Jeff Schweitzer's Blog, page 7

Science Is Not Religion

Author Christine Ma-Kellams recently told HuffPost Science that, “In many ways, science seems like a 21st Century religion. It’s a belief system that many wholeheartedly defend and evolve their lives around, sometimes as much as the devoutest of religious folk.”

Nothing could be further from the truth. Science is not a “belief system” but a process and methodology for seeking an objective reality. Of course because scientific exploration is a human endeavor it comes with all the flaws of humanity: ego, short-sightedness, corruption and greed. But unlike a “belief system” such as religion untethered to an objective truth, science is over time self-policing; competing scientists have a strong incentive to corroborate and build on the findings of others; but equally, to prove other scientists wrong by means that can be duplicated by others. Nobody is doing experiments to demonstrate how Noah could live to 600 years old, because those who believe that story are not confined to reproducible evidence to support their belief. But experiments were done to show the earth orbits the sun, not the other way around.

Here is the fundamental and irreconcilable conflict between the two: science searches for mechanisms and the answer to “how” the universe functions, with no appeal to higher purpose, without assuming the existence of such purpose. Religion seeks meaning and the answer to “why” the world is as we know it, based on the unquestioned assumption that such meaning and purpose exist. The two worldviews could not more incompatible.

Unlike scientific claims, beliefs cannot be arbitrated to determine which is valid because there is no objective basis on which to compare one set of beliefs to another. Those two world views are not closer than we think; they are as far apart as could possibly be imagined.

Religion and science are incompatible at every level. The two seek different answers to separate questions using fundamentally and inherently incompatible methods. Nothing can truly bring the two together without sacrificing intellectual honesty.

We are told that since science and faith are both fallible, both are equally valid approaches to understanding the world and ourselves. Here is what Jeffrey Small says about this:

“Bias, preconceived ideas, academic politics, ego and resistance to change are ever-present in scientific and academic communities and often result in institutional opposition to new theories, especially ground-breaking ones. Many scientists initially resisted Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo because they presented a new paradigm of the universe.”

Well, exactly! What this proves is that over time, science is indeed self-correcting while faith is not. While we all know now, due to science, that the earth orbits the sun, the Church is still fighting the battle with Galileo. Even today in the 21st century, the Church claims that Galileo shares blame because he made unproven assertions. Unproven assertions! The best the Pope could muster was that he regretted the “tragic mutual incomprehension” that had caused Galileo to suffer. As the new millennium settles in, the Church still claims that Galileo was wrong. The dissonance between Scripture and fact is not a problem relegated to earlier centuries, but remains relevant today.

Science is indeed fallible, and scientists suffer from all the usual human foibles. But reproducibility, scrutiny from other scientists, the drive for new knowledge, the glory of overturning orthodoxy, all drive science to a better understanding of an objective truth or our best approximation of it; this method of understanding the world is inherently incompatible with faith. Faith cannot be contested: I believe, therefore it is true. All scientific claims are by nature contestable. Those differences cannot be reconciled. Ever.

In reality we need to turn this argument about fallibility on its head. Science never claims to be infallible. There would be no need for more research if scientists believed they had all the answers, and all of them right. But god by definition is infallible. And yet. The Bible’s clear statement about age of the earth, off by more than 4 billion years, is one example of an important factual error. Sure, maybe this is a mistake of human interpretation of divine will. But with each new discovery proving a Biblical assertion wrong, the Church retreats to the safety of errors in interpretation or dismissing the discrepancy as unimportant. Yet the ever-accumulating factual mistakes must call into question the certainty with which the Church claims that god, or the Bible, is infallible, since their previous insistence has proven unsubstantiated with glaring factual mistakes. These doubts about infallibility apply, too, to the Church’s teachings on morality. If the bible is the literal word of god, then god has clearly blown it. If the bible is a flawed interpretation of god’s will, then the conclusions about morality can be equally flawed. The issue of fallibility is a problem for the faithful, not for science and reason. Never confuse the two.

A Duck Is a Duck; and a Muslim Prayer Is a Muslim Prayer

The town of Grecian, Conn., is dominated by an Islamic population.  For years, the town supervisor, a devout Muslim, invited a local imam to open the council’s monthly meeting with a prayer from the Quran.  Two residents, one Jewish the other Christian, were offended by this imposition of the Islamic faith into their secular government proceedings.  They sued the town, arguing that invoking a Muslim prayer to open a town meeting violated the First Amendment.  They argued that starting each meeting with a recitation from the Quran was nothing but the town’s endorsement of Islam, in direct conflict with the Establishment Clause. Christians and Jews were horribly offended that their local government would so clearly favor one religion over the other, and so blatantly dismiss Judaism and Christianity as equally legitimate inspirations for prayer.  The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court agreed, and ruled against the town.  The Supreme Court in May decided to hear the town’s appeal.  The White House, and GOP leaders in the House and Senate, have submitted briefs in support of the town with the following rather absurd claim: the town’s exclusive appeal to Islam to open the council’s meetings “does not amount to an unconstitutional establishment of religion merely because most prayer-givers are Muslim and many or most prayers contain secular references.”  That rather twisted and forced logic implies that Islamic prayers do not promote Islam but all religion equally.

That story is fiction; there is no town of Grecian, Conn. But the town of Greece, N.Y., most certainly is real.  Take the story above, substitute Greece, N.Y., for Grecian, Conn., and Christianity for Islam, and you have the scariest non-fiction possible.

The most important legal battle in the country was for the past few years quietly being waged here in Greece, N.Y., a small enclave near Rochester.  Few have ever heard of the case, or of Greece, N.Y..  That will soon change.  The Supreme Court will shortly hear arguments that may well undermine our most cherished founding principle, the separation of church and state.  As you absorb the folly to come, forget not that early settlers made the arduous journey to our shores in part to escape the stifling oppression of a dominant religion.  The urgent need to rid the government from the influence of a single religion was Thomas Jefferson’s unifying and guiding principle.

In Greece, N.Y., the town supervisor each month invited a local Christian minister to open the council’s meeting with a prayer. Until 2008, only Christians were allowed to lead the prayer. This exclusivity is important because the Supreme Court has previously ruled, under the so-called “O’Connor’s endorsement standard” that the government violates the First Amendment whenever it appears to “endorse” religion. Excluding all religions but one is by any standard an endorsement of that one remaining religion. The Supreme Court has previously agreed.

A Jewish resident, along with a resident atheist, sued the Greece town council arguing that “a reasonable observer” would conclude that Christian prayer “must be viewed as an endorsement of a… Christian viewpoint” and therefore is in violation of the Constitution’s Establishment Clause.  As with the fictional story, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court agreed, ruling against the town; and the Supreme Court in May decided to hear the town’s appeal.  I have only rarely disagreed with Obama’s policies, but he could not be more wrong than here in his support of the Greece town council.  Town supporters argue that the Court should “relax” constitutional limits on religious invocations.  Really?  Should we “relax” our right to bear arms?  How about our privacy protections under the constitution? How about the right to assembly?  The right to free speech?  Should we “relax” those protections? Maybe we should just scrap the entire Bill of Rights because the protections given therein might inconvenience a subset of our society.

All debate can be quashed with one simple question, which I meant to pose by example in the opening paragraph.  Would any Christian or Jew tolerate a town meeting opened exclusively with an Islamic prayer from the Koran?  We know absolutely the answer is an emphatic no.  And that is all there is to discuss.  If a town council cannot impost Islam on its residents, then the council cannot impose Christianity.  Any effort to do so is unambiguously a violation of the Establishment Clause.  Such an imposition is precisely what Jefferson and our other founder’s feared most.

The obvious test here, and in all similar cases, is to substitute one religion for the other and see if the ruling would be consistent.  If not, the government is establishing religion.  It would be rather absurd on one hand to say opening a government meeting exclusively with a Christian prayer does not endorse Christianity, but opening with an Islamic prayer in fact endorses Islam.  But Greece, N.Y., would not contemplate opening all meetings with an Islamic prayer. Any reasonable observer must conclude that restricting prayer to a single religion in a supposedly secular setting is an endorsement of that religion.  There is no argument to refute that.  If you weaken in resolve, simply imagine an imam, bearded and turbaned, in traditional dress, standing before our United States Congress, invoking the Quran to open every session of the House and Senate.  Not comfortable with that?  Then imagine how every Jew, Muslim and Atheist feels with each opening of a government meeting with a Christian prayer.

