Love, The Leap of Faith

I have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ through his Holy Church.

The Church is not a barrier or a mediator between me and God.  Rather, there is One mediator between God and Man, the Man Jesus Christ (1 Timothy 2:5).

The Church is the Body of Christ and Christ is her head.

The Church is also the Bride of Christ.

Marriage imagery is used extensively in both the Old and New Testaments to describe the relationship between God and His people.  God is the Bridegroom.  His people are His Bride. 

Faithfulness is enjoined upon the participants in this Holy Matrimony, this Matrimonial Covenant.

Unfaithfulness to God is Adultery.  Israel was oftentimes likened to an unfaithful wife, an adulteress, and even a prostitute. 

God told the prophet Hosea to marry a promiscuous woman and have children with her.  This was to be a representation of God’s marriage covenant with His unfaithful people Israel.

Human marriage, therefore, is a type and a sign—a shadow—of the true marriage between God and His Holy people, His bride.

Jesus constantly referred to himself as the Bridegroom.  When asked by some Pharisees why his disciples did not fast like the Baptist’s disciples, Jesus answered them, “Can you make the friends of the bridegroom fast while he is with them?”

For you see, the Christian religion is not primarily adherence to a creed or set of beliefs.  The religion of Christ is primarily a relationship with a person—the person of God.  That relationship is a love affair.

What proof is a man able to offer his fiancé of his love for her prior to their getting married?  Can he prove that he’ll be forever faithful?  Can he prove to her that he loves her more than anyone else?  Isn’t it rather a leap of faith?  Sure couples can give each other motives of credibility.  A man can make it credible through his actions and by his words that he loves her, that he can be faithful, and that he can be trusted.  But what proof is any of that of his real feelings or his future intentions? 

A woman can’t know on her wedding day that the man she’s marrying will love him in fifty years and yet on the day of the marriage a man and woman promise to love each other for the rest of their lives. Can they believe those promises?  Do they mean to keep them?  How can they KNOW how they’ll really fell about each other in fifty years, in forty years, or even in five years?  Both are incapable of proving the truth of what they say to each other and yet they still believe.

The faith a woman has in the love of her husband is like the faith we have in the love of Christ and our own love must reflect that love.  The things of faith aren’t any more verifiable than the things of love and yet we DO LOVE.  Many of us have chosen to make that leap of faith in our human relationships when positive proofs were impossible.  When promises had to do. 

How much greater; how much more trustworthy, the promises of God?

God is Love

Jesus, who is God, said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”

The seeker after Truth, then, is also the seeker after Love.  Truth is not merely something we know.  It is SOMEONE we love.

So the Church—“religion”—doesn’t stand between me and my relationship with God.  The Church IS my relationship with God.  Through the Church I’m grafted in to the body of Christ and given a share in his divinity.  2 Peter 1:4

I could no more leave the Church than I could leave my wife.  And my marriage doesn’t stand between me and my relationship with my wife.  IT IS the relationship I have with my wife. 

And so is the Church the relationship I have with God.  And it is as intimate as it could possibly be while I’m clothed in mortal flesh and surrounded by corruption.  Through the Church I touch Christ, I taste Christ, I drink in Christ.  I speak to Christ and Christ speaks back.  I spend time with Christ reading in silence and talking with him.

What greater relationship with Christ—with God—could I hope to have before I go to join Him in Heaven?  In the words of Walker Percy, “What else is there?”  In the words of St. Peter, “To Whom else shall we go?”

Materialism and the Evil of Slavery

It has been suggested to me that the president ought not to take his spiritual views into the White House.  Or that the president ought not to make his spiritual views a factor when making policy decisions.  But upon what basis is he to make decisions? Based upon material considerations?

The principle that I ought to treat others as I would like to be treated is not a material principle but a moral one.  This moral principle has both a subject and an object.  Any being for whom the obligation imposed by the principle can be said to constitute a duty is the subject. And the end towards which the duty is directed is the object.

If the object is spiritual than the spiritual views of the subject must somehow be involved.  And if we’re agreed that this principle is a good principle and we don’t wish the President to disregard it when he enters the White House than he has to take his spiritual views along with him as well. 
 
I propose in what follows to show that this moral principle—namely, that others ought to be treated as we would like to be treated—is the only rational motive for actually opposing slavery and then only if its object is spiritual and not material.  And that, thus, if Lincoln had kept his spiritual views out of the White House he’d have had no motive for opposing the injustice of slavery.

“Why ought we to treat other as we ourselves would like to be treated?”

We have a material object in mind if it’s to avoid friction in our relations with other people and to engender good will from them.  So do we treat others as we would like to be treated because we see others as valuable beings in their own right or do we value them simply for what we can get out of them?  Does my neighbor have any real value other than his value to me?  And if I think he does, in what does that value consist?  Because from just a material point of view his value can be measured in three ways; by the value I (or society) ascribe to the physical material of his body, to the services he can perform, or to the goods he can produce.  A child who can perform no valuable service nor produce any valuable goods is thus worth less than $1.00 at a given moment in time.  Any other material value we might chance to ascribe to the child is based on our calculation of the estimated value of his or her future contributions.

Material objects don’t have an intrinsic value—their value is purely subjective.  If we wish at all to ascribe an intrinsic value to persons we must therefore see them as something more than material objects—as subjects.  But on the other hand if we wish to see persons as nothing but material objects than we have no ground for ascribing to them any intrinsic value. 

So if we think persons have value just because they’re persons we’re admitting a belief (a spiritual view) that persons are not just material objects.  And that may seem like a good enough place to stop.  But the wish to ascribe to persons an intrinsic value does no good unless we can know what a person is. 

If “person” is merely a word used to describe something that possesses certain randomly chosen attributes or abilities, the exact number and quality of which being open to serious and interminable debate, then the question of who is and who is not a person can’t be answered by scientific inquiry upon material facts alone because in that case the material facts themselves are the object of the debate.  Rather than being something “knowable” and attached to individual natures, i.e. “what things are in and of themselves”, personhood would only be an arbitrary distinction made by those whose position of authority enables them to decide for everyone else the attributes by which “personhood” can be known.

And so if personhood is extrinsic, that is “on the outside”, than whatever real value an individual has is only a value in relation to other people. 

Since the individual himself has no value apart from the group than it is the group itself which much be credited with the ultimate value.  As a necessary consequence the individual is expendable to the degree that he, by his actions or by his existence causes the aggregate value of the group to diminish.  (The aggregate value of the group we shall call the “common good”)

Thus no defense remains to those who wish to keep all but material considerations out of government but who wish nevertheless to uphold the intrinsic value and dignity of the individual person.  For if both a person’s value and their status as a person is due to immaterial considerations than material considerations alone will not be sufficient to govern persons effectively—or, shall we say, equitably. 

Even if you agree with all I’ve said above, you may still wish to object that individual value could be recognized by a government relying on solely material considerations as a matter of simple justice.  But justice considered in just its material effects is really just a demand for fairness.  It’s nothing more than the belief that two like things ought to be treated alike.  But why ought that to be the case?  If the common good is the only measure of individual value, then if it’s better for the common good that like things be treated differently than that’s what ought to be done.  It may not be fair to the individual but it’s right so far as the interests of the group are concerned and is thus “fair” on that basis for the individual as well.

So also if in the time of Abraham Lincoln the common good demanded that a disenfranchised minority be held in slavery for the benefit of the majority than that’s what ought to have been done.  It may well have been to the material advantage of the United States to permit the “keeping of slaves”.  But what happened as a matter of history was that the spiritual view of great numbers of Americans enabled them to recognize the immaterial, intrinsic value of black people as persons apart from their utility.  Consequently they were able to take upon themselves the duty of treating other persons as they would like to be treated and they could do it for the sake of something higher and better than what they themselves could get out of it—for something other than material considerations.  Only by embracing this spiritual view could hundreds of thousands of men and women risk life, limb, and property for the liberation of a persecuted few without any hope or expectation of getting anything in return.  Only by virtue of a spiritual view could the love that compels a man to lay down his life for his enemies as well as his friends take root, blossom, and find expression.

Because if human reason is confined to material facts it can make judgments of public policy and matters of life and death only on the basis of expediency, efficiency, convenience or comfort.  And the near universal belief that slavery is actually wrong cannot be defended under such limitations.  If a man’s value is to be judged by the same standards as a horse or any other beast of burden than he may be compelled to work under the same conditions.  A man’s life would be judged not of value but of waste.

