Fear and God

While out and about this weekend, my wife and I happened to be driving along in Little Suamico, when we came upon something that I found rather upsetting. Specifically, a church, with the weekly message on a board facing the road. Nothing unusual there, except the content of the message, which read:

Eternity: Smoking or Non-Smoking

Aha!  The old "God as fire insurance" card is still being dealt from the bottom of the deck by believers.  Between this and the hilarious Christian radio broadcast I caught a few months ago (I listen entirely due to the phenomenon of Hathos - look it up) which praised Jonathan Edwards' comically hyperbolic fire-and-brimstone screed "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" as the greatest sermon ever conceived, I've noticed that Christian rhetoric seems to be ramping up everywhere, taking us back to the scare tactics of yore.  What's next?  Catholics praising Torquemada and calling for a return to the ways of the Inquisition?

Now that I've had some time to reflect upon it, I don't quite know what to make of the message outside that church.  My initial reaction was to take it as a taunt, and an incitement to fear, which has been the greatest ally of religion since the earliest humans saw the bright, hot orb in the sky and began to worship it.  The subtext seemed to be, "Come inside, for we are the only way to avoid burning in Hell after you die."  It's exactly that sort of claim of impossible knowledge, and the presumptuousness that goes along with that claim, that I and other unbelievers find so incredibly offensive.  "We have the truth.  Turn or burn.  Accept Christ or die."  How can anyone take such stuff seriously?  It's as sophisticated as the message you'll see on many such church message boards that reads "Good without God becomes 0."  You don't need to think at all to refute such nonsense.

Having thought about the "Smoking or Nonsmoking" line a bit more, however, I'm starting to think that I'm not really the intended audience.  I mean, sure, if a few atheists see the sign, experience the fear of judgement that I've written about before, and come inside, I'm sure the faithful would be ecstatic.  But I think the real intended targets are the churchgoers themselves.

A person who doesn't believe in God, or is a believer, but not of the Christian variety, is more likely than not to be massively turned off by such a crude message, particularly with its casual, almost nonchalant invocation of torture for all eternity.  That kind of message even irritates more mainline Christians who are either uncomfortable with the idea of damnation or disbelieve in it altogether.  The people who are most susceptible to fear-mongering about the afterlife are the people who believe that Hell is a very real place, and that there is a very real chance that they might go there.  And so the followers go through the vicious cycle of guilt over and over,* constantly trying to assuage that gnawing fear that their God (who "abhors" them, to quote Jonathan Edwards) will discard them into the Pit for all time.  And the clergy of that church are complicit in not only NOT helping to relieve that anguish, but making sure that it continues over and over.  It is simply not good enough to go to church, to do good things, to tithe, and on and on.  Fear is the only prescription.

And so, while I feel the same contempt for whoever conceived of the nasty and brutish little blurb outside that church, I also feel something else: sympathy.  Sympathy for those who are trapped in the cycle of fear made worse by the people and institutions they turn to for consolation.  Someone once said something like, "There's a mean streak in anyone who would shake someone else's faith."  After reading that sign and thinking about it, I must reply, Au contraire.  There's a downright evil streak in anyone who would terrify already frightened people with the threat of Hell.

*Brian Flemming's film The God Who Wasn't There dramatically tells of his own personal struggle with this cycle of fear, and I highly recommend it.

Rick Perry: Ignorant of the Establishment Clause

Seriously?



The gist of it is that things are so screwed up that only sky daddy can fix them. Our sins are so bad that only He/She/It can take them away, and blah blah blah.

Yeah, I'll pass. But, please Governor. Please run for President. Just so everyone can see what a massive idiot you are.

The Fear of Dying

Professor Costica Bradatan published an excellent piece in the NYT this weekend, and as a philosophy nerd I simply have to share it.  But Professor Bradatan's subject isn't metaphysics or epistemology, it is death.  Money quote:

There is a point beyond which philosophy, if it is not to lose face, must turn into something else: performance. It has to pass a test in a foreign land, a territory that’s not its own. For the ultimate testing of our philosophy takes place not in the sphere of strictly rational procedures (writing, teaching, lecturing), but elsewhere: in the fierce confrontation with death of the animal that we are. The worthiness of one’s philosophy reveals itself, if anywhere, in the live performance of one’s encounter with one’s own death; that’s how we find out whether it is of some substance or it is all futility. Tell me how you deal with your fear of annihilation, and I will tell you about your philosophy.

Furthermore, death is such a terrifying event, and the fear of it so universal, that to invite it by way of faithfulness to one’s ideas is something that fascinates and disturbs at the same time. Those who do so take on an aura of uncanny election, of almost un-human distinction; all stand in awe in before them. With it also comes a certain form of power. This is why, for example, one’s self-immolation (meant as political protest) can have devastating social and political effects, as we saw recently in Tunisia, when 26-year-old Mohammad Bouazizi set himself on fire. This is also why the death of those philosophers who choose to die for an idea comes soon to be seen as an essential part of their work. In fact their deaths often become far more important than their lives. Why is Socrates such an important and influential figure? Mostly because of the manner and circumstances of his death. He may have never written a book, but he crafted one of the most famous endings of all time: his own. Any philosophical text would pale in comparison.

Bradatan makes a very serious point here.  I once read a philosophical paper (I can't remember the title or author, or I'd give full credit here) which argued that there are multiple different fears which make death and dying so terrifying for most people.  Those fears included the fear of the process of dying, the fear of judgment, and the fear of annihilation.  Each of these is completely understandable, but let's take a moment to unpack them.

The fear of the process of dying is obvious - death involves organs shutting down, and the processes of life ceasing.  It's perfectly natural to presume that there's going to be some pain, perhaps even excruciating pain, involved.  To provide a very personal example, take the case of my grandfather, who died a year and a half ago from an catastrophic stroke.  He collapsed and was, essentially, dead when he hit the floor.  The suddenness of it was brutal.  But, despite that, I distinctly remember feeling a measure of relief at the funeral.  Relief that Grandpa hadn't been made to linger in pain and misery.  Similar sentiments were expressed aloud by other mourners.  We humans may naturally fear death, but part of that is apprehension of the area between "alive" and "not alive."  The shorter the interval between the two states, we seem to acknowledge, the better.

Fear of judgment is a different matter.  Partly, I would argue, it's a matter of people being programmed from very early ages (in most cases) to believe that there is an omniscient, omnipotent being who can and will pass judgment on everyone without exception after they die.  This serves a few purposes.  First, there's the obvious position that religion, by hypothesizing a universal judgment after death, promotes good behavior here on Earth in order to avoid punishment or attain paradise in the hereafter.  But more subtly, it appeals to the innate desire for justice that most humans seem to have.  Whether or not you believe that "the arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice" (and I have very serious doubts about that sentiment, much to the dismay of my Hegelian friends), there is an appeal to the idea that, in the end, all accounts will be settled, and all wrongs made right.  This yearning for just deserts to be given out is always overheard when theists confront atheists.  "If there is no God, then it doesn't matter how bad you are while you live.  You could be as bad as Hitler and just kill yourself before you got punished, and nothing bad would ever happen to you."  It feels good to imagine that Hitler and other evil humans are in Hell, eternally suffering for their misdeeds.  But knowing that others are suffering for their sins requires one to believe that the same fate is possible for oneself, hence the fear of judgment.

