The Unitarian Church killings

There are reports that this guy had a pretty militant attitude in regards to Christianity as well.

I'm guessing that unless he's a run of the mill pyscho between the homophobia and Christian hating he's probably some stripe of neo-nazi.

I think it's worth looking at what the culture might have contributed to this situation, Rod. After all, you have made good points in the past concerning how the culture, media, and popular personalities contribute to the deterioration of our morals. Is it possible this situation is yet another example?

www.knoxnews.com/news/2008/jul/28/church-shooting-police-find-manifesto-suspects-car/

---
Adkisson targeted the church, Still wrote in the document obtained by WBIR-TV, Channel 10, "because of its liberal teachings and his belief that all liberals should be killed because they were ruining the country, and that he felt that the Democrats had tied his country's hands in the war on terror and they had ruined every institution in America with the aid of media outlets."

Adkisson told Still that "he could not get to the leaders of the liberal movement that he would then target those that had voted them in to office."
---

Is there simply a coincidence that he had material from Bill O'Reilly, Michael Savage, and Sean Hannity in his apartment? Certainly in the past when an act of violence happened one of the factors that was looked at was the reading material that was found at the perpetrators residence. I recall some extensive commentary in the news about material found at the Virginia Tech killer's residence.

Could this be an example of how heated rhetoric, in this case conservative rhetoric, inspired someone to move forward and act on their violent thoughts?

I'm certainly not going to suggest that conservativism leads murder - some of my best friends and all that. But more importantly its quite clear to me that most people who fall on the "conservative" side of our binary cultural/political labeling scheme have good motives.

But I do think that "conservative" media is far too often full of hateful language and false accusations against "liberals." El Rushbo, Savage, Hannity, etc tend to portray liberals as depraved individuals out to get America and the good conservative people in it. No sane person will listen to them and go for the gun, but an unhinged person might be pushed over the edge by that nonsense. I listen to these fellows and feel quite intimidated, in addition to grossly misrepresented. My "liberal" news sources and commentary are not nearly as intimidating: Tom Lehrer inspires nobody to violence. Even Air America's Thom Hartmann doesn't demonize conservatives in general. He does go hard after amoral capitalists and the congressmen they own, but so do crunchy cons, no?

Who are the liberal hatemongers, and what are their ratings? Rod's been going on and on about P.Z. Meyers, but who the heck listens to P.Z. Meyers? I'd like to think some conservative fans of the Limbaughs and Savages will use this opportunity to reflect on their portrayal of their political opponents.

This horrible act means nothing regarding the merits of conservative ideas. It means an awful lot, I think, regarding some of conservatism's more prominent messengers.

I see that Rod has chosen to respond to the link I posted on another thread with extreme crankiness--i.e. implying that I believe this is "exactly what you would expect from conservatives -- gun massacres of liberals." Hmm . . . strangely, I didn't actually say that. Doesn't journalistic integrity include not putting words in the mouths of your sources, Rod? Or is that something that can be neglected in the blogosphere?

I'd like to remind our host that I was a conservative myself up until very recently. So I'm well aware that there are many decent, reasonable human beings who are conservatives. Though I sometimes wonder where they're all hiding these days.

However, there's no getting around the fact that this particular murderer's hate was fueled and encouraged by intemperate right-wing rantings. I think mental illness was probably the primary motivator of his actions. But when "conservative" polemics are sufficiently unbalanced as to be readily embraced by a psychotic, I have to wonder if they bear some degree of responsibility for feeding his insanity.

An atheist throws away a communion wafer, and conservatives hotly maintain he is representative of all atheists--though the other atheists deny it--and his destructive effect on society is lamented for many yards of blog space. A man goes to a church with the intent of murdering every liberal there, after steeping himself in right-wing ideology . . . and conservatives deny he has ANYTHING to do with them. Moreover, they assert his actions will have little or no effect on society. No chilling effect on those who might want to proclaim inclusion for gays, or support for liberal causes? No extra fear that one day that "nice" guy down the road might shoot you, too? None? That seems pretty hard to believe.

I don't think this man was representative of conservatism. But I do think that he should serve as a warning of what can happen when intemperate polemics are given free rein. Tell people often enough that liberals and gays are the minions of the devil and the agents of all evil in society, and someone might just believe you.

An atheist throws away a communion wafer, and conservatives hotly maintain he is representative of all atheists--though the other atheists deny it--and his destructive effect on society is lamented for many yards of blog space. A man goes to a church with the intent of murdering every liberal there, after steeping himself in right-wing ideology . . . and conservatives deny he has ANYTHING to do with them.
Posted by: sigaliris | July 28, 2008 10:34 PM

Yep, I see that too.

I wonder if Michael Savage will keep talking about evil liberals.

Will Ann Coulter write a column about this event, and will she find a way to show that these liberals were cowards and traitors?

Yup, ideas and words have consequences. (Where do we keep reading that?)

But this won't have a chilling effect or scare Unitarians into wearing their little lamp necklaces inside their collars. (A post on one of the PZ threads was sure that Christian students at the U of MN will now live in fear and have to hide their cross jewelry.)

Naw, shootings don't coarsen society, just pictures of trash cans with wafers in them.

It is not unusual to see bloggers here claim that liberals are responsible for everything that is wrong with America, even the whole world. It is hard to blame them since they hear it so often on the radio. The top three talk radio hosts make big bucks by keeping people angry. With that as a background, I am not surprised at this incident. People, even our politicians, used to have disagreements, but still maintain civil relationships. Not so much now.

Steve

Once a year, for a week, i listen to late night talk radio, because i direct church camp for a bunch of 3-4-5th graders out in a rustic setting where i like to get a small heads-up on the weather the next day.

So i sneak in a set of headphones, and each night after the lights-out walk-around about 11 pm, i put the headphones on and listen for the forecast, usually picking up ten to thirty minutes (at the most) of Mark Levin or Michael Savage or Sean Hannity.

Two weeks ago, i was thinking "these guys are just making a profit off of agitating the agitated and riling the roiled, and where will these guys end up after they hang up from either getting on air or more likely waiting for hours to only hear a dial tone?"

It was folks exactly like the man in Tennessee i was thinking about and praying for and worrying over. I'm a conservative myself, but the late night radio hysteria-and-anger-fests disturb me. There is a corrosive and paranoid tone which i can't help but see as complicit in a mind like the shooter's choosing to take action.

Surely he was disturbed and troubled and might, four hundred years ago, have taken a pike to the crowd outside of the fishmonger shop, but today, there is a small slice of responsibility that the radio goombahs need to eat and digest.

