What Duty? Pat Buchanan looks at the Dobson-Obama flap, and thinks Dobson makes a couple of good points. "At issue: What is Christian truth? Does the true Christian put social peace ahead of his duty to make God’s Law man’s law?"

Indeed, Obama celebrates the Underground Railroad and the abolitionists who, to end slavery, took us over the brink into Civil War. He invokes the defiant marchers of Selma Bridge and Dr. King, who chose confrontation and tore the nation asunder rather than see segregation endure.

Obama, however, is now preaching a kumbaya Christianity where leaders who believe abortion is the killing of the innocent unborn are to set their convictions and cause aside in the name of ecumenical amity.

But what is this "duty" to make "God's Law man's law?" Is it a law to love another, or a law to sow discord and conflict in order to object to the choices other people make? Did Dr. King have a "duty" to call for unprecedented federal intervention in property rights and freedom of association? Does Christian A have a duty to force racist B to kinder to minority C? Or should A just love B and C and do unto them as he would do unto himself?

Does Dr. Dobson have a "duty" to criminalize the killing of the unborn? And if this is accomplished in the U.S.A., do we then have a "duty" to save the unborn in Canada? In China? Why not? A few months ago I was told by a friend that she was pregnant. Even at ninth months it was hardly noticeable. What if she had a miscarriage months before, and never told anyone? It wouldn't have made a difference to anyone else, any more than every time she had sex and didn't conceive. What then would have been the difference to the rest of us if she had an abortion (not that this friend ever would)? To what lengths is The State supposed to go to make sure abortions don't happen, or to prosecute those who perform or procure them?

Frankly, I think social peace is often underrated.

Labels: politics, religion

  3:29 PM permanent link 0 comments

  An Inconvenient Spiritual Abuse I haven't seen Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, but a friend did. This friend was actually expecting to be convinced of the threat of man-made global warming. That is, she assumed it to be true (because that's what we've been told), and was looking forward to the movie presenting actual evidence to back up her belief.

She didn't get the movie she was expecting.

• No evidence was presented that humans were the cause, only assertions.
• Climate change was presented based on the last thousand years, although the earth has been around for 4 billion years and had its share of warming and freezing periods long before man entered the scene, and even since man has been here in the pre-industrial age.
  

My friend admits to getting bored by it and not seeing it all the way through, so she could be wrong. Assuming she isn't, then how in the world are ordinary people supposed to be "convinced" of man-made global warming, if something as well-publicized as An Inconvenient Truth isn't persuasive?

But this failure to be convinced apparently makes my friend worse than a child molester, if an English Bishop is to be believed. From The Birmingham Post:

In a hard-hitting letter to parishioners, Bishop Mursell maintained those who refused to accept the climate change argument shared a 'common philosophy of life' to [Josef] Fritzl, who imprisoned his daughter in a cellar for 24 years during which he sexually abused her and fathered her seven children.

But the question is, why should anyone accept the argument? Because politicians and researchers living off government grants say so? Because your priest says so?

It is people like Bishop Mursell who, by using the issue to enhance their own authority, make the man-made global warming theory less believable. Why believe that man-made global warming exists? "Because WE say so, and WE are credible because of our power and prestige. If you don't agree with what WE say and do as WE command, then you are worse than [insert Hitler, child molesters, or your favorite villain here]."

Saying the same thing over and over again doesn't make it true, and demonizing the unconvinced doesn't actually make them monsters.

What it does suggest, however, is that Bishop Mursell likes to spiritually abuse his parishioners through false comparisons and guilt-manipulation. Perhaps he sees a little bit of Fritzl in his own behavior, and his projecting his self-loathing outward.

Labels: Culture, global warming, religion, science

  12:21 PM permanent link 0 comments

  The Good Intentions of an Ignoramus Almost all of my knowledge is from hearsay, not direct experience. But most of it is reliable. I knew that Manhattan existed before I arrived there on a road trip, and even though I've never been to London I trust it exists on the same kind of reliable testimony that had told me Manhattan exists. The theories that the Earth is a spherical planet and is orbiting the sun, I accept on similar grounds. Everyone else tells me so, as do the books and tv shows. In the same way, I trust that persons I was told existed and events I was told happened did indeed exist and did indeed happen, and that the world today is the Effect of their Cause. I believe this is more reliable wherever there is clear continuity in the record-keeping. It is more believable that U.S. President Millard Fillmore actually lived, than that Moses or Jesus lived as described in the Bible - even though the latter two allegedly accomplished more important things. That's because the existence of Moses and Jesus depend on more remote hearsay evidence; there are definitive records of Fillmore's existence in our federal government's archives, and, presumably, in the archives of the Foreign Offices of foreign countries. In contrast, you have to accept Moses and Jesus on faith, not evidence.

But a lot of what I know amounts to associating names and categories to visual recognition: gold is an element, water is a compound. Chimps and humans are both primates. Housecats and tigers are felines. Wolves and poodles are canines.

