Kalashnikov Truth

Until late in WWII, infantry firearms fell into three categories: heavy machine guns requiring two operators; long-range rifles, either bolt-action or semi-automatic, with offset stocks requiring re-aiming between shots; and pistols or light machine guns spitting out light rounds with limited range. One of Nazi Germany’s many military innovations was the first assault rifle, the StG 44. It was lighter than previous rifles and incorporated three innovations: a select-fire switch converting it to a machine gun, an in-line barrel limiting barrel rise, and a mid-size round with medium range. A single weapon that could pinch-hit for all three categories.

A young Soviet inventor named Mikail Kalashnikov combined these innovations with features from the American M1 and created the Automatic Kalashnikov rifle, or AK-47, named for the year it was adopted by the Soviets. In the more than 70 years since its invention, this rifle and its upgrades have been wildly successful. Kalashnikovs are used by scores of militaries, as well as drug gangs and insurrectionists. Estimates of the number of Kalashnikovs in existence run between one and two hundred million, most of them bootleg copies of varying quality, successful because they deliver massive firepower, and are cheap, rugged, and reliable.

What on earth does this have to do with religion. It’s about the word “truth.” 

Between 1979 and 1989, the Soviet Union fought an Afghanistan insurgence of conservative Moslems who espoused a medieval document, the Quran, along with sharia law developed during the middle ages. The Mujahideen in Afghanistan substantially patterned their lives on medieval Islam, but this medievalism did not extend to their choice of weapons. Despite the fact that the AK-47 was invented by their atheist enemies, it was their weapon of choice because--unlike other Soviet customs such as wearing red stripes, drinking vodka, and speaking Russian--it promoted military success. No sane mujahideen would charge a Soviet AK-47 armed with nothing but a sword.

A Kalashnikov Truth is a premise (such as, “Kalashnikovs are more deadly than swords") not disputed by people from radically different ideologies. If you doubt this premise and are unlucky enough to be in a war zone, you are free to mount a cavalry charge against machine guns, as the British did briefly in WWI. But most people prefer to run thought experiments. A Kalashnikov Truth is testable on universally accepted principles. Of course, a Kalashnikov truth may be confined to one era. A truth of the middle ages was that armored knights were more effective than foot soldiers. Neither side in the Crusades disputed this. Such a truth, in its day, is foundational, accepted even by pacifists. Rather than being fought over by warring ideologies, it is fought with. Such truths include the laws of physics and the axioms of logic, as well as proven technologies.

Religions don't offer this kind of truth. One that did would convert all the nations of the world just as all the infantries of the world have converted to assault rifles. One way of expressing this is that most religious propositions are, to use Karl Popper’s term, unfalsifiable. That is to say that opposing sides agree to no objective test that would prove them wrong. Religious teachers have made predictions that are falsifiable and have been proven false, as when Paul predicted that people living in his time would witness the Second Coming (2 Thessalonians 4:15). American evangelicals predicted actual end-time dates in the 19th and 20th century. A poster cild of this is the Great Disappointment of the Millerites, who expected the Rapture in 1844, after which many in Miller’s followers reinterpreted their Second Coming as a heavenly phenomena with no earthly (falsifiable) manifestation and are now Seventh-day Adventists. Apparently, no living religion has bet its existence on falsifiable doctrines and honored the bet.

A curious story of a successfully falsified religious belief appears in 1 Kings 18, where Elijah challenges 450 prophets of Baal to a fire-starting contest, and King Ahab and his people agree that it is a objective test of whether YHWH or Baal is the true God. Both sides place a bull on firewood and pray to their god to send down fire from heaven. Of course, it is theoretically possible that both or neither side might succeed in calling down fire. In that case, the test would be inconclusive. Nothing would be falsified. But King Ahab, Elijah, the prophets, and the people agree that if Elijah successfully calls fire and the Baal’s priests do not, his god is the true one, or at least the most responsive to ritual--which are not the the same thing, but nobody seems to notice. There is a terrible drought in the land, and the people want results, so all agree that, absent heavenly fire on Altar A, fire on Altar B falsifies God A. When Elijah’s bull catches fire, even after being doused with water, nobody prevents him from slaughtering Baal’s 450 prophets. Sadly, such extreme response to theological disagreement has been replicated many times--notoriously in the Albigensian Crusade and the Inquisition after it--but seldom if ever on such a Kalashnikov basis.

Religious speakers like to use the word “truth,” and certainly not all truths are falsifiable, but religious “truths” are especially evasive. Notable are the various beliefs about life after death. Jesus’ resurrection would be proof if it could be observed and replicated in experiments, but all we have is an ancient story, a sectarian scripture. To accept Jesus’ resurrection is to accept New Testament authority, and to accept the New Testament as authority is to accept Jesus’ resurrection--a circular argument proving nothing to anybody outside the circle. As a syllogism  it depends on a middle premise that all stories in ancient manuscripts are true, which is absurd.

In one sense, common Christian beliefs about personal immortality have been tested millions of times. All you have to do is die and see what happens next. But, of course, a competing secular theory of death predicts that you’ll see nothing, not even lack of seeing, not even darkness, and discover nothing. Besides, even if you should see, say, pearly gates, St. Peter in a shining robe with a golden guest book and quill pen, you're stuck in Celestial City with no way to report down and falsify mortal skeptics. To us still on earth, nothing is ever proven.

There’s a great deal more to be said about immortality, prayer, miracles, and such and about sporadic attempts, like the Millierite’s dating of the Rapture, to render them falsifiable, but none of these seems to have had anything resembling the success of the AK-47, and so I may have spent enough words contrasting religious truth and Kalashnikov truth. When you invest in the stock market, you will be proven right or wrong. Your belief that your stock will rise tomorrow will turn out to be true or false. Informed bystanders will all agree. Religious belief is different.