Boatloads of conservatives, and conservative Christians, refer to gays in terms rather analogous to how Islamists refer to Jews -- basically, not too far above dirt. Any chance that all the anti-gay antipathy that is blowing through the conservative atmosphere might have any effect, any at all, at tipping Mr Adkisson over the brink? If so, when does accountability begin?

An ethical thought experiment:

Suppose the killer had read Al Franken's "Lying Liars" and Richard Dawkins's "The God Delusion", carried a life-long grudge against Conservatism, disliked White Evangelicals, identified himself with the liberal/progressive culture of Berkeley CA, and targeted a Southern Baptist Church known for its activism on behalf of Constitutional bans on gay marriage and abortion? Would you think the evil inflicted was exclusively the product of one deranged mind, or would you consider - perhaps publicly promote - the idea that political ideology must bear some responsibility?

The mention of PZ Myers is ironic. Isn't he the one who said it is time to "bring out the steel toed boots."?

And some of the New Atheists have advocated violence. Sam Harris, in The End of Faith says "Some propositions are so dangeous that it may be ethical to kill people for believing them." pages 52-53.

And who decides which propositons those are? Atheists. Like Dawkins, much touted by PZ Myers calling all religion "child abuse".

Think about it, at one time in the 1930's the "JEWS" were blamed for all the world's problems.

Now you have people like Dawkins claiming "RELIGION" is "the root of all evil."

Where do you think this stuff will lead if they get political control?

Straight to the GULAG.

TR: I take it you've never heard of Malta or Cyprus. They're more religious than us. They might be too small to get many spree killings, but Ireland was more religious than the US until very recently and has murder rates lower than us. (Pew Research almost never polls these nations, check Gallup or the Eurobarometer) South Korea has some important religious groups, but is generally less religious. Some of the worst spree-killings have happened in South Korea.

Thomas R, I don't think you've understood the question. I'm not asking why a religious country like Ireland has low murder rates and the like. I'm suggesting that we ask why, given that the most religious developed country in the world has spree murders almost unheard of elsewhere in the developed world, we're seeing Americans insisting that it is godlessness that leads to nihilism.

I don't think pointing to Malta, Cyprus or Ireland answers that question. For one thing, none of those countries are godless; the reverse is the case.

France, Germany, Holland, Britain, Iceland, and the Scandinavian countries, all seem to have quite low levels of religious belief and observance, high levels of science education resulting in high acceptance of darwinian evolutionary theory, highly industrial societies, and fully developed welfare states, without the degree of chaos and anarchy that is exemplified by the high general homicide rate of the United States (a similarly developed country, if more so, and also a significantly more prosperous one) and in particular the incidence of spree murders and mass murders in general.

It has been suggested that rabble-rousing by conservatives might have egged this killer on, but I find implausible the suggestion that his belief that churches treating people with dignity were responsible for his plight can have been formed by listening to any conservative commentators, who tend to be pro-church.

It has been suggested that rabble-rousing by conservatives might have egged this killer on, but I find implausible the suggestion that his belief that churches treating people with dignity were responsible for his plight can have been formed by listening to any conservative commentators, who tend to be pro-church.
Posted by: Tony Sidaway | July 29, 2008 8:08 AM

Tony, an important qualifier is that they tend to be supportive of a particular kind of church - one that preaches conservative values and fundamentalism. In the views of these sort of people, churches that promote liberal values such as homosexual marriage and social justice are not 'real' churches.

You may have seen some examples of this here in the commentaries about the liberal branches of the Anglican and American Episcopalian churches.

Too bad some of you are using this horrific event as an excuse to keep banging the same old drum and going after the same targets. Can't you give it a rest?

Are you new here?

The media and society are blamed for pretty much everything. Slutty ads lead to destroyed childhoods. TV causes autism. Public schools create criminals.

When a mentally ill man shoots up a progressive church and writes a manifesto saying he hates liberals and gays, and then we find books by leading pop-culture conservatives who often rail about liberals and gays, doesn't that suggest a social problem? The talk radio garbage and the books they write do have consequences for the culture and in the worst case scenario, may have lead to someone shooting up a progressive church.

Sorry to rain on the parade ... but the hateful talk is on both sides of the spectrum. Depending on my schedule I listen to all kinds of radio programs (Air America, Limbaugh, Hannity, Pacifica, etc.) and cable programs (on the right and the left). A complete stranger to this planet wouldn't be able to tell the difference between the right-wing and left-wing because the sarcasm, satire (and occasional snarkiness) is a feature of both.
Posted by: Reaganite in NYC | July 29, 2008 8:50 AM

Really?

Name for me a nationally known liberal commentator who has the same audience reach and comparable level of bile of Michael Savage or Ann Coulter.

Tony Sidaway, I think comparing the US to the other countries you mentioned is actually pretty difficult as the US is really different from other countries.

First, the US doesn't have an ethnic identity unlike other countries which has good and bad aspects. It is probably easier for an immigrant to come here and fit in. But the downside is that it is also easy for someone to feel like they don't fit in as well. This might be less true in the interior, but is true in the coastal cities. London might have a similar dynamic, but probably not on the same scale as the US.

Second, the US economy really stresses the concept of creative destruction which is great if you can find a place that's booming. It's bad if you're on the loosing end of things since the negative effects are generally born by the individual.

Third, the US is in love with the concept of progress. New things are considered good until proven negative. Social life in the US has been turned upside down by the internet, but there are negative consequences were sorting out. Crime and social isolation are two examples. I'm sure this is happening elsewhere but it is a really powerful dynamic here.

Tony Sidaway: "I could be completely wrong about this, but I believe that public awareness of Unitarian Universalism and what it stands for is fairly vague."

You are mistaken. The UU's have been a target of conservative groups for not being a real religion. In Texas there was an attempts to take away their tax exempt status because they don't have dogma. I'm also pretty sure they've had issues with the Boy Scouts because of homosexuality and their lack of dogma.

: Thomas R | July 29, 2008 9:52 AM

My question did indeed introduce what I believe to be a false premise: that atheism leads to nihilism. I think the relatively high levels of violence, particularly spree murder and other forms of mass murder, in this nation, which is absent in other developed nations that have lost their former religious culture, exposes that premise to question. I brought the premise up because it has been raised in other discussions on this blog (in relation to the UCF affair where an atheist protested against death threats). I believe it to be false, of course.

he just sits there with his like-minded friends

Like Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage, in other words. Since Hannity and O'Reilly invite people on the show to shout at them and not allow them to talk, I'm not really seeing any difference.

quote: "My question did indeed introduce what I believe to be a false premise: that atheism leads to nihilism. I think the relatively high levels of violence, particularly spree murder and other forms of mass murder, in this nation, which is absent in other developed nations that have lost their former religious culture, exposes that premise to question."