And so I am also told that oil from the ground comes from fossils of preexisting life on earth. The Big Bang happened because it makes the most sense, I am told. "Darwinian" Evolution is true because it makes the most sense, I'm told.

Then I'm told that Evolution somehow proves there's no God, as if progression in four-dimensional space-time is the only Reality there is. But then physics tells us there are more dimensions than that, and one wonders if consciousness and creation can't exist in those dimensions, and that some sort of God or spiritual/supernatural force might exist after all.

And then I'm told that Global Warming is real, and then I'm told it's a myth. That it's impossible for the Twin Towers and Building 7 to have fallen as they did according to the official story on Sept 11, and then I'm told it is quite possible for them to fall.

Because I have a lot of Oscar and Super Bowl trivia in my head, I don't see how I'm expected to form an intelligent opinion on these matters. Heck, the only reasons I know it's foolish to microwave a metal plate or drop a radio in the bath is because I've been told about these dangers - I wouldn't know enough to figure them out for myself. On most matters relating to the physical universe, I am an idiot, and have no way of knowing when "respectable" science is corrupted by greed and power, or when "alternative" theories and therapies become too paranoid or cult-like. Is the homeopath selling snake oil? Is the hospital grossly overcharging? How am I supposed to know? And why should I trust the "mainstream" and the "respected" as opposed to the despised and rejected?

I don't know if I'll ever trust my own judgment. Every sound argument for an "established scientific fact" is countered by, to me, an equally persuasive counter-argument. I'm not smart enough to figure it all out, and even if I did have the time and intelligence to get it right on one subject, I wouldn't know enough about other subjects to form an educated opinion.

I do know that what has appealed to me about Christianity and other religions and philosophies is the degree to which they express genuine love and respect for every human being. The more theological and technical their dogma becomes, the more I'm turned off. And that's also why I'm attracted to Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment theories of Constitutionalism, Classical Liberalism, and Libertarianism. They also invoke similar love and respect for every human being, including giving them room to make choices I may disagree with, provided they don't harm anybody else. They don't reduce other people to pawns in ideological struggles, but treat individuals as ends in themselves.

That is why, as much as I would love to kill Mugabe in Zimbabwe, or the junta in Burma, it is simply not my decision to make. Bad as the inflation is in Zimbabwe, and the post-cyclone misery in Burma, an invasion or civil war in either country will probably bring even more suffering. I don't believe it's my call to make, nor is it the call of the U.S. President or Congress.

I'd kill Mugabe and the Burmese junta because I hate them, not because I believe killing them will actually accomplish anything good for the suffering in their countries. Should I act on my hatred, or should I do what I can on behalf of the innocent and helpless? Ideological justice says "Kill the tyrant!" but real justice is motivated by love for the innocent, not hatred for the guilty. In any catastrophe, the poor, the innocent, and the weakest will always suffer most of all. Taking the meek and humble path means that not every one of these will be rescued. But they won't be rescued in any case. Not by authoritarian means. And certainly not by an invasion or civil war.

What I'm saying is that I believe Love is the Ultimate Reality, and the only true God. Though I may err in situations, I hope I never abandon my best intentions.

Labels: Christianity, Culture, health, political theory, religion, science

  8:15 PM permanent link 1 comments

  Don't Blame Britney and Miley This is my latest at the Partial Observer. Excerpt:

By 1997, some Christians decided to boycott Disney because Disney - which was never anything remotely like a Christian company - started to give out same-sex partner benefits to their gay employees. If your business employs large numbers of animators, make-up artists, costume designers, and dancers, this sounds like a sensible business decision. The new generation of Christians, however, demanded "wholesome" entertainment from a "wholesome" company, when their grandparents would have warned that seeking "entertainment" was itself the problem. The very fact that a Christian boycott of Disney was called for was proof-positive that the Old Time Religion had died and the boycott could never work. The real problem was not Disney, but the fact that conservative Christians watched Disney videos and vacationed at DisneyWorld. The problem was not the symptoms of sex, violence, or profanity in the movies, but the disease that Christians caught when they had fallen into the hypnotic trap of mass media and pop culture. They would watch the same television shows as everyone else and, perhaps to a lesser extent, the same movies. They would watch the same sports and the same news programs. They would be swayed to want something they didn't need through advertising. They would be presented with a narrow range of choices in the ballot box, and be told this was "freedom" and "democracy."

Had the old-time Christians been as vehemently against radio, records, and television as they were against cards, alcohol, and shows, conservative Christianity may actually have become a counter-cultural movement today, rather than a whiny, paranoid subculture within the mainstream culture that it has become.

Labels: Britney Spears, Christianity, Culture, Disney, Entertainment, Miley Cyrus, religion

  8:42 AM permanent link

  Sexually Mature, Emotionally Mature It is one thing to have sex with children who are not sexually mature. What about those who are sexually mature, but not considered "emotionally" mature enough to give their consent?