Finally, the trickiest one.  The fear of annihilation isn't talked about like the process of dying and the possibility of judgment.  In fact, it's rarely talked about at all, and the philosophers who have done the best job of addressing the fear of nothing beyond this life tend to be, well, not very uplifting.  Certainly the nihilists have their thoughts, as do the existentialists.  Personally, I think Sartre and especially Camus do the best job of confronting the fear of annihilation.  The Myth of Sisyphus is probably the most frank discussion of death and nothingness in an indifferent universe that can be found.  Even theists, fearing that their faith is misplaced, worry over the possibility of a great nothing beyond this life.  Kierkegaard gave serious thought to that sentiment, as did Pascal (although I share Hitchens' disgust for Pascal's hucksterish and disingenuous Wager, which laughably presents the issue of God's existence in the same way a used car salesman would, i.e. "What do you have to lose?").  We don't want to believe that the Grand Inquisitor in The Brothers Karamazov was right and that all that awaits us beyond the grave is death.  But the possibility is there, and this is what Bradatan is addressing.  Our response to our natural fear that there is nothing, simply nothing, after our short lives end, is the defining characteristic of our personal philosophy.

Consider some possible responses to this fear.  Sincere theists, for instance, deny it with faith.  They honestly believe and positively assert that there is something more beyond this life.  Most atheists (myself included) are agnostic on the question of what happens after death - we simply do not, and by definition cannot while we draw breath, know what happens after we die.  But, having no evidence to suggest otherwise, we must at least prepare ourselves for the eventuality that there is only nothingness, which is exactly what there was before we were born.  It would be very curious if there were some sort of eternal state of being which extended forward in time but not backward.  But the very idea of anything being eternal is scientifically and metaphysically absurd.  Even the stars in the heavens will eventually burn out.  The universe itself will end, whether by heat death, a big rip, or a big crunch, all of this reality will pass away, albeit in a very, very, very long time.  It makes no sense to me to say, without any evidence, that I could somehow outlive the universe that I am a part of.  This is why I tend towards the existentialist branch of thought when it comes to annihilation.  I don't at all share Sartre's Marxist leanings (which he himself realized were in conflict with his individualistic philosophy), but I do agree with him that, at the very least, I need to live with the assumption that this is the only shot at living I am going to get, and I had better make the most of it.

That being said, I don't want there to be nothingness.  Who could?  It's not really possible to escape the fear of nothingness, because the mind simply recoils at the thought.  At best, it's extremely difficult for our minds to comprehend our own nonexistence.  Speaking personally again, I find the thought of never again seeing my wife, of a separation from her for all time, to be one of the most awful possibilities my mind can conceive.  It does not comfort me in the slightest that if I am annihilated, I will not be conscious and aware of that separation from her.  If wishing an eternal afterlife into existence could make it so, then I wouldn't have to worry about it, because we all would have wished it into existence.  But, if there's any point of philosophy that has really stuck with me, it is the existentialists' argument that the universe is coldly indifferent to its inhabitants.  It is neither malevolent nor benevolent in its workings, it simply is what it is, irrespective of how we feel about it.  Sometimes the dealer tosses you aces, and sometimes the dice come up snake eyes.*  There's no right or wrong to it.

That's my answer to Bradatan's challenge.  I concede, it isn't a happy one.  My wife sometimes confronts me on the subject of philosophy, and she has a valid point.  The gist of her argument is this, "Thinking about things like nothingness and the end of life clearly isn't making you happier.  So why not think about something else, or change your mind?"  My response is always the same: "I can't."  On this score, I concede I envy the very religious.  They may be deluding themselves, and they may be believing on no evidence whatsoever, but self-deception usually has the benefit of making the individual happy.  On some level, I would be very comforted it I could believe that there is a benevolent, omnipotent, omniscient father-like God to spare me from nothingness after I die.**  I'd be a lot happier if I could believe that my wife and I could be together for all time.  I don't think anything would make me happier.

But I can't.  Nor can I simply not think about it.  In my mind, at least, I have to think about it.  Mortality is inevitable.  It's coming, and there's nothing anyone can do about it.  I'm certain about very few things in this life, but the fact that it will end is one of them.  The best I can do is remain agnostic about what happens after that end, and at least prepare myself for the potential for nothingness.  And, more importantly, live my life to the fullest possible extent, because I have no reason to believe I will get a do-over.

*Holy mixed metaphor!

**On another level, I'd be a lot less comforted if that God were as dictatorial as his followers say he is.

H/T: Sullivan.

You stay classy, Timothy Dolan

The former Archbishop of Milwaukee and current Archbishop of New York is, to put it mildly, an idiot.  I'm sorry.  It might be seen as impolite or worse in some circles to call a man of the cloth names.*  But if the shoe doth fit, then verily must The Most Reverend** Archbishop wear it.  To wit, this is what he wrote on his blog on the website of the Archdiocese of New York regarding impending marriage equality in New York state:

Last time I consulted an atlas, it is clear we are living in New York, in the United States of America – not in China or North Korea.  In those countries, government presumes daily to “redefine” rights, relationships, values, and natural law.  There, communiqués from the government can dictate the size of families, who lives and who dies, and what the very definition of “family” and “marriage” means.

But, please, not here!  Our country’s founding principles speak of rights given by God, not invented by government, and certain noble values – life, home, family, marriage, children, faith – that are protected, not re-defined, by a state presuming omnipotence.

Please, not here!  We cherish true freedom, not as the license to do whatever we want, but the liberty to do what we ought; we acknowledge that not every desire, urge, want, or chic cause is automatically a “right.”  And, what about other rights, like that of a child to be raised in a family with a mom and a dad?

Our beliefs should not be viewed as discrimination against homosexual people.  The Church affirms the basic human rights of gay men and women, and the state has rightly changed many laws to offer these men and women hospital visitation rights, bereavement leave, death benefits, insurance benefits, and the like.  This is not about denying rights. It is about upholding a truth about the human  condition.  Marriage is not simply a mechanism for delivering benefits:  It is the union of a man and a woman in a loving, permanent, life-giving union to pro-create children.  Please don’t vote to change that.  If you do, you are claiming the power to change what is not into what is, simply because you say so.  This is false, it is wrong, and it defies logic and common sense.

North Korea?  What the hell is this man talking about?  Amy Davidson of The New Yorker explodes on the bit about a right to a mom and dad:

This is, speaking very charitably, a non-sequitur.  There are all sorts of reasons children are raised in families that don't include "a mom and a dad;" Dolan must know that.  Same-sex marriage isn't one of them.  Maybe Dolan believes that divorce, in any circumstance, violates a child’s rights; how about children adopted by gay parents—does he believe that their rights would be protected by lingering in foster care, bounced from non-home to non-home? Would he prefer that those born to gay or lesbian parents had never existed? If so, that is a pretty tangled position for a Catholic (or even for a writer of North Korean communiqués).  Does he think that children should be taken away from gay parents (or single widowed parents, for that matter) who have loved them all their lives to be given to any heterosexual, or even just heterogeneous, couple? And even if he agrees with all of that, what on earth does it have to do with same-sex marriage? Allowing two people who love each other to marry will not stop people who don’t love each other from separating, or from getting married in the first place. Neither marriage nor love is a scarce resource. And yet Dolan talks as though there were thieves in his house.

Dare I say it?  Amen.  Does Dolan not realize the pervasive and delicious irony of men of the cloth, (who are by definition virgins who don't know the first thing about marital love or child-rearing in practice) appointing themselves the arbiters of what is and is not acceptable with respect to marriage and raising children?  How in the world would Dolan know what is or is not good for marriages and children?  I'm pretty sure that chastity-bound clergy are the very last people on Earth whose counsel we should seek on such things.