I think the common argument that religious people such as myself make isn't that atheism necessarily leads to nihilism. It is, rather, that atheism offers no convincing reason to believe in any kind of objective morality. The logical conclusion to atheism is thus indeed nihilism. Not all atheists, in fact probably most of them, however, take atheism to its logical conclusion. I don't especially find the arguments given for atheism all that logical in the first place, so it isn't that surprising to me that atheists don't always act in a fashion I would consider logical.
Also, your claim that developed nations which have lost their former religious culture are less prone to violence doesn't entirely add up when one takes Eastern European nations and especially Russia into account. Russia was officially atheistic for 74 years and look at the country today. Alcoholism and crime and rampant. Male life expectancy has actually declined. The birth rate is extremely low. The country has many more problems than America does. If America's gun violence is due to its higher levels of religion, doesn't that mean that atheism is responsible for Russia's problems today?
Either the decline of religion doesn't necessarily lead to a less violent society (comparatively speaking) and other cultural factors are at play as well, or the level of religiousity isn't the best predictor of crime levels in the first place.

rr

Alicia - would you say the same if the shooter's name had been Muhammed? A man who bursts into a church and shoots the place up because of their beliefs is a domestic terrorist.

If there were a culture war, the tolerant, all-embracing unitarians would be the nearest thing one could get to non-combatants.
Posted by: Tony Sidaway | July 29, 2008 9:38 AM

Eh? With the typical Unitarian clergyperson's commitment to liberal ideas, social justice, and tolerance for gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgendered individuals, and support for a woman's right to determine her own reproductive choices, I'd say that Unitarians are on the front lines.

I think the common argument that religious people such as myself make isn't that atheism necessarily leads to nihilism. It is, rather, that atheism offers no convincing reason to believe in any kind of objective morality. The logical conclusion to atheism is thus indeed nihilism.
rr
Posted by: rr | July 29, 2008 10:24 AM

There is no single logical conclusion that comes from a lack of an objective morality. Nihilism is one option, but a decision to act in a way that preserves the common good is another. So is reciprocal altruism. Another possibility is pragmatic utilitarianism.

Your claim that nihilism is the logical conclusion to atheism is unfounded.

"Olbermann prefers to indulge in a particularly scathing form of fun-making that would be damn near impossible to do face-to-face." Margaret E.

TR: Actually this could mean they're less proned to inspire violence or intimidation. They gather in amongst their own and don't go out yelling at those not their own. Would I rather be ostracized or attacked? Personally I'd rather be ostracized. If you're a more extroverted or attention-seeking type you might prefer attacked.

"throwing out Al Franken and Rush Limbaugh like they're two sides of the same coin." David

TR: I wouldn't go that far, but I'm pretty sure I saw Franken once reduce some elderly woman at the Christian Coalition to tears. He can get pretty vicious.

The hateful element of the Left is more bloggers and, on occasion, cartoonists. Cartoonist Ted Rall has done and said some very outrageous things that I think are comparable to Limbaugh.

Elizabeth Anne, I would say the same no matter what his religion or ideology was or who had chosen as his "hated other." I don't believe in thought crimes, and hate crimes are a version of thought crimes.

I understand that even conservative prosecuters who don't agree with the concept of "hate crimes" will use hate crimes legislation in their efforts to convict bad people, and I don't blame them for doing so.

But I don't believe in judging hate crimes or setting aside classes of people as potential victims. We are all potential victims of "hate crimes."

"Would I rather be ostracized or attacked? Personally I'd rather be ostracized. If you're a more extroverted or attention-seeking type you might prefer attacked."

Posted by: Thomas R | July 29, 2008 10:50 AM

But Thomas R, the ostracism that Olbermann traffics in IS an attack... he just doesn't allow the victim to fight back. I find it to be cowardly, myself, and think Olbermann's an intellectual bully. When we're talking about verbal attacks – which we are — I'd always rather have a chance to defend myself. Does that make me attention-seeking? I think it just means I don't like having others define me and my beliefs.

Reaganite: I don't believe that any mainstream conservative commentator would use (or even think) the n-word, but some of their less educated listeners/readers probably do. Such people (and I don't know enough about the killer to know whether he was one of them) are certainly capable of translating the standard right-wing scaremongering about affirmative action into the deliberately crude phraseology I used.

rr, you said: It is, rather, that atheism offers no convincing reason to believe in any kind of objective morality. Others have said basically the same thing. Could you try to explain what you mean by "objective morality"? It seems to me that the only difference in kind between secular and religious morality is that secular morality is clearly seen to be a cultural agreement, whereas religious morality is placed behind a screen of myth that conceals its origin in, yes, cultural agreement to believe in it.

If you could actually bring forth some stone tablets that were of demonstrably unearthly origin, you'd have a piece of objective evidence to support the assertion that your morality is different from an atheist's morality. Or if there had been a world-wide event, filmed by tv cameras and amateurs with cell phones, in which a god appeared and listed The Rules for us, that might justify the term "objective." But since all the convincing reason we have to believe in your "objective morality" is some writings in a human hand, collected and edited by humans, and much debated by humans as well, I can't see what "objective" is supposed to mean in this context.

I live in Tennessee and I know 3 people who attend that church. My current internship supervisor is one of them and she was present when the shootings happened. This is a very sad thing but not surprising. My impression is that we are dealing with a person who has significant long-standing mental health problems. He was married 4 times and allegedly was violent and has a history of alcoholism. In Tennessee we have an enormous number of guns and an enormous number of mentally ill people who never ever receive treatment. The primary reasons for this are cultural and fiscal. Mental health services for people who have no insurance or who are on the state medicaid (called Tenncare here) is absolutely abysmal. There is talk of even more cuts in crisis services at the community mental health centers where I have done some work. The cultural factors include shame surrounding psychiatric treatment and the belief that religion will "cure" mental illness. I don't think we can make a political issue out of this. What surprises me is that these things don't happen more often here in Tennessee. I can't begin to tell you the number of times I ahve dealt with mentally ill persons who have thoughts or plans of going on a rampage like this. Fortunately, I am usually able to get such persons hospitalized involuntarily at a state facility. However, our state hospitals are bursting at the seams. Our politicians in Nashville shamefully ignore these problems.

