By Diana Hsieh @ 2:00 PM
I want to strongly recommend this recently-released lecture by Onkar Ghate on "The Separation of Church and State," given at OCON in 2009. It was particularly stellar.
With religion on the rise in America, maintaining the separation of church and state is now a pressing issue. This talk begins with an examination of the contemporary debate about the principle of separating religion from government. Dr. Ghate argues that both sides of the contemporary debate are mistaken and explains why today even most well-meaning Americans are unable to mount a tenable defense of the principle. To understand what the principle actually means, Dr. Ghate then considers some of the history behind the principle, focusing on John Locke's crucial contributions. Finally, Dr. Ghate sketches what a full philosophical argument for the separation of church and state looks like.
For an understanding of the philosophic foundation of the secular government, including the problems with the standard attacks on and defenses thereof, you won't find anything better. Most people in the audience were surprised and delighted by the discussion of John Locke on faith. I wasn't surprised, but I was delighted! I've always taught a class on "Faith and Reason" in my Introduction to Philosophy courses, and Locke is undoubtedly the highlight. While he defends faith, his defense is such that faith cannot sustain any foothold in cognition. (Locke is far, far better than Thomas Aquinas on this issue... but that's a subject for a future podcast.)
I'm simply overwhelmed to read Tony Judt's account of a single night stuck in the prison of his body, ravaged by ALS (a.k.a. Lou Gherig's disease). Here's how he describes his basic condition:
By my present stage of decline, I am thus effectively quadriplegic. With extraordinary effort I can move my right hand a little and can adduct my left arm some six inches across my chest. My legs, although they will lock when upright long enough to allow a nurse to transfer me from one chair to another, cannot bear my weight and only one of them has any autonomous movement left in it. Thus when legs or arms are set in a given position, there they remain until someone moves them for me. The same is true of my torso, with the result that backache from inertia and pressure is a chronic irritation. Having no use of my arms, I cannot scratch an itch, adjust my spectacles, remove food particles from my teeth, or anything else that--as a moment's reflection will confirm--we all do dozens of times a day. To say the least, I am utterly and completely dependent upon the kindness of strangers (and anyone else).
Please, go read the whole thing. While I don't know what Mr. Judt's own religious views are, I regard his life as a clear demonstration of the life-hating brutality of Christian doctrine. To wit:
Christianity regards suffering like that of Mr. Judt as not merely noble and elevated, but positively divine. It's not good to live fully, happily, robustly according to Christianity: it's good to suffer and die. That's what Jesus taught -- and then he lived and died by that ideal.
Christianity regards the body as a vile, despicable prison that leads a person's divine soul astray into the dark depths of sin. Mr. Judt is positively lucky, as his body really is a prison: he cannot indulge pleasures of the flesh, not even the seemingly minor ones like scratching his own itches.
Christianity regards Mr. Judt's life as God's property, not as his own. So Mr. Judt must be forbidden by law from ending his own life, if and when it becomes intolerable. If anyone attempts to help him end his life, that person should be imprisoned as a murderer. As a bonus, if Mr. Judt manages to end his own life somehow, the loving Christian God will consign him to the torments of hell for all eternity.
Of course, many Christians do not live by such dark principles. They are kind, decent people, loathe to see anyone suffering from such a tragic condition. They might even support stem-cell research, and even assisted suicide. To that extent, their values are more American -- loving science, seeking happiness, and upholding individual rights -- than Christian.
It is time to tell people the unvarnished truth: to stand up for man's mind and this earth, and against any version of mysticism or religion. It is time to tell people: "You must choose between unreason and America. You cannot have both. Take your pick."
If there is to be any chance for the future, this is the only chance there is.
Religious conservatives are fond of replying by pointing excitedly at the references to "Nature's God", "Divine Providence", and the "Creator" in the Declaration of Independence.
Raymond then quotes the relevant passages of the Declaration:
When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights;
And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.
Raymond then cites some other passages in Jefferson's writings where he displays as obvious hostility to Christianity. So Raymond asks, "Of what 'God', if not the Christian one, was Jefferson speaking?" He replies:
The answer to this question -- which also explains the references in the Declaration of Independence -- is that Jefferson, like many intellectuals of his time, was a Deist. The "Creator" and "Nature's God" in the Declaration of Independence, and the God of Jefferson's altar, is not the intervening Christian God but the God of Deism.
Deism was an early attempt to reconcile the mechanistic world-view arising from experimental science with religion. Deists believed in a remote sort of clockmaker-God who created the universe but then refrained from meddling in it afterwards. Deists explicitly rejected faith, revelation, religious doctrine, religious authority, and all existing religions. They held that humans could know the mind of God only through the study of nature; in many versions of Deist thinking, the mind of God was explicitly identified with the laws of nature.
Thus "the Laws of Nature and Nature's God"; in Deist thought these concepts blurred together. The phrase "endowed by their Creator" could be rendered accurately as "endowed by Nature". In modern terms, this is an entirely naturalistic account of human rights.
That's exactly right. Finally, Raymond notes:
Jefferson’s "altar of God" quote and the references in the Declaration of Independence are easy to misconstrue today because Deism did not long outlive the Founding Fathers. In their time it functioned as a sort of halfway house for intellectuals who rejected traditional religion but were unwilling to declare themselves atheists or agnostics. As the social risk of taking these positions decreased, Deism waned.
Given the bravery of the early Americans in opposing the British Empire, I doubt that intellectual cowardice was the reason for their deism. I suspect -- although I've not much researched the subject -- that they accepted some version of the Argument from Design. Absent a solid grasp of the fact that physical laws are the necessary expression of the identity of entities and absent an explanation for the great diversity and complexity of living organisms, the Argument from Design would seem quite plausible. It's still flawed, purely on philosophic grounds, but the mistake was understandable in the 18th century. Deism was the rather benign result of that mistake.
Today, people have far less excuse for believing in God's existence on such grounds, as the scientific and philosophic objections to the Argument from Design are well-known and devastating. They have no excuse for leaping from such arguments to claims about the truth of Christianity. The Argument from Design, even if sound, could not lend the slightest bit of support to the myths and dogmas of Christianity.
For more, see my three podcasts on the Argument from Design: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. Part 4 is forthcoming.
Specifically, they report that an energetic form of evangelical Pentecostal Christianity is rapidly gaining adherents in Latin America, Africa, and Asia.
Furthermore, these evangelicals are "more liberal than their US counterparts on economic policy, but just as conservative on homosexuality and abortion". In other words, they are more consistent with Christian doctrines. Many of these new-style liberal evangelicals support greater government intervention in the economy to achieve "social justice" (e.g., forcible redistribution of wealth).
The CSM article also notes that these ideas will also become a greater force in the United States, as immigrants from Latin America come to this country.
My own prediction is that the current partial pro-capitalism leanings of many American evangelicals will continue to fade and be supplanted by the more philosophically consistent anti-capitalist ideology of these new evangelical Christians.