Who's to say they're not emotionally mature, the dominant culture and the laws of the State that the dominant culture produces? What if they're part of a subculture in which physical and emotional maturity coalesce at the same time? In which marriage and the responsibilities of marriages are expected in the teenage years? Why is that culture warped, whereas the culture in which teenagers are treated as "too immature" for sex despite their impulses, and thus do become "too immature" for sex, is assumed to be "normal?"

In The Nativity Story Joseph was depicted as an established, respected adult, whereas Mary was 14 or 15. Their betrothal was considered normal for the time, and Protestants, at least, consider Joseph, this "pedophile," to be a righteous man who is the earthly father/mentor of The Lord Jesus Christ.

(As I understand it, Catholics, apparently, believe that Joseph and Mary never did get it on even after Jesus's birth, because they consider Mary a perpetual virgin and that allusions to Jesus's brothers is a translation that could be interpreted as cousins. This page is vague concerning what this meant for Joseph.)

Christians dismiss this marrying of younger teenage girls as "the culture of the time." It was alright for the earthly father/mentor of The Lord to crave underage girls, but that was way back then. Morals are different today, even though Christians are normally the first to claim that morals are timeless and universal.

So if a religious sect tries to recreate the culture and values that prevailed where Jesus Christ was born, what do these same believers in Jesus Christ do? They (or at least American Christians) would have those people arrested, because in today's culture, sex with "underage" teenage girls is about the most evil thing they can imagine. Torturing Iraqi civilians is okay for them, but a sect in which 15 year-old girls get married? That's inexcusable (except, apparently, for Joseph, earthly father/mentor of Jesus).

I don't want teenage girls to marry. I don't like polygamy. The wives at the El Dorado sect that I've seen are more brain-dead and creepier than the Stepford Wives. I wouldn't want to be a part of that culture, or see children raised there.

But there are lots of cultures that I think are damaging to children. That doesn't mean I have the right to intervene. They're not my children. I believe all custodial rights over children belong to their mothers, and the only reasons to strip mothers of their rights is abuse or neglect. Following a "wrong" or "abusive" belief system doesn't rise to that level. If you think polygamous Mormons should have their rights stripped because of their belief system, perhaps I think you should, too, if I think your belief system is also abusive. Whatever argument you make, you are guilty of the same allegations by somebody else. If you say somebody who makes more money than you is greedy, than I can say the same about you if I make less money than you do. Likewise, if you believe these Fundamentalist Mormon views are quirky, extreme, and dangerous, than I, too could make the same charge against your religious beliefs if I believe they will be similarly dangerous to the status quo.

If the mother is one of many wives, or if the mother has many husbands, that is none of the State's business. If physically immature children are used for sex or in sex rituals, I could see State intervention. But the fact that sexually mature young women in a sub-culture are getting married - at the age they expect to get married by their teachings and upbringing - doesn't seem to me to be a "crime." Especially in a southern state where most people are Christian, and the girls of this sect are marrying at the same approximate age that by all accounts was the age that Mary was betrothed to Joseph.

If "Bible-believing" Christians concede that Mary was just a young girl, and was still young when the marriage to Joseph was consummated, who are they to judge others who today believe it is right and natural for sexually mature young women to get married? Indeed, it seems to me that it is more screwed up to design different ages for sexual maturity and emotional maturity. That might be what we have in this day and age, but it doesn't seem natural. God creates sexual impulses at one age, the maturity to handle them at another age - that is screwed up. Sects and cults that try to right this wrong should probably be encouraged, not obliterated. Otherwise, we will only raise the next generation to be even more sexually neurotic than we are already.

In any case, the initial call against this Fundamentalist Mormon compound appears to be a hoax. So let the children return to their mothers. Children shouldn't be ripped from their mothers to accommodate some aberrant Victorian rule about the "appropriate" age to get married.

Labels: Christianity, Culture, Mormonism, religion, sex

  7:10 PM permanent link 0 comments

  Projection "Bush Putin has eliminated or co-opted all other centers of political influence. There is a puppet legislature, a weak judiciary, and a neutered press. The Evangelical Russian Orthodox Church has become a tool of the state. Symbols of empire and the Cold War Soviet past, including smearing of dissenters as unpatriotic the anthem, have been restored. And, as in Cold War Soviet times, the leadership is constantly telling the people that they are threatened by foreign enemies— Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, and Russia Ukraine, Georgia, the Baltic states, the United States—as well as by internal extremists rebels." - The New Yorker

Everywhere I look, we Americans are saying bad things about the extremism, aggression, or human rights abuses of foreign countries. Meanwhile, at least two of the three leading Presidential candidates are war criminals who support an unprovoked invasion and illegal occupation of Iraq - but people are more angry at the third for being an "elitist," as if that's the bigger crime even if it were true. It's like we project onto others the evil that we don't want to see in ourselves.