It could not therefore have been material considerations but the spiritual views of Abraham Lincoln that helped lead finally to the end of a great evil that might otherwise have been endured for decades longer.

In the comments section of a friend's Facebook post concerning marriage and the Catholic Church I quoted some of what Gandhi had said in the 1930's and 40's about contraception.  I do not include any of that exchange or make references to the people involved simply because I have not asked their permission.  I take my argument outside the arena because Facebook is such a poor venue for carrying on a debate about serious subjects.  This explanation is for those who happen upon this post without the benefit of context.

First, this is what I quoted from Gandhi:

“Contraception is a dismal abyss, an insult to womanhood, inconsistent with her dignity.”

He said its widespread use would be “likely to result in the dissolution of the marriage bond and result in free love.” Contraception, ...Gandhi said, is “like putting a premium on vice, making man and woman reckless . . . it will be the undoing of man.”

On Human Sexuality, The Church, and Gandhi

The Church’s stand on certain issues relating to human sexuality is often mocked and ridiculed by the cynics who credit to her leadership nefarious motives at every opportunity.  Oscar Wilde said, “The cynic knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.”  I just hope consideration may be given to the possibility that the Church’s doctrines are not inspired by nefarious motives but rather are the outgrowth of a genuine love for the whole human family and an authentic desire to heal its ills?  That’s been her stated motivation in the 2000 years since her foundation in any case.  The claim that the Church may really know what ails us might possibly be true as well.  So might the remedy she prescribes.  After all, the illness consuming humanity has received the same diagnosis by those outside of the Catholic Church.  Humanity has been given a second opinion, as it were.  It was in this connection that I quoted Gandhi.

If Gandhi was wrong about the dangers of cheap and medically reliable contraception leading to the greater degradation of women, the further profanation of sex, and the continued debasement of humanity as we become more and more the slaves of our primal biological urges; then maybe Gandhi was wrong about war and passive resistance.  Or maybe, if he was only right about contraception for his time and for his culture he was only right about the evils of violence and war for his own time and culture, too.  Maybe wars—even wars of naked aggression—really ARE the answer, at least sometimes and for some people.   And who’s to say otherwise?  But on the other hand if Gandhi was right about non-violent resistance and civil disobedience than maybe he was also right about contraception and the proper attitude towards sex.  Because after all, both aspects of his philosophy are derived from the same source and if one is wrong the other’s likely wrong as well.


http://ia600200.us.archive.org/23/items/conquestofself031976mbp/conquestofself031976mbp.pdf

It’s also been asserted that in times past both the common man and his religious leaders could have sex with whichever women they wanted, regardless of consent, and without consequence.  But an attempt is made to correct for such injustices to the extent that marriage forces a man to assume the duties of responsible fatherhood.  After all, biological necessity has not bequeathed to men an obligation to the children that they cause to come into the world.  But women are faced by a biological necessity with either the responsibility of caring for their children or the responsibility for choosing not to.  Women cannot just walk away, even in our advanced day and age.  (As an aside, abortion is in fact not the abdication of all responsibility however much it may be presented that way.  It is in reality to take on a much graver responsibility than the care of any child in love would have possibly demanded.) 

I do not believe that the union of husband wife is of human institution, but from the merely human point of view marriage can be  seen as the consequence of a recognition that the right to one’s children comes with duties and obligations, the fulfillment of which society has a right to demand. 

And it has been helpfully pointed out that sex has value beyond its procreative function (or aspect).  Indeed that is the Church’s position as well.  But in saying that sex has a value beyond its procreative aspect it’s admitted that conception is nevertheless one of the aspects of sex with the unitive being the other.  Both aspects together form the “whole sex”. 

The story is told of three men each asked to wear a blindfold and put their hands against a certain object.  The first feels rough, cold, and hard.  The second feels soft, smooth, and flexible.  And the third feels short, thin, and hairy.  We know the object being felt is an elephant.  Each man, though, knows the elephant only in a single aspect, the first a knee, the second the trunk, and the third, the tail.  But the whole elephant is not just one of its aspects singly apart from all the others.  Nor is the elephant whole if it’s missing one of its aspects no matter how inconsequential.

And so sex—the WHOLE SEX—consists in ALL of its aspects together and not any one taken apart from the others.  Sex is about pleasure and the union between husband and wife and that union is, by nature, intended to be fruitful. SEE NOTE  If an obstacle is imposed, the intention of which is to block any of those aspects (female genital mutilation as practiced in some African countries being an example of an attempt to separate one aspect—pleasure—from the whole), then real violence has been done to the whole nature of sex. 

Neither is this just “what the Church teaches”, as I hoped to show by quoting Gandhi.  That sex contains multiple aspects, each of which being necessary for the fulfillment of the whole, may be arrived at by natural reason, by the analogy of hunger and the food appetite, for instance (which analogy I'll draw out in another place).

NOTE By “nature” I mean what something is in-and-of-itself.  For example, it’s the nature of an eagle to be a flying creature and an eagle is an eagle whether it actually flies or not.  That is to say that the part of the eagle’s nature which it is to fly need not be realized in act and, indeed, if the eagle has been born lame in one of its wings it cannot fly.  But it remains an eagle just as much as the eagle that does fly.  The lame eagle holds its ability to fly in potential.  So if what is roughly equivalent to “wings” in the sexual faculty of husband and wife has been lamed in one or the other spouses, the sexual act still holds its fruitfulness in potential.  And because there has been no deliberate attempt by either partner to frustrate that potential (or destroy it) the nature of the act remains just what it would be in the fullness of health and virility.

Unequal Diversity

SELECTED QUOTES FROM “College Becomes First to Ask Applicants’ Sexual Orientation” by Josh Voorhees on Slate.com.

“A private college outside of Chicago has begun asking potential students about their sexual orientation in a move the school says is aimed at increasing campus diversity.”

“those who answer ‘yes’ may be eligible for a scholarship worth up to one-third of the cost of tuition”

“‘Increasing diversity is part of our mission statement,’ said Gary Rold, the school's dean of admissions. ‘This is simply closing the loop, in many ways, of another group who has a very strong identity. It may not be race and religion but it’s an important part of who they are.’”

“...At Dartmouth College, for example, students can check boxes of activities that might interest them, including LGBT-centered activities. At the University of Pennsylvania, students who write in their application essay that they are gay can be paired with a mentor.”

FROM “College Becomes First to Ask Applicants’ Sexual Orientation” by Josh Voorhees on Slate.com.

http://slatest.slate.com/posts/2011/08/25/elmhurst_college_lgbt_school_becomes_first_to_ask_directly_about.html


MY COMMENTARY

Is this really what's meant by "increasing diversity"? Of course people should be exposed to a range of people, ideas, and beliefs that are different from what they might consider “normal”, but why is exposure to this sort of diversity particularly encouraged—with scholarships and other special treatment (mentors, etc.)!!!—and other sorts of diversity are actually DIScouraged, either directly or indirectly, in public institutions around the country. Myriad examples could be easily found of colleges actively discouraging politically conservative or traditional Christian points of view from being freely expressed. But whatever. My point is, homosexuality is a sexual preference. It isn’t a political or ideological belief, it isn’t an ethnicity, and it isn’t necessarily a culture. People with homosexual tendencies can be found in EVERY culture, class, ethnicity, and as adherents to every religion. How can the inclusion of a particular “group” be increasing diversity when that group is itself almost infinitely diverse. What are you really adding to the diversity equation when you add people whose only difference from other people is a slightly greater-than-average propensity to engage in a particular behavior that is by no means exclusive to that group? And isn’t the contrary point of view, that including homosexuals “as a group” increases legitimate diversity, a capitulation to unfair and inaccurate group stereotypes?

Granted that personal interaction with people who have homosexual tendencies increases acceptance of people with homosexual tendencies generally, can’t we also grant that personal interaction with people holding to beliefs and ideologies different from our own increases acceptance of those persons as well? And if we grant that, shouldn’t more of an effort be made by those in charge of our institutions of higher learning to diversify the points of view being expressed than the sorts of behaviors students engage in or the manner in which those students might self-identify? Let everyone self-identify as LGBT but let there be a diversity of views being freely expressed and openly entertained without prejudice or ridicule and you will have done much more to increase real diversity.