Moreover, did you notice that Dolan dragged out the old chestnut natural law line about the purpose of marriage being the procreation of children?  Again, I would ask, how would he know?  But beyond making smartass remarks, I do have a serious point to make here: If the ultimate purpose of marriage is to have children, then a whole lot of people who are married now shouldn't have been allowed to get married at all, if you follow that logic.  I guess my wife and I shouldn't have bothered getting married, since it's been four years now and we have no children, and aren't planning on any at this time.  Would Dolan prefer that we'd just shacked up instead?  But what do you expect from a church where premarital sex is a sin, using birth control or a condom is a sin, having sex while married but not intending to get pregnant is a sin (apparently), and basically you're supposed to have one child per sexual encounter?  But don't you dare point out that the people making and enforcing these ridiculous standards of purity can't seem to keep themselves away from small children.  The chutzpah is unbelievable.

What of couples where children are an impossibility due to infertility or other reasons?  They cannot procreate children, and according to the natural law argument, cannot fulfill the ultimate purpose of marriage.  By the way, that would include my own parents, who, after being unable to have children, proceeded to do something truly wonderful and adopt my sister, my brother, and I over a span of 15 years.  I'm sure Dolan would be willing to amend his definition of marriage to include straight couples adopting children,*** but that's not what he wrote, because only by limiting marriage's purpose to the procreation of children can you explicitly write the definition of marriage to exclude gay people.  What nonsense.

The North Korea line still really bothers me, if only because Dolan seems completely blind to how headsplittingly ironic it is that someone implicitly invoking the "because God says so" argument would accuse the other side of being like North Korea.  I'm pretty sure the people in favor of gay marriage aren't appealing to the authority of a celestial Great Leader and his son, the Dear Leader.****  It couldn't possibly be that this cleric is just trying to associate gay marriage with North Korea in a transparent attempt to poison the well.

Maybe they should teach basic logic in seminary.  Add that to the list of required courses right after "Keeping Your Hands Off Children 101" and "Advanced Keeping Your Hands Off Children 220."

In case I haven't made my case plain enough, I really, really don't think a bunch of repressed virgins in Roman collars are qualified to pass judgment on the sexual conduct of others, or to speak on matters of marriage and child-raising.  It's a category error.

*Although men of the cloth, it must be said, have been doing quite a bit to make sure they are called even worse names of late.  I'm pretty sure "pedophile" and "accessory to child rape" trump "idiot."  Just saying.

**Maybe it's the fact that I'm an atheist, but I do find it amusing that styles of address for Roman Catholic clergy get more absurd the higher up you go.  A priest is called "The Reverend Father."  Fine.  Bishops and Archbishops are referred to as "The Most Reverend," "Your Excellency," or "Your Grace."  Getting a little overblown there, but whatever.  Cardinals are "Your Eminence," which almost seems like a step down from "Excellency," but what do I know?  And finally, "His Holiness," is reserved for the Pope, which is really for the best, because at least that way the number of people on Earth who claim to be holy and infallible is only one more than the number who actually are.

***I suspect this is because straight people adopting children has become acceptable and even fashionable of late.  However, I have, on a few isolated occasions, been told by very devoutly religious people that my status as an adopted child means that, 1) my birth parents didn't love me, 2) my adoptive parents can't love me the same way that other people's parents love them (they wouldn't trouble themselves to explain why), and 3) God doesn't love me, because I'm essentially a bastard child, and it says in the Bible that blah blah blah.  My mental response to such blather usually rhymes with "chuck two," but ordinarily I just tell people that if such hideous thoughts are what their religion compels them to believe, perhaps for humanity's sake they ought to consider just what sort of God they're following.

****That line is ripped wholesale from Hitchens, I confess, and is entirely accurate.  Kim Jong Il (the Dear Leader) is not the true head of the North Korean state, but rather is only head of the party and the army.  His long-dead father, Kim Il-Sung (the Great Leader), is legally still the head of the state.  All songs and art must be in praise of the Dear Leader or the Great Leader.  Failure to pay homage is punished severely.  Does this sound familiar?

The sick and twisted "values" of Michelle Bachmann

Some people, somewhere, may be asking: Just how crazy is Michelle Bachmann?

This crazy:

In April 2005, Pamela Arnold wanted to talk to her state senator, Michele Bachmann, who was then running for Congress. A 46-year-old who worked at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, Arnold lived with her partner, the famed Arctic explorer Ann Bancroft, on a farm in Scandia, Minnesota. Bachmann was then leading the fight against gay marriage in the state. She'd recently been in the news for hiding in the bushes to observe a gay-rights rally at the Capitol. So when members of the Scandia gay community decided to attend one of Bachmann's constituent forums, Arnold, wanting to make herself visible to her representative, joined them.

A few dozen people showed up at the town hall for the April 9 event, and Bachmann greeted them warmly. But when, during the question and answer session, the topic turned to same-sex marriage, Bachmann ended the meeting 20 minutes early and rushed to the bathroom. Hoping to speak to her, Arnold and another middle-aged woman, a former nun, followed her. As Bachmann washed her hands and Arnold looked on, the ex-nun tried to talk to her about theology. Suddenly, after less than a minute, Bachmann let out a shriek. "Help!" she screamed. "Help! I'm being held against my will!"

Arnold, who is just over 5 feet tall, was stunned, and hurried to open the door. Bachmann bolted out and fled, crying, to an SUV outside. Then she called the police, saying, according to the police report, that she was "absolutely terrified and has never been that terrorized before as she had no idea what those two women were going to do to her." The Washington County attorney, however, declined to press charges, writing in a memo, "It seems clear from the statements given by both women that they simply wanted to discuss certain issues further with Ms. Bachmann."

I thought the old "Help, I'm being kidnapped" trick was something five-year-olds tried when they were in the car for a really long time.  But the article goes further, exposing Bachmann's education by a teacher of dominion theology, i.e., the idea that Christians should be in charge of everything, while she was at Coburn School of Law at Oral Roberts University.*

At Coburn, Bachmann studied with John Eidsmoe, who she recently described as "one of the professors who had a great influence on me." Bachmann served as his research assistant on the 1987 book Christianity and the Constitution, which argued that the United States was founded as a Christian theocracy, and that it should become one again. "The church and the state have separate spheres of authority, but both derive authority from God," Eidsmoe wrote. "In that sense America, like [Old Testament] Israel, is a theocracy."

Eidsmoe, who hung up the phone when asked for an interview, is a contentious figure. Last year, he withdrew from speaking at a Wisconsin Tea Party rally after the Associated Press raised questions about his history of addresses to white-supremacist groups. In 2010, speaking at a rally celebrating Alabama's secession from the Union, he claimed that Jefferson Davis and John C. Calhoun understood the Constitution better than Abraham Lincoln.

Reading Eidsmoe, though, some of Bachmann's most widely ridiculed statements begin to make sense. Earlier this year, for example, she was mocked for saying that the Founding Fathers "worked tirelessly" to end slavery. But in books by Eidsmoe and others who approach history from what they call a Christian worldview, this is a truism. Despite his defense of the Confederacy, Eidsmoe also argues that even those founders who owned slaves opposed the institution and wanted it to disappear, and that it was only Christian for them to protect their slaves until it did. "It might be very difficult for a freed slave to make a living in that economy; under such circumstances setting slaves free was both inhumane and irresponsible," he wrote.

This is the kind of stuff Bachmann takes seriously.  Even better, there's the classic story of the homophobe whose anti-gay demagoguery strikes close to home with their own relatives.