The Supreme Court should have never agreed to hear this case; that the arguments will take place is further evidence that our judicial branch of government has been hijacked by zealots with a political agenda beyond the anticipated role and mandate of our highest court.

We All Burn Because the GOP Wasted 30 Years

Ignorance as a Platform

If you voted for Reagan, Bush senior, or George Bush Jr. or any senator or congressman who denies the reality of climate change, you must take responsibility for all of its terrible consequences. You voted for candidates who openly dismissed environmental concern as a liberal plot. Ronald Regan thought trees caused air pollution. Reagan actually said in a 1979 radio address and then in 1981, “Trees cause more pollution than automobiles do.” Or more elaborately, “Eighty percent of air pollution comes not from chimneys and auto exhaust pipes, but from plants and trees.” To this day, conservatives defend this absurd claim as valid, perpetuating the confusion between carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide and the role of volatile organic compounds in creating smog. Under George Bush Jr., the White House buried the “National Assessment of the Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change,” which was produced by U.S. scientists not as a liberal plot but in accordance with the law using the best data and analytical techniques available. Some U.S. scientists resigned their jobs rather than give in to White House pressure to underreport global warming. Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) claims climate change is a hoax. Rick Santorum (R-PA) says the concept of man-made climate change is both “patently absurd” and “part of a ‘scheme’ by the left to get more government regulation.” Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) cites the bible’s great flood to prove climate change, if real, is not man-made. The Utah House of Representatives passed a resolution condemning climate alarmists and disputing any scientific basis for global warming. The list goes on and on; anti-science has been a foundation of Republican platforms for decades now. Such willful and joyful embrace of ignorance has long been a hallmark of GOP politics, and has led us to the changing climate we see today.

In a democracy, voters must own the decisions of their representatives if voting to reelect politicians espousing toxic views. Republicans are now the proud owners of climate change. Their grandchildren will be delighted.

We Knew Then and We Know Now

The biggest heartbreak of a changing climate is that it did not need to happen. Twenty two years ago I was part of the United States delegation to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) when I was the Assistant Director for International Science and Technology in the White House. We know now, more than two decades later, that the predictions scientists made in the final report have proven extraordinarily accurate, and much on the conservative side. What strikes me all this time later is the tragedy of lost opportunity. Due to intense conservative opposition to science on the basis of nothing but faith, we have now passed the time in which we can stop the world from warming catastrophically even if we take drastic action. The costs of responding now will be exponentially greater than what they would have been if we acted in 1990. But we won’t act even today because the House Science Committee is filled with members who believe climate change is a liberal hoax, along with the idea that the world is 4,000 years old and evolution is a conspiracy to denigrate religion. We are fighting battles that were decided hundreds of years ago. And we knew 20 years ago that climate change was real and caused by human activity; we knew that. But so-called skeptics refused to accept the conclusions of thousands of scientists from 166 countries — because they suddenly became professional climatologists who knew more than all the global experts. Climate deniers are now no different from flat-earthers clinging to a belief at odds with reality, indifferent to overwhelming data and undeniable evidence contrary to that belief.

The world’s conservatives are like a surgeon who is presented with a patient with all the classic symptoms of a heart attack. The evidence of a heart attack is overwhelming, but the doctor decides not to help the patient because it is possible the guy has gas. The patient could have been saved with a simple and inexpensive intervention; but due to the doctor’s inaction the patient now incurs the costs of a long stay in intensive care, follow up physical therapy and a life-time of expensive drugs. All preventable if the doctor had just looked at the data in front of him. But the doctor heard the voice of god telling him to go play golf.

The Day Has Arrived

Climate change is here, and here to stay. A new report from the American Meteorological Society (a nasty den of liberal conspirators deviously disguised as neutral scientists) demonstrates the point in its summary of 2012: Arctic sea ice reached record lows; sea level hit an all-time high; and greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels (rather than from trees) broke all records. Last year was one of the top ten warmest years ever recorded; and the United States experienced its hottest year ever. These are not isolated statistics taken out of context; these are data points along a robust trend driving toward an ever-more rapidly changing climate. The science is clear, the conclusions robust: the earth is warming much faster than natural background rates, and that warming is caused by human activity. To deny that reality is no different than dismissing atoms as nature’s building blocks, refuting that DNA contains genetic code, or claiming that energy does not equal mass times the square of the speed of light.

Faith is no substitute for objective reality when making public policy. A preacher might believe his skin is immune from the effects of heat; but put his hand over a hot flame and his flesh will burn, indifferent to his contrary belief. Climate change is as real as that flame; denying its existence will not diminish the very real impact.

Big Consequences

Due to conservative intransigence we will be witness to an extraordinary transformation. The threat of massive migrations unprecedented in human history, wars over dwindling or shifting resources, catastrophic storms and flooding and dramatic changes in agricultural production are not sufficient to concern climate deniers. So let’s look at something closer to home and more immediate: the health effects of a changing climate.

• We will see (are seeing) an expanding range of tropical diseases and new strains of old diseases as they move north, more and more severe allergies as ragweed season grows longer, more mold and fungus in hotter more humid weather, change in rainfall patterns affecting food production, more extreme heat waves, and more frequent and severe droughts and longer and more intense fire season.

• As warmer weather moves north, disease vectors go along for the ride. Many of those vectors are insects, like mosquitoes, which are expanding their range to a backyard near you.

• Water-borne diseases will increase in frequency because warmer water expands the season and range of diseases-causing organisms.

• Rodents also proliferate in the growing temperate regions with milder wet winters; they themselves are disease carriers, and also are reservoirs for disease-carrying ticks.

• We can look forward to a host of ugly diseases, including: dengue fever, malaria, yellow fever, Hantavirus, leptospirosis, Japanese B Encephalitis, Elephantiasis, Lyme’s disease, West Nile, Leishmaniasis, Chagas disease and Typhus.

• A long drought in the southwest has reduced predator populations, leading to an explosion of white-footed mice, which carry Hantavirus.

• New Yorkers first suffered an outbreak of West Nile virus in 1999, a new scourge for the city, which is now an annual threat.

• We will also get new strains of old diseases. A new strain of West Nile first detected in 2002, is moving quickly. The virus infected about 175,000 people in 2007, killing 117.

• An increase in carbon dioxide supercharges the growth of the most aggressive pollen producers, including hay-fever causing ragweed and the trees that give us the worst springtime allergies.

• With a warmer climate we will see an increase in the proliferation of mold and fungus, the spores of which love warmer temperatures and higher levels of carbon dioxide.

• Severe droughts in Africa lead to massive dust storms from that continent’s expanding deserts. Those clouds travel across the Atlantic and into the lungs of unsuspecting citizens in Florida, who have seen a 20-fold rise in asthma in the past several decades.

• Changing weather patterns will bring floods to some areas and more severe droughts to others, a longer and more extreme fire season, and changes to agricultural production, all of which are direct threats to human health.

So when grandma gets malaria, or comes down with a bad case of West Nile, write a letter of thanks to your local Republican representative.

Conservatives have on their shoulders a world that will change dramatically because they prevented us from acting when we had the chance. We knew. We knew 20 years ago and had a good idea even 30 years past; you can imagine the frustration in watching this unfold knowing that opposition to the scientific conclusion was not due to questions about the data but due to ideology, religious fanaticism and right wing lunacy. Irrationality, disdain for the truth, contempt for science, and the warm embrace of willful ignorance are symptoms of the same malady, a conservative movement sick with extremism borne from faith-based reasoning. And the world burns as a result.

Zealotry in the Doctor’s Office

 

Where there was previous little doubt, now there is none at all.  The fundamental idea of separating church and state, so dear to our founders, is dying.

Religion is driving and winning legislation across the land. Texas just passed a law that will ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, require doctors to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals, limit abortions to surgical centers and mandate that doctors must be present for even non-surgical abortions.  Tasting blood, a Texas lawmaker introduced a bill that bans abortions at about 6 weeks, when the first fetal heartbeat is detected.  North Carolina is poised to pass motorcycle safety legislation that has transformed into one of the nation’s most aggressive anti-abortion bills.  Among many draconian provisions: public employees and individuals who obtain health coverage through the federal health care law’s new public exchanges would not have access to a plan that includes abortion coverage.  Wisconsin is considering an extreme anti-abortion bill, and Michigan tried last year (and presumably will keep doing so).  This is the tip of the iceberg as freedom of choice becomes threatened state by state.