And despite more than a decade of pointing out the insular political and ideological nature of most US campuses and news rooms there has been no such comparable effort to increase diversity in categories of belief or political point of view. And isn’t it at least possible that the current sharp divisions in the US between right and left are due, at least in part, to the fact that people who hold different views aren’t as likely to come into direct personal contact with each other as they might have been at earlier times in our history?

Click on the below link to see an interesting take on Politicians:


http://tv.nationalreview.com/uncommonknowledge/post/?q=ZmQ0OTNkNTk1YzZjYzE4MGNlZmNkM2JhYWI4MGRmM2M=

With What Dignity

In 1920 G.K. Chesterton published some sketches he had made of his impressions while on a trip to Jerusalem.

In one section he writes:

"If there be one thing, I think, that can safely be said about all Asia and oriental tribes, it is this: that if a married woman wears any distinctive mark, it is always meant to prevent her from receiving the admiration or even the notice of strange men. Often it is only made to disguise her, sometimes it is made to disfigure her. It may be the masking of the face as among the Moslems; it may be the shaving of the head as among the Jews; it may, I believe, be the blackening of the teeth and other queer expedients among the people of the Far East. But it is never meant to make her look magnificent in public; and the Bethlehem wife is made to look magnificent in public. She not only shows all the beauty of her face; and she is often very beautiful. She also wears a towering erection which is as unmistakably meant to give her consequence as the triple tiara of the Pope. A woman wearing such a crown, and wearing it without a veil, does stand, and can only conceivably stand, for what we call the Western view of women, but should rather call the Christian view of women. This is the sort of dignity which must of necessity come from some vague memory of chivalry. The woman may or may not be, as the legend says, a lineal descendant of a Crusader. But whether or not she is his daughter, she is certainly his heiress.

(Picture of Bethlehem women, late 19th Century)

"…The black dress of the Moslem woman and the white dress of the Christian woman are in sober truth as different as black and white. They stand for real principles in a real opposition; and the black and white will not easily disappear in the dull grey of our own compromises. The one tradition will defend what it regards as modesty, and the other what it regards as dignity with passions far deeper than most of our paltry political appetites."

In another place in his book "The New Jerusalem", Chesterton writes, "On the road to Cairo one may see twenty groups exactly like that of the Holy Family in the pictures of the Flight into Egypt; with only one difference. The man is riding on the ass."

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It's obviously true that Western Christian culture has become less Christian. And to the degree that it has become less Christian, it has become less human and therefore less humane. This isn't a recent phenomenon. I would say that Western culture has been becoming steadily less Christian for the last four or five centuries after having become increasingly Christian during the previous millennium-and-a-half.

I’m sure that many will disagree with the assertion that our culture has become less humane as it’s become less Christian. And I’m sure that the great atrocities committed or commanded by Christians during the so-called Christian era or “dark ages” will be cited as evidence. But surely these great atrocities are the exceptions that prove the rule. If they weren’t exceptions, marked in black against a much broader background, how would we be able to recognize them as the atrocities they really were.

It might be argued that we have become more humane in our punishment of criminals since the decline of Christian influence began in our culture. But is hanging a man for murder or chopping off his head for rape really less humane than subjecting him to modern conditions in a federal or state prison? I think it’s quite possible to believe that neither is humane—at least that one may not be less inhumane than the other.

Or maybe it’s the horrifying treatment that Africans received at the hands of a confessedly Christian people that could be held to refute what I’m trying to say. But the worst of what we, as a culture, have done to native and indigenous peoples has been done well after the Enlightenment—the so-called “Age of Science and Reason”—was already well under way.

But it isn’t what people have or haven’t done or even what they wanted to do. The point is what motivated them. What basic beliefs about themselves and the world defined their ideas about their own dignity as human persons and the dignity owed to the rest of God’s creation.

Our post-Christian culture has shown an appalling lack of discernment when it comes to being able to recognized the true value and dignity of God’s creatures. This lack of discernment, a creeping and penetrating blindness, has caused us to become less humane.

As we look out on contemporary life in Western culture, we see what appears on the surface to be greater equality and opportunity and greater latitude to express our freedoms and choose our own beliefs. But I think the slaves of Athens and Rome were more capable or recognizing their own dignity and the dignity of those around them than the richest and most educated citizens of today’s democracies.

At one time in the history of the world, one nation proclaimed the value and dignity of mankind in this way:

"What is mankind that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned with him glory and honor. You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet." (Psalm 8)

If a fundamental aspect of one’s system of belief is that humankind has been “crowned with glory and honor” and given dominion over the works of God’s hands, one is probably likely to be particularly impressed with this idea that a little halo of divinity surrounds the head of even the poorest and meanest of human individuals.

The laws of the children of Israel even provided for the dignity of livestock in the way they were treated. Like people, animals were accorded one day in seven to rest from their labor and were even entitled to their labor's fruits. (Exodus 20:10; Deuteronomy 25:4; Exodus 23:11) And the proper slaughtering of animals for food and other purposes was designed to be as painless and honorable for the animals as possible.

Quite often in both the Old and the New Testaments we are treated to an idealization of the shepherd’s loving protection of his herd as a type of God’s loving care for his people.

The honor and dignity afforded the daughters of Israel in their laws and in the stories of their heroines and prophetesses was even more comprehensive. And Christianity, where it has actually been practiced, has afforded women an equal dignity with men as living souls created in the image and likeness of their creator.

Rather than being considered the “property” of their fathers or husbands, wives and daughters were recognized as persons who, like the men in their families, had limits imposed upon them by their obligations and responsibilities. “Freedom”, in the misguided and irrational sense by which we understand that word in contemporary society, simply didn’t exist for anyone. And while it remains true even today that men may hold positions of honor that women are prohibited from holding for no reason other than that they are women, it is nevertheless true that women are and have always been held in the same honor as men.

The picture of the Bethlehem wives and the homage paid to them by Chesterton is an illustration of the special place afforded women in Christianity.

But it will be said that where absolute equality of opportunity is denied true equality of dignity cannot possibly exist but that’s a gross misunderstanding of both equality and dignity. A demand for equality that fails to recognize or respect a person's real dignity is no equality at all. It is an equality-of-opportunity that is impotent to achieve equality-of-results. It misjudges the nature of equality and confuses it with "sameness". To indiscriminately treat things that are equal as if they were the same is an abuse of the things inherent dignity.

To illustrate the point, in the created order it would be as far beneath the dignity of an animal to be treated the same as a human as it would be beneath the dignity of a man or woman to treat an animal like a human. It is a confused attempt at equality based on a misunderstanding about sameness that devalues as completely as it indignifies.

Quite simply, the nature of things in and of themselves demands that they be treated with the honor, respect, and dignity that is specifically due to them.

It's my contention that in our attempt to realize greater equality we have instead reduced everything to an unnatural sameness and that we have done so to our detriment. Instead of recognizing and celebrating the differences that permit individuals to retain their particular dignity and worth we have chosen to see everything as intrinsically identical with the effect that the highest dignity to be afforded anything is usually the lowest available for everything. And what follows is the denigration and abuse of humans and animals alike.

Anyway, this might explain the modern habit of packing humans as well as livestock in the smallest possible spaces that economy will allow while throwing dignity out of the window.

(By a coincidence, I noticed the following story on The New Republic’s web site Wednesday morning about overcrowding in America’s prisons: http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/89575/prison-overcrowding-brown-plata-supreme-court-california?page=0,1)

Time To Reform Immigration - For All The Right Reasons

The debate about anchor babies and the 14th Amendment is a stupid debate to be having. The debate needs to be about comprehensive immigration reform.
It's very, VERY unfortunate that Republicans aren't willing to HAVE that debate since they could be having it on their own terms.

Republicans claim to be the party of family values and traditional marriage. Well, one of the great evils of our current system is that it provides an incentive for thousands of people to game the system by making a sacrilege and a mockery of marriage. If that was the only evil this would be enough of a reason for Republicans to make immigration reform a top priority.

Unfortunately, that ISN'T the only evil.

Under the current system, good, hard working people with traditional family values who would strengthen the fabric of American life and society are second to people with resources, connections, and a willingness to do the bare minimum necessary to maintain legal status. What I mean is that people without resources or connections but who are good, healthy, hard-working people have less of a chance to stay in this country and share in the American Dream than some lazy good-for-nothing who happens to have money and a sponsor. Our current system is a fertile soil for crime and corruption, for bribes, blackmail, and oppression.