MargaretE: My conservative friends think I'm a Marxist and my liberal friends think I'm a fascist. ;) I prefer to call myself a moderate, left of center in some ways, right of it in others, just weird in yet others.

You make a valid point, although I think many conservatives have opted out, too. As P. J. O'Roarke pointed out years ago in reporting on his visit to Heritage, USA (not yet defunct then), conservative Christians of a certain stripe have practically created a parallel universe of music, books, even museums (such as the Creation Museum in Kentucky).

I guess I was thinking on a more fundamental level. It seems to me that in a pluralist society such as ours, we all tacitly agree that we respect each other as people and respect each other's right to hold religious or political beliefs, even if we vehemently oppose those beliefs. There are exceptions, of course--if my belief is in human sacrifice, that's right out, but such extreme cases are rare. Part of this tacit agreement was that what we have in common as humans is more important (temporally speaking, at least) than what divides us by race, creed, politics, and so on.

These are the tacit agreements that seem to have been broken, discarded, or outright rejected. Now it seems that what divides is more important than what unites, there is no longer an obligation to understand, respect, or communicate, and that each group reads its own literature, listens to its own music, socializes with like-minded others, gets its own news from its own outlets, and that there is no longer any concept that we're all in this together. I think Left and Right are both to blame--as to which is more to blame, I think that's unanswerable in the current climate (it would just make the arguments worse!) and not really relevant. The question is how we can get back the tacit agreements needed in a society such as ours, or if we even can do so.

In Tennessee we have an enormous number of guns and an enormous number of mentally ill people who never ever receive treatment. The primary reasons for this are cultural and fiscal. Mental health services for people who have no insurance or who are on the state medicaid (called Tenncare here) is absolutely abysmal. There is talk of even more cuts in crisis services at the community mental health centers where I have done some work. The cultural factors include shame surrounding psychiatric treatment and the belief that religion will "cure" mental illness. I don't think we can make a political issue out of this.

I believe the right has already made a political issue out of it. Starting with Reagan, who closed all the shelters. Perhaps they could stop making it a political issue.

Part of the premise of progressivism is that helping the worse off of society we can help everyone else and sometimes even spend less money than originally. Like helping they physically ill stops them from infecting others and using scarce ER resources when they become too ill to function.

Helping the mentally ill, obviously, stops them from going on murderous rampages, or, more often, stops them from walking into traffic and causing a ten car pileup.

People have a very poor idea of the actual costs of things, and conservatives are mostly to blame for this, for attacking 'spending' but failing to account for 'incidental' costs incurred by not spending the money.

In other words, not putting up stoplights at intersections 'saves money' only until the next car accident, and the same with having mentally ill people wandering around. Same with having people walking around with bronchitis cause they don't have health insurance.

Turmarion, my deep admiration to you for your analysis and turns of phrase. The "tacit knowledge" logic is both elegant and persuasive. Polanyi coined it, but you've used it here to excellent effect.

MargaretE, you ask what I consider the most important question:

...would you not agree that it's been mostly liberals who have decided to "opt out" of our collective tacit knowledge, choosing to toss out centuries of tradition and natural law in favor of a more "enlightened," amoral, relativist world view? Or am I missing your point completely?

First, I suggest that if you have the presence of mind to ask that question, you are not missing the point. :-)

Second, I submit that the process is the important focus, not the details or the outcomes. We can judge the outcomes in hindsight (and we should), but the process is what drives us towards improvements in civilization.

I don't mean to lecture, so I'll try to be brief.

Tacit knowledge is critical to societal survival. Without an accessible and efficient method of conveying such knowledge, there would be no human energy or time left for innovation and exploration.

Oversimplifying: Conservatives are the guardians of the status quo. They protect and preserve the value of the lessons learned from hindsight. Liberals drive the process of change, without which a society will not identify those things that no longer promote survival until it is too late for that society.

Your question, as it's phrased, implies that liberals intend to throw the baby out with the bath water. I gently suggest that while that is a possbile outcome, it is not the process that accomplishes that, it's the people of that time and place who take the process to an extreme. The same can be said of conservatives who refuse to change or adapt when evidence mounts to contradict the value of what they are protecting. It's a dynamic and often violent balance that provides some middle path between the extremes. If we always looked to the middle first, pundits would be begging on the streets and we'd lose much entertainment value. ;-D

I'll stop there. All I ask is that we avoid applying that logic to specific details out of the context of the whole. Let us certainly criticize and oppose extremism on both sides. But let's not use that extremism to obscure the value inherent in the process.

I wrote: "If there were a culture war, the tolerant, all-embracing unitarians would be the nearest thing one could get to non-combatants."

John E. - Agn Stoic | July 29, 2008 10:45 AM replied: "Eh? With the typical Unitarian clergyperson's commitment to liberal ideas, social justice, and tolerance for gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgendered individuals, and support for a woman's right to determine her own reproductive choices, I'd say that Unitarians are on the front lines."

Well, only extremists would oppose the idea of tolerance towards others. While conservatives may disagree with some aspects of social change, I think the stereotypical perception of conservatives as positive agitators against social change altogether or against the principles of equal treatment is mistaken. I think it's much more nuanced than that.

On the actual issue of unitarian universalism, for instance, let's take the following as prominent conservative commentators:

Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Pat Buchanan, William F. Buckley Jr, P. J. O'Rourke and William Safire.

Those guys to my mind cover a pretty broad swathe of conservative views, perhaps tilted a little towards the modern liberal-baiting end, but going right back to the heyday of Nixon and Ford. As I'm British I may have misjudged so please feel free to add or subtract prominent conservative commentators in the interests of getting a representative list.

Has any of them ever mentioned unitarian universalism in particular or liberal churches in general? I honestly don't know, but I suspect it hasn't exactly been a hot topic with any of them.

rr: "So on what basis can atheism make moral claims such as murder (not self-defense) is always wrong?"

It's pretty clear from your posts you feel this way. I'd only ask you to consider the possibility that other people see an objective standard of morality independent of God. Basically math is objective and exists outside of human perception and humans discovered it. Likewise morality can be like math and we can discover it too. Just like math two people could independently derive the same code of morality working from what they observe.

rr: "To be blunt, if I was an atheist, I wouldn't give a damn about morality one way or the other. There simply wouldn't be any reason to anymore, though that wouldn't mean I would start going around killing people and stealing."