Furthermore, I predict we will increasingly see religious morality used to justify socialist government policies. In other words, the danger is not that the political battle will be between religious conservative Republicans (who partially support free markets although they hold terrible views on "social issues") and liberal Democrats (who might be somewhat better on some "social issues" like abortion but who are strongly opposed to capitalism). Instead, we may end up with the worst of both worlds.
Specifically, the biggest danger will be a deadly merger of religion and socialism/environmentalism. Both share an underlying anti-reason and anti-man philosophy which is completely antithetical to the pro-reason, pro-man Enlightenment philosophy that made America possible.
Hence, if we want America to survive, we must be willing and able to advocate our ideas -- namely, reason, ethical egoism, and individual rights.
Fortunately, we don't have to discover these ideas from scratch -- thinkers like Rand and Peikoff have already done much of the conceptual heavy lifting. But we have to be able to articulate and defend those ideas (as contextually appropriate), as if our lives depended on it.
By Diana Hsieh @ 8:00 AM
Some weeks ago, Monica Hughes pointed me some Christians discussing the proper response to paleo-diet advocate Mark Sisson's Definitive Guide to Grains. Here's the best, from "Barlow":
As a Christian, I have further trouble with this kind of advice. Think of the eucharist. How are we to know what kind of bread to use in the eucharist if we do not become skilled at baking bread, bake better and better bread, pass on the art of baking bread, etc? Are Christians only supposed to think that the world was set up so that grain will only be grown for the eucharist, and bread only be baked for the eucharist? That all the loaves of bread to be baked should be tasted, notes should be made about what worked or didn't, and then the loaves cast away? It makes no sense. The eucharistic meal is a real meal. It shouldn't be the only place we or our children encounter bread. The eucharist is an overflowing of what culture should be like. We should be a bread-loving, wine-loving culture, with artisans getting as good at baking bread as they are at making wine. Finally, Jesus describes himself as the "bread from heaven" - connecting himself with the whole flow of redemptive history from the manna in the wilderness to bread baked in haste to the grain sack that never ran out after being blessed by the prophet. I don't want to raise my children to wonder why Jesus connected his life-giving body with something "so unhealthy."
Then, in a separate comment by the same author:
To clarify, I'm not saying that we need to eat what Jesus ate. I'm just saying that, as a Christian, if Jesus ate it, I can't very well say that eating it is evil or inherently bad for me. Otherwise I'd have to conclude that Jesus was damaging his health and encouraging others to do the same.
Well, Barlow, I'll make a modest proposal. I propose that you eliminate the symbolic cannibalism of the Eucharist from your diet. Even apart from the absurdly mystical mumbo-jumbo of transubstantiation, eating your man-god is just plain gross.
By Paul Hsieh @ 8:00 AM
Yet more global warming alarmists are linking environmentalism with religion. Here are a couple of recent discussions of this topic.
The first comes from Thaddeus Russell, someone who is concerned about AGW but dislikes the religiousity.
...Many climate-change deniers and even some who accept global warming as a fact, like the authors of Superfreakonomics, have attacked what they call the "religion of climate change." Al Gore is often singled out for raising the discourse on the issue to a supernatural level, thus taking it out of the realm of human questioning.
Though Gore's books, speeches, and Oscar-winning film on the issue are chock full of secular scientific information, they are also laced with biblical references. And Gore himself has said that climate change is "ultimately a moral and spiritual issue."
Gore recently told Newsweek that since the publication of An Inconvenient Truth, he has trained Christian, Muslim, Jewish, and Hindu clergy to spread his message.
He admitted that he uses a version of the "Inconvenient Truth" slide show that is "filled with scriptural references." Moreover, "It's probably my favorite version, but I don't use it very often because it can come off as proselytizing."
The Gore interview with Newsweek can be found in the 11/19/2009 story by Sharon Begley "The Evolution of an Eco-Prophet". Here are a couple of excerpts:
Asked how he reconciles that realization with the wonkish content of the book, Gore at first seems stymied. But then, when I prompt him, he points to pages on the spiritual dimension of climate change, the idea that God gave man stewardship over the earth, and that preserving it for future generations is a sacred obligation. Then he opens his laptop to show a commercial by his Alliance for Climate Protection, in which the Revs. Al Sharpton and Pat Robertson make an odd-couple plea for "taking care of the planet."
Gore allows that he's been tailoring the slide-show training he gives to faith-based volunteer groups. "I've done a Christian [-based] training program; I have a Muslim training program and a Jewish training program coming up, also a Hindu program coming up. I trained 200 Christian ministers and lay leaders here in Nashville in a version of the slide show that is filled with scriptural references. It's probably my favorite version, but I don't use it very often because it can come off as proselytizing."
In the Newsweek interview, Gore cites reason and the Enlightenment (!) as two of his major influences:
So, if efficiency is so great and saves so much money (leave aside the CO2 part), I ask, why don't businesses do it? "You know, I was raised in an Enlightenment-influenced family," Gore says. "Both my parents were such believers in the preeminence of reason, and I still believe all that."
Al Gore is as much a defender of the Enlightment as President Obama is a defender of capitalism.
For example, consider the views of Tyler Edgar, the assistant director for the environmental arm of the National Council of Churches:
Edgar, who also is traveling to Copenhagen, sees things differently [than the religious global warming skeptics]. Broadly speaking, America's religious communities have shed their long-standing suspicion of the environmental cause "as that hippie, tree-hugging thing," she says. In the past three years or so, many have rallied behind the belief that "we are all called upon to protect God's creation and God's people" by acting to stop climate change, Edgar says.
This site is to serve pastors who are interested in a growing emphasis within the Christian community called "Creation Care": applying biblical principles of stewardship to the environment we share with all living things. We like the word "creation" even better than the word "environment" because it includes all that makes the earth a wonderful place, and it reminds us it's all a gift, a sacred trust from the hands of the Creator.
From a biblical perspective, "the environment" is God's creation. Creation care does not just mean caring for "nature," apart from humanity. It means caring for the entire creation: the environment and "all creatures great and small" including humanity. As those who confess Jesus Christ to be Savior and Lord, our relationship with all of creation must be in keeping with Christ's relationship with all of creation. When we explore what the Bible says about creation, we interpret each text in light of our relationship to Christ and his relationship to all of creation. If the Bible teaches us that Christ has created the universe, gives it life and sustains it, and has reconciled everything to God, then our actions should participate in Christ's creating, sustaining, and reconciling work.
Here's another telling example from the USA Today article:
[Jim Ball, head of the Evangelical Environmental Network], who arrives in Copenhagen on Friday, says he plans to spend most of his time "hanging out in the hallways" of the Bella Center conference hall, where international delegates will be negotiating a deal. He'll be looking to speak with senior Obama administration officials and members of Congress.