Republicans need to start seeing the practical value--if not the intrinsic moral worth--of embracing immigrants and immigration reform. Failure to do so will definitely be detrimental to the Republican party's prospects and the very health of American Society long-term.

Calling into question the legitimate status of citizens on dubious Constitutional grounds is a big, big mistake.

Christmas Musing

Jesus Christ, God’s Word, is the Truth, DIRECTLY.

Christianity causes one to face the Truth directly;
And so it can cause one to turn from Truth AS directly.

That is the greatest danger inherent in God’s Word;
That man, once faced with the Truth, may reject it the most completely.
Every little bit of it,
And start talking the most complete nonsense.

And by the way,
The English Language is losing its soul.

Against the Moral Theorizing of Sam Harris

When I first saw Sam Harris’ most recent appearance on “The Daily Show” with Jon Stewart, I wanted to respond. I had first become aware of the existence of Sam Harris in 2006 when Ryan sent me an article from Newsweek entitled “The New Naysayers”.

A couple of weeks after I saw the Daily Show interview I happened to see a clip of Bill Maher and this led to a discussion with Ryan regarding Bill Maher’s and Sam Harris’ peculiar brand of moral elitism in which I mentioned the interview and his new book, “The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Values”. Since I hadn’t read the book (and still haven’t), the information I used in the discussion about Sam Harris’ theory about a scientific basis for morality was at that time entirely from the Daily Show interview. After the conversation, I wanted to learn more about Sam Harris’ theory and to that end I found Sam Harris’ TED speech. What follows is a response to both the Daily Show interview and the TED speech, both of these were afterward supplemented by several reviews I read of Harris’ book from an Atheist point of view.

***************************************

Morals concern what one ought to do in a given situation; how one ought to behave. The question is, why ought one to do one thing rather than another?

Therefore, the word “ought” is most often found with “if” or “because”, as in, “I ought to do this if…” or, “We ought to do this because…”

By one rationale (the most common rationale among secular non-religious people) morals depend for their values on preferred outcomes. This is known as Consequentialism. In Consequentialism, the ends are what matter and so, according to this theory, the ends always justify the means or, put another way, the means are always justified in the end.

And though Sam Harris’ theory seems to be consequentialist in that he believes human behavior is moral or immoral insofar as it does or does not contribute to the promotion of a previously defined outcome or effect, i.e. Human Flourishing, it seems apparent that Sam Harris absolutely DOES NOT wish to believe that some behaviors like rape, torture, or slavery, are value neutral in and of themselves. Rather, it seems that he desperately wants to believe that some behaviors are always wrong even when the intention of those engaging in such behaviors is ostensibly to promote Human Flourishing.

Harris does this by supposing the concept of Human Flourishing to be an objectively quantifiable concept. But though both terms in that generic phrase "Human Flourishing" are rather more vague than we would like, it is the word “human” rather than the word "flourishing" which is in the most desperate need of clarification.

We may choose to agree with Mr. Harris and presume the near possibility of measuring brain wave patterns in order to determine what "Human Flourishing" looks like on the individual human level, but once we get above the level of the individual we find we have competing and conflicting interests among a diversity of individual humans. Even if neurology is a hard science, sociology is not, and the concept of Human Flourishing will certainly be a thing more accurately quantified at the micro level than at the macro level.

But let us plunge forward with Mr. Harris to a not too distant future when all the brain’s waves have been scanned , all its regions mapped, and to where it’s been determined once and for all what Human Flourishing looks like in the individual human brain. And let us continue on to when conditions have been arranged in the life of some one individual so that, as far as brain wave patterns and the individual’s own opinion were concerned, he flourished. Day and night, week in and week out, this one individual flourished.

Now let us, multiply it out, block by block, city by city, region by region, nation by nation, and say that conditions have been so arranged so that every human being on the planet could scientifically be said to be flourishing. What leap of logic allows us to believe that the occurrence of this great mass of individual humans flourishing can be directly translated as a real representation of the concept “Human Flourishing”?

And assuming for the moment that such a leap can be made and that the occurrence of Every-Individual-Human-Being-Flourishing at once CAN be translated into Human Flourishing in Mr. Harris’ sense, (and assuming that this is indeed the goal towards which human activity is meant to be directed), does it follow that ANY human activity discovered through scientific methods to promote that preferred outcome is therefore moral? On the consequentialist model, the answer would have to be “yes”.

What sort of activities might we be talking about? Earlier, I used the phrase “conditions could be arranged”, but nobody really has any idea what those conditions might look like. How are we to arrive at a scientific knowledge of the necessary arrangement of conditions needed to stimulate optimal Human Flourishing at the macro level--the level of all individual human beings flourishing in community? Won’t this proper arrangement have to be arrived at through the slow and arduous process of experimentation by trial and error? And isn’t it likely that there’ll be many failed attempts at finding the proper arrangement before the right one is finally worked out?

And what of all the failures? The phrase, “the road to hell is paved with good intentions” shouldn’t much concern a devout atheist like Sam Harris but it might at least cause him to question the sufficiency of his arguments concerning a scientific basis for morality. If thousands of experiments were conducted to find the right arrangement of conditions to promote Human Flourishing but human misery was the result hundreds of times before the optimal arrangement was finally hit upon, how would such a process be seen from a moral point of view?

And what if after all that experimentation the arrangement most conducive to human wellbeing in the aggregate was found to be one in which the majority of humans flourished at the expense of a small minority of humans who didn’t. Or what if the project to achieve universal wellbeing succeeded but only by reducing the human experience to drug-addled dependency or grey matter in jars?

In other words, what if the optimal arrangement included by necessity attitudes, activities, and behaviors that Sam Harris would like to believe are obviously immoral?

Indeed, what if it turned out, much to Sam Harris' chagrin, that the ideal arrangement was life under a worldwide Caliphate and under the strict administration of Sharia Law? What if this were the arrangement, discovered through an exhaustive process of experimentation under the most uncompromising laboratory conditions, that most perfectly resulted in world peace and real, universal Human Flourishing in the aggregate? After all, it may be that science will reach as deeply into the human experience as it possibly can and find that that sort of universal homogeny, unity of purpose and belief, and single-minded zeal for something beyond and “other than” our material existence is absolutely necessary to our human wellbeing. Sam Harris may stamp his feet and declare that nothing beyond the material world exists and that such fairy stories are a dangerous delusion. Only in this case, if it were a delusion it would nonetheless have turned out to be a necessary one. If, for the sake of argument, humans are nothing but the products or our genes, evolved in such a way as to render us the greatest potential odds for survival, then the human tendency to direct our actions towards the service of things we can’t materially verify is certainly a product of that struggle for survival and may be something as necessary, natural to, and indistinguishable from the healthy flourishing human psyche as light and laughter. It may be as natural and as necessary as the alternation of night and day.

Science must take man as he is and what science discovers is that the majority of men throughout recorded history and right up to the present have exhibited a need to order their life in the service of religion, that they finds reasons for ritual, and that most of them demand to offer back something to someone or something they can’t perceive merely for that Something’s sake. That some humans seem to have no need of religion or ritual doesn’t prove that the need of most men for religion and for a life ordered according to the demands of that religion is something extrinsic or artificial to the human experience. If the exception proves the rule in ninety-nine cases out of one-hundred, why shouldn’t the minority of exceptions prove the rule in this case? If some small percentage of creatures in the human species don’t have the capacity to experience such a thing as numinous awe, perhaps they lack something intrinsic, essential, and necessary? In practical terms, this absence may be of no more serious effect than a lack of pigmentation or the ability to see color. And yet, in the race to flourish beyond the capacity for mere survival, these could be useful if not necessary attributes to have. Life would certainly be less colorful without them.

Grant for the sake of argument that this desire for religion, ritual, and sacrifice evolved "accidently", as it were. Perhaps, as man struggled to eke out an existence against tremendous odds and under conditions that should probably have caused a creature of such heightened awareness to despair, perhaps it was only this evolved capacity, the capacity for Hope, that enabled him to “Flourish”.

In the end, encouraging people to place their hope in some yet-to-be-realized scientific accomplishment may turn out to be exactly the wrong thing to do. Such a hope may be only a pale and inadequate substitute for the “ignorant superstitions” that have given mankind Hope up to now.