Let us be unambiguously clear about what is happening with this latest resurgence of zealotry.  The fundamentalist Christian right is staging a theocratic coup, imposing one brand of religious belief on all others.  No matter how the issue is parsed, foes of freedom of choice base their opposition on one idea, and one idea only: that life begins at conception.  This is a religious conviction, one being imposed on those with different religious beliefs, and one removed from any biological reality.  This disconnect to reality leads to two irreconcilable problems for those supposedly “pro-life.”

Can’t Compromise on Murder

Since opposition to abortions is based on the flawed view of biology that life begins at conception (we will see why that is flawed in a bit), and the ancillary idea that all life is sacred (equally untenable as discussed below), then opponents cannot possibly compromise to accommodate voters with a different view.  If they truly believe “life-at-conception” and “life is sacred” then anything less than a total ban on abortion would be to them the equivalent of murder.  Even the 20 week limit adopted by the Texas House would constitute murder by the movement’s own definition.  So someone like John McCain who tries to put a moderate face on radical views must come up short.  McCain said about pro-choice voters, “I would allow people to have those opinions and respect those opinions.  I’m proud of my pro-life position and record. But if someone disagrees with me, I respect your views.”  That sentence makes sense if we are talking about a difference of opinion about national security, for example, but not about murder.  You respect my view that murder (by your definition) is OK?  That is untenable.  Therein we find the problem with legislation passed on the basis of biblical interpretation:  there can be no compromise. And compromise is the essence of any democracy.

Life at Conception:  A Religious Myth

But anti-abortion folks face an even greater unsolvable dilemma.  Their basic claim is wrong; the ugly realities of biology prove that life does not begin at conception.  The majority of fertilized eggs are naturally aborted, never leading to life nor ever having the chance at life; 75% fail to implant in the uterus due to fatal genetic abnormalities, hormonal imbalances, or a uterus incapable of receiving the embryo.  The moment of fertilization is nothing but one step (and usually an unsuccessful one) in a series of millions that take us from a single cell to an independently living being.  Granting that moment special status is completely arbitrary and meaningless biologically. 

Abortion foes claim, as a secondary argument and extension of the idea that life begins at conception, that a fertilized egg has the same suite of rights enjoyed by all humans. But the belief that a few cells derived from a fertilized egg is a human being is a sad example of good intentions based on misguided notions of biology. The small ball of cells is potentially a human being, but so are eggs and sperm, even if to an unequal degree. All require specific and tenuous conditions to realize the potential to become human. Ovulation and male masturbation would be acts of murder by the same logic that confers the status of humanness on a fertilized egg or early-stage embryo.  Conception is just an arbitrary point along a continuum; the fertilization of an egg is no more magical or meaningful than the original production of the sperm or egg; all are equally essential parts to the cycle of life. 

Biological Realities

Yes, somewhere between a just-fertilized egg and a baby about exit the birth canal lies a distinction between potentially human and human. Because that line is difficult to draw does not mean that the line does not exist.  Clearly, the division between potentially human and human is increasingly difficult to distinguish with time from conception, but even later stages of the embryo pass milestones that offer important guidelines.

In the absence of a central nervous system, the embryo is incapable of any sensation. Until a brain is formed with a functioning cortex, the embryo has no ability to form any conscious thought. Neural development begins early, but the process is slow relative to other organ systems. The three main lobes that will become the brain form by the 29th day. About six to eight weeks after fertilization, the first detectable brain waves can be recorded, but the brain is not nearly fully formed, and the cortex is little distinguished. Before eight weeks, in the absence of any brain function, the growing embryo is little different in its human potential from a fertilized egg.  Abortion at this stage is little different from what happens 75% of the time when a fertilized egg fails to implant.

Later stages of growth do not offer a sign as clear as brain development, but the fetus provides another point of determination, although one involving a higher emotional and ethical cost in the hierarchy of decision-making. Before a fetus is capable of living outside the womb at week 23, even with invasive medical intervention, the line from potential to actual human has not been crossed. Before week 23, a premature baby cannot survive.  Viability between weeks 23 and 26 is uncertain.  After week 26, survival is possible, although lungs do not reach maturity until week 34, and a suite of life-time medical problems can be expected.  Medical advances can only push this point of viability so far back toward conception, because functioning lungs, even if not mature, must be present for a fetus to survive outside the womb.  No amount of medical intervention before that point of development will change this fundamental fact of biology, which establishes a second threshold for abortion at 23 weeks.  A science-fiction scenario of an artificial womb in the far future would not change this calculation of natural embryogenesis.

The Myth of Life’s Sanctity

Beyond the point of when a fetus might be viable outside the uterus, the threshold for when an abortion is a reasonable choice becomes significantly higher. I agree that late-term abortions are difficult to justify, except in the extreme case of rape or incest in which the victim had no access to medical care earlier in the pregnancy.  A primary argument here rests on the notion that life is sacred.  Indeed, the very term “sanctity of life” is code for opposition to abortion, supposedly indicating a pious regard for all things living.  But nothing could be further from the truth.

Cows, pigs, goats and sheep are alive, but killing them for food is not questioned.  Hunting big game for sport is just fine.  But since cows and big game are alive, the unctuous appeal to the “sanctity of life” is absurd.  Plants are alive, but I suspect the “sanctity” part only applies to animals.  What abortion opponents mean is that some forms of life, that only they have the right to define, are sacred, while others can be disregarded as long as they give the OK.  

Perhaps, then, the “sanctity of life” really applies only to human beings.  No, that does not work either because abortion foes do not view all human life as sacred; only some life.  For example, killing in war is justified, as is lethal injection for convicted criminals.  Opponents of abortion are almost universally in favor of the death penalty.   Killing an intruder in your home is acceptable.  How can one possibly hold these beliefs and claim to believe at the same time that “all life” is sacred?  The contradiction is stark, and the assault on logic and reason beyond comprehension.

Alright, let us say for the sake of argument that the sanctity of life argument really does only apply to humans, and only to some humans as defined by abortion foes.  Even that concession does not lead to any logical conclusion.  Ask yourself this question:  when was the last time a pro-choice activist entered a church and gunned down a pro-life activist in front of family and friends?  Is it not just a bit odd that the some of the very people who claim that life is sacred are the ones that kill to promote their cause? Pushing the “sanctity of life” becomes particularly problematic when murders are committed for the cause.  Those proudly proclaiming support for the sanctity of life support nothing of the kind.  The truth is that these folks believe life is sacred on a case-by-case basis, hardly a founding principle.

The sanctity of life argument is dead; and abortion foes who continue to spout pious nonsense that all human life is sacred will have to oppose the death penalty and denounce all wars, allow intruders into their homes and cease defending themselves against lethal attack.  Those who claim all life is sacred must become vegans who only eat plant products that do not damage in any way the parent plant.  If all life is truly sacred, eating any plant or animal would be murder, an idea no more absurd than claiming that eliminating an undifferentiated ball of cells is murder.  The sanctity of life argument is ridiculous at every level.

Last Resort

Nobody likes abortion.  That is not the question being debated.  Prevention, not abortion, is the vastly preferred method of family planning. Abortion is an invasive surgical technique, physically and psychologically traumatic, expensive, and potentially dangerous. Whereas sex should be as frequent as desired, unwanted pregnancy should be exceptional rather than routine. Part of the adult responsibility commensurate with having an active sex life is prudent and careful use of contraception. Abortion should not be viewed as a contraceptive. However, if an unwanted pregnancy occurs, a women’s right to choose her own reproductive destiny must be protected.  As should our right to live in a country free from religious tyranny.

Scalia Scales New Heights of Absurdity and New Lows of Judicial Malfeasance

The Constitution of the United States is nothing more than a piece of paper home to some clever words. The reason a great nation arose from that parchment has nothing to do with the document and everything to do with its readers. Americans have collectively agreed, by simple convention, to live by the tenets and dictates of our founding principles; we and our ancestors have accepted this social contract based on the notion that we are a nation of laws protected from the tyranny of the majority through the checks and balances of federal power. Faith in our institutions is a critical element to the nation’s survival. Included in that equation is a belief that our highest court is removed, at least to some reasonable degree, from the passions of current politics. We want to believe that a majority of the Justices can overcome their own political views to write opinions in the nation’s long-term best interests. In fact, this has historically been the case. Yes, there are some obvious and notable exceptions in which contemporary political views led the court astray (Dred Scott v. Sandford in 1857; Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896; Hamdi v. Rumsfeld in 2004, to name just a few). But those are the exceptions that prove the rule; and over time the Court has often self-corrected (Brown v. Board of Education in 1954). At least until the era of Antonin Scalia.