Another example of this comes from Martin Marty:

William Franklin Graham famously called Islam a wicked and evil religion, but I don't think he called for its extinction through violence, as in war. Colorado congressman Tom Tancredo, a wild politician, did call for the bombing of Mecca to shatter the Muslim center. Now, Parsley—as in Rod Parsley—is the flavor of the month among the controversial clergy being spotlighted in the camps of the three presidential campaigners. Parsley, pastor of Ohio's mega-est megachurch, twelve-thousand-member World Harvest Church in Columbus, calls for "destroying" Islam.

Parsley is most explicit in his well-selling Silent No More and in broadcasts to large and presumably assenting audiences. While Americans know that some who claim Allah would like to destroy Christian civilization, citizens often overlook the tit-for-tat or tat-for-tit (that is, "who started it?") calls for war from militants on both sides. As reported in Mother Jones (March 12), Parsley says there is a war and he wants bigger war, as America can only "fulfill its divine purpose" by seeing to it that Islam, "this false religion, is destroyed." Though he spells out no specific strategy, he writes things like, "We find now we have no choice. The time has come" to destroy "this anti-Christ religion," inspired by demons who spoke to Allah.

Shall some Muslims be spared—the moderates down the street or anywhere else, for example? No: "mainstream believers" in the "1,209 mosques" in America drink from the same well as do the extremists whom all citizens condemn. Screaming that he does not want to be "another screaming voice moving people to extremes," Parsley has plunged into presidential politics in the hope that he will find policies that will help "destroy" or lead to the "destruction" of Islam, the goal of his war.

It seems to be the most militant and bloodthirsty of Christians who are most condemnatory and afraid of Islam for being militant and bloodthirsty.

People on opposite ends of a conflict often have similar personalities and values - only their dogmatic beliefs are different, and it is the dogma that is the source of the conflict.

If liberal and Christian societies face a threat from Islam - whether through mass immigration or terrorism from extremists - this can be mitigated through defensive measures on our borders and coasts, and in immigration laws. But a Holy War against the world's 1 billion Muslims as a means for the United States to fulfill its "divine purpose?" This is the talk of fanatics. The more influence they have, the more understandable that Iran would want to develop nuclear weapons. The Soviet nuclear deterrence kept the craziest anti-communists from getting elected and pushing the button. With neocon advisers and support from people like Parsley, what is to deter a President McCain from all-out war against Islamic states?

And how would we be any better than the terrorists we claim to be fighting?

Labels: Culture, politics, religion, war

  6:55 AM permanent link 0 comments

  More on The Root of All Evil My The Root of All Evil essay at the Partial Observer provoked some interesting comments. "Reader" and "Henry" extrapolate on some points I only glossed over with a sweeping sentence or two. I am not, however, anti-religion, but I have noticed how certain conceptions and perceptions of religious doctrines have had a negative influence in my own life and, in my judgment, in society generally.

Labels: Culture, Partial Observer, religion

  7:30 PM permanent link 0 comments

  Obama Was Right to Stay I suppose some people are upset about Barack Obama attending a church with a racially hostile preacher because, if a white Presidential candidate attended the church of a segregationist pastor, his career would be over.

I'm guessing that Obama initially chose Trinity Church in part because the networking opportunities would be good for his political career on Chicago's South Side. Should he have left the first time he heard extreme words or hyperbolic rhetoric? Or the hundredth time?

Why should it matter?

Leaving the church would have damaged friendships and created other problems for Obama - personal, and career-wise. White people leave churches in a huff all the time, but I don't think this is so in the black community. And even if one doesn't agree with anything said in the sermons, there are other aspects of church life that can retain a person's loyalty.

And besides, is racial resentment the only form of "hate" that is so un-PC that it deserves separation and public condemnation? What about when preachers announce their support of the war in the pulpit? Or some tax-and-redistribute scheme? Or some law against vice that will throw non-violent people in prison and ruin their lives? Any word from a pulpit that would empower the State is in fact a call for violence and coercion - which are grounded on hate, not love.

Imagine, in 2020, a white Democratic Presidential candidate was found to have attended an ultra-conservative evangelical church. Should he be asked to renounce his longtime pastor because the candidate differed with the pastor on the war? Why would this be different? It seems to me that to support the war is worse than anything Jeremiah Wright says or believes.

Unless your own conscience forces you to withdraw from one church after another because of differences with the pastor, then don't judge Obama. But leaving a church leads to broken friendships, disrupts a child's Sunday School education, and a whole lot of other hassles. It usually isn't worth it.

Labels: Barack Obama, elections, politics, religion

  11:43 AM permanent link 0 comments

  The Root of All Evil This is my latest at the Partial Observer. Excerpt:

The root of all evil is the mind divided against itself. Evil isn't part of nature, it is only an idea that informs our perceptions. Without the knowledge of good and evil, the body, mind, and spirit would be in harmony. We would be as innocent as animals. Indeed, we would be nothing but animals.
[. . .]
This is because we would have no conscious will. We would have no basis for knowing we are at odds with nature - with the external environment, with each other, or and with our own bodies. Therefore, everything we do would be natural, and we could do no evil.