Ball's pet cause is a proposal for rich countries, including the USA, to send poorer countries money -- at least $10 billion a year will be needed, the U.N.'s Ban says. The funds would help the countries overhaul their economies to pollute less, and cope with possible consequences of climate change such as lower agricultural yields, or rising seas that could devastate island nations.
"Our role is to remind (politicians) that this is a profound moral issue, and that the basic moral teachings of religion apply to these environmental problems," Ball says.
Particularly in light of the scientific scandal of ClimateGate, I believe that religion will bolster environmentalism with the faith-based moral fervor that it needs to survive -- just as faith-based altruism has kept socialism alive and kicking after the supposed science of central planning was demolished with the economic collapse of the Soviet empire.
By Diana Hsieh @ 2:00 PM
What will happen if gays are permitted to marry? Pundits disagree, but this pie chart seems pretty accurate to me:
Oh yes... Be afraid, be very afraid.
Sadly, religious bigotry against gays -- although absurd in itself -- has very real consequences for gay couples and their children, as this Miss Manners' column shows:
Dear Miss Manners:
My partner and I adopted a child three years ago. He has become a happy, silly, active, loving child.
When we were going through the adoption process, the topic of being a "conspicuous family" was discussed. As two men with a child, we fall into that category.
Several times over the last couple of years, we have been verbally attacked. Twice we have been in a grocery store when someone informed us that we were not a "real family." On one of these situations, we were even told that we were condemned to hell!
Another time, when I was having breakfast out with our son, I was discussing children with a woman who was there with two of her own. The conversation was casual and amiable. When I mentioned "my partner" in the conversation, she started shouting at me, "You're evil! You are doing that child a great injustice!"
Our son's birth mother was a heroin and cocaine user during her pregnancy. She had the presence of mind to realize she couldn't take care of him and chose us as his adoptive parents.
We didn't decide to adopt to "save" a child, but the fact is, we will probably be able to give our son a much better life than if he had stayed with his birth mother.
How do we react to these people?
Miss Manners' advice is good, as usual:
A gentleman of Miss Manners's acquaintance was once subjected to a barrage of unwarranted insults. Outraged on his behalf, she asked why he did not trouble to defend himself.
His reply (and please forgive the inelegance for the sake of vividness) was: "If someone is throwing up on you, you get out of the way. You do not stay around to examine what is coming up."
There is nothing you can say to people who, whatever they may think, see fit to hurl crude insults at you, even in front of your son.
A stiff "I'm sorry you feel that way" is all you can utter before turning your back.
Happily, time is on the side of gay couples -- provided that America doesn't become the "Christian nation" sought by so many conservatives.
William Doherty won't be among the throngs in the shopping malls Friday morning. He will be in church.
Doherty, a professor in the Family Social Science Department at the University of Minnesota, is part of a growing backlash against the commercialization of Christmas. Last year, he helped his church, Unity Church Unitarian in St. Paul, hold a worship service on what has become known as Black Friday, the official kickoff of the holiday gift-buying bonanza and biggest retail shopping day of the year.
This rejection of the commercialism of Black Friday seems somewhat different from the push to "Put Christ Back in Christmas." That movement originates with more conservative, "family values," evangelical Christianity. This opposition to Black Friday seems to reflect more progressive opposition to commerce and consumption. (That's an assumption on my part, but conservative evangelicals are not often found in Unitarian churches -- or in universities.)
Importantly, the two movements are united in their basic aim of stripping the supposed stench of commerce from Christmas. Ultimately, that means replacing the cheerful tradition of exchanging gifts with loved ones with the dull duty of serving the poor, the needy, and the unworthy. That's the operative moral ideal -- explicitly:
At New Hope Baptist, the Rev. Runney Patterson Sr. was excited by Unity's experience. It meshed perfectly with his concept of giving. "Most of what we consider holiday gift-giving isn't giving at all, it's swapping," he said. "We're just trading gifts. True giving is when you find an individual or a family that is not able to give back to you." [Emphasis added.]
Notice, the goal is not to help some worthy person, struggling to make ends meet due to hardships beyond his control. The goal is to prevent you from trading with others: you must not benefit! That's truly the moral imperative of altruism: it's not that you help others, but that you don't help yourself.
That's wrong every day of the year, including Christmas. Every holiday should be a celebration of human life and achievement!
By Diana Hsieh @ 5:00 AM
I must admit, I'm often just a bit intrigued by religious spam. My favorite form is the attempt to turn me away from that pretender Jesus to the one true God, Allah. (If only the writer knew the depths of my evil!) The following gem appeared in my inbox a few months ago. As you'll see, it's fairly standard Christian proselytizing: you're a bad, bad sinner, but God will forgive all if you repent and accept Jesus.
If I were to seriously consider this attempt to convert me, I could only be offended. I'm not some lowly depraved sinner! Yet some people are deeply attracted to this kind of message. My question is... why?
Here's my supposition -- just one possible explanation. A person without clearly defined principles but some sense of the importance of morality is likely to feel vague pangs of guilt pretty routinely. Such a person might not want to consider what he's doing too closely, because that would require forsaking certain cherished desires. He might be caught in the crossfire of conflicting principles. He might often feel uncertain about whether he's acting rightly, yet not know how to determine the right course. He might not differentiate between his own honest errors and his willful evasions. He might indulge certain desires, knowing them to be wrong.
Over time, such actions would take their toll on the person's psyche. Periodic pangs of guilt would accumulate into a vague sense of being guilty as a person, but for not-too-clear reasons. That would be a deeply, deeply uncomfortable feeling. For such a person, the Christian claim that we're all guilty would be a comfort. Christianity tells him that he's not uniquely bad, that all people face the same problem of guilt, whether they acknowledge it or not. Then Christianity offers an easy way out: repent and accept the sacrifice of Jesus for your sins. Heck, if he sins again, he can just repent again... and again... and again. The flesh is weak, after all.
Does that seem right? What other reasons might a person have for embracing an image of himself as a depraved sinner?
Oh, and here's the e-mail:
Hello,
Thank you for not deleting this email right away. While you and I may not know each other, what I want to tell you is important enough for me to want to contact you. But don't worry, I obtained your email address off of the internet and will not contact you again unless you reply.
I assure you that this is not a solicitation or a scam of any kind. I do not want to sell you anything or sign you up for anything. My hope is that you will continue to read the email. My hope is that, in the end, you will see this letter as so much more than "spam."
The reason for the email is so that you can hear about the good news of the Gospel. Now, you might be saying to yourself, "I already know Jesus Christ and am sure of my salvation". I THOUGHT I WAS SURE TOO. It can't hurt to examine your faith and see where you stand. The cost of being wrong is too great.
The Bible says in Hebrews 9:27 that "it's appointed for every man once to die, and then judgment." What that means is that everyone dies once and is then judged before Almighty God. So, if you are standing before God on Judgment Day, are you going to heaven or hell? Have you been a good person? You might think so but, unfortunately though, we aren't going to be judged by any human standard of goodness. There is only one standard by which we can all be judged and that standard is God's Law, also known as the Ten Commandments. The Bible says in Romans 2:15 that God "has written the law upon the heart of every man in the form of our conscience" so that when we die and face him, we will have no excuse.