It would seem that Scalia is determined to mount a campaign designed to do everything possible to undermine our faith in the Supreme Court. His radicalism, irrationality and extremism threaten the credibility of the most important anchor in our three-branch government. Books will be written about his destructive tenure, but in the meantime we can lament his most egregious rulings. The latest came just this week in the majority opinion to overturn 50 years of civil rights law and in his dissent to the majority’s decision to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act. Consistent in his inconsistency, on the one hand he cavalierly ignored 50 years of precedent, relishing judicial activism, while the very next day deplored Supreme Court intervention in the gay marriage debate. In the year 2013 Scalia expresses outrage at the legality of “homosexual sodomy” without condemning that act between a man and woman. An activist who deplores activism, Scalia has no problem with court determination of what orifice by what gender we may or may not enter. Further muddling his twisted judicial philosophy, he appealed to states’ rights in his DOMA dissent, arguing that the issue of gay marriage should left to the states. Oh, if only he had applied that logic to Bush v. Gore.

In an interview in which Scalia made the absurd claim that he and his colleagues do not consider politics in their decisions, he put forth a few telling comments that reveal the ugly truth. First, he justified Bush vs. Gore by noting (with no evidence) that later counts showed Gore would have lost anyway. The exact quote: “No regrets at all. Especially because it’s clear that the thing would have ended up the same way anyway.”

Whoa. Take a step back and think about that logic. Scalia is saying that he can justify his ruling based on facts that were only revealed later. Meaning at the time of his ruling he had no such justification. What could reveal more clearly his political motivation for his decision? He has admitted here he can only justify what he did with circumstances that developed after he ruled.

Second, when asked about Citizens United, he said the following, “I think Thomas Jefferson would have said the more speech, the better,” when asked about so-called super PAC spending on national elections. “That’s what the First Amendment is all about. So long as the people know where the speech is coming from.” Is this supposedly sharply intelligent man completely dense? He actually defends Citizens United with “as long as people know where the speech is coming from?” The most immediate and terrible consequence of Citizens United is that we DO NOT know where that speech is coming from; the identify of donors is kept hidden. Scalia has lost all credibility: his rulings are clearly political, designed to support a right wing agenda. Worse, his decisions are inconsistent, meaning he rules to promote a particular political outcome rather than on the basis of careful judicial review, precisely what our Founding Fathers did not want for the Supreme Court.

His radicalism seeps out in strange ways. In one case decided in 2010 (Salazar v. Buono), Scalia said he was simply baffled that a Christian cross could be construed to represent Christianity. The case in question is a bit convoluted, but the details are important. A seven-foot cross was erected on Sunrise Rock in 1934 on government-owned land in the Mojave Desert to honor fallen veterans. The metal display has been repaired and replaced many times since, with the latest renovation completed in 1998. A former National Park Service employee, Frank Buono, sued to have the cross removed as an offensive symbol to all non-Christian soldiers and their surviving families. In response to this challenge, Congress offered yet another violation of the Establishment Clause by using sleazy slight-of-hand to circumvent the Constitution. Congress sold a little plot of land on which the cross rests to a veterans group, thereby claiming that the cross no longer stood on federal property. But the transparent ploy of gutting the Constitution by creating an island of private property surrounding by a National Park did not fool the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which ruled the cross had to come down. Our largely Catholic Supreme Court then decided to hear the case.

Justice Antonin Scalia explained that he agreed to put this case on the court docket because he was simply baffled that a Christian cross could be construed to represent Christianity. He was puzzled that a cross was not broadly representative of Islam, Judaism or no religion at all. Take a moment and ponder that. His assertion that the cross represents everybody is extraordinarily bizarre, defying even the most basic elements of decency. How horribly offensive to every non-Christian to be told that the cross is a universal symbol representative of all religions. Our Founding Fathers are spinning furiously in their graves right now. Scalia’s view is precisely what our forefathers worked so terribly hard to avoid. Scalia is brazenly choosing one religion over all others in direct violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

In addition to ignoring our Bill of Rights, Scalia has abandoned any pretense of logic to support his faith. To demonstrate how terribly sick Scalia’s thoughts are, he asked the ridiculous question, “What would you have them erect? Some conglomerate of a cross, a Star of David, and you know, a Muslim half moon and star?” Notice that Scalia did not offer the obvious and imminently more reasonable alternative of erecting the Crescent of Islam in place of the cross. He only suggested the absurd notion of a chimera. He is so utterly blinded by his faith that he could not imagine that anything other than a cross could serve to honor our soldiers. Would Scalia himself allow a Star of David on his grave? If a Christian would not select a Star of David then why on earth would a Jew choose a cross? Yet that is exactly what Scalia proposes. The notion that the cross represents everybody is extraordinarily bizarre, defying even the most basic elements of decency.

As horrifying as his views are on Christianity, Scalia managed to outdo even himself when he claimed a moral equivalency between homosexuality and murder when speaking at a Princeton seminar. The exact quote: “If we cannot have moral feelings against homosexuality, can we have it against murder? Can we have it against other things?”

What is most shocking about this episode is that the incident barely made the news. A few days later the story was completely dead. In a sane world his comments would have unleashed a tsunami of indignation and a groundswell calling for his resignation. The man is not qualified to sit on the court. Not because he holds abhorrent personal views but because his rulings are guided by those views rather than the law. He does not interpret law as is his mandate; he rules according to his repugnant personal views and simply ignores laws and any precedent he finds inconvenient.

Scalia sometimes describes himself as a “textualist” interpreter of the Constitution, meaning he divines the meaning of the words in the Constitution as the framers did in writing them. He channels into the minds of Jefferson and Adams; really how else would he have any greater insight into the meaning of those words than any other legal scholar? Actually he is a “spiritualist” interpreter of our founding document, the Carnac of the Supreme Court. Only Scalia knows what the founders really meant; only he can interpret the words accurately, even though he apparently has trouble interpreting his own. In any case, he said that as a textualist his job was easy. “The death penalty? Give me a break. It’s easy. Abortion? Absolutely easy. Nobody ever thought the Constitution prevented restrictions on abortion. Homosexual sodomy? Come on. For 200 years, it was criminal in every state.” (In what was to become a pattern, he skipped the issue of heterosexual sodomy, which is also illegal in many of those same states). For a brilliant scholar it is impressive to cram into one sentence so much inanity. Notice that he dismisses any discussion in repealing the death sentence by stating that nothing in the Constitution prevents it. By that logic anything not specifically prohibited is allowed. Well that is exactly true of sodomy as well — nowhere in the Constitution is sodomy prohibited. By his own logic, just provided to justify his position on the death penalty, requires that he must too support sodomy. But instead of being consistent, he shifts his argument to the states, citing precedent. And that is rich, because no other Justice in modern history has had such disdain for “stare decisis.” Scalia cites precedent when it suits his purpose, and rudely dismissed previous rulings when they become inconvenient. Even richer is his appeal to states’ rights (implied in his argument) given his willingness to trample over Florida’s rights in anointing Bush to the presidency.

For someone supposedly with a keen intellect, Scalia’s mind has become a nightmarish olio of jumbled principles packaged with arrogant certainty, which is an extraordinarily dangerous combination. No Justice has been more inconsistent in legal outlook. He is an activist judge who decries judicial activism. He is a strict constructionist who willingly flaunts the will and intent of our founders. He is, in the end, an embarrassment to the history of the Supreme Court. His judicial record is a train wreck, derailing logic and decency. With apologies to Churchill, never has one man done so much to harm so many. In a TV interview, Scalia described his job thusly: “I’m in charge of making the Constitution come out right all the time.” By his own criterion, he is a complete, utter failure. He is the epitome of everything that a Justice on the Supreme Court should not be; he is an abomination.

Our Skewed Political Landscape

By today’s standards my political views are considered liberal, perhaps even far to the left of center. Yet just a few decades ago I would have been (and was) labeled a moderate or even slightly right of center for holding the same positions I hold today. The radicalization of the right has skewed our political landscape: a moderate outlook compared to the extremism of Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin or Ron Paul seems downright leftist. Much of what is bunched together as liberalism is really centrism that has been artificially shifted left when compared to the fanaticism of the religious right.