I'm sorry you feel that way, but not everyone does.

"Well, I'm glad at any rate that you do not, Rod. It seems to me that there was a strong sub-thread to that effect going on in one of those endless PZ Myers topics--all atheists share the same set of beliefs, they're all nihilists, their morality is meaningless, their lack of belief equals a belief system that is equivalent to a religious faith, etc. etc.--but I'm too lazy to go back and pick out actual quotes at this point. They would only aggravate you, anyway. Perhaps you should ask Max what he thinks. ; )"

For one, I've said myself, directly to athiest on these threads, that while I spoke generally about athiests, I was not speaking universally. I specifically mentioned to them (Ed and John if I recall correctly) that I was NOT speaking of them.

When Rod asked you "who said that" you replied as I quoted you above

However, even if one were to believe and say that "all athiests share the same set of beliefs, they're all nihilists, their morality is meaningless, their lack of belief equals a belief system that is equivalent to a religious faith, etc. etc." that's not the same as saying the PZ represents all athiests. Though apparently, he represents many of them. Certainly that's fair and accurate.

I may find athiest morality meaningless in a transcendental manner, but I don't find that athiests are not moral individuals. I've said as much a number of times.

"Rod, that you would confine yourself to disputing the things I actually have said, rather than making up other things that you maybe wish I'd said because they'd have been so much easier to refute. ; )"

Sig, same to ya.

12:33 post was me.

Has any of them ever mentioned unitarian universalism in particular or liberal churches in general? I honestly don't know, but I suspect it hasn't exactly been a hot topic with any of them.

I've never heard any of them mention the UU's. They're really something of a joke to most people, the sort of people so earnestly PC they have to apologize three times for some sort of oppression their ancestors committed before breakfast.

I live in Tennessee and I know 3 people who attend that church.
Posted by: Christian | July 29, 2008 11:18 AM

Christian, thanks very much for providing an on-the-scene perspective.

Derek Copold | July 29, 2008 12:51 PM writes I've never heard any of them mention the UU's. They're really something of a joke to most people, the sort of people so earnestly PC they have to apologize three times for some sort of oppression their ancestors committed before breakfast.

Yeah, that was my impression, too. They even make the Quakers look dogmatic by comparison.

" I don't know any conservative religious believers who would sanction the evil that Jim Adkisson did."

Then perhaps you should pay a visit to dubdubdub.godhatesfags.com

Or maybe you should listen when the likes of Jerry Falsewell says gay people are to blame for Hurricane Katrina and 9/11.

Or to 'reverend' Jimmy (he of the 2 wh0res) Swaggart who 'would kill a man and tell God he died' if a man so much as looked at him 'funny'.

Rod, there are lots of death threats and plenty of violence against "libruls", much of which emanates from 'conservative religious believers' and their "leaders". If you "don't know any", you ain't lookin'.

I just saw this comment on the Washington Post boards, and I had to laugh: "Although the entire issue is tragic, let's not get carried away denying mentally unstable, uneducated maniacs their weapons."

How sad that what pushed the man over the edge was that he lost his food stamps and couldn't find a job. Most Unitarians I know (my entire family) and I believe in food stamps for those who have lost their jobs.

Simon | July 29, 2008 1:09 PM writes: "Wow. We have a winner of the Shoddy Reasoning Award. By this "logic" Christians should consider taking responsibility for events like the Columbine massacre, in which the murderers specifically targeted believing Christians."

Could you explain your comment, Simon. This is what I said:
I think this thread is the appropriate place to stop saying "why are atheists so confoundedly rude?" and ask why America, now standing alone as the sole developed nation where Christian belief and church attendance are high, is plagued with spree killings in schools, churches and workplaces. If Christian belief is necessary for morality, why aren't the spree killings happening in the other developed nations which are largely over religion and have high degrees of acceptance of that bugbear of the American Christian right, darwinism?

To clarify my point: the claim that atheism leads to nihilism seems to be refuted by the lawlessness and violence that crops up so often in America, which stands alone as the one fully developed Christian nation. While other nations have an increasingly atheistic culture and much higher levels of acceptance of secular scientific concepts such as darwinian evolution, they don't have the predicted problems in anything like as much the same levels of anarchy as the United States, with its high levels of religious belief and high church attendance.

Rather than taking this killing in isolation, we should look at the American epidemiology of mass murder in general and spree killings in particular, and try to square it with the belief, expressed quite a lot on this blog, that nihilistic, amoral violence is a problem to be expected if levels of religious belief decrease. The data appear to be against this.

Franklin Evans | July 29, 2008 1:15 PM, to clarify, as a fully paid-up, fluffy bunny, whiskers-on-kittens liberal myself, I'm not one to laugh at Unitarian Universalists (except in the most affectionate way). I'm not a churchy kind of person otherwise I might be tempted to join.

Franklin Evans, thanks for reading my post and the kind words.

rr | July 29, 2008 1:34 PM, I'm sure this fellow has lots of interesting things to say on his blog about why morality is theoretically impossible without God. I'm sorry if this sounds sarcastic, but I can say that in practice it works very well.

Moreover philosophers have been formulating secular theories of morality for yonks, even while other philosophers have claimed that such theories are impossible. Consequentialism and utilitarianism are good examples of quite respectable theories of morality. More recent game-theoretical theories are ten-a-penny (computer modelling is getting cheaper).

To summarise (and massively oversimplify): humans have evolved to cooperate effectively and our sophisticated brains are quite good at detecting cheaters. This provides us with the means to negotiate and enforce moralities based on consensus.

Turmarion, my admiration as well for your post (and of course the thoughtful comments in response to it).

I'm with Elizabeth Anne re: this being a community crime. This was not a random act of a psycho -- he picked that church, those people, because of what they believed. Yes, he is obviously troubled, not reflective at all of any of my conservative friends (even you, Cleveland!). But the people he picked to kill were not picked randomly, they were not picked because he had a direct personal grievance against them as in many cases of domestic or workplace violence. They were picked because they were UU, because they were liberal, because they openly welcomed gays and lesbians.

We remember with admiration and sadness the girl who was killed at Columbine for affirming her faith. We remember with awe the amazing example of firgiveness given by the Amish a couple years ago.

Today, with deep sadness, I weep for this congregation and pray that just for one day, people of good will can put down their animosity and need to blame, and simply agree that it's time for us to reflect on what we have wrought. In humility and self-examination, not in finding rationale to blame the oh-so-convenient other.

