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The Problem of Pain and Suffering, and God’s Will
I saw this on my Facebook feed (as is the case with the majority of my posts), and this provoked a response. It was an article authored by Christian mother Christine Suhan. She starts off well-meaning, appealing to the common experience faced by people every day: in the face of tragedy and grief, our world seems to crumble around us and we feel as though the very ground beneath us has let us down. During that time, there is always someone who claims, “Everything happens for a reason.”
Inevitably, you tend to hear it enough times that it becomes “all you can do to keep yourself from punching them in the face.” She goes on to say that pain and suffering and loss are part of the human experience. However, she also claimed that God’ will is not his path created for us, but how we walk his path. At first, it sounds profound, until you’re reminded of the theology. For example, “God’s plan is never for someone to have cancer. God’s will is not for an innocent child to be brutally murdered. God’s will is not for a teenage girl to be raped. God’s will is not chronic pain, illness, disability or death.” But none of these things are within the person’s control. Cancer is not within the patient’s control. Murder and rape are not within the victim’s control. Chronic pain, illness, and disability are not in the sufferer’s control.
Who can control bad things happening, according to believers? God. But according to the author, “God’s will is not an event that happens to us, [God’s will] how we respond to what happens.” In other words, God’s will is… our will? She says that God’s will is for us to supposedly “walk with Him” in our time of suffering. But then it brings up J.L. Mackie’s Inconsistent Triad: God is omnipotent and omnibenevolent, but evil (or in this case, suffering) exists. If God were truly good, he wouldn’t allow (and I’ll be generous and say “needless”) suffering to exist. If God were truly omnipotent, then again, needless suffering wouldn’t exist. Obviously, evil and suffering exist.
If God were all-good, he wouldn’t force us to suffer through the abuse, the cancer, the deaths and losses. If he were good, he wouldn’t be forcing illnesses upon us to make us love him. Think of all the people you love: would you seriously wish ill circumstances on any of them? Not just in a moment of passion or anger, but truly wish ill will toward them. And yet this is the God Christians worship.
If your argument is to bear the suffering with dignity and grace, then fine. There certainly is an argument there that suffering helps one grow as a person. But the idea that God is loving, good, and all-powerful simultaneously cannot be entertained.
She tries to shift the burden away from god, and away from ourselves: “God is not responsible for our pain. We are not responsible for our pain. What happened in the Garden of Eden is responsible for the human condition. And the human condition is hard wired for pain and suffering.” But again, according to the theology, Adam and Eve, the ancestors of mankind, were the cause through their disobedience and pride (depending on whom you ask). God is at fault for literally planting the seed of temptation there, while Adam and Eve (humans) are at fault for their disobedience. On both counts, she is wrong. Without the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, there would be no suffering. If our will is God’s will, then God’s will must have been to allow suffering to enter the world.
If she intends to argue for random chance, that is that random chance is what harms us, then it loops back to the Inconsistent Triad: God cannot be omnipotent if there are circumstances which exist outside of his control.
How I view suffering (at least most of it) is an opportunity to learn, and to pass on our wisdom to others. The pain of heartache can ease another’s in that they can realize someone else has made it through, that many others have made it through, and that the experiences are indeed surmountable. Suffering through an illness can bring about wisdom and insight into the fragility and value of life. It brings sympathy and empathy for others because we as the sufferer have been in such a situation. We also know what, if anything, can relieve it.
To borrow from Buddhism, life is suffering. But we can learn to rise above the cycle of suffering (samsara) in order to achieve nirvana and moksha, that is the “relinquishment” of suffering (as my professor once put it). It is freedom from suffering because we have risen above it. It isn’t that pain no longer exists, but rather we are free from suffering the pain. We can gain wisdom we learn from suffering, to be free of suffering.
The “Radical” Fallacy
This thought came to me the other day and I’ve got time to write some of it down. A lot of our news media is throwing out the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism” (I may or may not shorten it to just RIT throughout the rest of this post). President Obama has been criticized for not using the phrase while presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has almost jumped at the bit to use it in her attempts to appeal to the right-wing. In a response to such criticism, Obama has said, “What exactly would using this label accomplish? What exactly would it change? Would it make ISIL less committed to try and kill Americans?”
I think he has a point. What label, what appellation we apply to the act does not change what it is: terrorism. It doesn’t matter whether it’s religious terrorism (Christian, Islamic, etc.), racial terrorism (e.g., race riots, hate crimes), or sexual terrorism (e.g., rape). It’s terrorism. To use the tired cliche, call a spade a spade.
Having said that, calling anything radical invokes the commonly known “No True Scotsman” fallacy. For those unfamiliar, let me put it this way: “No true Scotsman would ever drink piss-warm beer.” Or for a more real-world example, “No true Muslim would ever think to bomb anyone anywhere; Islam is a religion of peace.” For those of you who are familiar with basic philosophy and logic, feel free to comment or just leave the article. For those who’re interested in what I have to say, read on.
