid reason to believe in something that is based on more than just a desire for it to be true. Scientists do not have this type of faith.
2. Something that is believed with strong convictions.
Basically, this is synonymous with having "confidence" in a person or thing to be as one expects it to be. Everybody feels this type of faith about some things, but sometimes for different reasons.
In the context of religion, Christians believe strongly in the existence of God without evidence because, as we just saw, they're directly instructed to! It's part of the deal. In fact, the more strongly you believe in that which you have no evidence for, the Christians say, the "stronger your faith". If you give your life over to the teachings of the Bible completely and believe everything it says is true and divinely inspired, it is said that you have "great faith". During times of turmoil, when a person starts to doubt that God is watching over them, Christians would say that person is experiencing a "crisis of faith". In this context, Christians both "believe strongly in something" and do so "without any evidence".
Outside of the context of religion, well, we all pretty much use this second definition the same way. We typically only believe strongly in things where we we have direct or indirect evidence to support our belief. We humans are learning machines and we see the world through the lens of our own observations. We are continually testing and retesting of the consistency of our experiences and seeking patterns. Every time we reach for the light switch, it's a small science experiment in our minds. Our hypothesis is that the light will come on when the switch is flipped (this is why we typically reach for them) and this is based on thousands of direct observations about the normal effects of flipping a light switch. It's likely most people have a handful of experiences where this didn't hold true, but these data outliers are unusual and infrequent to the point where we normally believe, with a fairly strong conviction, based on our own direct observations and experiences, that when we flip on a light switch, that it will electrically connect a device in the vicinity that is capable of producing visible light. We do not "strongly believe in" that the light switch will turn on a light "without evidence", on the contrary, we have a huge amount of evidence for this, which is why we believe it so strongly.
So, is all faith a virtue? It depends where you stand, but moreover, it depends what you mean by "faith". Not all "faith" is the same. Science is okay with some faith. No scientist is going to say they don't have "faith" in the sense of a strongly-held belief that electricity works and is real; even though they can't see electrons moving directly, their presence can be demonstrated in dramatic fashion and their behavior is so consistent that we have developed complex mathematical and practical frameworks around how to harness their power to do things like wake us up for 6am for work or display blog posts on our computer monitors to read. Of course, science wouldn't say that all strongly-held beliefs are of equal virtue and neither would you. If someone claimed to you to strongly believe that they could do something ludicrous, like walk on water, you probably would not lend that persons belief any credence at all merely on the basis of the strength of their belief. No matter how strongly they believed they could do it, our experience would tell us that it takes a lot more than a particular belief to make something physically possible.
Most people would agree than simply believing something without any reason to believe it is not a virtue at all, but is, in fact, some sort of strange unnatural state of being. Christians, on the other hand, suspend this notion in the context of religious doctrine, but even they embrace it everywhere else and would probably call anyone who claimed to actually be their messiah crazy until he actually performed a miracle in their presence.
No, not all "faith" is the same. The problem is that these two meanings are -so- closely related in the context of religion that it's often difficult to tell which one people are using. Maybe it would be better if when we stopped using this word altogether. I propose that henceforth when someone wants to say "you believe in something strongly", they say "a high degree of confidence" instead of "faith". "Confidence" is neutral and doesn't have an alternate meaning that means "confidence without any rational reason" like "faith" does. When people mean, "faith" as in a "belief without evidence", how about instead of "faith", we use the phrase "an irrational belief". We can add "strong" as a modifier to the latter in the case of religion if you like:
Some examples:
"You have faith that the sun will come up tomorrow."
...would become...
"You have a high degree of confidence that the sun will come up tomorrow."
"I have faith that I can perform brain surgery on myself."
...would become...
"I have an irrational belief that I can perform brain surgery on myself."
"I have faith that a spaceship is following the Hale-Bopp comet and we should all kill ourselves in order to evacuate the planet and join the spaceship!"
...would become...
"I have an irrational belief that a spaceship is following the Hale-Bopp comet and we should all kill ourselves in order to evacuate the planet and join the spaceship!"
"I have a lot of faith that God is real."
...would become...
"I have a strong irrational belief that God is real."
No?
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Westboro Baptist Church - Christian Morality Revisited
A couple months ago I wrote about my thoughts on the "Myth of Christian Morality". Recently, as my thoughts have turned to the Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) and their various shenanigans, I began to see again just how my observation about Christian morality was holding true with them.
In my previous post, I laid out my argument that basically, there is enough material in the Christian Bible to support almost any moral position, one needs only to pick and choose what parts of the Bible you most closely identify with, then embrace only that part of the scriptures to, in essence, create your own version of Christianity. Indeed, I think that entire argument can be summed up into a single point:
Man creates God in his own image.
WBC is a great example of this. If you read carefully about Fred Phelps, his abusive family history, his own predispositions toward good and evil and right and wrong, you start to get a picture of someone who is clearly mentally unbalanced in some fairly significant ways. He has a "my way or the highway" attitude about life and when he was a younger man, was fine with abusing or ostracizing anyone who got in his way or didn't agree with him. He's been "arrested for assault, battery, threats, trespassing, disorderly conduct, contempt of court" and convicted of these types of activities more than once. He's clearly severely homophobic and very misguided about homosexuals in general. In his actions, in his words, he displays all the characteristics associated with a sociopath.