Who here that is attempting to blame the liberals (i.e. comments about liberals and tacit knowledge) or blame the conservatives (many posts) will join me?

rr, I'll read your links later because I'm curious what he has to say. But I've done to much goofing off for one day.

rr: "One cannot "break" the laws of math and make 2+2=5 or "break" the law of gravity by jumping of a cliff with an anvil attached to ones' neck and not fall to the bottom."

Believe it or not it is possible to break some of the laws of nature for limited amounts of time. It doesn't happen beyond the quantum scale very much but the effects are quite real and measurable.

Morality seems to work the same way. You can break moral laws but they tend to catch up with you, but not always and some evil men die happy in bed.

quote: "I'm sorry if this sounds sarcastic, but I can say that in practice it works very well."

Quick response. Religion often works well in practice too. After all, it motivates a whole lot of people to help the poor and the sick and to not kill and steal. That doesn't mean it is true. Same thing with claiming objective morality exist without God. Whether something "works" or not says nothing about its truthfulness. I find it interesting that those who are all down on religion for its "myths" and "lack of evidence" can turn around and believe in something (objective morality) that they likewise can't provide any evidence for besides wishful thinking and sentimentalism. O.k., gotta run.

rr

Posted by: | July 29, 2008 1:57 PM

Grr that was MH posting.

To follow up my previous post about the book, "Mistakes Were Made" with a brief example given by Tavris and Aronson: When DNA evidence (and other evidence) exonerates an innocence person who has been convicted of a crime, the original prosecutors and police involved in the case very rarely admit they made a mistake.

There was a point when those police and prosecutors weren't sure who the guilty party was. But once they decided, self justification kicked in and they became incapable of revising their opinion because to do so would be potentially damaging to their self-esteem. This self-justification occurs even in cases in which the actual culprit is discovered.

When someone has invested so much energy in their beliefs, even if those beliefs are shown to be mistaken(and especially if they have caused damage) it is very hard to back down.

Derek Copold | July 29, 2008 1:57 PM writes The problem with this claim is that these outrages (which are statistically insignificant, despite the newscoverage) are committed by areligious people.

I don't believe that's a problem with my claim at all. There are more areligious people in other highly developed countries, but not the same, or a higher, level of spree murder and other mass murder.

Thus their areligious nature (to accept your evaluation for the sake of argument) cannot be the source of the problem.

Which was of course my point: horrible crimes like this cannot be due to moral decay caused by atheism, or they would be more prominent in countries where atheism is more common.

There are other indicators of moral decay: teen pregnancies, venereal diseases, the raw homicide rate, and so on. None of them are significantly higher in other developed countries where atheism is more common and church attendance is much lower. Most of them in fact seem to be significantly lower in other highly developed countries.

These mass murders suggest that American society is ailing, but the conservatives are not justified in laying the problems at the door of secularism, the teaching of evolution, and so on.

quote: "None of them are significantly higher in other developed countries where atheism is more common and church attendance is much lower. Most of them in fact seem to be significantly lower in other highly developed countries."

What about Russia? Russia's problems alone prove this assertion to be false.

rr

What about Russia? Russia's problems alone prove this assertion to be false.

The Soviet Union was run by a totalitarian theocracy.

I'm just now getting to the excellent "tacit knowledge" discussion.

Can not our collective "tacit knowledge" simply be wrong on occasion?

For example, Margaret E contends that "it's been mostly liberals who have decided to "opt out" of our collective tacit knowledge, choosing to toss out centuries of tradition and natural law".

"Centuries of tradition" decided that homosexuality was "wrong". "Centuries of tradition" dictated that women should be 'barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen' (certainly in America). "Centuries of tradition" tell us that 'blacks were not fully human, entitled to vote or hold property'. Etcetera.

(I refuse to engage in a discussion of "natural law" since I have only heard it in connection with Roman Catholic dogma.)

IMO, thinking people - not just "liberals" - should "toss out" some traditions.

These mass murders suggest that American society is ailing...

Our society isn't perfect, but we're not experiencing the sort of native outflow you are in Britain. In fact, I find it funny how one of the leading New Atheists has left secular Britain for our poor, benighted religious soil.

Anyhow, The problem with the numbers you're throwing in is that they often don't take into account the mixed status of our country, which is still far more diverse than European (recent immigration notwithstanding). Also, we have large pockets of immigrants from particular cultures that skew our stats: Mexico being the prime case.

And since we're on the subject, Britain isn't exactly crime-free these days, either. Some of your cities make Washington, D.C. look relatively safe.

Rod Dreher:

To say this loon in Tennessee is representative of conservatism or conservative Christianity is baseless and cheap.

Got What They Deserved!
Man Shoots Up Church Over Liberal Views
Protected Illegal Aliens, Promoted Gay Rights and desegregation
This should happen far more often.

And to any one of these folk:
O'Reilly (addressing "terrorists"): "Look, every other place in America is off limits to you, except San Francisco. You want to blow up the Coit Tower? Go ahead."


Savage (referring to students protesters): "I would say, let them fast until they starve to death; then that solves the problem."


Hannity: "I'll tell you who should be tortured and killed at Guantanamo, every filthy Democrat in the U.S. Congress."


Limbaugh and Coulter have said similar things many times. And need I mention the proud leader of the 'Catholic League'? All of those folk are outspoken believers. By comparison, the folk you seem to think are representative of conservative Christianity are silent.

"What if creationists took over my country's government and sabotaged the science and education policies? But they're not going to and so, while I keep an eye out, I don't worry about it much."

Which is fine by me, as I'm not a creationist (unless you're implying that anyone who's not an atheist materialist is ipso facto a "creationist").

Tony,

Again you ask,

"Has any of them ever (Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Pat Buchanan, William F. Buckley Jr, P. J. O'Rourke and William Safire) mentioned unitarian universalism in particular or liberal churches in general? I honestly don't know, but I suspect it hasn't exactly been a hot topic with any of them."I/I>

And again, I repeat, the U/U doesn't need to have been a "hot topic" - those conservatives rail against all liberal ideologoies and faiths, and the U/U is certainly among the most liberal. I'm referring to this specific incident wherein the killer's ex-wife was a member of an inherently liberal U/U congregation. And the killer was clearly aware of its liberal tenets.