So far we’ve been playing on the field of Sam Harris’ choosing. We’ve been trying to show that science cannot provide a moral basis for evaluating actions directed toward preferred results. And we’ve been trying to show that Sam Harris’ attempt to provide such a basis for evaluating human actions and behavior is at cross purposes with his desire to believe that some behavior is really truly immoral regardless of the intended effect.

I admit, I would have a hard time determining a basis for evaluating actions and behavior in a moral sense if I came at it from the direction that Sam Harris does and, to be frank, I can’t even say for sure whether I’d find such an attempt worth pursuing. If we’re all left alone on this planet with nary a star to guide us than we should just pick a destination that looks attractive and drive; and if obstacles obstruct us we should smash them away or get smashed in the process. It's the height of hubris to suppose that science could tell us that one destination is better than any other.

But if the destination we wish to pursue is “Human Flourishing”, so be it. Let us define whatever it is we wish “Human Flourishing” to mean and then harness whatever is within our power to achieve that goal.




Daily Show clip URL: http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-october-4-2010/sam-harris
Appearance on October 4, 2010

“The New Naysayers” URL: http://www.newsweek.com/2006/09/10/the-new-naysayers.html
Newsweek; Jerry Adler, September 11, 2006

Bill Maher clip URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZlhiL0lrfE
Appearance on George Lopez Tonight, October 26, 2010

Sam Harris’ TED Speech URL: http://www.ted.com/talks/sam_harris_science_can_show_what_s_right.html

At the Cross of Christ

Who shall be left to stand and behold Christ’s suffering body, when things appear to be at their worst, than a handful of women and those who are not afraid to take Jesus’ mother into their home?

The Ground Zero Mosque

(Note - In referring to Islam, I'm referring specifically to Islamic Expansionism and not the religion itself.  I have no quarrel with those Muslims who interpret their faith differently than do our enemies.  I hope and pray that Americans of every faith may stand united against the common threat to our freedoms so we may continue to live in respectful disagreement with one another.)

Readers of my blog (I assume there may be one or two of you out there) might expect me to come down against the proposed erection of a Mosque two blocks from Ground Zero. 

And they’d be right. But let me tell you why. 

We are at war!!! Like it or not, we were attacked by an enemy who desires complete and total victory.

The still-empty pit where the World Trade Center used to majestically stand is a constant and daily reminder of that horrible day almost nine years ago. That hole has become a fitting symbol of how deeply we were wounded that day and how the illusion of safety and security we enjoyed since the end of the Cold War had been suddenly swept entirely away.

We thought the war against expansionist Islam had been won. The Moors were driven out of Spain half a millennium ago, the Turk was turned back at the gates of Vienna shortly thereafter, and the Ottoman Empire, after ruling the remains of the once mighty Roman Empire for centuries, hitched its wagon to the wrong horse in the First World War and was forced to surrender to the Allies. We were satisfied, ever since, that the threat had been effectively if not essentially neutralized. Two-and-a-half generations had grown up with a decapitated Islam. We were taught that communism was the real threat to our freedom and security. Islam had lost the power to win the victory that had been its goal for so long.

Thankfully our policy makers continued to recognize the tenuous nature of the still existent threat in that remote and faraway part of the world. The tyrants and dictators of the Muslim nations were pitted against each other and when angst was directed against the west, it was directed against Israel. Israel was kept in a constant state of alert as it became a magnet for the aggression that would have otherwise been directed out at the rest of the western world. 

The moral reasons for supporting Israel against the Muslim threat are debatable. Its justification from an Evangelical Christian point of view is dubious. But the value of supporting Israel from a policy standpoint is unquestionable. From the end of the First World War to the present Israel has had to bury its own sons and daughters so the rest of us didn’t have to. Israel has held firm against a persistently aggressive Muslim force. Time will tell if they may fair otherwise than the crusading armies of Europe during the Middle Ages.

But now many western countries have forgotten what we benefit from our support of Israel.   They think our support is the cause of the war we now find ourselves in when in fact it's the other way around.  A strong Israel, supported by the west, has deflected the violence of the Islamic Expansionists and made our lives safer during the last century. Whatever peace we've therefore enjoyed in the interim was the result of that support.  Sans Israel the violence would have come sooner and more often.

My point is this… War did not begin in the early morning of September 11th, 2001. It was only the re-emergence of an old war on a particular front. Islam has been at one, long, untiring war with the whole non-Muslim world since the days of the Prophet. True, that Islam, where it conquered, usually respected the rights of the “People of the Book” to go on practicing their faith. But where was the toleration for Muslims apostatizing and becoming Christians or Jews?

The west (including Israel) has a long history of toleration. After the religious wars of the 16th and 17th centuries ended in a stalemate, tolerance of differing religious beliefs became necessary, and as time when on tolerance became easier and easier as each succeeding generation cared less and less and as the possibilities for effecting a victory for one side or the other became more and more remote. 

But toleration has limits. For the sake the preservation of the tolerant, it must end with those who do not wish to be tolerant in return. 

Tolerance is not a virtue. It’s a tactic used to get along in the world with people or in situations we can’t change or don’t really care to. It’s borne out of necessity and indifference. You’ll find that anyone who’s really tolerant is so either because the status quo is unalterable by any methods he’s willing or able to employ or because he just doesn’t think it’s a very big deal.

Toleration is not the same thing as respect. If a man's beliefs differ from my own I can respect and even defend his right to hold those beliefs so long as those beliefs don’t result in actions that threaten my person or my property. I respect a man’s right to smoke at the table next to mine but if I tolerate it it’s because I must or because I don’t care enough to move. 

We have a long history in this country of respecting the rights of others to believe what they want so long as they do so peaceably. Such respect is enshrined in the First Amendment of our Constitution. But our culture has an even longer history of toleration and that toleration, wherever it was prevalent, was always borne out of necessity or indifference. 

It may be true that Christians, if they could be united in belief and purpose, would cease to tolerate many beliefs and behaviors that they currently tolerate out of necessity--that is, because they aren’t able to change the beliefs or curtail those behaviors. It may be true that if this or that Christian sect had sufficient power they would find a way to change beliefs and curtail behaviors even if it meant the use of torture and execution.

But it isn’t certain, nor is there even justification to suppose, that any particular Christian sect as currently constituted  would resort to such tactics were they actually permitted to do so.

It is equally uncertain, but equally likely, that if the anti-faith minority in this country ever gained sufficient power or numbers they would resort to whatever tactics necessary to stamp out religious belief. They might resort to re-education, incarceration, torture, or even death to destroy an irrational and insidious faith which they tolerate now only because they must or because they consider it a matter of indifference.

But it is beyond mere intellectual certainty--it is a certain fact--that our enemies in this War on Terror, most of whom just happen to be Muslims, DO resort to such tactics. In Muslim countries, where converts from Islam to Christianity are executed, it is because toleration isn’t necessary and because one’s religious beliefs aren’t considered a matter of indifference. 

I haven't looked into it but I assume there are some nice Muslim countries where apostates from the Muslim faith--converts from Islam to some other religion--are respected and allowed to live. But if they're tolerated it's because the ruling party is powerless to do anything about it or because they just don’t care very much.

Our enemies are not THAT kind of Muslim. They care a great deal about that sort of thing and we can be certain that if they had the power they would NOT tolerate or even respect many beliefs and behaviors that we in the west respect or at least tolerate as a matter of course. 

We can be certain that if THAT sort of Muslim ever gained the majority in a western country toleration would be at an end. We may pray for their respect and hope to pay tribute. But I don’t think we have any reason to expect their respect in such matters. All the evidence points the other way.

The Muslims who want to build a mosque near Ground Zero may not be THAT sort of Muslim. While they may not consider apostasy from the Muslim faith to be a matter of indifference, were they given the power to execute apostates they might choose rather to respect the tradition of religious tolerance in this country than to kill the apostate. 

We just don’t have any reason to believe that Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda, or the Taliban—our Enemies—if they ever assumed power, if they WON the war…we just don’t have any reason to believe that they would respect our traditions or tolerate our beliefs. And why should we expect them to when their professed beliefs demand that they don't?

We are at war and in a war there are always unintended victims. We didn’t start this war, no matter what anyone says. This war started long before the first European soldier ever stepped foot on Muslim land. This war started in the lifetime of the prophet and, though occasionally repulsed, the armies of the crescent moon have always found a new soldier to pick up the torch. Our generation has seen many disparate new torchbearers from the Muslim countries, most notably Osama bin Laden and the leadership of the Iranian Republic. 