Why do I say that it’s fallacious? Because when you label someone or an entire group of people as “radical” based on one qualifier (in this case, being Muslim), you presume to know: 1) that one person’s beliefs, or the beliefs of every single person identified, and 2) the true tenets of Islam, the true meaning of the words supposedly written by the “prophet”. By the nature of it being religion (as well as the fundamental nature of humanity), you cannot claim to know the mind of anyone else, but your own. You cannot without a doubt the mind of a supposed deity (assuming a deity exists). By the same token, you also cannot know the mind of another person. You can predict, and perhaps rightly so, but you cannot know beyond the shadow of a doubt.
As the saying goes, when you assume, you make an “ass” out of “u” and “me”. But mostly you.
My solution? Call it terrorism. It doesn’t matter what the motivation is. All we need to know is someone attacked, how many people were injured or died, and what is our response. Stop calling it lone wolf attacks. Stop calling it gang violence. Call it terrorism. The qualifier for the label should be nothing but the act itself. It should have nothing to do with the attacker’s skin color, gender, religion, or otherwise.
Shame on My Alma Mater Pt. 2
I decided to go back to McDevitt’s Facebook post to check out the comments and someone (I’m assuming a parent) had actually posted a picture of the original dress code for prom, and to quote her:
#1. For “Ladies”, there are 19 lines of rules, with long sentences, lots of CAPS & some italics: lots of “MUST” & “NOT”.
#2. For “Gentlemen”, there are 10 ones of text, no full sentences, no all caps, & only one use of italics. The tone is much less disapproving / scolding.
To be fair to the school for a moment, there are more varieties of dresses than there are suits, in general. But religious institutions always put the burden of not being temptresses on women, not on men for their behavior.
via Facebook/Eva H.
To argue the point and beat the dead horse even further, nothing about Aniya Wolf’s attire violated the dress code. She was in a tuxedo, and unless you live under a rock and somehow have never seen a tuxedo before, you know what that looks like: dress pants, dress socks, dress shoes, a button-down shirt with cuff-links (optional), a blazer, and a bow-tie. Assuming that she wore this properly, which she did:
via Facebook/Aniya Wolf, pictured on the right
Unless a rule was implemented in which a woman’s hands, face, and hair were deemed offensive, Miss Wolf was well within the guidelines of the dress code. I’ll wait and see if a copy of the email turns up stating (reportedly) hours before the event that the administration restricted her clothing choices to dresses.
It might also be significant to note that the rules were handed out on 13 April when prom was on 6 May. For those of you doing the math, that’s less than 4 weeks, at which point it would be too late to pick out a dress (as I’m sure all the Dress Barns and similar retailers would have been sold out of all but the worst dresses), as well as make the proper alterations to meet the requirements of the rules.
To address the people who say “she could have gone to a different school”, think about when you’re saying this. She has attended Bishop McDevitt for 3 years now. She has worn the same uniform for those three years: slacks and a polo/Oxford shirt bearing the McD logo. Juniors and Seniors are the only ones admitted to prom, barring the invitation by an upperclassmen to an underclassmen. In other words, she had not had the opportunity to “test the waters” of the limits of the dress code (or likely even knew what the dress code was) before a month to three months ago.
We also have to assume that she has otherwise faced no problems before this because she (as were many other students including those during my attendance) was able to wear this uniform. She was also able to wear a suit to the winter formal. She was getting an education which her mother presumably valued, or else she wouldn’t still be attending. She also has no control over which school she attends because she is a minor. She can influence where she goes, but she otherwise has no control over her enrollment.
But moving on.
As I previously wrote, clothing has no bearing on morality. Sexual orientation and gender identity has no bearing on morality. Clothing also has no bearing on the truth (whether you believe in “truth” or “Truth”). You know what does? Actions. Convictions. Beliefs. Values. If your beliefs–in this case, Catholicism–make you discriminate based on subject matter that has no moral indicator (like clothing, education, race, sexual activity), then your sense of morality has been skewed for the worse.
Judging by the dress code, the young women’s virtues (or purity or modesty or virginity or hymen, depending on your bluntness) were valued more than their autonomy. Yes, had any students been harmed while under the ever-watchful eye of the administration, the responsibility would have fallen on them. But in this case, no harm was caused, and based on John Stuart Mill’s Harm Principle, the only time authority/power/force should ever be exercised on another human being is to prevent harm, or at least prevent the most amount of harm to occur.
The manifest purpose of a school, regardless of whether it is public, sectarian, or home is to provide an education. The latent purpose is to develop one’s identity which will be carried throughout life. In this case, Bishop McDevitt did neither. If anything, it suppressed the identity of an individual, and, despite the outpouring of support from both the student body and people the world over, the school made her feel ashamed of herself. As I’ve written before, it made her feel like a mistake.
Schools also teach us what to value, if not why we value it. As a modern society, we should be taught to value equality, acceptance, and love if nothing else. Facilities of primary and secondary education (that is, K-12) should remain a safe space for its students, and prepare them for their life ahead. Bishop McDevitt failed in its purpose to do this, not just for Aniya, but for the rest of its students. It set the precedent of discrimination based on sexual orientation, based on clothing, based on presumably traditional (read: religious and/or conservative) values. It showed that instead of protecting and supporting its students unconditionally, it will pick and choose who to support and uphold based on arbitrary criteria that ultimately cannot be helped. Worse, it taught younger students who may not have been exposed to any kind of politics (governmental, gender, religious, or otherwise) to discriminate against those that are marginally different from us.