In the statehouse, Bachmann made opposition to same-sex marriage her signature issue. Both she and her husband, by all accounts her most trusted political adviser, believe that homosexuality can be cured. Speaking to a Christian radio station about gay teenagers last year, Marcus, who treats gay people in his counseling practice, said, "Barbarians need to be educated. They need to be disciplined, and just because someone feels this or thinks this, doesn't mean that we're supposed to go down that road."

In 2004, Bachmann gave a speech warning that same-sex marriage would lead to schoolchildren being indoctrinated into homosexuality. She wanted everyone to know, though, that she doesn't hate gay people. "Any of you who have members of your family in the lifestyle, we have a member of our family that is," she said. "This is not funny. It's a very sad life. It's part of Satan, I think, to say that this is gay."

She was clearly talking about her 51-year-old stepsister, Helen LaFave, who had lived with her partner, Nia Wronski, for more than 15 years. As Bachmann became the public face of opposition to same-sex marriage, her relationship with her stepsiblings grew strained. "Helen always liked Michele, always," says Linda Cielinski, one of Bachmann's other stepsisters. "They lived together as teenage girls. They were very close at that time." Bachmann's anti-gay activism, Cielinski says, "was a hit to the gut."

But it's okay!  Bachmann polled her family to see if they agreed with her that her own stepsister is "part of Satan."

And so, in April 2006, when the Minnesota Senate judiciary committee met for a hearing on Bachmann's proposed constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, Helen LaFave, Wronski, and several relatives including Cielinski were all in the gallery. "I wanted Michele to put a face to this whole thing," says Cielinski. "These were family members she was hurting." They didn't intend to talk to the press—LaFave has always shied away from media attention—but journalists quickly learned who they were and surrounded them. (LaFave declined an interview request, citing concern about the effect of the controversy on her 87-year-old father, who is still married to Bachmann's mother.)

The ensuing brouhaha further tore at the family. In a Star Tribune story headlined "Bachmann, stepsister hold opposing views," Bachmann claimed that she'd polled her siblings and stepsiblings, and that six of the nine agreed with her. Her stepbrother Mike LaFave was horrified. "The reality was she hadn't taken a family vote count, nor would my family ever do such a thing," he says. "I just find it terrible that when Michele was taken by surprise by a question she wasn't prepared for, the first thing she did was throw not only my sister but her whole family under the bus."

Exactly how inhuman do you have to be to take a poll of your own family to see if they agree with you that your own stepsister is evil?  This is what she means by "family values?"  Her values are depraved.  I always tell people that my family values are simple: I would walk through fire to help my family, especially my sister and my brother.  Michelle Bachmann went on the radio and called her own stepsister a "barbarian," and then justified it by saying she'd called a vote, and most of the family agreed with her.  What the hell is wrong with these people?

How dare she lecture anyone about her so-called family values?

*The fact that Oral Roberts has a law school ought to be a minor national disgrace.

Bet he didn't see that coming...

Harold Camping had a stroke.

I normally don't like to indulge in schadenfreude, but in the case of morons who were only weeks ago telling the world to convert to their religion or suffer eternal damnation, I will happily make an exception.

You can lead a rapture believer to reason, but you can't make him accept it

Harold Camping, debunked crackpot rapture obsessive, is "flabbergasted" that he and his followers weren't lifted into paradise yesterday.

"I'm looking for answers," Camping said, adding that meant frequent prayer and consultations with friends.

"But now I have nothing else to say," he said, closing the door to his home. "I'll be back to work Monday and will say more then."

Camping's followers will surely be listening.

"I'm not as disappointed as everyone since I didn't fully believe him," said one, who asked to remain anonymous Sunday because he worried he would be shunned for admitting he was "upset" with Camping.

The middle-aged Oakland resident said he'd been listening to Camping since 1993, when he said the world would end in 1994.

That was strike one, the man said. And this is strike two. Even so, he said, that doesn't mean the message is wrong.

"I just know he's biblically sound," the man said. "I've never been one of these guys who think everything he says is true.

"I don't think I am going to stop listening to him," the man added, heaving a deep sigh before continuing: "I don't know, I gotta listen to him on Monday, see what he says on the radio."

What the hell is wrong with these people?  They guy clearly said Saturday would bring about the rapture and the beginning of the end of all things.  Nothing of the sort happened.  But this guy wants to hear what Harold Camping has to say this week, which I would assume will start with a very loud, "OOPS!"  What could Camping possibly say of value after he staked his entire reputation (not that he really had one to begin with) on a prophecy that has manifestly not come to pass?

There's just no convincing some people.  Their prophet of doom is embarrassed and yet they still want to hear what he has to say.  But the article gets better!

"I would encourage them not to lose their faith because they listened to a wolf in sheep's clothing, and Jesus said there would be wolves in sheep's clothing," said Jackie Alnor.

Alnor, a resident of Hayward who blogs about the rapture, said Camping had twisted the word of God by trying to predict the end. Only God knows when the world will end, she said.

"He's in big trouble with God," she said.

If that isn't bad enough, she said, Camping's false prophecy could have bigger impacts on religion.

"It's given people who hate Christianity an excuse to hate it even more," she said. "People can just paint with broad brush strokes."

I love the "I'm a true Christian, but you aren't" trope.  For a religion supposedly founded upon the teachings of a guy who warned in no uncertain terms about judging lest you be judged, a great many Christians sure do like them some judging.  And yes, those of us who aren't Christians will use the nutbags to show the fundamental absurdity of the religion.  When you base a religion on fantastical claims of the universe being created in seven days, talking snakes, people living inside whales, a messianic figure born of a virgin, executed, resurrected, and magically lifted into heaven, and a book that features a whole lot of killing and soothsayng, I'm pretty sure there's no real basis to say that Harold Camping is altogether that much more out there than the entire institution.

And what irritates me the most is the self-sustaining nature of the religion.  People criticize Christianity, and Christians refer to certain passages in the Bible that foretell of people criticizing their faith in order to say, "Look!  We're right!  It says so right there!"  Of course, the same argument protects the faith of Harold Camping as much as any other Christian, and then there's my problem: Why should I care what a bunch of illiterate inhabitants of the ancient Middle East, utterly ignorant of any of the discoveries of modern science, had to say about anything whatsoever?  Nothing they say could possibly have any application in the modern world unless the book is divinely inspired, meaning you have to presuppose the existence of God in order to accept the book.  Hence why those of us who see no evidence supporting the existence of any God at all don't accept the Bible or any other holy book as proof of anything useful.

If this whole phony rapture obsession teaches us anything, it should be to demonstrate, once again, the deep desire of the religious to see all things come to an end.  To quote Christopher Hitchens:

One of the very many connections between religious belief and the sinister, spoiled, selfish childhood of our species is the repressed desire to see everything smashed up and ruined and brought to naught.  This tantrum-need is coupled with two other sorts of "guilty joy," or, as the Germans say, schadenfreude.  First, one's own death is canceled - or perhaps repaid or compensated - by the obliteration of all others.  Second, it can always be egotistically hoped that one will be personally spared, gathered contentedly to the bosom of the mass exterminator, and from a safe place observe the sufferings of those less fortunate.  Tertullian, one of the many church fathers who found it difficult to give a persuasive account of paradise, was perhaps clever in going for the lowest possible common denominator and promising that one of the most intense pleasures of the afterlife would be endless contemplation of the tortures of the damned.  He spoke more truly than he knew in evoking the man-made character of faith.