Labels: Culture, Eliot Spitzer, Partial Observer, prostitution, religion

  10:35 PM permanent link 0 comments

  The Way This is my latest at the Partial Observer. Excerpt:

The Way also gives advice for rulers. In essence, it is the same message: leave people alone, leave things alone. Even let one's enemies alone because, as they try to force things, they will self-destruct. There have been subsequent historical examples of this. For instance, the Russians beat Napoleon because they refused to fight his armies head-to-head. The Tao offers plenty of sound advice for absolute monarchs. Indeed, in Chinese culture, the Emperor was viewed as the center around which the country revolved. If he just remained in the "center," and kept his own palace in order, the country would run smoothly. The more the Emperor interfered with the country, the more likely it would break down.

Labels: Partial Observer, Philosophy, political theory, religion

  7:44 AM permanent link

  Four Movies I just saw Gone With the Wind tonight. It seems that Rhett Butler was the only man with a lick of sense in the movie, as he knew from the beginning that the war was futile: (to paraphrase: "They have coal mines, factories, and a navy; the South has slaves, cotton, and arrogance.") Butler spends much of the war as a blockade runner.

The women, on the other hand, seem to have a grasp on the benefits of love and life, plus peaceful, honest commerce, such as in these two scenes (the lines are inexact but close):

Scene 1: Outside of Atlanta army hospital, receiving a donation from a madam:

Melanie: Ten, twenty, fifty dollars! And not our paper money, but GOLD!

Scene 2: The front hall of Tara, Scarlett's father comes through the door with news:

Scarlett's father: The Confederacy has surrendered.

Scarlett's sisters: Why did we ever fight?

Melanie, brightening: Ashley's coming back!

Scarlett, also brightening: Ashley's coming back, and we can grow cotton!

Both scenes cracked me up.

* * * *

The previous night, I saw The Fugitive again, though I've seen it lots of times. What makes the movie great is, of course, Tommy Lee Jones's Detective Gerard and the rest of the U.S. Marshals. Yes, it feeds into nationalist propaganda that federal law enforcement must come in to save the day from incompetent local cops. However, there are worse things for the federal government to be doing than finding fugitives wanted for violent crimes who may cross state lines.

* * * *

The night before, I saw, for the second time, most of Miracle, about the 1980 U.S. Hockey team. Coach Herb Brooks, as played by Kurt Russell, almost comes across as an Objectivist hero, without the philosophical pronouncements. He seems indifferent to the political and economic problems in Cold War America, and seems focused on beating the Soviets simply because it is a tremendous challenge, he's convinced he knows how it could be done, and he insists on doing it his way. As a result, he and his team probably did more to win the Cold War than hundreds of politicians, generals, and economists did the time, because Team USA helped change the cultural dynamics in America, restoring the country's self-confidence.

* * * *

Finally, the night before that, I saw Little Big Man for the first time in a long time. Perhaps the most thoroughly negative portrait of the U.S Cavalry ever caught on film, it showed what warriors are capable of when they don't recognize the humanity in the women and children they slaughter.

Another interesting realization came to me from how Chief Dan George refers to his Cheyenne tribe as "the human beings." He did not mean that others, whether Pawnee, white, or "black white men" were of another species, but rather, perhaps, less-than-fully-developed morally and ethically. Don't most tribes and nations have a word describing themselves the same way, saying "we are the real humans" or "the true race" or something like that?

So anyway, this reminds me of the Book of Genesis. I think it's ridiculous that people these days believe that when it says "God made the heavens and the earth" that the writer meant "the galaxies and the planet earth" rather than merely something along the lines of "the sky and the ground." The creation story may begin at the end of the last Ice Age, in which the "waters" - ice, covered the ground and the sky may have been dark from volcanic ash before "light" finally breaks through. Likewise, what was meant by God making the first man, Adam, was probably not that Adam was the first of the biological species homo sapiens and the father of all, leading to questions like "Did Cain marry his sister?" Rather, my guess is that a biological history was the furthest thing from the writer's mind; of course there were others of the same species around, but not possessing the same spiritual inheritance that made Adam the first "human being" in the sense Chief Dan George uses the term.

This is not to say that Genesis is true or false, but its factualness is more convincing if we don't translate the words literally into today's meanings.

Labels: Culture, movies, religion

  9:00 PM permanent link 0 comments

  The Problem is Nationalism Morality is the status quo, modified to accommodate the wants and needs of you, the individual.

Immorality is changes to the system that seem weird and dangerous to you.