Once again, Alma Mater is the Latin for “nurturing mother.” This is neither nurturing nor caring, but rather harmful if not outright destructive. Bishop McDevitt states that it “cherished”, “accepted”, and “loved” its students, but this is far from cherishing, loving, or accepting. Regardless of what its beliefs were, the simple resolution among the administration, Aniya, and her mother would have simply been to allow her to attend an event during the formative years of her life. It would have garnered less news, less negative reputation (if you visit its Facebook page, Bishop McDevitt now stands at 2.3 of 5 stars), and less national/international attention.
Despite all that I’ve written, I’m not angry. I’m just sad and disappointed. But in happier news, congratulations, York City, for being progressive and “practicing acceptance and love” and inviting Aniya to your prom.
Shame on My Alma Mater
Well, my high school made internet news as well as the local news the other day. For Bishop McDevitt High School (in Harrisburg, PA and not Wyncote, PA), prom presumably celebrated Friday 6 May. I say presumably because all the pictures came up immediately that night and the day after, and also because the story broke that night on the local ABC channel (ABC 27).
For those of you who don’t click the link (because I know most of you don’t), the story is that Aniya (“Ah-n-ya”) Wolf, a student at Bishop McDevitt High School and an “out” lesbian, was rejected from her high school prom because she had worn a suit. From the information I can gather, the dress code for the prom was administered 3 months beforehand, but there was no mention that Wolf could or couldn’t wear a suit to the prom.Wolf’s mother tried to appeal, but evidently failed. However, according to one (who shall remain anonymous for his safety) of my friends who went to the same high school, Miss Wolf had gone to the Snowflake (my high school’s winter formal) in a suit with no repercussions and without ejection from the dance.
Still, Miss Wolf arrived at prom in her suit and was promptly told that she would not be admitted, and, according to her, if she refused to leave, the police would escort her off the premise. This didn’t happen, or otherwise, it would be bigger news, and ABC27 had attempted to reach Bishop McDevitt for a statement, to which it responded that it had no comment at the time. However, the following evening, the administration issued the following statement:
Bishop McDevitt High School held its annual prom on Friday, May 6, 2016.
Without question, we love, respect and cherish all of our students.
The dress code for the prom specified girls must wear formal dresses. It also stated that students who failed to follow the dress code would not be admitted.
The full dress code policy was sent to parents about three months ago. A reminder was sent to all students on March 6. On Friday afternoon, when it was brought to the attention of the school administration that a female student was planning to wear a tuxedo, we contacted her mother in hopes we could resolve the situation.
It’s important to note that students who haven’t adhered to the dress code in past years haven’t been admitted to the prom.
Bishop McDevitt will continue to practice acceptance and love for all of our students. They are tremendous young men and women. We simply ask that they follow the rules that we have put into place.
It makes me sad that I’m writing about my school like this. I understood that, being a Catholic institution, that it was going to be conservative by most standards, but it was always kind, always helpful, if a little strict. I suppose, though, as a cis-hetero (if not white) male, it afforded me the advantages not given to my SAGA/LGBT brothers and sisters.
As my friend (whom I mentioned above) said, “For me, much of the rosy memories of high school are suddenly replaced with the memories of lgbt students at McDevitt being ignored when they were bullied, and senior year religion classes in which our teacher stood in front of the class and fed us intellectually dishonest and patently false statistics that not so softly suggested that lesbian and gay individuals, like a few in the actual class, were products of either child abuse, rape, or some other traumatic experience.”
My issue here isn’t that of the enforcement of the rules. It is a private institution independent of the state and therefore doesn’t necessarily have to follow discrimination laws (as horrendously unfortunate as that sounds). It has the right to enforce the rules as it wishes, and take the measures necessary to see them enforced.
My issue is with the rules themselves. The amount of clothing worn or not worn is not indicative of morality. If anything, it has more to do with the level of comfort and confidence an individual has. The type of clothing, again, has no bearing on one’s morality and ethics, and it is a far leap to assume that someone scantily clad has poor morals (for example, the child molesters of our society).
The amount or type of clothing also has no bearing on one’s sexual activity: as many people have pointed out, if women are raped wearing coats and boots, then the problem isn’t with the women, it’s with the men and our collective inability to teach men self-control, and our collective mindset of vilifying women simply for the fact that they are women. The rules based on clothing, especially in western society, are arbitrary. Women can wear clothing that identifies them as women, that accentuates their “assets” as women, but at the same time, we vilify, mock, humiliate, and otherwise destroy her confidence.
At the same time, we vilify, mock, and humiliate when women decide to cover up. We take them down and destroy them for daring to take control of their own bodies and to control what people see and how much. In short, we as a society are raping our young women, and get angry when they try to take back control. Miss Aniya Wolf tried to take back control and was immediately struck down because she was so audacious as to step outside of the boundaries of “the norm”. Add in the fact that she is a so-called “butch” lesbian and oh my God, someone call the cops because she isn’t normal.