Consider that the next time you hear someone telling you about the rapture and tribulation.  Keep it in mind when those who criticized Camping because he claimed to know the hour and the day tell you that, although they don't know when it will occur, someday God will summon the faithful to Heaven and leave the rest to suffer and die horribly for months and years until the coming Apocalypse.  Remember that people who believe such things (and not all Christians do) ultimately want you to die.

I, for one, will not have people who believe such things dictate to me that I am immoral because I do not believe in their God.

Friday Music VIII - Rapture Edition

Some crackpots think the end of the world starts this weekend.  Old news.  But, in the spirit of mocking crazy people, this song seems appropriate.

Bad Religion, "God Song"

Thought of the Day VI

"Consider this: Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?"

-Socrates, outlining his famous dilemma in Plato's Euthyphro

If I had to point to a single reason for my "deconversion," it would be the insolubility of Socrates' dilemma.  We have a difficult enough time discerning the Good without referring such questions upward and interjecting the "my god is bigger than your god" problem.

A "God gap" in US Foreign Policy

With a friendly hat tip to my friend Tom at illusory tenant: You just can't make this stuff up.

The State Department has a "rigidly narrow" view of diplomacy that neglects religion's role in foreign affairs, a prominent Catholic ambassador charged on Sunday (April 17) as he announced his resignation.

Other foreign policy experts have another name for it: Religion Avoidance Syndrome. And the departure of Douglas Kmiec as ambassador to Malta, they say, is symptomatic of a longstanding God gap in American foreign policy.

Kmiec, who helped shape an intellectual framework for President Obama's outreach to Catholics during the 2008 campaign, was slammed in a recent State Department report for spending too much time writing about religion.

Kmiec's focus on faith, "based on a belief that he was given a special mandate to promote President Obama's interfaith initiatives ... detracted from his attention to core mission goals," the State Department's Inspector General wrote in a February report made public in early April.

 Oy vey.  Where do you even begin with this?  First, as I noted in my comment on the illustrious tenant's post, there is already far too much God in our foreign policy for me and, I think, most sane human beings.  For proof of this, one need only remember that one Cardinal Bernard Law, accessory both before and after the fact to God only knows how many child molestations while Archbishop of Boston, is not ever going to face justice for his revolting crimes.  Instead, he gets to be Archpriest of the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, hanging out in the Vatican, an ecclesiastical state with which the United States has diplomatic relations.  The interference of religion in our diplomacy and foreign policy is demonstrated by the fact that the US can and will do nothing to demand the extradition of this fugitive.  Were the decision mine to make, I would be threatening to level the Sistine Chapel with an airstrike unless the Cardinal were immediately turned over.

But the article gets even worse

"Our diplomats are very well trained and they are very capable," said former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in 2006. "But they have not really focused on religion per se as a subject of study."

Okay, I'll take a step back here.  The article is correct in noting that religion is the cause of a lot of strife in the world today.  In fact, I'd go so far as to say that almost all current conflicts, and the vast majority of conflicts for the last several decades, have their roots in religion.  But it sounds like Albright and Kmiec's solution to this problem would be to have our diplomats be more religiously trained, which inevitably is code for just more religious.  Is there anything the world needs less than just another nation claiming God is on our side, or any side at all?

Wouldn't it be nice if American diplomats could be the rationalists who can talk with, say, the Israelis and the Palestinians and say, "Look, you both have these beliefs, but there's room enough for two countries in the area if only you are willing to coexist."*  It would at least be a better start than current American foreign policy, which is to pander to the US evangelical community (who want the temple to be rebuilt so they can hasten the apocalypse) by simply going along with whatever Israel does, even when they're doing outrageous things like shooting unarmed civilians on a ship in international waters or creating untold suffering and misery with their ill-advised and disproportionate invasions of Lebanon and Gaza (not that the Palestinians are doing themselves any favors).  To quote Christopher Hitchens' God is Not Great:

Two peoples of roughly equivalent size had a claim to the same land.  The solution was, obviously, to create two states side by side.  Surely something so self-evident was within the wit of man to encompass?  And so it would have been, decades ago, if the messianic rabbis and mullahs and priests could have been kept out of it.  But the exclusive claims to god-given authority, made by hysterical clerics on both sides and further stoked by Armageddon-minded Christians who hope to bring on the Apocalypse (preceded by the death or conversion of all Jews), have made the situation insufferable, and put the whole of humanity in the position of hostage to a quarrel that now features the threat of nuclear war.

In other words, religion is exactly what we don't need in diplomacy.  Once you inject the idea that people can believe certain of things with no evidence (i.e., God exists), they allow themselves to believe other things with no evidence (i.e., God wants us, and not those other people, to live on this particular piece of land).  Why should the American foreign service be sucked into this mug's game?  Was the Northern Ireland situation (mostly) resolved because the United Kingdom gave more religious training to their negotiators?  Methinks not.

If the United States is going to be part of the solution to international crises, rather than a contributor to the problem in the first place, then we need to continue running people like Doug Kmiec out of the foreign service.

*I would add that the Israel-Palestine question is partly insoluble because of religious issues, but also because there are elements on both sides that have absolutely no interest in peace.  The day Israelis and Palestinians stop killing each other and learn they have nothing to fear from the other will be the end of both the Israeli far right and of Hamas and Hezbollah.  Which is precisely why those are the groups you see perpetuating the cycle of violence.

Thought of the Day IV

Peacefully they will die, peacefully they will expire in your name, and beyond the grave they will find only death. But we will keep the secret, and for their own happiness we will entice them with a heavenly and eternal reward. For even if there were anything in the next world, it would not, of course, be for such as they. It is said and prophesied that you will come and once more be victorious, you will come with your chosen ones, with your proud and mighty ones, but we will say that they saved only themselves, while we have saved everyone. It is said that the harlot who sits upon the beast and holds mystery in her hands will be disgraced, that the feeble will rebel again, that they will tear her purple and strip bare her "loathsome" body. But then I will stand up and point out to you the thousands of millions of happy babes who do not know sin. And we, who took their sins upon ourselves for their happiness, we will stand before you and say: "Judge us if you can and dare." Know that I am not afraid of you. Know that I, too, was in the wilderness, and I, too, ate locusts and roots; that I, too, blessed freedom, with which you have blessed mankind, and I, too, was preparing to enter the number of your chosen ones, the number of the strong and mighty, with a thirst "that the number be complete." But I awoke and did not want to serve madness. I returned and joined the host of those who have corrected your deed.  I left the proud and returned to the humble, for the happiness of the humble.  What I am telling you will come true, and our kingdom will be established.  Tomorrow, I repeat, you will see this obedient flock, which at my first gesture will rush to heap hot coals around your stake, at which I shall burn you for having come to interfere with us.  For if anyone has ever deserved our stake, it is you.  Tomorrow I shall burn you.  Dixi.

-The Grand Inquisitor to Jesus in Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov

It almost sounds like Dostoevsky foresaw the rapist priest scandal from a century in advance.  And he knew full well just how much corruption religious institutions are capable of.

Speak for yourself, Scott Walker

I have no idea how I missed this piece last month about Scott Walker's religious fervor, but it doesn't surprise me.  That's right, Governor Privatize Everything says he's doing what he's doing because Sky Daddy said so.

Walker said that God has told him what to do every step of the way, including about what jobs to take, whom to marry, and when to run for governor.

When he had first met his wife, he said, “That night I heard Christ tell me, ‘This is the person you’re going to be with.’ ”

He said he was trusting and obeying God when he took a job at IBM and then at the Red Cross. ““Lord, if this is what you want, I’ll try it,” he said. It was all about “trust and obey.”