So let's go through them real quick. Have you ever broken the 9th commandment by lying? Of course you have. A person who does that is called a liar. Have you ever broken the 8th commandment and stolen anything (regardless of value)? A person who does that is called a thief. Let's look at the 7th commandment against adultery: Jesus says that whoever looks upon another person with lust has committed adultery in their heart. Have you ever looked with lust? Yes. What about the 6th commandment against murder? Jesus also says that whoever hates a person, without cause, has committed murder in his heart. Have you ever hated anyone? If you're like most people, at this point you are a lying, thieving, murdering adulterer at heart standing before a just and holy God.
At this point, you might be saying to yourself, I don't believe in God, Heaven, or Hell. I say that it doesn't matter what you believe. Let's say that someone held you up at gunpoint, would you laugh at him and say "I don't believe in guns!"? Of course not! That's because your disbelief doesn't negate reality and believe me, GOD IS REAL. Or are you willing to bet your eternal life on it?
Or, you might be saying to yourself, "I don't believe that God would judge us so harshly. My god is a god of love and forgiveness and would never send anyone to Hell". You are right. Your god would not send anyone to Hell because he doesn't exist! What you've just done is broken the 2nd commandment against idolatry. When you create a god in your mind to suit yourself, you are turning your back on the real God. Have you ever broken the 3rd commandment by using our Creator's name in vain as a four-letter cuss word? That's called blasphemy and is very serious in God's eyes.
So, if you are still reading this then you've probably said, "That's impossible! No one can live up to the standard of the Ten Commandments." You are right. No one can. Man is not perfect. We were born into sin and have a sinful nature. God is so holy and so perfect that his standard is unattainable to mortal men. You might say, but that's not fair! What about forgiveness? God is supposed to forgive us of our sins. What about all of the good things that I've done in my life?
Well, let's look at an example. What if you were in a courtroom standing before a judge and you had just been convicted of murder. You did it. You're guilty and all that's left is for the judge to render his sentence: $500,000 or death. You can't just say to the judge "Your honor. I just wanted to say that you are a good man and that I know you will forgive me of my crime. Besides, what about all the other good things I've done in my life?" What's the judge going to say? If he is a good judge then he's going to send you to the electric chair. He might want to be merciful, but he can't just set you free, the law demands a penalty. Since God is a good judge and because he is so good and so holy, he has no choice but to send you to Hell. The law demands a penalty and the Bible says in Romans 6:23 that "the wages of sin is DEATH".
But, here's where your story takes a turn for the good. You are about to be lead away in shackles when all of a sudden, someone comes into the courtroom and pays your $500,000 fine. The judge then sees that the requirement of the law has been fulfilled. And since you've met the requirements, you are now free to go! That's what Jesus Christ did for all of us when he died on the cross 2000 years ago. Jesus Christ came to earth, God in human form, born of a virgin, lived a perfect and blameless life, was crucified on the cross, and then rose from the dead three days later as a payment for our sins. All we have to do is accept the payment and we are free from eternal damnation!
How do we accept the payment? All that is required from us is to ask God for forgiveness, repent (turn away) from our sins, and then trust in the Lord Jesus Christ with all of our hearts (Romans 10:9). When we do that, Jesus Christ washes away all of our sins and we can now stand before God blameless on Judgment Day. Then read your Bible and obey it, join a local church and be baptized. God will make you into a new person with new wants and desires. He doesn't want to send you to Hell, He loves you. You've probably heard John 3:16 "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him, will not perish but have eternal life."
Well, that's it. Thank you for reading all the way through. I thank you for your time and my prayer is that you will consider all that you've read and seek Jesus Christ for eternal life today. Don't wait for tomorrow because we never know when we will be taken from this earth and now that you've read this email you are without excuse when you stand before God.
To Him be the glory, Mel Kizadeck
Oh dear. I've read the e-mail in full, so now I'm definitely going straight to hell when I die. That's okay... because I'll be dead.
...As environmentally minded clerics, and greens with a spiritual bent, confer in increasing numbers, in particular over climate change, acquaintances are being struck that transcend many ethnic, ideological and theological obstacles.
...[UN Secretary-General] Ban told an audience of gorgeously attired Bahais, Buddhists, Christians, Daoists, Hindus, Muslims, Jews, Shintos and Sikhs that "you are the leaders who can have the largest, widest and deepest reach" when warning people about climate change. Religions, he said, had established or helped to run half the schools in the world; they were among the world's biggest investors; and the global output of religious journalism was comparable at least to Europe's secular press.
The Economist article observes that this trend seems to be further advanced outside of the US. But the US is probably not far behind.
Although religion and environmentalism may seem to be fairly disparate, Onkar Ghate spoke about this coming convergence at the 2008 OCON conference in Lecture 2 of the 3-part series, "Cultural Movements: Creating Change".
Here is an excerpt from my notes of his lecture:
...Lately, the evangelicals have started to move away from a primary focus on issues such as abortion and sexual orientation/conduct, and towards a broader range of issues which includes "social justice" and environmentalism. Environmentalism and religion in particular have the potential to form a truly "unholy marriage", because in a crucial way they both need and complement the other.
The religionists have previously been concerned with issues in the spiritual realm, such as sex. Environmentalists have previously been concerned about issues in the material realm, such as industrial production. But a combination of the two gives each other strength, and feeds an ideology in which your very existence is a sin. This alliance grants a powerful moral foundation for environmentalist condemnations of mankind's physical activities and it also expands the domains by which religion can assert control over man's spirit through guilt.
The video of his lecture can be found on the "ARC: Culture" web page, middle column, under the heading "Cultural Movements: Creating Change". Use the scroll bar on the embedded video to select between the three separate lectures.
(BTW, I highly recommend listening to all three lectures).
By Diana Hsieh @ 11:00 PM
In this episode of PhiloFiles, I discuss various Design Arguments for the existence of God, focusing on William Paley's Analogical Argument for Design.
By Diana Hsieh @ 11:00 PM
I must admit, I had all kinds of fun preparing and recording Episode #16 of Rationally Selfish Radio. (Sadly, it was delayed by hours of downtime by my podcast host.) Here it is, just for you!
In this episode, I discuss Design Arguments for the existence of God, particularly objections to Aquinas' Teleological Argument and the Fine Tuning Argument.
A recent piece from PJTV floated by, "Is Barack Obama Jesus Christ?" It starts off with footage of one of those often-creepy examples of children singing patriotic songs or Jesus-jingles with the words modified to be about Obama (this time it appears to be a Jesus-jingle). The piece goes on to explore its title question with sarcastic tongue in cheek comparison and contrast that ranges through the schools that have kids singing like that, to the adoring treatment of Obama in the mainstream media and artistic community.