As for your contention "To clarify on "Culture War": it is true that I don't believe there is any such thing." then I am saddened to have to inform you that you are very much mistaken. There is very much a culture war happening (in America at least), so much so that it has earned its own Wikipedia entry, not to mention the 1,150,000 other web search results. And I'm pretty sure it was started by conservatives. Back in the 70s, I received a "Declaration of War" from Jerry Falwell (I still have my copy of it), and guess who the "enemy" was? Me. That's right, homosexuals were labelled the enemy (and still are, apparently, since the U/U's support for equality for gays was specifically mentioned in the killer's note). Even on conservative/right-wing Canadian (!) radio talk shows, there's a regular feature called "The Culture Wars", and it remains as vitrioloic as some of the Beliefnet discussions devolve to.

No such thing? Delusional.

Derek Copold | July 29, 2008 3:06 PM writes: Anyhow, The problem with the numbers you're throwing in is that they often don't take into account the mixed status of our country, which is still far more diverse than European (recent immigration notwithstanding). Also, we have large pockets of immigrants from particular cultures that skew our stats: Mexico being the prime case.

Pardon me, I forgot all those atheist Mexican immigrants skewing the figures.

But seriously, yes I take your point. The United States has long borders and its expansive geography, so different from cramped Western Europe, may result in a less homogeneous society. Racial diversity is a given; black and white people from the same neighborhood even speak with different accents in America. The slashing of social programs and long term shifts in employment patterns may bely the prosperity shown in the GDP figures.

And since we're on the subject, Britain isn't exactly crime-free these days, either. Some of your cities make Washington, D.C. look relatively safe.

Crime figures in the UK have fallen by 48% since the peak of 1995. Victimization rates are at the lowest levels since the British Crime Survey started in 1981. Public concern about crime has fallen by 30% since 1999. These falls match similar drops in most of the West.

At the same time knife and gun crime levels have concentrated in inner cities, which get 55% of all violent incidents. Despite this, violent crime is down 40% since 1997. The raw murder rate? 784 in a national population of 53 million. For comparison, New York City alone with a population of 8 million recorded 579 murders last year. The murder figures for Washington D.C. and New York City together just about equalled the murder figures for the whole of England and Wales.

Figures are for England and Wales, 2007 (Northern Ireland and Scotland gather their figures separately).

Tony Sidaway,

Derek Copold explained the defect in your logic quite well. You question assumes that because America has (1) more professed Christians than other rich countries, and (2) more spree killings than other rich countries, that (1) must somehow be related to (2). This leads to the absurdity of calling Christians to account for spree killings, virtually all of which have been committed (as is apparently the case in Tennessee) by irreligious persons, and often by deeply anti-Christian persons (such as the Columbine monsters).

Your thesis about nonbelieving societies being relatively peaceful is equally off base, since it appears extrapolated from little more than the Western European example. It is all too convenient for secularists to dance away from the numerous Marxist Leninist regimes of the past century, all of which adopted hostility to religion as an organizing principle -- and all of which were hell holes of mass murder and injustice by anyone's moral standards.

Simon | July 29, 2008 3:52 PM, you write:

You question assumes that because America has (1) more professed Christians than other rich countries, and (2) more spree killings than other rich countries, that (1) must somehow be related to (2).

No, you've got it reversed. I'm suggesting that (1) and (2) show that, whatever it is that's causing these nihilistic mass murders such as spree killings, serial killings and whatnot, there's very little evidence to link them to atheism, which is much higher in countries of equivalent industrial level that don't seem to be so prone to these and other social ills.

You say: Your thesis about nonbelieving societies being relatively peaceful is equally off base, since it appears extrapolated from little more than the Western European example.

My thesis says nothing about nonbelieving societies being relatively peaceful. I merely suggest that these relatively peaceful societies with low levels of belief and low church attendance give the lie to the suggestion that atheism need lead to nihilism.

It would of course be perfectly correct to state that the Soviet Union showed that atheism does not necessarily correlate with societal health (and I wouldn't dream of saying that it does).

Pardon me, I forgot all those atheist Mexican immigrants skewing the figures.

You do know that the Mexican Government has been deeply anti-clerical for almost all of the past century? There's a lot of noise made over symbols like Our Lady of Guadalupe, but that's often quite nationalist in nature.

As for the crime, I'll accept your figures. Apparently my information was out of date. I'll only point out that New York and Washington are both extreme concentrations of crime-prone minorities. If you compare American whites to Europeans, the crime rates even out.

Here's a link (caveat lector: the site does have a rightward bias, and the numbers are a bit old, but still useful, IMO):
www.tinyvital.com/BlogArchives/000220.html

Too, I still find it odd that you experience such a large outflow of natives. If things are so swimming over there, why do I keep bumping into your compatriots over here, none of whom are eager to go back?

Tony:

A man has the right to desecrate the Jesus-bread in the comfort of his own kitchen.

The use of phraseology here for the Eucharist betrays a certain mindset which is not likely to get a hearing from believers, but nevertheless, I guess it depends on what you mean by "right". A person has a "right" to be a jerk in the sense that we would consider it inappropriate to use the state to enforce behaving politely (as in the movie Demolition Man), but morally or ethically, a person does not in fact have a right to be a jerk. This is why we deride jerks, try to raise our kids not to be jerks, try to get jerks we know to quit being jerks, and avoid and shun jerks as much as possible. There is no (and in a pluralistic society should be no) legally actionable way to stop someone from desecrating the Eucharist, the Koran, or anything else; in that limited sense, one has a "right" to do such things. I think the majority of people, however, would readily grand that such an act is reprehensible and that one has no moral right at all to perform it.

In choosing that particular form of protest against the death threats and intimidation (which were apparently based on the perception that a young student merely intended to desecrate the eucharist) Myers drew the fangs of intimidation.

I don't know the full details of the incident with the student that lead up to all this, but in my post I clearly said, "death threats from anyone were totally beyond the pale." No true believer in Christ, Catholic or otherwise, would make such threats. I'm not sure I see any logic to Meyer's response to these threats. By that logic, since Salman Rushdie has been the subject of death threats for years from Islamic extremists because of The Satanic Verses, we should show solidarity with him and "draw the fangs of intimidation" by having regular Koran-burnings, huh?

To do a thing like that is inevitably to appear crude

As if our society isn't awash in enough crudity already!

(just as the black power salute at the 1968 Olympics appeared crude and drew "boos" from the crowd)

Sorry, don't see the analogy there, either.

but a point was made and a line was drawn: that Catholics cannot kill an academic or have him fired for desecrating the eucharist.