Funny that he doesn't mention his decision to drop out of college before graduating.  But the piece gets so much more depressing.

He then qualified that statement a little: “I don’t mean that means it’s going to work out for a win. . . . I don’t believe God picks sides in politics. I believe God calls us to be on His side.”

This man is cleverer than I give him credit for!  Do you see what he did there?  "God didn't pick my side, but I just so happen to be on God's side!"  What a brilliant way to claim a divine mandate while making it appear that you aren't insane or the most arrogant creature on the face of the Earth.

Finally, there's the "turn your life over to [insert deity of the speaker's choosing here]" chestnut that those of us with respect for reason and human dignity find so incredibly conceited and offensive.

He urged everyone in the room “to turn your life over 100 percent to what Christ tells you what to do.”

Once you do that, he said, your life will be complete:

“The way to be complete in life is to fully and unconditionally turn your life over to Christ as your personal lord and savior and to make sure that every step of every day is one that you trust and obey, and keep looking out to the horizon to the path that Christ is calling you to follow and know that ultimately he’s going to take you home both here at home and ultimately far beyond.”

Fourteen months later, at his inaugural prayer breakfast, Walker said, “The Great Creator, no matter who you worship, is the one from which our freedoms are derived, not the government.”

Let's try to put these thoughts together in a little syllogism.  It doesn't matter which God you worship, but your life can't be complete unless you believe in Christ and blah, blah, blah.

I really shouldn't have to explain why statements like this are disturbing.  I shouldn't have to point out even that both parties pander to the religious impulse.  I shouldn't have to note that, despite our national Constitution's explicit enjoining of any religious test to hold public office, the idea of an unbeliever running for President is virtually unthinkable.

The simple fact is that a great and growing many of us (fact: "nonreligious or secular" is the fastest growing religious group in the United States today) do not require a "Great Creator" to explain our origins; we have science.  We don't need YHWH or Allah to explain from whence our freedom is derived; we have politics, law, and philosophy.  We have no need of a savior to take away our guilt; we have personal responsibility, restitution, and forgiveness.  All of these things can perfectly well exist without appealing them upward to a heavenly dictatorship.  As La Place told Napoleon Bonaparte when he presented his model of the solar system - which, Napoleon noted, did not feature God - "Je n'ai pas besoin de cette hypothese."  ("I did not need to make such an assumption.")

Of course, Scott Walker is, to make an oldies reference, the son of a preacher-man.  But that doesn't make statements like his any less offensive.

H/T: Capper.

Postscript: I am reminded of then-Attorney General Ashcroft's pronouncement some years ago that America had "no king but Jesus."  As Christopher Hitchens pointed out in his book God is Not Great, that statement was exactly two words too long.

A short essay: The Absence of Reason

At this point, I've been blogging on the topic of the Republican Party being renamed the Church of Cut My Taxes for nearly a week, and I think I ought to expound a little further on what I mean to say by this.

In previous posts (here, here, here, and here), I've pointed out that the GOP position on taxation for nearly the last decade has been that tax cuts are necessary in all budgetary and economic circumstances.  When George W. Bush came into office, the economy was growing and the national budget was in surplus, working toward paying off the national debt.  President Bush campaigned on the idea that the surplus should be given back in the form of tax breaks.  Fine.  Of course, then the budget slipped into deficit, and the economy into a recession.  Then we were told by the Republicans that it would be disastrous to raise taxes in a recession (despite Reagan and Clinton both having done so with very successful results), and we got more tax cuts.  That "stimulus" didn't really work, and as a result we've gotten a continual meme from the GOP that ever more tax cuts are the only solution.  Not only that, but the implication is that when the current tax cuts don't work, it's because we didn't cut taxes enough and we'd better get about cutting them further.

This reasoning (or lack thereof) is completely circular and self-sustaining.  When tax cuts work, we need more tax cuts.  When they don't work, guess what, we need more tax cuts.  The suggestion of ever increasing taxes is anathema, and grounds for excommunication.  This is the way the fundamentalist religious mind operates.  That the GOP's fervor for tax cuts has become so dogmatic is really unsurprising, given the growing interconnectedness between the Party and religious extremists.  Hence, the Church of Cut My Taxes.  Even secular conservatives have fallen into religious thought in this respect.

The ultimate problem, I would argue, is absence of reason in general.  The acceptance of claims without evidence in one sphere of life leads to the acceptance of other such claims elsewhere.  Here we are in the year 2011, with science making new and breathtaking discoveries about every facet of the universe.  These discoveries are based on a scientific method of hypothesis and research of claims that are falsifiable.  A scientific theory that cannot at least in some imaginable scenario be proved false is no theory at all.  And yet at the same time, "faith," by which I mean the blind acceptance of a proposition without evidence, is promoted as a virtue.  Most especially, faith is directed at concepts which simply cannot be proved or disproved, like the existence of God or the supernatural.  That sort of faith is antithetical to reason and clear thinking.  And not without consequence.

To steal an analogy from Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World, suppose that I tell you I have a fire-breathing dragon in my garage.  You'd probably be skeptical, since dragons are presumed not to exist (based on the evidence that no one has ever seen one), and you'd demand that I prove the existence of my dragon.  When you look in my garage and, lo and behold, there's no dragon, you're probably going to think you've been proven right, and that I have no dragon.  Ah, but did I mention my dragon is invisible?  And what about the fire?  Surely we should feel the heat from a fire-breathing dragon.  "No," I tell you.  "My dragon breathes heatless, invisible fire."  Then you could try to feel for my dragon, but I also forgot to mention that the dragon is intangible.  And so on.  In other words, I have an invisible, intangible dragon that breathes heatless fire.  But you cannot prove that the dragon doesn't exist, since I have defined my dragon in such a way that there isn't any method to prove or disprove that it does exist.

Of course, that is all nonsense.  As Sagan summarizes:

Now, what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all?  If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists?  Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true.  Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder.  What I'm asking you to do comes down to believing, in the absence of evidence, on my say-so.  The only thing you've really learned from my insistence that there's a dragon in my garage is that something funny is going on inside my head.

The English philosopher Bertrand Russell made exactly the same analogy with his famous teapot, and modern-day religious satires, such as the Flying Spaghetti Monster and the Invisible Pink Unicorn, likewise make fun of the absurdity of such thinking.  Is someone irrational for saying that they don't believe in dragons, unicorns, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster?  Absolutely not.  Yet express disbelief about a supposedly omniscient, omnipotent, infallible, invisible, intangible deity and people of faith will accuse you of defective reasoning at best, and wickedness at worst.  President George H.W. Bush even voiced the opinion that atheists should not be considered equal citizens of the United States.  All this for refusing to accept on no evidence whatsoever a claim that is on precisely the same standing as the aforementioned dragon in my garage.

But I've wandered slightly off my chosen topic now.  My point is that this sort of irrational thought, the kind that religion requires above all else, leads to the acceptance of other claims on just as little evidence.  Some of this, of course, comes down to command theory.  If you believe in a deity, and you further believe that said deity has rules and laws, then obviously any violation of those laws cannot be tolerated.  The entire opposition to marriage and other rights for homosexuals, for instance, is entirely incoherent without the belief that God himself condemns homosexuality.  That position is still incoherent, but not in the mind of the believer.  What other reason is there to care whether two gay men who love each other want that relationship to be on the same footing as my relationship with my wife?  There is none.