That's another way of saying that everyone has their own prejudices. On an email list, I'm acquainted with a trans-gendered male-to-female who advocates gay marriage, but thinks polygamy is ridiculous. But then there are those who divorce and remarry, yet condemn sex-change operations and homosexuality, even though divorce and remarriage was considered scandalous before no-fault divorce was put into law just one generation ago. Abortion is still resisted in most conservative and moderate Christian quarters, but birth control? Of course it's acceptable and "Biblical," even though the first denomination that proclaimed it acceptable was the Episcopal Church as recently as the 1930's. Sodomy? Heterosexual Christians practice forms of it all the time; for them, only homosexuals are barred. Morality is what I like, not what you like.

Of course, these prejudices in Christians (and many others) don't apply just to sexuality. Every day I read some diatribe from one source or another about the necessity of the "separation of Church and State," usually by someone with an ax to grind with Christianity, not the State. I think they're somewhat confused. I would put it this way: the problem with the secularists is nationalism, and the problem with the Christian Church in America these days is . . . nationalism.

What do I mean by nationalism? That all decisions of right and wrong, and good and bad, and just and unjust, must stem from the federal government in Washington, D.C. Some would say that the seed of this nationalism came in 1933 and the New Deal. Others would say 1913 and the creation of the Federal Reserve. Others might say 1898 and the rise of American Imperialism in the Spanish-American War. And others may cite the surrender at Appomattox in 1865. Yet others may attribute Alexander Hamilton's influence in George Washington's Presidency, or the Constitutional Convention itself. For our purposes, it doesn't matter; for generations now, we've known that The State emanates from D.C.; it is what we know and are accustomed to. It is part of our morality. Nationalism is belief in The State, and The State is not your state, but the federal government.

I would rather live in a society dominated by individuals who believed in a six-day creation but who would leave each other alone, than a society that didn't believe in God but valued "democracy" more than liberty. But the crisis facing us is that the prevailing contest, the "Culture War," the issue dividing liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, is about differing views of The State, i.e., the national government in Washington, D.C. Their disagreements are not about the rights and freedoms of the individual, but rather, the ways in which the individual ought to be subordinate to The State.

And that's because nationalism is part of our "morality." Growing up, we were taught values like democracy and equality and liberty. But nationalism transformed democracy from the town hall meeting and elections for several different offices, to votes for one Representative of Districts with 700,000 residents, two Senators in states averaging six million people, and one Executive for a nation of over 300 million people, who possesses the bulk of the power. Democracy has been transformed into a system in which your vote counts far less than the margin of error.

Equality once meant that the rich guy couldn't be favored over the poor guy, or the white over the black, or the male over the female, in legal disputes. Now it means that a wisecrack at a workplace causes a federal lawsuit. Now it means that if you're black you can sue for discrimination if you don't get what you want, and if you're white, you can sue for "reverse discrimination" for the same reason.

And liberty used to mean that you could do what you please as long as you didn't harm others without their informed consent. Now it means you can do whatever the federal government thinks is good for you, because if you do bad things to yourself, that will, directly or indirectly, affect "interstate commerce" which the federal government has the right to regulate.

Both religious and secular nationalists believe they have every right to kill hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people in other countries to advance their ideals and values across the globe.

What religious people should realize is the degree in which nationalist political beliefs have infected their theology and moral thinking. And secularists should realize that it isn't the Religious Right, but the all-powerful State, that threatens their values. The State is the means of oppression. The more we weaken The State, the more oppression will cease.

Morality and ethics is about individuals, not politics. If the Religious Right would imprison the homosexual, that must be vigorously opposed and condemned. But if the Secular Left would imprison the critic of homosexuality, that must be also be opposed and condemned with equal vehemence. A genuinely liberal society oppresses no one; it does not criminalize non- aggressive behavior, nor does it subsidize anyone else's behavior, or save people from their own irresponsiblity. It favors neither the religious nor the secular.

A free society leaves people alone.

Labels: Culture, political theory, religion

  9:04 PM permanent link 0 comments

  I Want to Lead a Cult When I say that I want to lead a cult, I don't necessarily mean I want to be the Cult Leader, although I could be. The main thing is to be the lead opinion-maker and "police chief" of a movement, and to be the most influential person in the "inner circle" of that movement and enforce its Orthodoxy, even if somebody else is the figurehead.

I want to always be so convinced I'm right that I can, with clear conscience, accuse critics as people with moral failings and bad character.

When we (the Cult Leader and/or the Inner Circle) screw up, we will admit that some mistakes were made, but then focus on accusing the accusers of wanting to destroy the movement.

The substantive criticisms of our organization will be lumped together with the trivial and inaccurate criticisms, so that we can dismiss them all out of hand.

Litmus tests will be given to determine who is really part of the movement, and who is a fraud or heretic. Enthusiastic agreement with the ideals of the movement won't suffice; one must also agree with the particular doctrines and strategic vision of the Inner Circle, which is Orthodoxy. Everyone who disagrees just alittle bit should be treated with suspicion, and those who disagree a little bit more will be branded a heretic.