There's a lot to talk about here, but what struck me wasn't the quality or lack in the analysis. No, it was the sheer irony. This commentary was created to register some degree of outrage at the deification of Obama, at the sacrilege of any comparison of him to a Christlike Savior -- and the commentator is making a real point about how dangerous this is: after all, pretending doesn't make it so. Giving up our independent understanding and following authority in some sort of primacy-of-consciousness yes-we-can pretend world does in fact leave us dependent and exposed to all sorts of dangers, positioned poorly to deal with all those pesky facts of reality, ill-equipped to achieve genuine values in the actual world.
The video took some serious effort to produce, so what is being said isn't exactly casual -- yet it somehow misses the painfully obvious application of its criticism to precisely what it is defending! Check out the closing:
Luckily, though, if there's anyone on earth who can help us stop thinking or laughing or learning new information, it's our public school teachers, mainstream journalists, and state-loving artists.
So, boys and girls, is Barack Obama really Jesus Christ? Of course not! But working together we can all pretend, can't we? And if we pretend very, very hard, we can soon go to live in his magical kingdom, where everything is taken care of for us, and nothing costs anything, and we never have to make any of those nasty, old personal decisions for ourselves ever again. And then we're screwed.
And in religion -- most definitely including the one being defended against this slight/competition -- we are called to submit to authority and take important matters on faith (that is, it helps us stop thinking). And religion tells us that if we simply pretend (i.e., believe) very, very hard, we can soon go to live in God's magical kingdom, where everything is taken care of for us, and nothing costs anything, and we never have to make any of those nasty, old personal decisions for ourselves ever again.
By Diana Hsieh @ 6:00 PM
I've just posted Episode #9 of Rationally Selfish Radio. In this episode, I discuss the major objections to the Cosmological Argument for the existence of God. Three variants of the Cosmological Argument were presented in Episode #6.
Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology by Ayn Rand. For more on the axiom of existence, see Chapter Six on "Axiomatic Concepts." For more on the invalid distinction between necessary and contingent, see Leonard Peikoff's essay "Analytic-Synthetic Dichotomy."
In this episode, I continue my "Teaching Files" on philosophy of religion. I present three variants of the Cosmological Argument for the existence of God. Objections are discussed in Episode 9.
By Diana Hsieh @ 5:00 AM
Surprise, surprise! After much heavy criticism of Bush's Office of Faith-Based Initiatives, the media is giving Obama's equivalent faith-based office a free pass -- meaning little coverage and less criticism. Mollie Ziegler Hemingway has the scoop in this Wall Street Journal op-ed: Faith-Based Double Standards.
Here's the worst part:
This scant media attention is all the more incredible given that, as Americans United for Separation of Church and State has noted, Mr. Obama has left "the entire architecture of the Bush Faith-Based Initiative intact—every rule, every regulation, every executive order." More controversially, the office has become a major hub of political outreach. In frequent conference calls, the administration informs faith-based leaders of its policy initiatives, as when it recently asked rabbis around the country to give sermons on health-care reform during the coming high holiday season. Representatives from politically important religious groups have been appointed to a 25-member religious advisory council. The office was also involved in drafting President Obama's June speech delivered from Cairo calling for alliances with Muslims.
Barry Lynn, head of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, was a vocal critic of Mr. Bush's faith-based office. Now, under Mr. Obama, he serves on the advisory council's task force to improve the functioning of the office. Explaining his turnaround, he said he doesn't view Mr. Obama's office as partisan—the way Mr. Bush's was. But acknowledging that there was no substantive difference between the offices yet, Mr. Lynn said: "We have a guarded optimism that when the advisory council, Justice and the White House act and get down to the nitty gritty, they will make this a constitutionally protected program. However, we have no proof of that and no guarantee."
I am not satisfied with AU's response here. Hence, although I've contributed to them in the past, they won't get another cent from me.
By Diana Hsieh @ 8:20 PM
Here, under the grand banner of "Better Late Than Never," I present Episode #4 of Rationally Selfish Radio! You can download or play the M4A or MP3 file.
In this episode, I begin my "Teaching Files," meaning lectures on introductory philosophy. I'm starting with philosophy of religion -- particularly arguments for the existence of God. Here, I introduce the topic by discussing its importance, the burden of proof principle, and the nature of God.
Ayn Rand's essay "Philosophy: Who Needs It" can be found in the anthology Philosophy: Who Needs It. You can also listen to the audio recording of the speech given at West Point.
By Diana Hsieh @ 2:01 PM
I saw this on Twitter a few weeks ago, via @amyalkon, and I'm so going to use when people claim that atheism is just another religion:
"If atheism is a religion then not collecting stamps is a hobby."
Other variations might work too:
... then watching daytime soaps from your parents' couch is a career. ... then starvation is just a different kind of eating. ... then not giving to charity is a way of being charitable.
I still prefer the "not collecting stamps" version, however. Any others?
By Diana Hsieh @ 1:01 PM
Here's a scary but potentially useful resource on religious environmentalism: the documentary Renewal. Here's how the film's web site describes the project:
Across the nation, people of faith are standing up for the environment. Evangelical Christians are fighting mountaintop removal, a coal mining process that is decimating Appalachia. Muslims are supporting sustainable farming. Jews are helping children experience the bond between nature and spirituality. Interfaith Power and Light is mobilizing people of all faiths in a religious response to global warming.
For the first time, the combined energy of these diverse activists is the driving force behind a feature-length documentary, entitled RENEWAL. Veteran film producers Marty Ostrow and Terry Kay Rockefeller have crisscrossed the country to capture these exciting stories of people whose passion and deep moral commitment are making a difference in a time of grave ecological threats.
The RENEWAL Project has been designed to make the documentary and its inspiring stories available to people and organizations who want to be a part of this growing movement to protect life on our planet and reverse the damage that humans have done to the environment. Learn how you can get involved today!
By Diana Hsieh @ 4:02 PM
I can't properly express my great amusement at this two videos, found via Andrew Sullivan. They're done by one Jesusophile -- a brilliant satirist, I think. Behold, and prepare to wonder and laugh mightily! (Just don't do it at work; the descriptions are too explicit.)
First, we have proof that condoms don't protect against AIDS using spoiled milk, a strainer, and a glass. (Seriously!)
Next, a rambling bit on why the pleasure of the woman doesn't matter in sex:
Everything about that video is beyond compare, but I'm particular taken with (1) the repeated mis-pronunciation of "vaginal," (2) his explanation and demonstration of how sex works using the orange and the spoon, (3) his befuddlement about lesbianism, and (4) his uncertainty about how Jesus feels about the clitoris.
Here's another gem -- albeit from real Christians: the world's worst movie ever. You simply must watch the trailer. You think it's bad enough -- and then it gets much, much worse.