There is nothing wrong with a woman in a suit. In fact, many women can pull off suits better than I can. There is also nothing wrong with a man in a dress. Once again, clothing does not dictate morality. It does not dictate one’s level of faith or religiosity. If the argument is based on modesty, then if she were not modest enough, not one girl at that prom (nor any other for that matter) would be “modest” enough.
Modesty is a socially constructed idea designed to keep our young women trapped underfoot, to keep them ignorant and uneducated about sex, to teach them that they are responsible for not only their so-called “purity” but their husbands’, their boyfriends’,their fiances’ as well. In other words, it relieves men of the responsibility for their sexual actions. In cases of rape, not only is the rapist punished, but the victim as well: by the legal system, by society, by friends, family, and peers. All by virtue of having her “virtue” taken.
It puts undue stress and pressure on them when as a society, we should be promoting knowledge and education, not ignorance and abstinence. We need to teach people that they’re human beings with sentience, not objects for pleasure, or outright animals who have no idea of consent. We should be teaching our young men that they have the ability to control their actions, not just that “evolution programmed” them that way. We need to teach them that no means no. We need to teach young women that they have the right to say no. That they are (or should be) empowered to make their own decisions, to dress how they wish, to be as sexually active as they wish, without fear of repercussion or judgment.
As for my school, I wanted to address that final statement: “Bishop McDevitt will continue to practice acceptance and love for all of our students. They are tremendous young men and women. We simply ask that they follow the rules that we have put into place.” By rejecting Miss Wolf’s choice to dress in a tuxedo to go to her prom, you rejected part of who she is. As she and her mother said multiple times, she has dressed like a boy since she was little. She felt comfortable and happy with the clothes she wore. She felt comfortable and happy in a suit she wore to Snowflake. She felt comfortable and happy with the slacks and Oxford shirt and tie, or the polo as required by the school uniform. In what way is this different from either of those examples?
By rejecting her clothing choices, you rejected her choice to express who she is and how she feels. You made her feel like “a mistake”. That isn’t acceptance. That isn’t love. Alma Mater means bounteous or nurturing mother. You were neither bounteous nor nurturing. You were discriminatory. You acted in bigotry. You were outright hateful.
Mater Neglegentiores: on the Canonization of Mother Teresa
In recent news today, Pope Francis has declared that Blessed Mother Teresa’s canonization date is set to be September 4. While Catholics no doubt are celebrating her upcoming canonization, there remains a good many who are skeptical of her so-called “humanitarian” work. I, as well as many atheists, skeptics, and humanists would argue that Mother Teresa, insofar as she can be called “Mother”, has actually been detrimental to “the poorest of the poor.” As such, the title means “Neglectful Mother” as opposed to “Alma Mater” or “Nurturing Mother”.
Christopher Hitchens is perhaps the most famous critic of Mother Teresa, or if we’re to call her by her real name, Gonxha (or Agnes) Bojaxhiu. In his infamous book The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and in Practice, he lays out his arguments against her. This article is primarily for those who haven’t read this book yet. It is short, poignant, and scathing.
For those unfamiliar with the Catholic process of saint canonization, it requires two verified miracles (declared so by the Holy Pontiff). After the first verified miracle, the person in question is declared Blessed (abbreviated Bl.). Disregarding the question of how do you verify a miracle when we have no proof miracles occur, popes can then set a date for canonization.
For Bl. Mother Teresa, the first miracle occurred in 2003 when Monica Besra was miraculously cured of her tumor when someone placed a Mother Teresa locket on her stomach. However, according to doctors’ reports, Mrs. Besra had been going through her treatments and was likely to be in sudden remission. One detail that often gets missed that several years after the Mother died, Mrs. Besra continued to suffer and doctors continued to work on her, even after the locket was placed on her. So much for “verified” miracle.
The second miracle was a Brazilian man with a viral brain infection, in a coma. He was “cured” in 2008. However, we don’t know anything about this man. There is speculation, but any information is dispensed from the Vatican doctors and the clergy. Not the least bit suspicious, right? I couldn’t be smelling more fish if I were standing on the Santa Monica Pier.
Agnes’s “hospital”, unbeknownst to the larger global community, was little more than a poor house in which those who were sick came to suffer in their sickness. Medication was improperly dispensed in uncleaned and reused needles that were run under cold tap water. Surgical gloves were washed and hung on a line to be used the next day. Children lay in cribs with no stimulation.
Meanwhile, dear Agnes had access to a fortune. She had access to western medicine, and people all over the world were sending her money (most notably the Duvalier family of Haiti, and Charles Keating), expecting it to be spent on medical supplies, food, building renovation, and every other expense in between. But it was hoarded. In the case of a charity in New York, Mother Teresa disallowed the building of an elevator, because she wanted the patients to suffer and learn the humility of pain.
Suffering. That was her whole campaign. She believed that suffering brought one closer to god. As Christopher Hitchens said, she was no friend to the poor. She was friend to poverty. She believed sickness and poverty–suffering in general–to be a gift from god. Never mind why we should worship a god as cruel as this; this is a sick thought process that one would force people to suffer to no good end for the rest of their days. In an age where many illnesses have cures and treatments, she refused them. According to Seth Andrews in his speech The Mother of Bad Ideas, you were to “accept your fate” and “accept my deity. If you recovered… cool. If not, at least you died in the loving arms of Jesus.”
