Of Pots & Kettles

I spent way too much time last evening in a running Facebook thread that started with a question of how Muslims could use their religion to justify hatred of others.

While not the originator of the question, one commenter was particularly adamant about his views.

“The false god Muslims worship is a demon. Their god is a god of hate and destruction and death. Their god calls for the death of America.”

He went on to offer other gems within the thread, including:

“Pluralism is a plague in America.”
“…college campuses across the country are home to professors and students who hate America.”
“Obama is wicked… His abortion support. his same-sex “marriage ” support. His abuse of his authority by changing laws after their enactment. His war on Christianity in the military. etc etc.”
“I am not a Muslim hater. I am an Islam hater.”
“Islam is a pathological religion that turns people into monsters.”
“If one does an honest study they will realize the truth claims of Jesus are in fact the truth and the truth claims of others are lies.”

Here was a man with a self-avowed abiding faith in Jesus—a man who viewed himself as a good Christian… and yet a man who was filled with hate. Moreover, his hatred was somehow rooted in his faith—a faith he himself characterized as one of peace and harmony.

“An honest study leads to the conclusion that violence done in the name of Christianity is contrary to its tenets.”

On the one hand, I shudder at the level of cognitive dissonance required to use the message of Jesus to justify this much animosity. And rationalizing that hatred as being focused on the religion and the culture but not the people is a sophistry. “I don’t hate you, just everything you believe in and stand for,” was not quite the point of the Good News. Not to mention the mental gymnastics required to use this sort of argument to defend an abhorrence to college professors, students, liberals, and Obama who largely share Christian culture and religion.

Yet I think the best part is the delicious irony that this screed was motivated by this person’s horror that a group of Muslims could use their faith to motivate hatred. Yes Virginia, religions have been used since the dawn of time to justify the behaviors of groups and individuals. They are a lens that focuses and magnifies the culture and values of the people who practice them. Religions are not inherently good or evil, but the people involved in them or leading them may be. And the cold reality is that Christianity gets no magic pass here.

Your love or your hatred of your fellow man may be motivated by your faith, but you still have to own the result. In the end, you are responsible for your actions—good, bad, or indifferent. Only a coward hides behind their religion as an excuse.

Einstein’s God was not Yahweh

The quote attributed to Einstein, “The more I study science, the more I believe in God,” is getting a lot of play around the interwebs. I though it might be interesting to look at what he might have meant by the statement.

Einstein is also widely quoted as saying, God does not play dice with the universe.” Together, these quotes are oft cited as evidence of scientists believing in God—usually by fundamentalist Christian groups defending themselves against the encroachment of science on their literal interpretation of their mythology.

First, Einstein was neither a Christian or even a Jew. He was raised as a Jew and was schooled as a Catholic. He had ample education in the Abrahamic religions, but rejected them nonetheless.

Still, Einstein is not properly classified an atheist either. He rejected the notion of a personal god. Instead, he said, “I believe in Spinoza’s God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings.”

In other words, he was a Deist, and was in the spiritual company of Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, George Washington, Ethan Allen, and Thomas Paine. Deists believe that reason and observation of the natural world, without the need for organized religion, can determine that the universe is the product of a creator.

So Einstein’s quote is an observation of the mathematical beauty, the order, the ever unfolding revelation of the inner workings of the universe that he perceived. It’s not remotely an affirmation of the bible.

Einstein’s god never intervened in human affairs or suspended the natural laws of the universe, and absolutely did not have a supernatural existence or the capacity for miracles. This makes Einstein a curious poster boy for Christians in specific, or even theists in general.

Atheism, homosexuality, and other reasons your neighbors look at you funny

June is LGBT Pride Month, and what better way to celebrate than to talk about how much easier it is to be gay now than to be an atheist. Would my parents feel better if I was gay instead of atheist? That’s not at all clear. (But I’m pretty sure my fiancé prefers the latter.)

Ronald Lindsay’s essay does make the accurate point that the LGBT movement is farther up the acceptance curve than atheists are. Sure, gays are only despised in many areas of the country, while atheists are a scourge throughout it.

Yet it’s pretty clear that equal rights and social equality for gays and lesbians is inevitable, even if they must first wait for all the Baby Boomers to die. I think atheists will get there too, but that may take an additional generation. Repeated studies have indicated that a Muslim Hispanic lesbian high school dropout with a kitten drowning fetish would be elected to the Oval Office long before anyone entrusts the nuclear codes to an Ivy League educated white male golf-playing baby-eating atheist.

Clearly, there are parallels between the groups, much as any of these freedom movements have parallels, but they are not the same. One of Lindsay’s points of difference is that atheists, unlike homosexuals, make a choice. I’m not so sure.

It wasn’t that long ago that the conventional wisdom was that homosexuality was a choice. Genetic studies and other scientific evidence have since dispelled that myth. I strongly believe that gays being born that way has contributed more than a little to their societal acceptance.

If you talk to a few gay people it becomes pretty clear there was no point in their life when they decided to be gay. However, most do have a point where they stopped pretending to be heterosexual. Those are not remotely the same things.

Science has yet to nail down a “god gene”, but there is work going on that does at least suggest a genetic origin for predisposition toward the spiritual. I think discovery of such a DNA based origin for faith or the lack of it would go a long way toward making atheists less threatening. However, I won’t be able to stop snickering at the delicious irony if it turns out religion was an evolutionary trait along.