This war will not be over until a world-wide Caliphate is established and the Catholic Mass, which is now offered perpetually over all the face of the earth, is replaced by the unceasing cry from the minaret.

We in the Church know that this war can never be won for the other side but we also know that this war must go on, in some form or another, for the rest of time. 

The best we can hope for in our own time is that the enemies of freedom and true religion are again repulsed, that their torchbearers are put to shame, and that we can enjoy another long period of relative peace. 

Those who are tolerant of the proposal to build a new mosque near the site of ground zero are respectful to a fault and are tolerant because they don’t care. They can’t or don’t see the big picture. 

Let them build a mosque with our blessings wherever they like after the current battle is won. But to build a mosque now at the site being proposed, when the whole world is embroiled in this war against a personified enemy we can neither capture, kill, nor find, would be to hand an ideological victory to that enemy. It would not be seen as a declaration of our respect but as a declaration of our indifference. And an indifferent enemy is a weak enemy. 

If our enemy is confirmed in his belief that we are weak, he and all who fight under his banner will be emboldened. They will gain new strength and will wage the war that much more intensely.

Because They Aren’t the Same (And a Judge’s Ruling Can’t Make Them So)

“We learn pretty early in life that most basic difference between men and women: Men have penises, and women have vaginas. But more fundamentally, our cells contain different chromosomes—women are dealt two X chromosomes, men an X and a Y—and, therefore, many different genes. Most genes on one of the female X chromosomes are silenced so that there's only one functional copy of each, but there are exceptions; and while many Y chromosome genes direct testis development, others influence hormones and the brain. Even the genes we share are made into proteins at different rates: A study published in July 2006 in Genome Research compared the levels of gene expression in male and female mice and found that 72 percent of active genes in the liver, 68 percent of those in fat, 55.4 percent of the ones in muscle, and 13.6 percent of genes in the brain were expressed in different amounts in the sexes.”

(Quoted from “Women aren't properly represented in scientific studies” by Melinda Wenner Moyer. Published on Slate.com; http://www.slate.com/id/2261297/, July 28th, 2010)


The ability of our laws to reflect common sense by distinguishing one sort of thing from another has largely evaporated. I say “largely” because our law still distinguishes those who might need special assistance and extra protections from those who don’t, such as the differently-abled or the economically disenfranchised. But because our law, when it DOES distinguish one thing from another, distinguishes the so-called disadvantaged from “the rest of us”, the tendency is to see such distinctions as a declaration of relative value—as if the difference being recognized is a declaration that one thing is less than another thing.

One may argue that laws ensuring special help for the disadvantaged do no such thing and of course in theory that’s true. These laws don’t suggest by implication that one thing has less value than another and they certainly don’t explicate it. But right or wrong, our commons sense tells us that it’s better to be healthy and have the use of one’s own faculties than otherwise and that it’s better to be provided for out of one’s own efforts than to be dependent on the alms of another. The result is that at some level we do see these laws as distinguishing between what is better and what is worse.

Elsewhere, though, our laws are explicit in stating that one thing is of less value than another and should therefore be treated differently. I’m speaking in particular about those laws which afford the newborn child every possible protection while permitting the destruction of the child still in the womb.

In each of these cases, whether intended or not, the distinction recognized by our law is seen as a declaration that one thing is less than another and is for that reason entitled (or doomed) to different treatment.

Where a law recognizes what is believed to be a real and relevant distinction the law is considered just. When such a relevant and real distinction is NOT believed to exist, the law is considered unjust, offensive, those who support the law are scorned as misguided or even evil, and pressure mounts for the law’s repeal.

Those who support the creation of laws that would make it illegal to terminate the life of a child still in the womb are offended by laws that recognize a difference where they don’t believe any real or relevant difference exists. They further believe that science and philosophy are on their side. Pro-abortionists should understand that this is the reason anti-abortionists want to curtail and ultimately deny the “right” of women to terminate their pregnancies. It’s got nothing to do with being backward or draconian or because they aren’t sensitive to the dangers of “back alley abortions”. It’s because they don’t see a real or relevant difference between the child before it’s born and the child after it’s born and since one enjoys the protection of the law so should the other.

Abolitionists were similarly and rightly offended by laws enacted to protect the “right” of white people to keep black people in the manner of cattle. It’s plainly evident to us that no real or relevant difference existed between slave and slave holder but at that time it was a matter of unsettled belief. It was the belief in the essential similarity of African and European which caused laws protecting the legal rights of slaveholders over against the inalienable rights of slaves held to be considered unjust just as it was a belief in the essential dissimilarity between Whites and Blacks that gave those laws their force for so long.

As a consequence of this baggage we’re loathe to have our laws make distinctions of any kind at all. We’re just too prone to seeing differences or distinctions codified by our laws as declarations that one thing is inferior to another.

So the question that ultimately must be decided when evaluating whether certain laws are just or unjust is whether the law is recognizing a real distinction or a false one and for many years the error has been on the side of being willfully blind to real and relevant differences that DO exist as a misguided protection against the potential injustices which might be caused by the opposite error.

One of the results of this forced myopia is that school’s for boys are shuttered or forced to accept girls (and vice versa) because no real or relevant difference is recognized between girls and boys. A consequence of this forced blindness is that some jurisdictions have trouble finding legally justifiable reasons for separate bathrooms and changing facilities even when children in middle-school are concerned.

So accustomed have we become to willfully ignoring the very real and legitimate differences between the sexes that we’ve finally come to the point where half the country doesn’t understand why our laws continue to distinguish committed same-sex unions from their supposed analog in the marriage of husband and wife. Advocates for expanding the definition of marriage contend that there is no difference—or no essential difference—between the two. They contend that what makes it a marriage has nothing at all to do with the genders of the people involved while those on the other side contend that gender has everything to do with it. They who take the position that the gender of the people involved really matters a great deal are loudly accused of bigotry and unjust discrimination by those who think otherwise and to make their point those who favor an expanded definition of marriage compare their opponents to the bigots who were at one time against mixed-race marriages.

But the two issues are not the same.

Where interracial marriage was prohibited by law, it was due to the erroneous belief that white people really were different from black people in necessary essentials. This was also the motivating factor behind Jim Crow laws and myriad other injustices visited upon blacks in so many parts of our country for so long. Of course the reason these laws were unjust is because there isn’t an essential difference between one man and another no matter the color of his skin and the “race” of the people involved has nothing to do with the essential nature of marriage--with what a marriage really is.

But a marriage between two men or two women, if it could be called a marriage, WOULD be an essentially different kind of thing from the marriage of one man and one woman. When our law distinguishes a same-sex union from a marriage the law is recognizing a real and relevant difference between two different things. And further, our marriage laws, in recognizing marriage for what it is, do not treat things that are essentially the same as if they were different.

No matter a man’s sexual preferences, all men are essentially the same and our current law has the positive effect of treating them that way. Any man may marry any women he likes provided certain generally applied conditions are met: That the women in question be of an age to give her consent; that she does, in fact, give her consent; that the women is not already married to another man; and that the women isn’t too closely related to him. These conditions apply to all men indiscriminately.

The push to normalize same-sex monogamous unions by changing the law to recognize them as marriages is operating under the specious presupposition that differences between the sexes are less important, less essential, and less foundational than they really are. It makes the related mistake of believing that changing the name of a thing can change the essential nature of the thing itself and make of something what it is not.

It is undeniably true that wherever laws have recognized women as different from and complementary to men there have been abuses. These abuses and injustices have been contrary to the good that was willed by such recognition. And nearly one-hundred percent of the time the abuses have been to the advantage of men and the disadvantage of women. In the unfortunate course of human history, women have most usually been treated as something essentially less than a man which is to say less-than-human. They were, as a matter of law, denied essential human dignity and respect.

This was wrong in the past and it’s wrong, where it still occurs, in the present. But be that as it may, where laws treated women differently from men it’s because the lawmakers recognized essential differences that can’t be wished or willed away. It's the misapplication of a valid truth and not the truth itself that has so often been the cause of so much evil.