When others seem to act in ways that contradict their stated ideals, we will dismiss any explanations they may have and call them hypocrites. But when we appear to deviate from our Orthodoxy, we will have perfectly legitimate reasons, so we won't be contradicting ourselves at all.

Okay, so I don't really want to lead a Cult. I don't really want to be so full of myself that I grow blissfully disconnected from reality. But I've seen Cult-like behavior in some otherwise worthwhile movements, and it's possible that even when the figurehead leader is an honorable person, the bullying tactics of his "defenders" end up tarnishing his name and their cause more than their critics ever could.

Labels: Culture, politics, religion

  8:07 PM permanent link 0 comments

  Numbers Some of my out-of-left-field interests led me the other day to this interview with Jake Kotze, whose interest is synchromysticism.

I appreciate many things Kotze says, such as that if humans are part of nature, then human creations are natural, technology is part of nature. And that secret cabals are not a new thing, but have always been with us and are part of who we are. Therefore, we shouldn't "fight" them because we'll never defeat them.

He also said that everything in the universe is made up of exactly the same stuff, with the only difference between things being the ratios of elements in their chemical composition. The word "ratio" came back to me that night when watching Numb3rs. This particular episode involved a criminal who apparently had some the mystical view of numbers, much to the chagrin of the mathematician-consultant trying to figure him out.

But it is numbers - differences in chemical composition - that distinguish one thing from something else. More over, every thought we have boils down to some form of counting or ranking. And Marko Rodin borrowed from numerology to show how energy expresses itself mathematically.

Perhaps numbers don't represent or describe reality. Perhaps numbers are reality.

This makes me wonder if the universe wasn't "created" like an artist with clay, or designed as an architect plans a building, or built like a watch, but rather programmed like a computer. And if so, whether sentient beings will one day be able to create their own universe with a computer. If that's the case, who's to say we're not living in a computer simulation ourselves?

Labels: occult, religion

  8:53 AM permanent link 0 comments

  The Awful Truth I recently read an interesting book, The Awful Truth, by Patrick Conway. Interesting but frustrating; in the free downloadable version of the book, I couldn't find the footnotes (or endnotes), which are necessary to provide evidence for the argument.

Which is this: the ideological divide today exists because both sides (atheists/Darwinists on one side, religionists on the other) have failed to come to terms with the demise of ancient civilizations and the loss of knowledge. Conway's argument is that events in ancient histories (from Homer to the Bible) are more or less literally true, that is, that human beings literally interacted with advanced extra-terrestrial beings (gods). Ancient civilizations from Rome to Mexico were under control of Satan (an alien "god"), their rulers were demi-gods and the descendants of demi-gods, and human beings were slaves of these gods and kept in ignorance of their amazing secrets. It seems that only the people of Israel were ruled by God Almighty with fully human law-givers and rulers, but the Hebrew prophets were not merely "inspired," they were being told what was going on and what was going to happen.

As prophesied by the prophets, by John the Baptist, Jesus, and the Apostles, the Apocalypse really did happen with the destruction of Jerusalem's temple in AD 70 (the Ark of the Covenant has been lost since that time) with testimony of supernatural armies in the sky reported by respected sources like Josephus. Conway goes further than Christians who believe in fulfilled prophesy (called preterists, pantelists, transmillenialists), alleging that everyone who was "saved" to be with Christ, living and dead, were literally raised up that time and that modern Christianity is a concoction of those "left behind" who apparently had joined the then-Church for worldly reasons and gained access to the gospel accounts and epistles.

But on the whole, this is still "good news." Because, at the same time, Satan himself was destroyed, along with his hold on ancient civilization. Indeed, the new Roman Emperor who reluctantly oversaw the destruction of the Temple, Vespasian, was of humble origin and made no claim of his own divinity. Elsewhere, the descendants of demi-gods started to die off, leaving ignorant humans, who had no practical knowledge of architecture and astronomy - and therefore no use for the civilizations that once controlled them - no choice but to leave their once-majestic cities in ruins. Meanwhile, the God Almighty who destroyed Satan also abandoned the Earth in AD 70, not because he hates us but because he liberated us and has faith in us to govern ourselves. It's just taking us a couple of thousand years to figure it out.

But instead of being enslaved by the demi-gods of Satan, we are instead enslaved by false beliefs. First, there are the false claims of Judeo-Christianity, saying that the prophesies have been delayed and absurd moral claims pertaining to sexuality. Second, there is the backlash against monotheistic religion that is atheistic evolution; Conway claims there is no evidence in nature of evolution and that human beings, clearly out of harmony with the planet Earth, must be an alien race. He also blames Darwin's theories for the Holocaust.