Centrism is easy enough to define. We seek a secular government as small as possible, but no smaller than necessary for proper function; a fair, equitable, and simplified tax system, a strong and lean military capable of meeting modern threats to our security, robust protection of civil liberties and voting rights, and a level field in which everybody plays by the same rules as we strive to better our lives.

Certainly all of those ideals are subject to debate, and have multiple means of implementation with a wide margin for different outcomes; but none is radical or leftist. The latter idea, ensuring that we have a level playing field, is perhaps the most misunderstood. All competition requires a referee. Imagine a professional football game with no zebras to ensure fairness and enforce rules. The referee is there not to hinder competition, but to ensure that the competition is fair — to make sure that the best team wins on merit and skill. Football works only because everybody — players and fans alike — believe that the two teams are competing fairly, and that both teams must play by the same set of rules.

Capitalism is much like that football game. The competition is fierce, and under ideal conditions the best ideas win. That is the incredible power of the marketplace. But history has shown that without proper refereeing, capitalism collapses toward oligarchy and monopoly, crushing the very competition that makes capitalism an engine of innovation and growth. The age of the robber barons was no fluke of history. Just as with football, capitalism needs to be regulated to ensure fairness so that everybody plays by the same rules. Enter the government, the referee that keeps capitalism alive. Conservatives fear all things federal (except the military), insisting that government is a threat to free enterprise and entrepreneurship; ironically, the exact opposite is true. Government intervention, properly constituted and implemented, is essential to the very survival of capitalism. In the absence of oversight, reasonable regulations, efforts to maintain transparency, and the enforcement of rules of fair play, the system collapses. We little reminder of this: credit default swaps, insider trading, and a host of other ills brought our financial system to its knees just a few years ago. Greed and corruption will never go away; only by reining in those excesses will we reap the true benefits of a free market. And that requires government intervention.

And here is where the skewing of our political landscape has dire consequences. We have lost our tenuous consensus that government has some role to play. Tension between left and right is healthy; nobody has all the answers, and that struggle moving back and forth across the middle has historically created good and moderate solutions to the nation’s problems. But today the tug of war is no longer centered around the mud hole in the middle; as the red and blue teams pull hard, the debate back and forth no longer covers neutral ground, but is now all in red territory. So instead of having a healthy debate about the role of government in managing Wall Street, we get cries from the right that Obama is a socialist or communist. Instead of creating a balanced budget with a mix of tax increases and spending cuts, we get sequestration because the GOP will not even discuss tax hikes (including “hikes” that are nothing more than the expiration of previous and supposedly temporary cuts). Instead of a loyal opposition, working with but moderating the excesses of the opposing party, we get the Senate Majority leader vowing, in public, that his primary objective to ensure that the president fails. Mitch McConnell said, “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” Sure, you can put this in context, and lighten the sinister meaning, but the statement remains: defeating Obama became a greater goal than solving the nation’s problems. The underlying idea is that Obama is so bad that sacrificing any progress that might arise from cooperation is worth the price so that Obama is in office only one term. Whatever lack of progress results from the focus on defeating Obama would be made up by the progress we would see under the subsequent Republican president. There is no middle ground here; no struggle across the central mud hole to find good solutions to our problems.

This skewed approach leads to some surrealistic political posturing. For example, conservatives set out to blame Obama for the collapsing economy and declining stock market that he inherited. In the March 6, 2009, Wall Street Journal Michael Boskin opined that “Obama’s Radicalism is Killing the Dow.” He said, “It’s hard not to see the continued sell-off on Wall Street and the growing fear on Main Street as a product, at least in part, of the realization that our new president’s policies are designed to radically re-engineer the market-based U.S. economy, not just mitigate the recession and financial crisis.” Now that the DJIA is firmly over 15,000 we don’t hear from the GOP that Obama’s policies are killing the DOW. Funny that.

Conservatives were so quick to blame Obama for a bad economy that they saddled him with a declining DOW even before he took office. John Tanny of Real Clear Markets, wrote on November 25, 2008, that an article entitled, “This Is Obama’s Market, Good and Bad.” Obama was not yet president! That did not stop Tanny from writing that, “Lacking clarity, investors can only guess about what’s ahead based on Obama’s decidedly anti-business rhetoric used during the campaign. Whatever direction he takes, it should be clear that today’s stock market is the Obama stock market, so it’s up to him to decide its basic direction.” Even though Obama was not yet president.

What are conservatives saying about the DOW and Obama now, nearly five years into Obamas presidency? Nothing. He was responsible for a collapsing DOW before he became president, but is not responsible for a nearly 100 percent increase in the DOW during his five years in office. Such absurdities are only possible in our skewed political landscape, which allows the GOP, with full support of its base, to blame Obama for all failures and give him no credit for any successes. The tug of war is no longer about the center.

Liberals are not guilt free here. We hear constant whining about how Obama is not liberal enough, with ceaseless efforts to pull him away from the center. Remember the cries of woe and agony because Obama did not repeal DADT or DOMA the moment he got into office. The LGBT community attacked Obama instead of giving him the political space he needed to make lasting change. Fortunately for that community, Obama had their back and his eye on the long game, looking for lasting change rather than expediency. Liberals bemoan the continued operation of Guantanamo, without getting out the vote to overcome right wing opposition. Liberals want Obama to succeed but are unwilling to create the necessary grass roots support. Many liberals were unhappy with the pace in getting us out Iraq and Afghanistan, instead of cheering the fact that Obama was fulfilling his promise to do so. What, a Republican president would do better?

We have reached the point where we can no longer collectively celebrate success. In today’s paper, we learn that home builders are more upbeat now than any time in the last seven years. That is on top of good news over good news about the economy. According to Bloomberg Government, manufacturing has its best showing since the days of Bill Clinton, arresting the long slide seen under Bush. U.S. factory positions have grown since early 2010. Fox & Friends soiled themselves trying to discredit this reality: even the Wall Street Journal called Bush’s job creation history “the worst track record on record,” admitting the obvious growth under Obama. American automobile sales have not only recovered from catastrophic loss, but have accelerated into strong growth. GM reports sales up 11 percent from last year; Ford reports an annual increase of 17.8 percent; Chrysler is up 11 percent. American banks saw record profits the first quarter of 2013. American banks earned more from January through March than during any previous quarter, a total of $40.3 billion, the highest ever for a single quarter, and up 15.8 percent from the same period last year.

Historically, the political parties would be fighting to get credit for these positive developments. Instead, the GOP either denies their reality (Obama’s tax cut for 95% of Americans), ignores the obvious progress we’ve made (mum on DOW and automobile sales), or blames Obama for not having enough success quickly enough (unemployment figures).

The current GOP strategy is to obstruct progress and then blame Obama for failure. A better and more traditional approach, and one that will more likely ensure long-term political viability: cooperate with Obama to create a better America, and then claim credit. That old formula worked for most of our history; we need to return to the practice of promoting success, and then arguing over who is responsible for our good times. As long as we remain stuck in the mire of conservative vitriol, skewed far to the right, we will never reach our full potential as the great nation we are. History will judge the GOP harshly for this decade of obstructionism, but they can recover. The time has come to move on — and move back to the tug of war over the middle. If we must fight, let us fight over success. With just a little cooperation, there will be plenty to go around.

Sunday Dialogue: More Regulation, or Less?

To steal from Winston Churchill, government regulation is the worst form of oversight, except for all others. In its absence we return to the days of robber barons, badly polluted water and air, unbridled corruption and greed on Wall Street, banks vulnerable to collapse, contaminated food, tainted drugs, unsafe air travel and deathtrap automobiles.

New York Times:  Sunday, June 1, 2013

Regulation is costly, inefficient and frustrating, and much better than the alternative. History proves conclusively that unregulated free markets are incapable of reining in the excesses of capitalism, which must be tempered through government meddling. It is ugly, but it works.

JEFF SCHWEITZER

Spicewood, Tex., May 30, 2013

When Will Conservatives Admit Defeat?

“Home prices are surging, job growth is strengthening and stocks are setting record highs. All of which explains why Americans are more hopeful about the economy than at any other point in five years.” This is the headline today from the Associated Press. This is not a missive from a hopeful liberal press, but the conclusion from independent organizations broadly accepted as disinterested and honest researchers. In some cases the reports are directly from the industries themselves (car sales for example):

1) The Conference Board, a private research group, reported on Tuesday that consumer confidence is at 76.2 in May, up from 69 in April, the highest level since February 2008.