Pat Condell's argument for free speech as his new religion in this video is similar to the simple reductio ad absurdem of Leon Kass's intuitionist appeal to "repugnance" as grounds for banning human cloning. That reductio says the following:
In his case against cloning, Kass relies heavily on his own moral feelings of repugnance, without any serious attempt to justify them by plausible appeal to facts. Of course, Kass does offer some arguments against cloning, but those arguments are quite laughable. They would imply that we should ban in vitro fertilization, identical twins, and step-parents too.
Unfortunately for Kass, I find his appeal to repugnance itself repugnant. I'm an advocate of solid reasoning based on facts, after all. Heck, I find his pathetic attempts at substantive arguments -- rationalization, really -- quite repugnant too.
So if repugnance is as wise as Kass himself claims, then his whole method of arguing against cloning can and ought to be rejected on that very basis. Heads I win, tails he loses!
Obviously, that's not the strongest argument against mystical theocrats of various stripes, not by a long shot. Nonetheless, it highlights the absurdity of ethical and political claims based on a corrupt epistemology. It's a way of hoisting these folks with their own petard.
...just do the following: Make a list of all the very morally worthy and life-enhancing procedures Kass finds repugnant. Now, declare that what we need to do is re-engineer people so that we don't find those things repugnant anymore, because those kinds of unreasoned sentiments prevent us from improving our lot here on Earth. How can a Kassian respond? The only non-fallacious course is to argue for the moral authority of the human moral sense as it is presently constituted, without assuming its authority in the argument. And that's what I want from Kass, and from all those who argue via "the argument from 'yuck.'" And that's what we never get.
By Greg Perkins @ 12:01 AM
Never wanting to pass up a chance to confirm that I am on the moral straight and narrow, I eagerly took the Do You Have Biblical Morals? quiz. Here's my result:
Your morality is 8% in line with that of the bible.
Damn you heathen! Your book learnin' has done warped your mind. You shall not be invited next time I sacrifice a goat.
Now, before you go and conclude that the 8% means I'm some kind of moral monster, let me explain. Really, the 8% result was only due to poor question design -- not to any flaw in my character! Exhibit A in my defense:
12. What is the best way to curry favor with the Lord?
By treating all people, including atheists, with kindness and courtesy.
By learning and accommodating the culture and customs of other people.
By ritualistically slaughtering animals and burning the parts.
See, all the other questions asked what I would do or what I understand to be right, whereas this one only asked me to recall what the Bible says -- which is why I got an answer "right" Biblically.
Jack and Max are walking from religious service. Jack wonders whether it would be all right to smoke while praying.
Max replies, "Why don't you ask the priest?"
So Jack goes up to the priest and asks, "Father, may I smoke while I pray?"
The priest replies, "No, my son, you may not! That's utter disrespect to our religion."
Jack goes back to his friend and tells him what the good priest told him.
Max says, "I'm not surprised. You asked the wrong question. Let me try."
And so Max goes up to the priest and asks, "Father, may I pray while I smoke?"
To which the priest eagerly replies, "By all means, my son. By all means. You can always pray whenever you want to."
Not too get too technical, but that's actually a great example of the fascinating psychological effect of "framing."
Second:
The priest was walking down the street looking sad.
"What happened?" asked a parishioner.
"I am afraid someone from the parish stole my umbrella."
"Here's what you do. Next sermon talk about the Ten Commandments and look around when you quote 'Thou shall not steal' and see who bows his head in shame."
Next week the priest walks happily down the avenue, twirling his umbrella.
The smart parishioner said, "I see my advice worked."
"Not exactly," said the priest. "When I reached 'Thou shall not commit adultery,' I remembered where I forgot it."
By Gina Liggett @ 12:01 AM
Remember in 2005 when then-President Bush rushed back to Washington to get the Republican-dominated Congress to intervene directly in the Terry Schiavo right-to-die case? Terry Schiavo had been in a persistent vegetative state for 15 years, alive only because she was receiving nutrition through a feeding tube. Her husband and legal guardian--who knew she would never want to live like that--fought Terry's staunchly Catholic family in the court system for years over her right to die in such a circumstance. A Florida state appeals court agreed with Terry's husband and allowed the feeding tube to be removed in spring of 2005.
Out of all legal options, the family went to the top of the political ladder, and got President Bush and his religious-right powerhouse in Congress to counteract that ruling. Congress passed, and Bush signed, emergency legislation, sending the case back to the federal court. But wisely, the federal court did not overrule the previous decision. The feeding tube was not reinserted, and Terry was allowed to die.
The case was a sickening display of not only the breach of the separation of powers as well as the separation of church and state, but also of how quickly and deeply one's personal life can be penetrated by a government. A federal appeals court judge in Atlanta quite eloquently admonished Congress and the White House for acting “in a manner demonstrably at odds with our Founding Fathers’ blueprint for the governance of a free people — our Constitution.”
Fast forward to 2009, and there is an eerily similar kind of family nightmare in Italy. A 37-year old woman, Eluana Englaro, has been in a coma since a car crash in 1992. Her father, who claims that her daughter would not want to live in such a vegetative state, has spent years petitioning the Italian court system to allow her to die. Finally, doctors were allowed to implement a medical protocol for withdrawing Eluana's artificial nutrition--that is, until Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, after consulting with the Vatican, issued an emergency decree stating nutrition cannot be withdrawn.
Magnifying the absurdity of the Italian government's and Vatican's interference in the private lives of these citizens is the Prime Minister's justification for his decree: physically at least, Eluana was "in the condition to have babies."
Allow me to elucidate. Irregardless of the comatose woman's inability to consent to anything, the Italian Prime Minister and the Vatican are in effect saying that it would be acceptable for someone to impregnate this woman, have her body incubate a fetus, then deliver it; but to allow her to die a natural and dignified death by withdrawing artificial nutrition would be immoral, despite what Eluana would have wanted.
Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who pleaded with Berlusconi to not permit Eluana to die, told him "We have to stop this crime against humanity." (I must say, I find it ludicrous and ironic that the religious institution responsible for the horrific crimes of the medieval Crusades and the systematic enabling of pedophilia in the priesthood has the audacity to say anything about crimes against humanity.)
In these two right-to-die cases, Terry and Eluana were young when they suffered their irreversible brain damage and had not made their wishes explicitly known in writing. But those closest to them and legally responsible for making decisions on their behalf have a better idea than the government or the Church about whether or not they would want to linger for decades in an unconscious state.
Even more fundamentally important than the ethics of proxy medical decision-making is the right to die. I think this right is a corollary of Ayn Rand's concept of the right to life: "There is only one fundamental right (all the others are its consequences or corollaries): a man's right to his own life."
In their quest to take away the right-to-die, the Vatican and America's Religious Right are basically taking away the right to life, claiming your life belongs to God, not to you. This religious view is the reason the Schiavo family fought Terry's right to die; this was the reason they took their case to a President who actively promulgated religious initiatives; and this is what the Italian father is fighting.