Lacking access to the footnotes where I could investigate some dubious claims (you get what you pay for, I guess), I'd say that Conway's argument holds together pretty well. His polemical commentary on then-contemporary politics (ca 1998) are a tad too socially conservative and misguided from my own point of view. But he provides a good meta-narrative to explain both the existence of the Left and Right, and also what he considers as false the premises of both sides. Too many people have too much invested emotionally and financially with one side or another, or with trying to accommodate both sides even though both are false.

But perhaps this is a phase we too will be liberated from. The progress of technology, which has no axe to grind like atheism does, goes to show our potential to equal the achievements what "the gods" achieved in ancient times.

Conway's most effective in the passages where he challenges the concept of a personal God and answered prayer. No living monotheistic cleric of the Abraham tradition would make the claims and follow through as Elijah did, and even if he tried, he would fail and then make excuses. That's because, unlike with Elijah, the personal access to God is just not there. Conway is also great at mocking the idea that ancient wonders like Stonhenge or the Pyramid at Giza were constructed through levers and pulleys, were merely monuments, and that any alignments they had with the sun, moon, stars, and Earth's own geography were purely coincidental. The more one learns about the Pyramid, the more this conventional "history" insults one's intelligence.

I think that in our electro-magnetic universe we can't possibly have all the answers. If the guy at Coral Castle in Florida had it figured out, why can't other people? Why was it necessarily alien "gods" who created ancient civilizations? From another point of view we can ask, with visions and/or actual UFO and alien sitings being so prevalent over the past sixty years, who's to say that the "gods" haven't come back to, I don't know, correct things? Or make things worse?

Then again, is space travel by even advanced races beyond the speed of light possible? Do the aliens visit us only through telepathic visions? Some portal from an unknown dimension? Or are they only in our own heads? Or is Darwin right? Or the orthodox Christians, Jews, or Muslims? Or adherents to Eastern beliefs? Did the Apocalypse indeed happen in AD 70 specifically so that we could experience God as an energy, a life-force found within us rather than through factual claims taught to us?

And are you so convinced of your belief about any of this that you would feel justified in harming another person to defend or advance it?

In any case, books like Conway's, although they may overreach in their explanations, do provide a necessary fresh perspective on the way we live. Even if it doesn't change our beliefs, a book that causes us to look upon things in a new way can be quite beneficial.

Labels: Culture, Philosophy, politics, religion

  8:08 PM permanent link 1 comments

  Is War Worth It? Jon Rowe has some good insights on "Libertarian Christianity" in his blog post James Antle's Reason book review of Andy Olree's book The Choice Principle: the Biblical Case for Legal Toleration. Write Rowe:

I think a larger point we could glean is that the Bible is consistent with classical liberalism. And modern conservatism, liberalism, and libertarianism all in some way originate from and conform to the tenets of liberal democracy. As Francis Fukuyama once put it, we are all liberal democrats now. With clever hermeneutics, the Bible can, in some way, read to comport with liberalism, conservatism, and libertarianism.

However,

Paul was telling believers to obey, not some "Godly" ruler, but the pagan psychopath Nero, whose government "permitted abortion and prostitution while funding forms of idolatry." Romans 13 hardly supports the Christian Nation fraud or Dominionism, as some inaptly suggest. Indeed, given the threshold that Paul sets for obeying governments, arguably almost all revolts against civil magistrates would be forbidden. And this is exactly what the Tory ministers argued during the Revolutionary war.

Therefore,

I stand by my contention that the Tories' anti-revolt position was every bit as "biblical," if not more so than our Whig Founders' who, at times, clearly "played games" with biblical texts to justify revolt.

I'm inclined to agree. For both the Roman-Jewish Wars (of which Christians could certainly have been tempted to resist the Emperor and restore Jerusalem's independence), the Revolutionary War and Lincoln's War, there are three questions that could be asked:
1) Under what terms (particularly, legal conditions of a compact, covenant, or Constitution) does a party have a right to secede from the whole (remembering in these cases that the war was not to overthrow the ruler and take charge of all his dominions, but to allow one people of one part of the empire to secede from it)?
2) Even if secession is legally justified, is it morally and pragmatically justified?
3) Even if the rebels are "wrong," is the expense in treasure and bloodshed worth the effort, i.e., is it morally and pragmatically justified to suppress them?

The question for both sides comes down to: is war worth it?

For those who believe that the New Testament is primarily a book of moral and theological lessons for us today (personally, I think it's primarily a book of prophesy about the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70), I would suggest it is unseemly for a Christian to take up arms against his rulers (unless, perhaps, his home is attacked by them), but it is also unseemly for a Christian to take up arms on behalf of his ruler for any purpose other than defense.

After all, it wasn't wars of secession or wars of national unification that finally destroyed what was once called Christendom, it was World War I.

Nobody comes out ahead in a war, and most people lose quite a bit. It was wise of Paul to tell Christians to "stay out of it" and it is still good advice.

Labels: libertarianism, religion

  9:09 AM permanent link 0 comments