I know for me personally, I could not choose to be religious. My brain is simply not wired that way. I could choose to act religious, but that’s not the same thing. Especially in this country, the bar for appearing Christian is quite low in most communities. Simply don’t talk about religion, wish everyone a Merry Christmas, and show up to church every Easter. That clearly doesn’t make you religious, but you’d pass as a default Christian in the average American town.

This may be the real key difference between gays and atheists in society. Homosexuals are not asexual. If they were, they would have no desire for romantic attachment. As an asexual, it would be fairly easy to just keep your mouth shut and let everyone assume you were single and straight—much like the closeted atheist.

But homosexuals do have desires. They want to be in relationships, have families and all that social-centric stuff. In religion terms, being gay is more like being Hindu than atheist. They want to practice, just differently. It’s definitely easier to just decline to play rather than want to play, but by different rules.

So, I think it is harder being gay in society than atheist. And I think the ease of ignoring or hiding one’s atheism is also why getting atheists to come out of the closet will always be more problematic. Hence,the reason the movement toward atheist’s rights will progress slowly… glacially even. We’ll get there, but probably not in my lifetime.

My mother always said I could grow up to be President. It turns out that’s not so true.

It’s Political God(less) Rally Weekend!

Later today, people of all faiths will gather is Washington at the Nationwide Rally for Religious Freedom. Tomorrow, people of no faith will gather in the same spot for the Reason Rally. Both sides claim the timing is a coincidence.

Moreover, both gatherings are hopelessly misnamed.

The Rally for Religious Freedom is actually motivated by the new mandate from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that requires all employers provide free contraceptives through their health plans. Further, it’s organized by two anti-abortion groups, the Pro-Life Action League and Citizens for a Pro-Life Society. So the freedom they are advocating for is the freedom to observe their religious laws over secular ones. While I suppose you can argue that’s freedom of a sort, it’s certainly not the sort enshrined in the First Amendment. And let’s be clear, while cloaked as an “all faiths” gathering, this is a Christian rally.

Meanwhile, the Reason Rally is advocating for the acceptance of atheists as normal non-threatening members of society. In part. the hope is to also encourage more atheists to come out of the closet by making them less alone. While that’s a noble goal, a good place to start might be to name your rally something that doesn’t imply that all theists are irrational. The concepts of faith and reason extend far beyond the notion of God. Rejecting God doesn’t make you incapable of having faith in anything, nor does accepting God make you immune to reason.

What’s also interesting is that both groups are positioning themselves as the victims.

The Christians, despite being in the vast majority, feel the secularists are launching a war on their religion. This is as comical as the claims that the LGBT movement is destroying the family. Just because you don’t get to impose your values on everyone else does not translate to a conspiracy to deprive you of your beliefs.

The atheists, who actually are a minority struggling for acceptance, are staging “the largest gathering of the secular movement in world history” in an effort to appear less threatening. They are trotting out speakers like The God Delusion author Richard Dawkins, who is a perennial lightening rod for those fearing so-called militant atheism. Granted, when atheists get militant, they tend to write books rather than buy guns, but it’s hard to see this as a vehicle for winning the hearts and minds of those who fear you. This is much more like the secular version of showing up in ass-less chaps and chanting “We’re Here! We’re Queer! Get used to it!”

In the end, expect a lot of noise in the news cycles about each event, expect a fair bit of manufactured outrage, expect a lot of unhelpful rhetoric, but don’t expect too much productive to come of it.

The American War on Sex

Our culture has a curious relationship with sex. Judging by our television programming, Internet habits, and even news coverage, it would seem we are obsessed with it. Yet judging by our politics, we are terrified anyone is actually doing it.

Reruns of Two and a Half Men run almost constantly, and the content is almost entirely sexual. ABC’s The Secret Life of the American Teenager was wildly popular amongst teen girls, and dealt almost non-stop with teen girls having sex. The E! network is awash in pixelated boobs. And what self-respecting primetime crime drama wouldn’t feature sexual depravity and violence as a major theme?

Meanwhile, Janet Jackson’s “accidental” exposure of a nipple for 8 seconds on TV warranted the attention of the Supreme Court.

The hot-button issues emerging in the 2012 election are turning out to be topics like contraception, gay marriage, and defunding Planned Parenthood. In the 21st century, we are still committed to teaching abstinence to kids. The same kids to whom we market an unending stream of sexualized clothing, music, and media are then being told by politicians that sex is just for making babies within the context of a marriage. Is it any wonder kids think politicians are out of touch?

Ironically, the Muslim countries have this right. If you’re really committed as a culture to sexual repression, then drape your women in burkas, censor the Internet, and restrict TV broadcasts to G-rated content. At least it’s a consistent policy

Alternatively, maybe it’s time to embrace sex as a natural human function rather than some weird necessary ritual that must be performed 2.2 times in order to produce the requisite number of children. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs places sex at the same level as breathing, food, water, and sleep. We are hard-wired for sex at very fundamental and physiological level.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating for hedonism. Just because you enjoy eating doesn’t mean you’re into gluttony or dumpster diving. And just as the government plays a role in the food you eat, it has a role to play in sex as well. The government works to make sure the food supply is safe. It even encourages good nutritional habits. But there is very little support for the government regulating what you can eat and when. Maybe a similar approach should be taken with sex. The government can work to ensure that sex is safe. That might include disease prevention and control, sexual product testing, and access to sexually related health care.

But maybe people should be as resistant to the government regulating when, where, and whom you can have sex with as they are to the notion that the government will take away their soda-pop and Twinkies.

Government regulation of morality rarely goes well.