But divine command is only the most obvious way in which minds become susceptible to unreason once it becomes customary to form beliefs based on faith and not evidence.  Take an extreme example - in this case, a racist.  The racist believes that, for instance, aryans are superior to any other races.  What evidence supports that position?  None whatsoever.  In fact, scientists have shown that there really isn't much genetic basis for "race" at all.  Still, the racist believes what he believes because he or she believes it, and for no other reason.

Now, I don't want to be misunderstood here, so I'll be very clear: being in favor of tax reductions and racism are not at all the same sort of belief, and I am not trying to draw a moral connection between the two.  But a person who dogmatically believes that more and more tax cuts are always necessary is taking that position on faith, especially when one looks at the evidence that the last two recessions in the '80s and '90s ended when taxes increased.  Of course, not all proponents of tax cuts believe so dogmatically.  Just as there is a time to increase taxes, there is a time when cutting taxes is appropriate.  A person who says that understands that a worthwhile position must be contingent - that is, it must be subject to change upon changing evidence and circumstances.  Otherwise it is merely dogma.  Most atheists, myself included, are even willing to grant that their unbelief is contingent.  Upon being shown conclusive proof that God exists, I would change my mind.  I just haven't yet seen such proof, and I doubt the possibility of it.

The key point is to understand that positions need to be falsifiable and contingent in order to have any meaning.  A pacifist who dogmatically states that "War is never the answer," is just as wrong as the person who claims that tax cuts are always the answer.  There are some international crises that can be resolved through no means apart from conflict, regrettable as that fact may be.  The Second World War springs immediately to mind.  That does not mean war is always the answer.  It depends, and disagreement is okay.  Most questions don't have a right or wrong answer, but the reasonable mind is willing to be convinced by evidence, even if that evidence is unpleasant.  So it should be with tax policy.

Minds may disagree about when it is appropriate to cut, increase, or maintain tax rates, but the person who says that one of those is the solution to every problem has disqualified himself from the discussion, because no argument - no matter how well supported - in favor of the opposite position would convince that person.  The dogmatic believer instead stubbornly refuses to hear the evidence contrary to his or her position and takes it as a matter of faith that of course their position must be the only justifiable one.

Next time you run into a tea partier who demands budget cuts to programs for the poor and middle-class while insisting that they are "taxed enough already," try asking them when they think a tax increase would be appropriate.  Wartime?  A national debt crisis?  Government revenue at the lowest percentage of GDP since the 1950s?  If they say yes to those things, well, that's what we're up against right at this moment.  But if they cannot imagine a state of affairs where their present belief is not applicable, then they are simply the dogmatic believer, rejecting evidence and reason for the self-satisfaction of faith.

Or, as I prefer to put it, just another congregant of the Church of Cut My Taxes.

Thought of the Day

Give people divergent, irreconcilable, and untestable notions about what happens after death, and then oblige them to live together with limited resources.  The result is just what we see: an unending cycle of murder and cease-fire.  If history reveals any categorical truth, it is that an insufficient taste for evidence regularly brings out the worst in us.  Add weapons of mass destruction to this diabolical clockwork, and you have found a recipe for the fall of civilization.

 -Sam Harris, The End of Faith

The Church of Cut My Taxes

Sullivan offers a pretty even-handed analysis of the leaked parts of Paul Ryan's budget proposal:

I think there needs to be some revenue increases as well - and a return to Clinton era rates for the super-rich. I'd also favor a gas tax to recoup the expense for the unfunded wars, and make that tax directly linked to the costs of war in the future. By the same principle, bank bonuses should become subject to a new tax, to help recoup the lost revenue caused by the banks' recklessness. This is called shared sacrifice. To balance the budget entirely on the backs of the poor will not and should not fly.

But this Ryan plan is an obvious first offer. The Dems, in my view, should neither dismiss nor demonize it. The fiscal crisis is real. But the Dems can suggest tax increases, like the ones above, as well as spending cuts, as the Tories have done in Britain. It's a win-win if that happens.

I'd agree.  Sure, government spending needs to be pared down, but revenue needs to increase as well, and making the entities responsible for the financial meltdown pay extra to me seems both fair and just.  But I also think the GOP has become so dogmatic on its stand of "don't you dare raise my taxes!" that it'll be a cold day in Hell before we see the kind of balanced proposal that would please Sullivan.  We didn't see it in Wisconsin, and I don't think we'll see it in Washington. 

Come to think of it, all-out opposition to any tax increase whatsoever has become such a ubiquitous issue for the Republicans that I dare say they ought to re-establish their party as a church, so they could claim 501(c)(3) non-profit tax-exempt status.  Call it the Church of Cut My Taxes, set up Milton Friedman, Ayn Rand, and Grover Norquist as your Holy Trinity and there you go.  Or you could make it a sect of Christianity, i.e., The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Tax Cuts, and print bumper-stickers with clever sayings like "What would Jesus Do?  Cut My Taxes!"

I know this sounds like an absurd idea, but the GOP is already so wrapped up in religion as it is. The only proof you need of that statement is the association with the GOP by, among others, James Dobson, Pat Robertson, and a thousand and one PACs and non-profits that euphemistically and cynically put the word "family" in their names as a substitute for more appropriate descriptives like "Christian sectarian," "reconstructivist," "anti-gay," "anti-choice," and "anti-muslim."  So just add tax cuts to the list of dogmas of a given faith, and reconstitute the GOP as a religion in and of itself.  And think of the profits!  It worked for a brilliant entrepreneur (massive sarcasm alert) like L. Ron Hubbard, so why not Republicans?

Where to begin?

I suppose an explanation is in order.

Writing isn't something that comes entirely naturally to me.  But if there's anything that does come naturally to me, it's having an opinion.  About nearly anything, really.  While it is certainly true that conversing and debating are two very good means of communicating thoughts and opinions, even the most ridiculously talkative person on earth (my friends and relatives sometimes accuse me of being that person) knows how inexact and imprecise speech can be in the context of an off-the-cuff discussion.  I would estimate that I spend more time in a conversation trying to explain nuances, correct misunderstandings, and generally trying to clear up things already stated than saying new things.  Writing, on the other hand, permits a greater degree of exactitude.  Not to mention the freedom to be anonymous.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not much of a fan of anonymous internet opinion-peddling.  Ordinarily, such anonymity is used as an excuse to make offensive statements for the sake of causing offense.  I like to think of that sort of trolling as the debating equivalent of parking your car in the middle of a busy interstate, and then laughing hysterically at the ensuing pileup.  Plato's Ring of Gyges is exactly the right comparison: People tend to do bad things when they don't have to take responsibility for them.  So I hope it will be understood that I'm not here to be another internet shock-blogger just looking to, frankly, piss people off for page-views.

I do have my reasons for wanting to shield my identity.  Although I do not aim to cause offense for offense's sake, neither do I want to feel inhibited or compelled to censor myself for fear of causing offense.  Two major topics I plan to write about at length are religion and politics.  I don't think there exist in the universe any other topics so readily equipped to cause offense than those.  Need I say more?

Another reason I want to keep undercover is that I'm quite fond of cursing, and that's another one of those things that is sort of a no-no in polite society.  However, there are few ways of conveying emphasis so effectively as cursing.  Calling a ridiculous statement "bullshit" gets the point across a lot quicker and stronger than saying, "That's completely ridiculous."  And so on.  But I will endeavor while writing not to swear gratuitously.

So that's pretty much why I'm here.  I have need of place to opine without the constraints of speech or putting my name to it, ergo I need a blog.