2) U.S. home prices jumped about 11 percent in March compared to the previous year, the biggest annual increase since April 2006. This from the S&P’s Case-Shiller report.

3) The Dow has risen 18 percent this year alone; the S&P 500 will this month hit the longest winning streak since 2009. We must not forget that in March 2009 Stanford economist Michael Boskin opined in the Wall Street Journal that “Obama’s radicalism is killing the Dow.” The markets have almost doubled since then. The DJIA was at 7,949 the day Bush left office; as of this writing the DJIA is at 15,400.

4) The national unemployment rate is now not at 7.5 percent, down from the high of 10 percent in 2009; the rate continues to fall. The economy has added, on average, 208,000 jobs per month since November. Remember that the economy was losing 700,000 jobs per month when Bush left office. Let us not forget the rather creepy conspiracy theory that Obama was manipulating the unemployment figures prior to the election; where are Matt and Jack now?

5) According to Bloomberg Government, manufacturing has its best showing since the days of Bill Clinton, arresting the long slide seen under Bush. U.S. factory positions have grown since early 2010. Fox & Friends soiled themselves trying to discredit this reality: even the Wall Street Journal called Bush’s job creation history “the worst track record on record,” admitting the obvious growth under Obama.

6) American automobile sales have not only recovered from catastrophic loss, but have accelerated into strong growth. GM reports sales up 11 percent from last year; Ford reports an annual increase of 17.8 percent; Chrysler is up 11 percent.

No matter how much Fox and the Republican leadership in Washington might want to discredit the president, the numbers above are not in dispute. The gains in the stock and housing markets have enriched Americans to the tune of $16 trillion lost to the great Bush recession. To put Obama’s performance in perspective, let us not forget that the Dow showed a loss of 25 percent during the eight years of G.W. Bush; the S&P fared worse under Bush — the index dropped 40 percent of its value during the Bush reign. The NASDAQ lost 48 percent of its value. The stock market under Obama showed a positive 20.1 percent annual increase in his first two years in office and was up 85 percent at the end of his first term. In our nation’s history, Obama ranks third in first-term stock performance. And his second term continues the expansion: the DJIA was at 13,881 on the day of Obama’s second inauguration.

While the right wing embarrasses itself with dire warnings of hyperinflation and conspiracies to manipulate economic indicators, the rest of us enjoy a solid economic expansion. Of course we have much more that needs to be done. Which brings me to the central question: is there any circumstance, any result, which would enable conservatives to admit they were wrong about Obama and his economic policies?

Concerning national security, few would argue that Obama is soft on terrorism. But the challenge remains the same here as with economic policy: what outcome would yield an admission from the right that Obama’s policies work, and are good for America?

Given the positive economic trends we see, let me propose a reasonable hypothetical: at the end of Obama’s second term, the United States is enjoying a robust, healthy economy with low inflation and a declining debt. If this became a reality, would conservatives allow that Obama was a success? And if not, what outcome would?

If one argues that any success cannot be attributed to Obama’s policies, then so too one must argue that any failures are not his. Inversely, if Obama’s policies can be blamed for a bad economy, and the GOP is never shy about that, then those same policies must be credited when we enjoy strong economic growth. One of the most aggravating aspects of right wing zealotry is the idea that all things good are due to the Republican Congress (or to a previous Republican president no matter how far back in time), and all things bad caused by Obama (or a previous Democratic president, no matter how far back). That absurdity will not stand. This ridiculous selective attribution of success and failure is the clearest sign of right wing disintegration.

Let’s be real. We all know that, most likely, no possible outcome would cause conservative foes of Obama to admit they were wrong. No matter if the economy were booming along; even if the debt were totally erased; even if unemployment was at 3 percent; even if the stock market tripled. Nothing, no outcome, no success, will cause conservatives to admit that Obama and his policies were and are good for the country.

If my conclusion is wrong, then show me. I challenge any conservative to list any metric by which Obama could be judged a success. Could he do anything, achieve anything, that would bring lie to your claim that Obama is a radical, a socialist, a big-government advocate out of control? What if after eight years the country is clearly better off than when he took office? Would anybody on the right admit to being wrong? Of course any hypothetical metric of success must be put in context of past presidents, Republican or Democrat, to keep such measurements in the realm of the possible. Saying that Obama failed because he did not make everybody millionaires would not qualify as a response here.

If I am correct, nobody will meet this challenge. And if so, then we know everything we need to about the conservative movement today. If the right cannot give me anything or describe any set of circumstances that would qualify as a success, then conservatives admit openly that they simply hate Obama, and that absolutely nothing he does can ever be right, no matter how good for America. Nihilism is not a long-term viable strategy for any political movement; sacrificing the American people on the altar of hateful politics is not a winning game plan. Opposing a president leading a country to economic ruin makes some sense; the opposite is not true. Hating Obama no matter how good he may be for the country, no matter how well the economy is doing, is nothing but turning a blind eye to reality at the expense of the country. And as divided as we are as a people, such blind hatred will not lead to long-term political gain.

So, conservatives, go ahead: give me something, some economic criteria, that would hypothetically have you admit you were wrong about Obama. Go ahead.

Ah, the sound of silence.

Et Tu, Judas?

Variously described as “long-lost” or “recently discovered,” the Gospel of Judas has been reexamined and again found to be authentic. By analyzing the unique ink used and how that ink interacted with the ancient papyrus, scientists concluded anew that the document is genuine. When first revealed in the 1970s, the available techniques for analyses were unable to declare authenticity with a high degree of confidence, even though the evidence pointed in that direction. We now know, to the still-limited extent that such things can be known with modern technology, that the document dates to about A.D. 280.

So is having an authentic Gospel of Judas important? In answering that question, the Reverend Albert Mohler, Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, made a breathtaking, stunning, observation about the discovery. As reported in the April 6, 2006, USA Today, Mohler said the discovery, assumed to be authentic, “has no bearing whatsoever on the Easter story, much less on the faith of the Christian church.” He went on to dismiss the gospel as nothing but “an ancient manuscript that tells an interesting story.” Really? Really? If the good Reverend meant what he said, and if his views are representative of his flock, the implications are astounding.

Mohler is not alone nor an anomaly. Metropolitan Bishoy, leader of the Coptic Orthodox Church, echoed Mohler’s dismissal of the new gospel as “non-Christian babbling resulting from a group of people trying to create a false ‘amalgam’ between the Greek mythology and Far East religions with Christianity… They were written by a group of people who were aliens to the main Christian stream of the early Christianity. These texts are neither reliable nor accurate Christian texts, as they are historically and logically alien to the main Christian thinking and philosophy of the early and present Christians.”

Gospels are nothing but ancient manuscripts that tell an interesting story. Well, that is exactly what I, too, have been saying all along! Of course, unlike Rev. Mohler, I apply that same logic to, and draw the same conclusions about, the gospels constituting today’s New Testament Bible. After all, the collection of gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, were only accepted as canonical at the Synod of Rome in 382 A.D. in the Decree of Damasus, issued, coincidentally enough, by Pope St. Damasus I. Scripture, as accepted by modern Christians, is nothing but an arbitrary collection of four gospels codified by the Christians in power in the 4th century.

Those four gospels of the modern Bible are considered special only as an accident of history, because some Christians decided, nearly four hundred years after Christ died, that this quartet represented the word of god, while dozens of other gospels were just a good read. The canonical four carry no more inherent weight than the Gospel of Judas. So why would the powers that be choose those specific four? Did they have any motivation to exclude all others, besides the obvious contradictions buried in the description of events found among the larger group of gospels? Well, yes, indeed.

In early Christianity, diversity ruled, with dozens of variations and sects like the Ebionites, Marcionites and Carpocratians flourishing, splitting, and growing. Eventually, from this chaos emerged two major schools of thought. In one corner, we have the Gnostics, who believed that personal insights are the key to redemption and salvation. Gnostics were able to hear the voice of god from within and therefore had no need for priests to act as their go-between with god. Ordinary people could be divine, connected directly to god.

Orthodox priests in the opposing corner were none too pleased with this idea. Gnosticism not only threatened the power structure of the Orthodox Christians, but directly contradicted their belief that faith in Jesus and his resurrection was the sole path to personal salvation. These Christians emphasized that only the son of god was both human and divine, making god a step removed from the man on the street. That belief conveniently ensured a role for priests, who retained the power to intercede with god on behalf of ordinary folks.