But in our own culture, the war against this evil has swung the pendulum entirely too far the other way. The old injustices have been replaced with new injustices so that on balance the situation we find ourselves in is as bad as what came before. In denying the differences between men and women we have denied our very humanity. The solution to the problem was to set our laws right but instead we’ve denied the differences and pretended they don’t exist. Generations of children have grown up in the environment thus created and have, in the process, lost themselves. A general identity crisis has been the result and the effect has been disastrous for our culture overall.

At the present there is hardly a person alive anywhere in the country who was not raised in an environment which declared men and women identical in every essential respect. The effects of this error are even felt in the areas of human study that should be the most immune to them such as the physical sciences. Men and women are treated as if one is identical and interchangeable with the other.

Can it be any wonder, then, that after generations have been indoctrinated with a false and therefore pernicious philosophy so many are advocating for a change in marriage laws. The changes being sought would merely reflect what they sincerely believe to be true. That if there is no essential difference between men and women—just as there is no essential difference between a black man and a white man—than why should a man be prohibited from marrying another man? Why should gender have anything to do with whether a committed union can legitimately be called a marriage?!?

Our answer must be AND CAN ONLY BE that there is a difference and to our great advantage we can point to the evidence all around us. All of us are either male or female and whether we were blessed to know them or not we all had a mother and a father. We all know how new humans get made and we know it cannot happen unless two very different yet complimentary things are brought together in a certain way. Nature declares what we know by common sense and what can be denied only through the concentrated deceptions of the present age.

Again, I do not wish to exaggerate the differences between men and women. Nor do I intend to invent differences that do not exist.

But what differences do I mean?

On one level, men and women are essentially the same and no one should be able to deny that. We are essentially human. All of us at that level—men and women alike—share certain inherent and inalienable rights which are ours merely by virtue of our common humanity. We share a common origin and we look ahead to a common destination. Our way in this world is necessarily joined and one cannot do without the other for very long. Because I believe this level to be the most important level—the constitutional level—I will refer to this as the superessential level.

At another level, though, men and women are clearly different. We are not the same thing and though those differences may go no further than biology we have yet to mark the outer edges of how those biological differences affect us. At this secondary level, which I will refer to as the essential level, men and women are different.

I think regardless of what we as a society have seen fit to recognize by our laws over the course of the last century or two, and regardless of what many of us profess to believe, the majority of us are aware of these very real differences and understand them perfectly well so that I don’t need to go into great detail explaining them. I would wager, for example, that self-identified homosexuals, as a group and as individuals, are more fully aware than most that those differences go much deeper than biology. A man who prefers men prefers MEN and not merely the male anatomy. This is so because our differences go much deeper than anatomy. And I think it true in my own case that if my desire was for a man rather than my wife it would be a desire for the whole man and not merely a desire for that which made him anatomically different from a woman.

I believe it true that if the majority of us could simply be honest with ourselves, we could all come to a similar conclusion. Our husbands, our wives, and our life partners are either women or men and we love them AS women or men. We are aware, we understand, we recognize the differences between men and women and as much as some of us pretend those differences don’t exist or that those differences are merely incidental, we all know they’re there and what they are. And I think what we say and what we claim to believe (in most cases) are contrary to how we know reality to be. I believe that both our current laws and what we say are contrary to what we, at some level, know to be true. We KNOW that there are essential differences between men and women but because we fear that recognizing those differences may result in their codification in unjust laws and unjust treatment we pretend to ignore them or we say they don’t exist.

And those differences, which AREN’T relevant to voting, driving, working, etc., ARE relevant to the institution of marriage.

Our current laws prohibiting the recognition of same-sex unions as “marriage” recognize that however much males and females may be alike, they are formed for different functions and they recognize that it is through marriage that those functions find their most complete expression. Through marriage men can become fathers and husbands, women can become mothers and wives. These connote differences, not just of role, but of the essential nature of the thing itself. A husband is one thing and a wife is another. Each title grows out of the essential nature of the title-holder.

A marriage is a husband and a wife who may, in theory if not always in practice, become a father and a mother. For it is thus that the different functions of man and woman can reach the fullness of their potential.

Those of us who oppose artificially expanding the definition of marriage to include a thing which it is not contend, not only, that a union in the form of a marriage between two men or two women would be a different sort of thing than a union between a man and a women, but we contend that a supposed marriage between two members of the same sex is impossible. Marriage is the union of husband and wife. And just as a man can't be a woman and words can't make him so, a man can't be a wife or mother nor a woman a husband or father. Our words are powerless to change that reality.

I understand the motivation to not have our law distinguish between a same-sex union and an opposite-sex union. None of us want to be treated as different and therefore less than something else. But our laws, in recognizing differences, need not be making declarations of relative worth. And calling by the name of “marriage” that which is not of its nature a marriage would simply be nonsense. Once our laws sustain nonsense the structure on which they depend is reduced to nonsense as well.

So that our society may not descend into utter nonsense, may we recognize things as they are, differences and all and, hopefully, common sense and reason may prevail.

Labels in Arguments

Labels are so often used to scare or force people into silence. Average, everyday, run-of-the-mill conservative Republicans have been silenced for years by being vilified as racists and as heartless—as cold, brutal, bigoted and closed-minded, and indifferent to the sufferings of the less fortunate. The labels did nothing to address the arguments of the conservatives which, on the whole, were most often made in the service of fairness and the inherent equality of the human person, of the desire to see justice done in a fair and impartial way, and from the impulse to protect human society, from the weakest to the strongest, from at least some of the dangers and untoward influences that the popular culture, as it evolved into what it’s become, has been able and willing to threaten it with.

And although the labels did nothing to address the arguments, they did cause, to some degree, some people to stop making any arguments at all in certain company. After all, no one likes being called a racist or bigoted or closed-minded or heartless or cold or brutal. And no one very muck likes to be interrupted at every turn and corner in his argument by being forced to defend himself from baseless charges.

And of course this has tended to stifle debate, discourage discourse, and increase misunderstandings.

I’ve admittedly been the recipient of my fair share of labels over the years. I think maybe I’ve heard them all. At various times I’ve been called closed-minded, bigoted, heartless, homophobic, sexist, and even racist. All those various labels have been subsumed in the one word “conservative” or, worse, “Republican”. But I’ve also been called “liberal”, which is almost a worse word than “conservative” in its connotations, for, rather than “heartless” it is often understood to mean “brainless”. I suppose it is because, as the most common stereotype on the right is concerned, the liberal is convicted of his arguments through nothing but naked emotion. The thrust of calling someone a liberal is to imply that they haven’t taken the time to think through their arguments but have come to their conclusions just as a six-year-old might conclude that his teacher is a “bad teacher” because he didn’t like the grade she gave him (but which he nevertheless deserved).

Unfortunately, I think it a fair assumption that a number of people in both camps—both conservatives AND liberals—have come to at least some of their intellectual conclusions through emotion mixed with some very paltry amount of carefully chosen “facts”. But because of this reality (and it is a reality) it is then too often the case that when someone presents an argument with which we disagree, we dismiss their argument on the assumption that the person with whom we disagree is one of those who has reached that conclusion because they so obviously were unable to see through their emotions, their biases, and their preconceptions. This must be so (we think) because if they had really come to their conclusions after a careful examination of the facts they would necessarily have come to the same conclusions that we did. Since their conclusions not only differ from ours but may, in some cases, be diametrically opposed to them, and since we’re certain that we, of all people, have NOT been afflicted in our minds by too much input from our hearts, it necessarily stands to reason that either they haven’t examined the same facts as we have or else they haven’t examined the facts as carefully as we have, and the most probable reasons they haven’t examined the facts carefully (or disinterestedly) is because they’re either, a. not as smart as us, or, b. they’re blinded by their emotions.

Thus the gun-hugging bible thumpers of eastern Pennsylvania that Obama was so insensitive to during the 2008 campaign were only hugging their guns and thumping their bibles because they were scared. If they were smarter, or could be reasonable rather than emotional (so the theory went) they would certainly turn their guns into plow-shares and their bibles into pruning shears. It couldn’t possibly be the case that Obama found himself in intellectual disagreement with those eastern Pennsylvanians because, apparently, intellectual disagreements don’t exist—not so far as conclusions go, at any rate.

I read today that many on the left think Obama’s turning out to be a poor spokesman for his policies. But what can one honestly expect. Obama, like most people who share his world view, really, truly believes that the case for each of his policies is so nakedly self evident that their desirability, their necessity, and their utility is as clearly obvious to all people of good will as they are for him.