But besides her unfathomable negligence to the least among us, what other harm has she wrought? In her Nobel Peace Prize, she declared that contraception and abortions are “the greatest destroyers of peace”. In Ireland, in a speech she gave in 1992, she said, ““Let us promise Our Lady who loves Ireland so much that we will never allow in this country a single abortion. And no contraceptives.” She denied the empowerment of women to bodily self-determination. She denied them their freedom. To her, women were chattel to be used as servants and slaves, as breeding stock for an already untenable global population.
Why do we venerate this monstrosity? In the words of the late Christopher Hitchens, “She was a fanatic, a fundamentalist, and a fraud, and a church that officially protects those who violate the innocent has given us another clear sign of where it truly stands on moral and ethical questions.”
I Am a Regressive Leftist: a Defense of the Mainstream Liberal
This is not meant as a comprehensive response to why Islamic terrorism exists nor a response to leftist liberals who disagree.
I was inspired by Atheist Atheist’s video “What is Regressive Left?” According to the video, the phrase “regressive left” is one coined by atheist and neuroscientist Sam Harris, as well as former radical Muslim Maajid Nawaz to refer to people on the left side of the spectrum, politically speaking, who value identity and culture over traditionally leftist ideals, such as women’s rights and free speech. Specifically, it seems to refer to people who apparently favor religion–usually Islam–over those other ideals. Steve, who in the video seems to be against the regressive left, defines the phrase as people who blame war, poverty, and a host of other bad things on Western society, on colonialism, on imperialism. In other words, they believe that the problem is caused by politics, not by religion.
Given those two definitions, I (and seemingly an overwhelming majority) am a regressive leftist. While I’ll gladly accept that appellation, I still have to take issue with the opposition. For one thing, Maajid Nawaz, despite co-opting the term “regressive left”, has come in defense of it in an Intelligence Squared debate “Islam Is A Religion Of Peace”. While I disagree with the idea that Islam is a peaceful religion (I happen to agree with Ayaan Hirsi Ali on this point), I don’t buy into the idea that the media sold us: that over 1 billion Muslims want the remaining 5.8 billion people on the planet to convert or die. I believe that Islam went through a kind of evolution, much like Christianity did. I believe in what we know about Daesh, which is that it controls a sizable chunk of the Middle East (namely Iraq, Syria), and that estimates of its troops are somewhere between 80,000 and 200,000.
That’s 200,000 as opposed to the remaining 1.6 billion Muslims left. But of course, I’d be remiss to leave out those who are sympathetic, but those numbers are hard to come by. In a report by Jay Michaelson, he crunched the numbers for a Pew Research Poll interviewing approximately 68% of the global total (just over 1 billion) and found that approximately 195 million Muslims favored suicide bombings. That is “just” 12% of the global population (which of course is 12% too much). Talk to me again when that number reaches 4, 5,6 times that size about how Islam wants all to surrender to Allah.
Further more, I do believe that the basis of our conflict, our “clash of civilizations” to borrow the phrase from Samuel Huntington, indeed is based on politics. Specifically, it is based on US interventionism as well as poor political infrastructure in the Middle East. However, that doesn’t mean that I believe Islam has no part to play in the conflict. Obviously it does, otherwise Daesh wouldn’t be called “Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant”. However, if we look back through history, we can see that the Middle East and Northern Africa have been the hub of United States interventionism:
- Libya and the Overthrow of Muamar Qadhafi (Gadaffi) (2011)
- The Egyptian Crisis and Mubarak’s removal from power (2011)
- the Iraq War for oil (2003),
- the Gulf War/Operation Desert Storm/Kuwait War and a handful of other names for oil (1990),
- The Iranian Revolution (1979-80) that lead to the rise of Ayatollah Khomeini
All of these conflicts and more have lead to increasing tensions between the US and a large part of the Middle East (with the exception of Israel).
But Islamic terrorism does not have one single factor that defines why it happens. It has an additive dimension to it; that is, there are multiple facets that have led to its propensity to violence. For anyone who has taken a world history course, the rise of the Christ cult as well as the Mohammedans (later to be known as Christianity and Islam) are core units because they are world changing. “Islam,” whether or not it is known to many people, means to “surrender,” that is to surrender to the will of Allah.
This was the fundamental idea upon which Muhammad rode with his campaign to conquer much of the Middle East and Northern Africa. This clash of civilizations was brought to a head about five centuries later during the Crusades during which the European Christians tried to reclaim the Holy Land (i.e., Jerusalem) in the name of God, while the Moors (i.e., Muslims) tried to retain the land for Allah.
For the sake of brevity, fast forward several centuries later, and old habits die hard, especially for the newly re-Christianized America of the late 40s and 50s. The conservatives now depend on Christian values, and “In God We Trust” has now been minted on United States currency; “Under God” has been surreptitiously slipped into the Pledge of Allegiance. At the same time, the United States has been dipping its toes in the Middle East, particularly Israel in which it could leverage its power against the USSR (i.e., the former Soviet Union), aka the dirty atheistic communists, who had a lot of influence in Iraq, Egypt, Jordan, and Palestine (among others).