Your right to life includes your right to end your life according to your values. If you would not want to be kept alive for decades in a comatose state--and your proxy decision makers know that--then they have the ethical and legal obligation to carry out your wishes. And any governmental or church interference with that right is an immoral and egregious offense to the citizens of a society obligated to uphold their Constitutional rights.
Update: Eluana died Monday Feb 9 as legislators debated her case. The Italian government intends to push for an anti-right-to-die law.
Beck poses as a victim, asking why it is that the 10% of the country who doesn't believe in God is pushing the other 90% around and forcing their nonbelief down their throats. Believers don't do that, he says, so why not just let people be? Of course, striking down a mandatory moment of silence-or-prayer isn't forcing nonbelief down peoples' throats -- it's only stopping believers from forcing their religion down others' throats via violations of individual rights. Talk about spin. Even purely secular-sounding "moments of silence" only exist because of believers' desire to get God into the classroom to indoctrinate children.
Beck goes on to exaggerate that "it's been deemed unconstitutional to even say the word 'prayer' to our children," and Dobson says that "they just have to eliminate even the possibility that someone might pray." Um, no: the kiddies are free to pray anywhere at any time as long as they aren't being disruptive. What's been deemed unconstitutional is taking money from taxpayers by force to fund schools students are compelled to attend, and then requiring them to do or be indoctrinated in your religion. Reading the text of the ruling, you can see how the judge traces out where and how the line is crossed. (Of course, if we didn't have government schools that people are forced to fund and required to attend, then this would be a non-issue. Don't like your school's policy regarding religious indoctrination? No rights violation there, and you're free to find or form another school. Have a nice day.)
So, does it count as dishonest or just weak-minded when Beck turns to a wider point to claim that "in this country, our rights come from God" and to ask the rhetorical question, "if you take God out of the picture, then where do rights come from?" Oh, I see your point: you don't seek to ram your religion down peoples' throats... but we really do have to make sure your religious ideas are rammed down peoples' throats lest civilization collapse. Got it.
But I'm happy he asks about the basis of rights, because it reminds me that more people need to appreciate the analysis Ayn Rand offered in her classic essay, "Man's Rights":
The concept of individual rights is so new in human history that most men have not grasped it fully to this day. In accordance with the two theories of ethics, the mystical or the social, some men assert that rights are a gift of God -- others, that rights are a gift of society. But, in fact, the source of rights is man's nature.
The Declaration of Independence stated that men "are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights." Whether one believes that man is the product of a Creator or of nature, the issue of man¿s origin does not alter the fact that he is an entity of a specific kind -- a rational being -- that he cannot function successfully under coercion, and that rights are a necessary condition of his particular mode of survival.
"The source of man's rights is not divine law or congressional law, but the law of identity. A is A -- and Man is Man. Rights are conditions of existence required by man's nature for his proper survival. If man is to live on earth, it is right for him to use his mind, it is right to act on his own free judgment, it is right to work for his values and to keep the product of his work. If life on earth is his purpose, he has a right to live as a rational being: nature forbids him the irrational." (Atlas Shrugged)
Once again, the answer to the idea that our options are restricted to either religion or anything-goes subjectivism is that this alternative is malformed. Rather: it is either objectivity and facts, or whim. The right-religious whimsy approach to "rights" is just as wrongheaded and dangerous as the left-secular whimsy approach to "rights."
By Greg Perkins @ 12:01 AM
Really, I was ready to let it go and move on. But then this floated by in one of those endlessly-forwarded emails that friends and family pass around. What's so revolting is the utter inversion of justice it represents in the mainstream treatment of the accident.
God is routinely given credit and thanked for saving those people; but notice that He's not similarly given "credit" for needlessly killing those geese, destroying that plane, endangering and distressing the people involved, and soaking up lots of resources to deal with it all. Nor is He reflexively given such "credit" for all the deaths that aren't averted in other plane mishaps.
Such psychoses aside, the real problem I have with this is that it dilutes and distracts from the recognition genuinely earned by the heroes involved!
The pilot trained long and hard to be able to fly planes of various kinds, and to identify and execute just such a lifesaving maneuver. Then, in the moment it was needed and under tremendous stresses, he kept his head and did an absolutely brilliant job.
The crew trained as well in managing such a process -- and when their moment came they likewise kept their heads and executed brilliantly.
Engineers labored long and hard to design a plane that didn't just fly, but which would have ever better chances in all sorts of rare and strange circumstances, working to reduce the odds and impact of the unexpected. The result is a craft that could withstand this sort of water landing and float long enough to get those people out.
People on the ground sprang into action to scoop up the passengers and contain the danger.
And on and on. How about the experts who will analyze what happened and use it to make people a little safer in the future?
These folks deserve all of the credit and admiration and thanks, and it's an absolute injustice that the mainstream reaction would take even the tiniest sliver of their due and pretend it was earned by someone or something else.
The contraceptive pill is polluting the environment and is in part responsible for male infertility, a report in the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano said on Saturday.
The pill "has for some years had devastating effects on the environment by releasing tonnes of hormones into nature" through female urine, said Pedro Jose Maria Simon Castellvi, president of the International Federation of Catholic Medical Associations, in the report. "We have sufficient evidence to state that a non-negligible cause of male infertility in the West is the environmental pollution caused by the pill," he said, without elaborating further. "We are faced with a clear anti-environmental effect which demands more explanation on the part of the manufacturers," added Castellvi.
The article was promptly dismissed by several organisations. "Once metabolised, the hormones contained in oral contraceptives no longer have any of the characteristic effects of feminine hormones," said Gianbenedetto Melis, vice-president of a contraceptive research association, quoted by the ANSA news agency. The hormones contained in the pill such as oestrogen "are present everywhere... in plastic, in disinfectants, in meat that we eat," added Flavia Franconi, of the Society of Italian Pharmacology. ...
The alliance between capitalism and religion in the 20th century in America was artifact of the rise of atheistic communism. It's not a sustainable union: a religious worldview cannot ground the rights of the individual to pursue his own happy life by his own rational judgment as required by capitalism. (On that point, see Ayn Rand's essay "Faith and Force" in Philosophy: Who Needs It.) More particularly, the Christian scriptures preach disdain for this world, blind obedience to the whims of God, abject sacrifice for the sake of the poor and weak, acceptance of sin, the positive value of suffering, and the moral corruption of wealth. A person who takes those values seriously cannot preach or practice capitalism. (See this LTE and this one.)
Consequently, I'm not surprised to see supposedly "conservative" religious institutions abandon their marginal respect for individual rights in favor of statist causes like the welfare states and environmentalism. Of course, the Catholic Church has never been a defender of individual rights, particularly not reproductive rights. But its embrace of environmentalist arguments to further that end is something new -- and ominous.
GOP's 'social conservatism' alienates young Republicans
In regard to the Dec. 17 article, "Young Republicans seek a new kind of party": I voted Republican in 1996, 2000, and 2004, but not in 2008, because I was finally fed up with the ever-increasing influence of the religious right on the Republican Party – especially on issues such as abortion, stem-cell research, and gay marriage.