Instead, what differences of this sort usually amount to are a difference in the number and quality of the facts and, above all, the interpretation of those facts according to the sum total of all of the facts that person happens to have accepted up to that point in his life. That isn’t to say that either party has gone out of its way to omit certain obviously relevant facts. Just that some facts are accepted as relevant and some as irrelevant usually based on criteria other than naked, raw emotion.

In the heat of disagreement, labels are as often as meaningless as they are unhelpful. That isn’t at all to say that ALL labels are meaningless or unhelpful. Just that, used the wrong way—that is, used to avoid any serious consideration of the arguments being advanced by the other party—they are always meaningless and always unhelpful. Saying, “Well, you only say that because you’re a Democrat,” or “You only say that because you’re a Lakers fan,” isn’t meeting any argument head on. The Lakers, for example, may or may not be a good team, but dismissing the arguments of someone insisting that they are on the grounds that he happens to be a Lakers fan is never helpful and, ninety-nine point nine-nine-nine percent of the time, is wrong.

A BETTER TOOL FOR THE JOB?

The value of any tool must be measured against the results that can be achieved by using it; that is, whether and to what degree it successfully achieves the ends for which it was designed.

Whatever anyone might believe about it, our Constitution is not an instrument of divine institution. Those who participated in its construction would be the first to say that they were not men working under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

Rather, the task about which they set themselves was nothing more nor less than the invention of a tool—imperfect and of human origin—with which they could strive for and hopefully achieve certain purely natural and material ends.

The questions, then, must be “What did the founders intend for this tool to achieve?” “For what purpose was it designed?” And, “has this tool made possible the realization of their goals?”

So what did the founders intend? Did they intend to safeguard, absolutely, the sovereignty of the several states over a strong Federal government? If they didn’t intend the sovereignty of the several states to be absolute but instead intended it to be held within certain clearly defined limits, what did they intend those limits to be?

I think it crystal clear that, whatever else were the specific intentions of the particular individuals who drafted, approved, signed their names to, and ultimately voted on the Constitution of the United States of America, they certainly intended to create a strong federal government whose power would be held within certain strictly defined limits. Our Constitution sets up a Federal Government of enumerated powers: those powers not enumerated were famously reserved to the States or to the people.

However, it is also clear that among those enumerated powers was the power to raise armies and navies and to levy taxes for their support as well as the right and privilege, reserved to the Federal Government, to coin currency, and to regulate commerce among the several states, etc.

These powers are so broad—and have been made broader by subsequent Amendments and interpretations by the Supreme Court—that the intent made manifest through the enumeration of these powers effectively cancels out the intent of maintaining a more or less high degree of state sovereignty.

The wording of the 2nd Amendment tells volumes about the intention of strong state rights: A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free state…etc.

Much has been argued in recent years but the focus has been on almost everything except those words, “the security of a free state”. To what do those words refer? What is the “free state” in question? I propose that, given the fact that the Second Amendment specifically bars the Federal Government from making any law that would infringe upon the right of the people to keep and bear arms, the intention must be to safeguard the “freedom” of the “states” from the Federal Government.

However, the Federal Government’s power to regulate commerce among the states had the unintended effect of subverting the freedom of the states more drastically than gun laws ever could have. And, in fact, the reality is that the founders, in securing to the people the right to bear arms in anticipation of Federal overreach (if that was their intention), while effectively stripping from the states the power to regulate their own commerce (all commerce having since been defined by the Federal Government as “interstate”) means that they in fact succeeded in removing sovereignty from the states—states filled with gun-wielding patriots jealous of their sovereignty. And the only remedies to this sorry state of affairs are to either change the Constitution (an eventuality the founders had the wisdom to foresee) or to use those guns to defend state sovereignty from a supposedly “overreaching” Federal Government. As to the second possibility, that’s already been tried and failed. And rebellion, in order to be legitimate, must of necessity be far graver reasons of unjustice than --that is, Just War--besides, the Federal Government would have to go much, much further than merely overstepping its Consitutional bounds in matters ofcontinues to act within the bounds of its enumerated powers, there could be no cause to take so awful a step.

Anyway, as it stands, the Government has not yet overreached. That the Federal Government, in the conduct and performance of its enumerated powers, actually encroaches upon and nullifies state sovereignty is not the fault of the Federal Government or even those elected officials who serve within its ranks. It’s clearly the fault of our Constitution.

The problem was that our founders wanted to have it both ways and this, I hope, is a lesson for Europe. One cannot have a single economic zone while at the same time maintaining state sovereignty as we’re used to understanding it. One or the other must give way. Either we have government vested with the power to regulate commerce among the states or we have a Federal Government hobbled before the assertion of state’s rights. We cannot have both.

Our Constitution—perhaps any Constitution—is a tool inadequate to so lofty a design.

Recognizing the incompatibility of State’s Rights with a single economic zone, what we must do in order to safeguard our remaining freedoms is to focus on those freedoms which have little or nothing to do with economic activity. Chief among these must be the right to freely practice our religion and educate our children according to our beliefs. This may put some children on an unequal footing but that, I’m afraid, is a necessary sacrifice to freedom.

Freedom says nothing about equality and, in fact, may often be opposed to it. If I am free to believe what I like I’m free to esteem some things above others. I may be free to have prejudices. I may be free to recognize differences that tend towards unequal treatment.

A government may have a perfectly legitimate obligation to right injustices against equality but that obligation can only be, by the very broadest stretch of the imagination, construed to be within the sphere of economic activity or national defense.

And at the same time, a government which sees righting the wrongs of social injustice as its object must at some point begin to trample on the legitimate freedoms of its citizens.

A country that sacrifices freedom at the altar of equality will find it has neither freedom nor equality.

Question for Debate

(originally sent to SDA and RMF 9/12/08)

I found myself wondering, if a man is convicted of a triple homicide (for example) that he didn’t commit, is life without the possibility of parole a lesser or a greater punishment than death? Or, put more generally, is the permanent detainment of an innocent individual more lawful or less lawful than the execution of that same individual? Of course I’m assuming the man in question had a fair trial and was just unfortunate, a case of being at the wrong place at the wrong time, and not that he was deliberately railroaded.

I know the argument will be made that, in the case of a life sentence imposed upon an innocent individual, the possibility exists that his innocence will be found out and that he will go free making the punishment possibly less severe—certainly less intractable.

However, all punishment is intractable—at least the part already inflicted—and there’s no way to give a man back the years he lost in prison any more than we can give a man back his life. And so, to make the point I’m getting at clearer, let’s say we have two men, both convicted of a murder that neither one committed, one was sentenced to life and the other to death, and that the one man has died in prison and the other has died in the chair. We have just learned of each man’s innocence but both men are dead. Their punishments are utterly intractable. In such a case, to which man has the government committed the greater injustice? Is it more wrong to deprive an innocent person of his liberty or his life?

Now, whether a government has the legitimate right or authority to deprive a man of his life or liberty may be the fuel for another debate. I would suggest, based on our Constitution, that OUR government unequivocally does claim for itself that right provided it does not do so “without due process of law”.

However, extraordinary circumstances excepted, the right and authority of a government to deprive a man of his life or liberty does not translate to the private individual acting on his or her own authority.

The slavery that existed in the United States of America prior to the Civil War is almost universally recognized today as a great moral evil. It was not so universally recognized at the time when our laws recognized its legality. (Neither did its legality prove its morality.)

Proponents of slavery rationalized their right to deprive other people of their liberty by concluding that the enslaved weren’t really people or were a lower sort of people.

Likewise, proponents of abortion rationalize their right to deprive other people of their life in just the same way. Either the fetus has not attained to personhood or the fetus is a person whose life is less valuable than those making the decision to terminate its life.

The vast majority of us who are alive today would agree with the essential abolitionist position which is that slavery was not something to be tolerated or compromised with. It was a great moral evil. Moral evils must not be contained but confronted. They must be recognized and not ignored.

Lincoln recognized this when he confronted American Slavery and Reagan recognized this when he confronted Soviet Communism.

And so I get back to my original question, is it more wrong to deprive an innocent person of his liberty or his life. Opponents of capital punishment will say the latter without hesitation. How then can they be in favor of abortion unless by diminishing the personhood of the one aborted?

As for those who recognize true personhood in the one aborted, how can the compromise pragmatic approach be warranted unless it would also have been warranted with regards to slavery?