While the two schools sparred for almost two hundred years, the battle for dominance was never clearly won by either side. That is, until the squabbling led to an ugly split in 180 A.D., when Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyon, formally condemned Gnostic teachings in his magnum opus, Against Heresies (who isn’t?), and attacked as heretical any gospels that differed from the mainstream church. The Decree of Damasus issued in 382 A.D. was really just the culmination of the movement precipitated by Irenaeus when he published his anti-Gnostic book two centuries earlier.

We can think of the Gnostics as Democrats and the Orthodox Christians as Republicans. At the Synod of Rome in 382 A.D., the Republicans were in power. Not surprisingly, the Republicans chose the four gospels that best reflected their views. Hence, we now have Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, who told a sympathetic story about Jesus’s birth, life, crucifixion and resurrection. Any gospels that displeased the Republicans were conveniently neglected or declared heretical. This type of selective blindness is no different from what we experience in modern times. Witness the blind treatment of any military intelligence that did not support the war in Iraq: any gospels (intelligence) that displeased the Orthodox Christians (Republicans) was conveniently neglected or declared heretical (unpatriotic).

The selection of the four gospels was nothing but the exercise of raw political power to promote one particular belief, which was much in dispute by other equally devout Christians. But Gnostic Christians, who dismissed the importance, or reality, of the resurrection, simply had less political influence, and lost the election. Gnostics were the Al Gore of the 4th century. Maybe Pope Damasus I had a brother serving as an Imperial Bishop in a critical region to help throw the election his way.

More than three dozen gospels, of undisputed authenticity, have been known to the Church for hundreds of years, or millennia in some cases, but most did not make the canonical cut. Gospels of Thomas and Mary Magdalene, the Gospel of Truth and the Secret Book of John were denounced as heretical by the early church, but were popular enough in their day to survive in plentiful copies dearly regarded by early Christians. Even the gospels that made the team were not in complete harmony; that is to say, they offered contradictory stories about the same events. Rev. Mohler could not be more right; he just needs to extend his logic to all 40 gospels, including those of the Fab Four, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, which are in fact, as the good Reverend states, nothing but ancient manuscripts telling an interesting story.

As an aside, the conceptual schism between Gnostics and Orthodox Christians is analogous to the division in Islam today between Sunni and Shiite sects. Sunnis would be like the Gnostics (or modern-day Protestants), with no one person appointed as head of the religion, and with no formal clergy. Shiites, like the Orthodox Christians, have a divinely-appointed religious leader and a formal hierarchy similar in structure to the Catholic Church.

Judas and Applewhite

The Gospel of Judas is interesting because the story told within differs significantly from the biblical version. The bible claims that Judas betrayed Jesus for a mere 30 pieces of silver. This from Luke 22 (New International Version):

Now the Festival of Unleavened Bread, called the Passover, was approaching, and the chief priests and the teachers of the law were looking for some way to get rid of Jesus, for they were afraid of the people. Then Satan entered Judas, called Iscariot, one of the Twelve. And Judas went to the chief priests and the officers of the temple guard and discussed with them how he might betray Jesus. They were delighted and agreed to give him money. He consented, and watched for an opportunity to hand Jesus over to them when no crowd was present.

The new Gospel tells a dramatically different story. Here Judas conspires with Jesus rather than betrays him. The two co-conspirators together plan to have Judas turn Jesus over to the authorities for execution, upon Jesus’s request, as part of the duo’s plan to release Jesus’s spirit from his body. One wonders if Luke got something this important so wrong…

Anyway, the new story immediately calls to mind a more recent episode of spirit release. In 1997, 39 members of the Heaven’s Gate cult took their own lives, dying in shifts over a few days in late March. Some members helped others take a deadly mix of Phenobarbital and vodka before consuming their own poisonous cocktail. Why did these people die? Members of the cult believed the prophecy of Marshall Applewhite, who claimed that the comet Hale-Bopp was the long-awaited sign to shed their earthly bodies, which they called “containers.” By leaving their containers behind, followers would be able to join a spacecraft traveling and hiding behind the comet, which would take them to a higher plane of existence.

With the new Gospel of Judas in hand, we need to take another look at that bug-eyed lunatic Marshall Applewhite, who commanded his followers to shed their “containers.” Everybody outside of that cult would agree that the guy had a screw loose. But in fact, Applewhite had good precedent in broadly accepted religious lore. Perhaps he was not crazy after all. Gnostic Christians believed, and the new Gospel supports the idea, that Jesus not only knew about, but encouraged, Judas to betray him so that Judas “could sacrifice the man that clothes me.” Jesus apparently wanted to shed his container. Perhaps the Gospel of Judas has the story correct after all. Even if not, traditional Christians today, though offering multiple interpretations of what happened between Judas and Jesus, widely accept the idea that Jesus at least had knowledge of the betrayal before the fateful evening. That conclusion would be hard to deny, with passages from the Bible such as, “For Jesus knew from the first who those were that did not believe, and who it was that would betray Him.” (John 6:64 in the Revised Standard Version, RSV). If that is too ambiguous, we have, “Did I not choose you, the twelve, and one of you is a devil?” The bible speaks of “Judas the son of Simon Iscariot, for he, one of the twelve, was to betray Him.” (John 6:70-71 RSV). If John is right, Jesus knew that he and his container would soon part ways, and took no action to avoid the separation. Crazy like Applewhite.

The Gospel of Judas, like dozens of others, did not make the cut in A.D. 382 because the story told differed from the four gospels eventually selected. Wishing to shed one’s container after all is a bit crazy, no? That Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are now what one reads in Sunday school is nothing but an accident of history, an outcome of political maneuvering in smoke-filled rooms. And yet mysteriously billions of people believe this agglomeration of tales written hundreds of years after Jesus died represents the literal word of god or some allegorical reference to such meaning. The true miracle is that the human mind can take these various, conflicting, inconsistent tales from nomads ignorant in the ways of the natural world as something supernatural. Crazy like Applewhite.

God and Morality: Asking the Wrong Question

Frans de Waal‘s new book The Bonobo and the Atheist asks a question that vexed Greek sages thousands of years ago and every philosopher since: are we moral because we believe in god, or do we believe in god because we are moral? Cutting to the chase, his answer is a resounding ‘yes’ to the latter.

Ah, the benefits of having a good publicist. De Waal, whom I have admired for years, has found a real pro, because his latest book probing this age-old question has received much press lately in print, radio and television, even though he breaks no new ground. I am delighted that he has found this audience because his message, while not new, is vitally important.

However, while de Waal gets the attention, I would like to suggest that his question about morality and god is not quite right. The question as posed implies that morality, even if derived from our biology and without any reference to religion, will lead to a belief in god. He is almost right. But Captain Edward Smith almost missed the iceberg. Even a small mistake can be catastrophic, and de Waal’s error in linking morality to god, even while inverting the usual relationship, is a fatal flaw in his thesis.

Five Pillars

From his writings, de Waal clearly believes that religion retains some purpose in modern society, mainly in the form of strengthening community and providing the comfort of ritual. Again, he is almost right. As I argued in Beyond Cosmic Dice, religion pathologically persists in service of five different masters of human weakness: fear of death and the promise of seeing lost loved ones; the need to explain away the unknown; hope for controlling one’s destiny; a desire for social cohesion; and the corrupting allure of political power. So we create, each of us, and collectively, a god who is all-powerful and all-knowing to address some combination of these five masters, or all of them. Holding on to two of the five is where de Waal goes astray.

There is no link between morality and the five pillars; nothing about being moral would lead to a belief in god. The two concepts do not intersect. The history of religion proves the point.

That morality does not derive from, or lead to, religion has been the conclusion of some of humanity’s greatest minds, including David Hume, the father of religious studies. Due to certain inconveniences, like the possibility of being burned alive at the stake, Hume restricted his writings to polytheism. But it takes no great leap to read between the lines and apply his words to monotheism and Christianity in particular. Hume did not believe morality is a gift from god because he thought religion a false construct and therefore no foundation for human behavior or thought. Instead, humanity’s first beliefs in a higher power were borne of ignorance and fear of the natural world: every disaster that befalls us demands an explanation. Naturally, multiple unknown causes leads to the idea of multiple powers; polytheism is the natural state of a primitive mind.