If the GOP returned to affirming individual rights, limited government, and fiscal responsibility, then I would be glad to support it again.
But as long as they support the toxic "social conservative" agenda of the religious right, then they will continue to alienate many young and independent voters and lose elections. And deservedly so.
Celebrate reason and science on December 25th, instead of the same old bearded mystic!
I like to send Christmas cards, but as an atheist, I have had to limit myself to the hundreds of bland cards that neutrally say "Happy Holidays." I decided that if it's okay for (almost) everyone else to stamp, seal, and deliver their philosophy to me every Christmas, I'll do just the same.
Sir Isaac Newton's ideas helped to rescue mankind from drudgery and propel it into the space age. I am a lover of reason, and I love it unashamedly, and I want my friends to know it too. They will this Christmas. Yours can, too.
Details
Outside: "On December 25th, a Savior was born. He revealed eternal Truth, bringing Joy to millions. He astonished the world with His command over Nature. He changed history forever."
Inside: "Happy Birthday, Sir Isaac Newton. December 25, 1642 - March 20, 1726".
By Gina Liggett @ 12:07 AM
The Religious Right has been driving a sledgehammer into the wall of separation of church and state for 30 years, and has enjoyed an especially-intimate relationship with the politically powerful for eight years running. They have achieved significant successes: Bush's faith-based initiatives, the partial-birth abortion ban, the passage of parental-notification laws, the Bush appointments of Supreme Court Justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito, and the constitutional amendments against gay marriage just passed in Florida, Arizona and California. There are doubtlessly many other successes I've left out, especially at the state and local level.
Now, bow your heads and let us gloat. Because the Religious Right had some significant defeats this election, and I think its time to celebrate!
First and foremost, let's sing a hallelujah to the crushing, sweeping, stunning blow to Amendment 48 in Colorado. Hip-hip-horrrahhhh!! Your possibility of getting sued in court by a fertilized egg claiming its right to your body and property is just not gonna happen!
Washington state passed the nation's second assisted suicide law in the country! Now individuals who are suffering and who rationally decide to end their life with dignity have more opportunity to do so humanely. This is a "right-to-life" issue: the right to choose to control your life, and that includes ending interminable suffering, even if evangelical Christians don't want you to.
Another attempt to severely ban abortion in South Dakota failed! Hurrah!! Proponents tried to make a previous draconian abortion bill more palatable by allowing rape and incest victims or women in danger for their health to have an abortion if necessary. Oh, gee, thanks for the crumb, but all women in South Dakota will get to retain at least most of their right to terminate an unwanted pregnancy according to their decision.
And candidates favored by the Religious Right suffered some losses at the polls. Hurrah!! In five of eight Senate races, the Religious Right's favorite candidate lost (Colorado, Mississippi, New Mexico, North Carolina and South Dakota); and two races are in a run-off (Georgia and Minnesota). In eleven races for the the House, six incumbent Representatives favored by the Religious Right were ousted (Colorado, Florida, Idaho, North Carolina, Michigan and Virginia). And three incumbents held off religious challengers (Indiana, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania). This means that it will be more difficult for evangelicals to forcibly decide for all of us that we should abide by a biblical morality.
Nah-nah-nah-nahhhh-nahhh!!
Cheers to us all! The Wall of Separation of Church and State is still there. It's big!!! It won't come down... for the time being, at least!
By Diana Hsieh @ 10:22 PM
I'm delighted to report that Paul's Denver Post op-ed How the GOP Lost My Vote seems to be making the rounds of the blogosphere. Most notably, it's a "top headline" on Michelle Malkin's Hot Air and a good chunk of it was sympathetically quoted on Little Green Footballs. (Yikes! LFG has over 1000 comments on that post already.)
After a resounding electoral defeat, in which voters in this once-red state rejected Republicans McCain, Schaffer, and Musgrave, the Colorado Republican Party will undoubtedly be asking themselves, "Why did we lose?"
I want to let them know that they lost the vote of many former supporters (including myself) because they have chosen to embrace the Religious Right.
I voted Republican in 1996, 2000, and 2004. I believe in limited government, individual rights, free market capitalism, a strong national defense, and the right to keep and bear arms - positions that one normally associates with Republicans.
But I didn't vote for a single Republican in 2008. I've become increasingly alienated by the Republicans" embrace of the religious "social conservative" agenda, including attempts to ban abortion, embryonic stem cell research, and gay marriage.
The Founding Fathers correctly recognized that the proper function of government is to protect individual rights, such as freedom of speech and freedom of religion. But freedom of religion also implies freedom *from* religion. As Thomas Jefferson famously put it, there should be a "wall of separation" between church and state. Public policy should not be based on religious doctrines.
Instead, the government's role is to protect each person's right to practice his or her religion as a private matter and to forbid them from forcibly imposing their particular views on others. And this is precisely why I find the Republican Party's embrace of the Religious Right so dangerous.
If a woman chooses not to have an abortion for reasons of personal faith, then I completely respect her right to do so. But she cannot impose her particular religious views on others. Other women must have the same right to decide that deeply personal issue for themselves.
The Religious Right's goal of outlawing abortions would violate that important right, and sacrifice the lives of actual women for clumps of cells that are only potential (but not yet actual) human beings, based on religious dogma. As a physician, I find that position abhorrent and deeply anti-life.
In his October 24, 2008 radio broadcast, Rush Limbaugh told pro-choice secular supporters of limited government such as myself that we should leave the Republican Party. Many of us have already taken his advice and changed our affiliation to "independent."
The Republican Party stands at an important crossroads. The Republican Party could choose to follow the principles of the American Founding Fathers and promote a limited government that protected individual rights but otherwise left people alone to live their lives.
This includes affirming the principle of the separation of church and state. If they did so, I would happily support it.
Or the Republican Party could instead choose to become the party of the Religious Right and seek to forcibly impose the religious values of one particular constituency over others (thus violating everyone else's rights).
In that case, it will continue to alienate many voters and lose elections -- and deservedly so.
Even though I no longer regard myself as a Republican, I definitely regard myself as a loyal American.
My parents immigrated legally from Taiwan to America over 40 years ago. They had very little money, but they worked hard, sent two children to college and medical school, and are now enjoying a well-earned and comfortable retirement.
Their life has been a real-life embodiment of the American dream. America is a beacon of hope to millions of people around the world precisely because our system of government allows honest, hard-working people to prosper and thrive.
Our system is a testament to the genius of the Founding Fathers, who recognized that the proper function of government is to protect individual rights, such as our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Hence, I believe the Republican Party should choose the first path - the path of limited government, separation of church and state, and protection of individual rights.
This is the America that brought my parents from a ocean away in hopes of a better life for themselves and their children. This is the America I want to live in. And this is the America I want the Republican Party to stand for.
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