Now that that's settled, I should explain my background.  I have an undergraduate degree from a small school in the Midwest, and an advanced degree from a not-quite-as-small school in the Midwest.  I'm a native Wisconsinite, and my wife is a transplant from Illinois.  We live in an apartment in Northeast Wisconsin with a very mercurial black cat.  We'll get to my interests and hobbies some other time (they are numerous).  But I do want to give a quick-ish explanation of where I stand on religion, philosophy, and politics, because those are my primary areas of interest.

Religion is simple enough: I don't have one.  Contrary to the assertions of some theists, atheism is not a religion or an ideology.  I dislike the fact that it's an "-ism" at all.  Being an atheist means only that I do not believe in the existence any deity whatsoever.  Odin, Zeus, Osiris, Quetzalcoatl, Allah, Jehovah/YHWH, Shiva, etc.  As Richard Dawkins aptly put it, "We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in.  Some of us just go one god further."  It wasn't a simple matter for me to get "one god further."  That's not to say I became a nonbeliever because of some horrible tragedy in my life that destroyed my faith.  Fewer tropes annoy me more than the line used by some truly ignorant theologians and clergymen that all nonbelievers are really nascent believers who have lost faith because of personal anguish or ill-treatment at the hands of believers.

I was raised a believer, and even got through years of studying philosophy thinking of myself as a deist.  When even my belief in a non-intervening god began to waver, I briefly thought of myself as one of those people who wishes there was a god, but cannot see any evidence for it.  But that phase soon passed, and I realized that I had never actually seen any evidence for a belief in any god.  To shamelessly steal from Christopher Hitchens, "Blaise Pascal dedicates his Pensees to 'the one who is so made as that he cannot believe.'  That's me."  Moreover, I find Mr. Hitchens quite accurate when he describes the proposed kingdom of the Christian God as being rather like living in North Korea.  To quote at length:

"[Religious belief] is a totalitarian belief. It is the wish to be a slave. It is the desire that there be an unalterable, unchallengeable, tyrannical authority who can convict you of thought-crime while you are asleep, who can subject you - who must, indeed, subject you - to total surveillance around the clock every waking and sleeping minute of your life - I say, of your life - before you're born and, even worse and where the real fun begins, after you're dead. A celestial North Korea. Who wants this to be true? Who but a slave desires such a ghastly fate? I've been to North Korea. . . .  It is the most revolting and utter and absolute and heartless tyranny the human species has ever evolved. But at least you can fucking die and leave North Korea!"

In case you haven't noticed, I'm quite fond of Hitchens, but we'll get to that some other time.  Suffice to say, I agree with his assertion that religion ultimately wants a dictatorship.  The way I sum up my issues is something like this: The religions have these books.  And for centuries they told everyone that those books were literally true in every way.  Some people still believe this, but they are usually regarded as crackpots and idiots.  Now, however, science and learning have advanced, and we have hard evidence that pretty conclusively tells us that the universe wasn't created in six days, and on and on, so we can say with a fair amount of certainty that these books are not literally true.  But now the religions tell us, "Oh those books are metaphorical!"  And when we quote revolting passages from those books, like exhortations to genocide and execution for all manner of offenses in the Old Testament, we are told by the clergy that we must take such passages in context, despite the fact that they still maintain that these books were "divinely inspired."  I'm sorry, but that is obvious bullshit.  How can an omniscient, infallible deity inspire something that is completely immoral on its face and yet claim it to be moral if only we take it in the proper context?  And the only reason the religions will even go so far as to concede (for the most part) that the books aren't literally true, is because they do not possess (as they once did, and still do in some places) the authority to put me to death if I dare to say that these books are false.

I think that summation will do for now.

With respect to politics, my journey was a bit more straightforward.  Fiscally, I'm sort of an Eisenhower conservative.  Balancing the budget is good, even if raising taxes is required.  Common sense, please.  And Eisenhower is underrated as a president.  Foreign policy-wise, I've studied a lot, and I have mixed views.  Hawkish sometimes, dovish sometimes, very often skeptical of both perspectives.  Not at all in favor of continuing occupations in two Middle Eastern countries which have accomplished virtually nothing other than to hasten the radicalization of the local population and make it ridiculously easy for the rest of the world to hang upon the United States (a country founded on anticolonial sentiment) the labels of imperialism and colonialism.

Socially, I'm very much a liberal.  Mostly that can be blamed on my horror at today's "social conservatism" which looks increasingly like bigotry and intolerance based upon religious grounds.  Consider the arguments against gay marriage.  Never is this argument fundamentally based in anything other than religion.  "Protecting the institution of marriage" is perhaps one of the most idiotic phrases ever conceived.  I'm happily married, and I honestly cannot see what detriment my marriage suffered when one of my gay friends tied the knot, but nevertheless the moralizers tell me that his happiness is a threat to my marriage.  What nonsense.  I'll concede, my wife and I were married in a religious ceremony, despite the fact that even then my beliefs (I'll not speak for her, as she's her own person) were tepid at best.  It made the families happy, and I don't regret it for a moment.  But I have always maintained (and will continue to do so with my dying breath) that I do not need a diety to ensure that I remain faithful and steadfast to my wife by threatening me with punishments if I do not do so (not that that's ever been much of a hindrance to the infidelity of religious figures - looking at you, Jimmy Swaggart and Ted Haggard).  My wife is the most important person in my life, and religion has not the slightest thing to do with it.  I also don't understand why I should be offended if my friend is able to receive spousal benefits from his husband's insurance.  Perhaps someone could explain that to me.

Running down the gamut of issues, I'm pro-choice, but I'm also in favor of educating about other options, and I would love if the actual number of abortions in the country dropped to zero.  Like many other matters, I don't think you can legislate something out of existence.  Criminalizing abortion simply ensures that women seek out unsafe alternatives, and it implies that the government has a degree of control over a woman's body the moment she becomes pregnant.  That kind of logic can lead to unhappy places in a hurry.  I feel exactly the same way about, say, sex education.  Kids are going to have sex one way or another, so better to educate them to have sex safely and responsibly than to prate on about abstinence and just assume they'll listen.  With respect to guns, I'm not opposed to ownership, but the words "regulated" and "militia" appear in the first part of the Second Amendment, so I've no problem with regulations and restrictions either.  I do enjoy target-shooting occasionally, but I don't own any firearms myself.  I'm in favor of the death penalty, but only in the most extreme circumstances with absolutely irrefutable proof of the defendant's guilt.  Timothy McVeigh and the Nuremburg Tribunals come to mind.  But the costs of error trouble me greatly.

And finally, I should mention something closer to home.  My mother's a public school teacher, so I of course have an opinion on the current Governor of Wisconsin's plans to massively screw over the elderly, the middle class, government employees, children, and the entire educational infrastructure of our state.  Normally, I'm not a fan of recalls.  I think they're populism run amok.  And I don't see what's to stop the Tea Party types (how I loathe them, but I'll save that for another time as well) from recalling a Democratic governor on the grounds that "The son-of-a-bitch raised my taxes!"  But something has got to be done, and I resent anyone who calls for "sacrifice" and then proceeds to make life easier on large corporations and the very wealthy, while leaving the actual sacrificing to those less fortunate.

Someone once asked me what political party I was a member of.  I responded, "Well, I'm in favor of gay marriage, I don't believe in God, and I think it's okay to raise taxes some of the time.  What party do you think?"  It's kind of a sad commentary on the Republican Party that any one of those three things seems to automatically disqualify someone from being accepted in their ranks without being mocked or called a RINO.  Lincoln, Ike, and probably even Ronald Reagan (he raised taxes twice, remember) are rolling in their graves.

Do you see now why I'm keeping this anonymous?