We hang in perpetual suspense between life and death, health and sickness, plenty and want; which are distributed amongst the human species by secret and unknown causes, whose operation is oft unexpected, and always unaccountable. These unknown causes, then, become the constant object of our hope and fear.

From Many, One

But so too does this apply to belief in one god; one is just a derivative of many. The idea of powerful gods, or a god, controlling each important aspect of our lives would not by itself be satisfying. We want to put a face to the power; we want to be familiar with the deities that control our fate; we want to know them so that we can communicate with them and solicit their interventions. We are all Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, seeking to reveal the nature of the man behind the curtain, hoping to strike up a conversation with whoever is in charge.

By no coincidence then do our gods take on idealized human form. Our egoistic species has a universal tendency to transfer human-like qualities to surrounding objects, giving them characteristics that are familiar to us. This tendency to anthropomorphize everything around us has the consequence that we attribute human malice or benevolence to inanimate objects, and of course to the gods above. With their human form, gods also take on human personalities, with passions and weaknesses that make them jealous, vengeful, spiteful, fickle, wicked and foolish. How comforting to know that one’s fate and fortune, tossed about by unknown causes, can be controlled by dialogue with an invisible power that possesses familiar sentiments and intelligence!

But attributing human qualities to a higher power has a paradoxical consequence, one leading inevitably to the idea of multiple gods, at least initially. We raise our own estimation of ourselves as god-like, but diminish the power of the very gods we create by humanizing them. Once again, Hume is right on the money:

They suppose their deities, however potent and invisible, to be nothing but a species of human creatures, perhaps raised from among mankind, and retaining all human passions and appetites, together with corporeal limbs and organs. Such limited beings, though masters of human fate, being, each of them, incapable of extending his influence everywhere, must be vastly multiplied, in order to answer the variety of events, which happen over the whole face of nature. Thus every place is stored with a crowd of local deities; and thus polytheism has prevailed.

The idea that deities are “nothing but a species of human creatures, perhaps raised from among mankind” of course applies to more than the old discarded gods of the past. The words exactly describe Jesus. The link between the one god of today and the many of the past is forged in steel. The characteristics that originated in polytheism continued to apply even as the number of gods diminished. One could argue, in fact, that today’s religions are not truly monotheistic. Christianity has created hundreds of objects of worship in the guise of saints, who have become minor gods to many followers. So this conclusion from Hume is particularly poignant:

… it will appear, that the gods of all polytheists are not better than the elves or fairies of our ancestors, and merit as little any pious worship or veneration. These pretended religionists are really a kind of superstitious atheists, and acknowledge no being, that corresponds to our idea of deity.

So we conclude that most of the multiple divinities of the ancient world were supposed to have been human or human-like, thereby diminishing their power. Yet Christianity is no different: we have Jesus, in the flesh, bleeding like a regular guy, no different from what Hume disparages in his idea of a cruder polytheistic god. Like many gods, one god is nothing better than the elves or fairies of our ancestors. Nowhere in this narrative is there any suggestion that morality is linked to religion, or that morality elsewhere derived would lead to a belief in god.

While I emphasize David Hume as the father of religious studies, we cannot neglect to mention its grandfather, Baruch de Spinoza, who preceded Hume by almost 100 years. When Spinoza took on the question of ethics he created a path to secular enlightenment that Hume did not fully assimilate. I raise this here because at no point in Spinoza’s masterpiece, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus did he ever link the development of human morality with a future belief in god. As did Hume later, Spinoza concluded that the history of religion precludes any connection at all between morality and religion, in any order.

Poseidon and Morality

Religion’s history begs an important question: why of all the gods does the god of Abraham own the right to morality? The history of religion can be understood as the winnowing of gods from many to one. What this means is that all of us are atheists, even the most devout, undoubting, dedicated priest, rabbi or mullah. Atheist means “without god,” and all of us are without at least some gods. All monotheistic believers reject all gods, except one. They reject all the Greek elder gods Cronus, Gaea, Uranus, Rhea, Oceanus, Tethys, Hyperion, Mnemosyne, Themis, Iapetus, Coeus, Crius, Phoebe, Thea, Prometheus, Epimetheus, Atlas, Metis, and Dione. Muslims, Jews and Christians all deny the existence of the Greek Olympic gods Zeus, Poseidon, Hades, Hestia, Hera, Ares, Athena, Apollo, Aphrodite, Hermes, Artemis, and Hephaestus. All major religions today dismiss as nothing but myth the Roman gods Jupiter, Juno, Neptune, Pluto, Apollo, Diana, Mars, Venus, Cupid, Mercury, Minerva, Ceres, Proserpine, Vulcan, Bacchus, Saturn, Vesta, Janus, Uranus and Maia. Yet this roster of gods was real to multiple thousands of people for thousands of years, every bit as real as the one god worshipped by Christians, Muslims and Jews today. Was the morality derived from a belief in those gods any different from what we see today with one? If asked, Christians, Jews and Muslims today would use numerous and diverse reasons to deny the existence of Greek and Roman gods, who were so important to so many people for so long. I simply extend that reasoning to include the one remaining god. Everybody rejects as silly the idea of gods; I merely exclude the existence of one more god than those who consider themselves religious.

Something that we all reject is hardly a sound basis for morality. A more compelling basis would be the Tooth Fairy. Hear me out. No adult takes the myth seriously, of course. Yet the evidence for the existence of the Tooth Fairy is in fact more compelling than that for any other belief system. As a child, you put your recently yanked tooth under your pillow. The next morning, lo and behold, you have a quarter where the tooth used to be. That is concrete, real, undeniable evidence that the Tooth Fairy came to visit during the night. What other explanation could be possible with such incontrovertible evidence? What could be more compelling: you can hold that quarter in your hand, and you know for a fact that the previous night only a tooth lay beneath your head. The Tooth Fairy exists, end of story. Now, science might try to convince you, as a five-year-old, that there indeed is a more rational explanation for the nocturnal switch, such as a caring parent acting the part, for example, but you will have none of it. You believe the Tooth Fairy exists, have evidence to support your belief, and dismiss the scientific explanation as heretical.

Fortunately, we all grow out of believing in the Tooth Fairy. Well, no, we don’t. We just transfer that belief to something we call “god.” God is the Tooth Fairy, and the Tooth Fairy is god. Instead of looking for a quarter under our bed, we look to miracles as evidence to support our belief, ignoring the fact that belief cannot be supported by evidence. Yet, we insist. We see statues of the Virgin Mary crying blood, or the face of Jesus on an eggplant, or witness a healer laying hands giving ambulation to the disabled. Instead of the story involving a tooth and quarter, our narrative becomes more complex (we are adults after all), with the plot thickening to include creation and an afterlife. But both stories are made up, figments of our imagination, equally supported by “evidence.” Both are valid only because we believe. The first impulse would be to dismiss as completely absurd any equality between god and the Tooth Fairy. But resist the temptation, and ask yourself a simple question: how do the two really differ? Whatever argument you come up with to support a belief in god, can you not also apply to the Tooth Fairy, or Santa Claus, or trolls under a bridge in Ireland? Yes, of course, the concept that the Tooth Fairy is real is lunacy. But so, too, the belief in god. The notion that god exists is as childish and as silly as the belief that a mythical creature enters your bedroom at night to give alms for your milk teeth. This is a poor foundation for human morality.

Morality and Biology

Fortunately, we can understand the basis for morality without invoking god either as a cause or a consequence. There is no compelling evidence that morals are derived from religion, nor god’s grant of free will. Instead evidence points to morals arising from inherent characteristics embedded in human nature as a consequence of our sociality. What we view as moral behaviors — kindness, reciprocity, honesty, respect for others — are social norms that evolved in the context of a highly social animal living in large groups. The evolution of these social norms enabled a feeble creature to overcome physical limitations through effective cooperation. Morality is a biological necessity and a consequence of human development. Morality is our biological destiny, deeply embedded in the human psyche. Our moral characteristics are primeval adaptations that helped our ancestors survive. In a world of dangerous predators, early man could thrive only through mutual cooperation: good (moral) behavior strengthened the tribal bonds that were essential to survival. What we now call morality is really a suite of behaviors favored by natural selection in an animal weak alone but strong in numbers. Religion has nothing to do with morality: our understanding of human history, and the development of religion over the ages provides compelling evidence that morality is not derived from religion, nor leads to a belief in god.