Long story short, Palestinians view Israel as an illegal country that should have never existed in the first place. They are also backed by the countries mentioned above, who also happen to hate the Jews who worship a different god. Because Israel represents piece of political gold in terms of power and leverage, as well as influence in the Middle East, the US keeps ties to it. I’ve heard from political junkie and analyst Kyle Kulinski (The Kyle Kulinski show) a less likely hypothesis: conservatives and neo-cons still view Israel as the Holy Land that they must keep safe for the return of Jesus.
Islam in the meantime has a powerful hold over the Middle East and Northern Africa, and with its grip comes the propensity for violence. That is, after all, how it spread. However, the politics (which is defined as the activities of governance) associated is also what guides leadership. Because Islam (which is split into Sunni and Shia, which are further divided into subsects such as Ahmadiyya Islam) has no hierarchical leadership, there is no direction for Islam except for those who gain power and influence through violence and charisma. Those in power want to remain in power with as much power as possible.
This kind of attitude toward politics has given rise to what is known as Islamism, AKA Political Islam. It is defined by Quranic literalism, by moral conservatism. Islamism wants the removal of non-Islamic institutions such as those that we have in the United States and much of Western society. In short, every facet of the world that does not somehow to connect to Islam and Sharia Law must be modified or otherwise expunged.
Granted, there are a good many moderate Muslims, many of whom value kindness and embrace nonviolence. Many of them are in so-called western countries such as western Europe, the United States, and Canada. They have come to embrace western values of democracy, liberty, and the idea of basic human rights while at the same time, being able to keep their ethnic as well as religious values. In this way, they’re not so different from the Judeo-Christian West.
However, the Islamists push the narrative that the West hates Muslims, that they’re fearful of Muslims and that Muslims are unwelcome. They’re not entirely wrong. Every day there’s an attack, and immediately in the United States, there is a label applied. If he’s of European descent, he’s a lone wolf with a gun. If he’s black or Latino, he’s a thug or a gang member. If he’s from the Middle East or India, he’s a terrorist. That last stereotype is the one the Islamists push in order to gain new members. Daesh wants this to be true in order to recruit new members, in order to push its ideologies and expand its control into a so-called “worldwide caliphate”. Essentially, they depend on the West to be fearful and hate-mongering, and in America, that plan is working.
Donald Drumpf is the embodiment of hate- and fear-mongering. He is the one who is helping Daesh the most in America. On the Democratic side of the spectrum, there are many of us who want to welcome and embrace Middle Eastern immigrants and refugees. We want to show them that we accept them and their culture, and want to welcome them into our own. In short, we want to defeat the narrative of which Drumpf and Daesh want to convince others.
That requires that we embrace Islam and encourage reform in its attitude and interpretation. The Ahmadiyya sect has achieved this, so why not the others? We can encourage reform through not violence as more militant atheists such as Sam Harris would suggest or neo-conservatives like the laundry basket of Republican presidential candidates, but through kindness and basic human decency, . I don’t say reform as in conformity to Western values so much as reform in less violence, so that Islam really can be a religion of peace.
Because of the ideas I’ve presented here, I am a regressive leftist. And I hope you are too.
Culpability and Responsibili
This post is to address my religious friends and readers. Perhaps it may make you see Christianity in a different light. I meant to write this before Easter, but I guess since today is Easter, it’s still appropriate.
The following is an excerpt from Max Brooks’s novel World War Z. This is one of my favorite books because the themes found in it are ubiquitous, and fascinating, and relate to so many other facets of life. If you have yet to read it and want to, it can be found at your local bookstore in the “humor” section or found online. No, I’m not being paid for promoting the book (it’s been out too long anyway). I’m just using it to express an idea that’s been on my mind for several days now.
The situation is that the Russian army is on the alert for suspicious behavior. While on a field mission, a soldier named Baburin brought back an infected woman, showing the rest of his barracks the truth of what the Russian commanding officers were hiding from them, and an insurrection began. However, it was quickly brought down by tear gas and each insurrectionist was “brought to justice.” The narrator is a woman who survived the zombie war while in the Russian army. Bolded sentences represent the interviewer.
To “decimate”… I used to think it mean just to wipe out, cause horrible damage, destroy… it actually means to kill by a percentage of ten, one out of every ten must die… and that’s exactly what they did to us.
The Spetznaz had us assemble on the parade ground, full dress uniform no less. Our new commanding officer gave a speech about duty and responsibility, about our sworn oath to protect the motherland, and how we had betrayed that oath with our selfish treachery and individual cowardice.
[…]
“You spoiled children think democracy is a God-given right. You expect it, you demand it! Well, now you’re going to get your chance to practice it.”
His exact words, stamped behind my eyelids forever.
What did he mean?
We would be the ones to decide who would be punished. Broken up into groups of ten, we would have to vote on which one of us would be executed. And then we… the soldiers, we would be the ones to personally murder our friends. […] Some cried out, pleaded with us. Begged us like children. Some, like Baburin, simply knelt there silently, on his knees, staring right into my face as I brought the rock down onto his.