When Fred Phelps looks to the heavens for backup, he doesn't have to look far. The Old Testament in particular is full of behavior from God that could only be considered psychotic if anyone on Earth tried to do it. What would we do to anyone on this planet who literally attempted to drown every man woman and child on it but save only a select family? What about someone who attempted to destroy an entire city or two because they disagreed with them? What about someone who just killed or tortured one person because they disagreed with them or didn't say what they wanted them to say? Well, of course, we would never tolerate this behavior from an individual, but because "God" did it, it is all supposedly okay. In Fred's view, this is all proof positive that God is just like him. Disagree with me, and I'll smite you. Say anything against me, and I'll punish you for eternity. This is just how Fred thinks, is it little wonder then that Fred has created a version of God that includes everything a sociopath would love?
The God Fred has created matches his views perfectly. This isn't because it's the only message in the Bible, but because that's the message Fred was looking for.
Fred created his God based on his own image.
As a side note: when I say that people create God based in their own image, this can be a insult (as in the case of Fred), or it can be something of a compliment. When I see someone who is highly moral -and- a Christian, I can immediately tell that they have eschewed all the negativity in the Bible and taken out only what they wanted to hear, i.e. the positive messages of love, etc., from the Bible. Indeed, I find it something of a useful tool to measure someone's innate morality; the more immoral someone's interpretation of the scriptures are, the more immoral they are...nobody would believe in something they themselves knew was immoral.
In the case of WBC, it's also clear that Fred has, like most batterers, conditioned those around him to accept his abuse.
Anyone who's familiar with Fred's family history or his views on God should see the parallels here.
What's really sad is that because of Fred's version of Christian Morality, the level of control Fred has over his 'congregation' (family members, mostly) is great; he has conditioned them to accept power as reasonable equivalent for morality (both in this world and the next!) Therefore they see any being who has the power to punish them as being morally "right", regardless of the immorality of its actions. Fred's succeeded in projecting his own immorality into the afterlife by making up a God that agrees with his twisted views on moral behavior and because those verses are there for the reading, he appears to have God on his side.
All Fred's really done is create a supernatural version of himself...
...just like every other Christian.
In my previous post, I laid out my argument that basically, there is enough material in the Christian Bible to support almost any moral position, one needs only to pick and choose what parts of the Bible you most closely identify with, then embrace only that part of the scriptures to, in essence, create your own version of Christianity. Indeed, I think that entire argument can be summed up into a single point:
Man creates God in his own image.
WBC is a great example of this. If you read carefully about Fred Phelps, his abusive family history, his own predispositions toward good and evil and right and wrong, you start to get a picture of someone who is clearly mentally unbalanced in some fairly significant ways. He has a "my way or the highway" attitude about life and when he was a younger man, was fine with abusing or ostracizing anyone who got in his way or didn't agree with him. He's been "arrested for assault, battery, threats, trespassing, disorderly conduct, contempt of court" and convicted of these types of activities more than once. He's clearly severely homophobic and very misguided about homosexuals in general. In his actions, in his words, he displays all the characteristics associated with a sociopath.
When Fred Phelps looks to the heavens for backup, he doesn't have to look far. The Old Testament in particular is full of behavior from God that could only be considered psychotic if anyone on Earth tried to do it. What would we do to anyone on this planet who literally attempted to drown every man woman and child on it but save only a select family? What about someone who attempted to destroy an entire city or two because they disagreed with them? What about someone who just killed or tortured one person because they disagreed with them or didn't say what they wanted them to say? Well, of course, we would never tolerate this behavior from an individual, but because "God" did it, it is all supposedly okay. In Fred's view, this is all proof positive that God is just like him. Disagree with me, and I'll smite you. Say anything against me, and I'll punish you for eternity. This is just how Fred thinks, is it little wonder then that Fred has created a version of God that includes everything a sociopath would love?
The God Fred has created matches his views perfectly. This isn't because it's the only message in the Bible, but because that's the message Fred was looking for.
Fred created his God based on his own image.
As a side note: when I say that people create God based in their own image, this can be a insult (as in the case of Fred), or it can be something of a compliment. When I see someone who is highly moral -and- a Christian, I can immediately tell that they have eschewed all the negativity in the Bible and taken out only what they wanted to hear, i.e. the positive messages of love, etc., from the Bible. Indeed, I find it something of a useful tool to measure someone's innate morality; the more immoral someone's interpretation of the scriptures are, the more immoral they are...nobody would believe in something they themselves knew was immoral.
In the case of WBC, it's also clear that Fred has, like most batterers, conditioned those around him to accept his abuse.
What's really sad is that because of Fred's version of Christian Morality, the level of control Fred has over his 'congregation' (family members, mostly) is great; he has conditioned them to accept power as reasonable equivalent for morality (both in this world and the next!) Therefore they see any being who has the power to punish them as being morally "right", regardless of the immorality of its actions. Fred's succeeded in projecting his own immorality into the afterlife by making up a God that agrees with his twisted views on moral behavior and because those verses are there for the reading, he appears to have God on his side.
All Fred's really done is create a supernatural version of himself...
...just like every other Christian.
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