[…] By making us all accomplices, they held us together, not just by fear, but by guilt as well. We could have said no, could have refused and been shot ourselves, but we didn’t. We went right along with it. We all made a conscious choice and because that choice carried such a high price, I don’t think anyone ever wanted to make another one again. We relinquished our freedom that day, and we were more than happy to see it go. From that moment on we lived in true freedom, the freedom to point to someone else and say “They told me to do it! It’s their fault, not mine.” The freedom, God help us, to say “I was only following orders.”
–World War Z by Max Brooks, pages 81-83
This, ladies and gentlemen, is exactly how Christianity has made you culpable. They made you believe that the blood of Jesus Christ is on your hands. The blood of an innocent man, the so-called lamb of God, is on your hands and head, and you can never wash yourselves of that. It holds you by guilt, instilling in you from a young age that you are damaged, broken, and need God, who was the one that declared you broken in the first place. It holds you responsible for killing the son of God.
Except that’s not the case. You are not responsible for what happened 2000 years ago, which arguably may not have happened at all. You did not nail Christ to the cross. Your hands are not dirtied by his blood, you hold no responsibility over what your ancestors did centuries ago. You do not have to feel the guilt they subject you to. The sins of the father should never be passed down to the son. You are a good person. There is nothing you need to wash your hands of. If you do feel responsibility, then fine, do what you think is best, but you are not responsible and you are good without god.
These people who claim that you are guilty have no authority over you except for that which you give them. You are your own person with your own thinking mind. Use it.
A Philosophical Response to Indiana’s Public Policy
It has been an insanely long time since I’ve written anything, so to my dear readers, I apologize once again. But this time, I’ve come back, not with arguments on the existence of God, but rather taking what I learned from my philosophy class and applying it to modern situations. Following is a response to a Facebook debate that I’ve been having on Indiana’s new policy on discrimination against gays. If you haven’t figured out my politics now, I lean politically left and consider myself a liberal. This was the comment:
Each society has their own standard of ethics. One persons stance on immorality is another ones strict adherence to it. Take sharia law. They believe they are obligated to treat women as they do and put to death those that don’t. Under anarchy one must turn away from the law and rebel. Ones persons basic human decency depends on experiences and exposure. Good discussion but I stand with my moral standards come from a deep understanding. am I wrong or immoral if I think homosexuality is wrong? Who’s standard do we use. Am I wrong if I think being in a monogamous relationship is not as strong as a polygamist relationship? Not saying one over the other. But a standard is how you determine what decency is. Who is to say ones is more than right than another’s. If you say you then you trample on my right to believe as I chose. If you say live as you want than you say it is ok to trample on the rights of others to treat people the way you say is wrong. Bottom line may be it all depends on your culture and who are we to impose our will on others. If we do say enslaving people is wrong based on a cultural belief then you must have the courage to stand and fight for that belief or stop having theoretical discussions and take a stand in the real world for what you believe in. Even if it causes you harm. Not as easy as just making a blind statement just to invoke a response when you have to defend a position with your own life.
And the following is my response.
I don’t understand where you’re getting the idea that you’re defending your life from, and I don’t understand why you’re suddenly bringing in enslavement.
From my standpoint, you are allowed to make your opinion be heard, and I am well within my rights to think you’re wrong. Where my rights end is, of course, to impose upon you what I believe to be right and force you to follow my stance. I am not doing any of that. What I’m trying to do is show you what is wrong or what is potentially wrong with your position. I am not making any kind of “blind statement” and I am in fact standing up for what *I* believe.
Where I’m coming from with my argument is from Immanuel Kant who believed that because we are all born with the capacity for rational thought, it is through rational thought that we can come to understand what morality it. From there, I’m moving to John Rawls’s position in which he argues (and as I have mentioned before) that society should afford everyone the same rights, or create a society in which even the worse off among us are better off than in our current society. Meaning that even if the 1% still had over 50% of the US wealth, the poorest among us would still have better benefits than they do now.
The standard, therefore, is how can I make society a society that I would consent to live in?
Where it comes in under the gay marriage argument and under the Indiana discrimination law is that, gay people are just the same as you and I. I think few people would dispute the fact. Should they be penalized for something that they couldn’t help? What if the tables were turned and you were suddenly denied a public service (defined under federal law as including providing food and shelter), is it within their rights to deny you, or would you consider it an infringement of your rights? You who need food and drink, you who are willing to pay for said food and drink.
Would you consent to live under such a society where you were discriminated against your skin colour, sexual orientation, gender, or religion? I should think not. So why would you impose the same kind disservice to men and women who have done no harm to you, and who simply want to live their lives? Is it not in our Constitution that all free people of the United States are granted the right to pursue life, liberty, and happiness? Where can they have life if they can’t feed themselves? Where can they find happiness if they can’t marry and be with the one they love because some ancient books declare it so? Where is their autonomy when the society in which they live dictates where they can go, what they can do, what they can wear, etc.?
As for my personal religious belief, or lack thereof, my life IS in danger because of the ideas I espouse and the things I write. There are a great many people who have died who share my beliefs. Take Charlie Hebdo. Take Salman Rushdie. Malala Yousafzai. Ayaan Hirsi Ali. They are in danger for doing the exact same things I do: criticizing religion. I have my freedom of speech limited because people fear suicide bombings. Because people are afraid of offending others.
So yes, I am certainly committing my life to the words I write and to the things I speak. I am defending my position of atheism, of secularism, and of social contract ethics. Call it socialism if you want. I will defend it. Just as you have every right to defend yours.
An Atheist Reads “The God Question” By Andrew Pessin: Chapter 4
Looks like I’m getting betterat this blogging thing! At least I’m not going for weeks at a time without blogging, right?
Chapter 4: Cicero (106 – 43 BCE)
The Cost of Freedom: Not even God can know what we will freely do best
God is often attributed the power of foreknowledge or foresight of the future; that is, he knows what you will do before you do it. However, as my audience may have already figured out, this directly contrasts with the idea of free will. If god knows what we do before we do it, then it is no longer our free will; rather, it has already been determined that we will do it. Because god is infallible and by definition cannot make mistakes, whatever he knows in the future must absolutely come to pass. Cicero brings up the idea of consequential action, meaning that one thing causes another, which causes another, which causes another, etc.
If god were all knowing, then we lose our free will, and punishing bad behavior and rewarding good behavior would be completely unjustified–why? Because people are only acting according to how god had planned them to act. This is what Cicero claims and this is what I have a problem with. With everything up until this point, I have agreed. However, rewarding good behavior and punishing bad behavior is not completely unjustified. Based on psychological research of B.F. Skinner and other behavior psychologists, this is called positive and negative conditioning. We reward good behavior (or that which we deem is good behavior as I–and no philosopher from this source–have no working objective definition of good) to encourage that kind of continued behavior, and likewise for bad or harmful behavior.
I think that given the deterministic view, this isn’t so bad, probably because I hold a somewhat utilitarian view on morality and ethics (on some things, but not all things, but that is another conversation altogether).
However, Cicero continues: there is a way to avoid the loss of free will and that would be to strip god of his foresight. Naturally, that diminishes the view of god, but “such is the cost of freedom”(Pessin 15).
An Atheist Reads “The God Question” Chapter 2
I’ve covered this so many times, so some of this will be directly from the book (namely the explanation of the gods loving and hating different things and such a definition is self-contradictory), and some of it (as you may recognize) will be mine.
Chapter 2: Plato (427-347 B.C.E.): Do the right thing–whatever that means: Does morality truly depend on God?
As you’ve probably surmised from the title of the chapter, we are now dealing with the moral argument in relation to God (or in Plato and his contemporaries’ case, gods). For those of you who are more familiar with philosophy, this chapter is in reference to Euthyphro’s Dilemma: Do the gods love something because it is good? Or is it good because the gods love it? In Plato’s time, according to Pessin, when asked this question, the common answer is that what is good, is deemed right or good because the gods loved it, and what is deemed wrong or evil is what is hated by the gods. However, as you may have already figured out, the gods were varied in personality and in what they loved, so what was hated by one god may be loved by another. For example, Hera is the goddess of the family unity and therefore promotes fidelity and condemns infidelity. However, Zeus had a tendency to go sleeping around with mortal women, as evidenced by his bountiful demigod children. He likely views such behavior as good, possibly even right.
With the definition given by the ancients, a given action or state of being, such as fidelity, could be self-contradictory because it is both god-loved and god-hated. By the law of non-contradiction, this simply cannot be: A cannot not be B, and be not B at the same time.
Monotheism solves this problem to an extent, but then presents another: we cannot possibly know what God loves and what God hates. Even if we did, it creates yet another problem. In my opinion morality cannot be objective (as I’ve said many times in past posts) because while it may make morality objective to us, morality is still subjective to God. Once again, is it loved by God because it is right? Or is it right because it is loved? If it is the former, then objective morality transcends even God, and according to western monotheism, nothing transcends God. Outside of the context of religion, it lacks definition: what makes it right? If it is the latter, then morality is no longer objective. God becomes the arbitrator of what is right, good, and just.
Pessin writes that any God worth believing in and worshiping will not love and hate certain actions for random reasons. “There must be some reason He loves kind and just actions and hates evil ones like murdering and stealing. And what could that be if not the former actions are morally right and the latter ones not? But this returns us to the first answer and its problems” (9). Plato ultimately concludes, however, that morality, despite the lack of the definitions of goodness and malignity, is independent of God.
This chapter pretty much covered everything I’ve discussed over past posts (I’ve probably used the exact same words at some points), so there wasn’t much to discuss this time around, but personally, it was interesting and enlightening to find out how the second answer Euthyphro’s Dilemma (x is good because the gods love it) is self-contradictory due to the fact that Greek religion celebrated and worshiped many gods. It was just something I’d never thought about before. And the other thing that I hadn’t thought about was that, even if morality was independent of God (which I believe it to be), it still requires a definition that we either haven’t been able to apply or perhaps may never be able to apply.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this second installment and continue to follow me along as I continue reading and discussing my ideas. Please comment, like, and follow me if you enjoy my content!
Answers in Philosophy 