1. The phrasing makes it sound as if bloodthirsty Catholic hordes were massed outside the house of the student or of Myers, ready to let rip. Really now. And I might point out that there are cases of high school coaches getting death threats over sports-related issues. Does that mean sports fans are ravening, murderous hordes? Should someone desecrate team jerseys? Having said this, let me reiterate: death threats from anyone, especially anyone calling himself or herself "Christian", or for that matter, "human", are just plain wrong; period.

2. I didn't say he should be fired, though a reprimand would be appropriate. Consider this thought-experiment, though: had he gone out and legally bought a copy of the Jewish Publication Society tranlsation of the Old Testament (Tanakh) and painted swastikas on it or otherwise desecrated it, and posted this online; or if he had done something similar that involved racial epithets; what, then, does anyone think would have happened? Would he have had as many defenders, and would the university have affirmed his right to free speech? Be honest.

[Desecration of the Eucharist] is no longer a fiction used by Catholics to justify the oppression of Jews, but a legitimate form of academic protest against the encroachment of the church on academic freedom and against the invasion of academia by threats of violence.

If this is form of "legitimate academic protest", the standards of academia are much worse than I thought! Also, I'm not sure how random death threats from deranged, anonymous supposed "Catholics" consitutes "encroachment of the church on academic freedom". For that matter, both in the case of the kid and Myers, I'm not sure how stealing and/or desecrating the Eucharist is anything related to academic freedom.

Anyway, I'm going to leave off at this point. This is probably a fruitless post, and I don't want to go off on a long fruitless tangent. You are entitled to your opinions, but I respectfully disagree.

As a Unitarian in the Knoxville area, I appreciate your sympathetic words, and thank you. But we may differ in two important points. (Note:P as Unitarianism is a gathering religion for "like minded," but not "same-minded" people, I can only speak for myself, and not Unitarians in general.)

1) Despite feeling a fairly close connection to the tragedy and the people involved, I cannot see Jim Adkisson as an "evil piece of work." While he was ostensibly politically motivated, he is obviously extremely disturbed, and his political and social motivations seem to be essentially incoherent. His plan of action was completely irrational. While I agree that many people are to be praised as deeply "good," it is not usually helpful to categorize (and dismiss) people as "evil." People like this are a combination of their genetic and neuro-chemical makeup, and their upbringing and circumstances. While the debate about the relative importance of nature versus nurture has raged for decades, clearly we are necessarily the product of the two. It is more helpful to try to understand where behavior like Adkisson's comes from, what facilitated it, and what can help prevent it, than to dismiss it as evil.

2) While Adkisson may not be representative of conservatism, the extreme branch of the conservative movement bears some responsibility, as do we all. Not comes the uncomfortable part. What role and responsibility do we as liberal, and yes, others in the conservative movement, bear in this situation? Naturally, until more is known about this event and its perpetrator, one cannot be sure. But whenever the basic physical and social needs of an individual are ignored and that person is left to feel suffer and feel alone, then we have fallen short of our ideals. This is Unitarian Principle #1 of 7: inherent worth and dignity of every person"
(See http://www.uua.org/visitors/6798.shtml). And whenever a vulnerable and desperate person is fed a diet of hateful misinformation, the results can be tragic.

Many of us fall short of our ideals. But I'm convinced of one point: the ideal liberal tradition as espoused by unitarianism argues for understanding, tolerance and inclusion. Not for hate, insiders and outsiders, true-believers and heretics, good and evil. It also argues strongly for non-violence, in personal, civic, and international matters. These are Unitarian principles 2 and 7: "Justice, equity and compassion in human relations," and "The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all." I'm sure many conservatives share these goals. So let us agree to reject vitriolic hate speak of all kind, including that of Limbaugh, Hannity, Savage, and perhaps Olberman (I don't watch him and others. And reject statements which make the term "liberal" a scathing derision rather than a statement of worldly philosophy, or degrades liberals, gays, and those of other beliefs as something less than "good people."

If you compare American whites to Europeans, the crime rates even out.

Yes, of course, if you miss out many of the poorer, disadvantaged people you get a picture of a happy and prosperous nation. :)

My figures apply to the entire population of England and Wales.

Too, I still find it odd that you experience such a large outflow of natives.

Net immigration (not counting those who stay for less than one year) exceeds emigration by more than 200,000, which is still a bit of a headache for such a crowded country. Although extensive research hasn't yet been done into emigration, it's thought that a large number of those leaving are retiring to live in a more hospitable climate--rather as New Yorkers may retire to Florida.

**Whilst I couldn't disagree more strongly with this notion of "tacit knowledge" that turmarion imported from Michael Polanyi (obviously whatever it was, it was so tacit that nobody told us Brits about it!)**

Perhaps you could start to remedy that by actually reading Polanyi.

**"Ignorance is the curse of God; knowledge the wings wherewith we fly to heaven." - Wm. Shakespeare**

Yes, and Shakespeare was no atheist.

: Turmarion | July 29, 2008 4:29 PM

You write:
A person has a "right" to be a jerk in the sense that we would consider it inappropriate to use the state to enforce behaving politely (as in the movie Demolition Man), but morally or ethically, a person does not in fact have a right to be a jerk.

If PZ Myers were merely being a jerk, I would support his right (not "right") to act like a jerk. Rather, it seems to me that he's protesting death threats and intimidation against a Florida student--and tweaking the nose of the Catholic League in the process--in a rather flamboyant manner that demonstrates and sustains academic freedom. A science educator has a right to attack a superstition, no matter how entrenched it is, no matter how powerful its upholders.

You don't think that matters? Fine.

You think he could have made the point in another way? Don't think so. Only actively defying the attempt to impose religious dogma on academics would work in this instance. All the words in the world wouldn't count if, at the end of the day, nobody dared defy the Catholic bullies.

You write: There is no (and in a pluralistic society should be no) legally actionable way to stop someone from desecrating the Eucharist, the Koran, or anything else; in that limited sense, one has a "right" to do such things.

Legally actionable? Possibly not. Nevertheless, Webster Cook and his colleague have been suspended from university and may be expelled because of his foolish and sophomoric action. The Catholics are too powerful for undergraduates, sadly.

By that logic, since Salman Rushdie has been the subject of death threats for years from Islamic extremists because of The Satanic Verses, we should show solidarity with him and "draw the fangs of intimidation" by having regular Koran-burnings, huh?

It wasn't necessary. Our government broke off diplomatic relations over the affair in 1989, and didn't restore them until Tehran formally undertook, in 1998, not to support assassination operations against Rushdie (it was a fudge, Tehran's form of words was "neither support nor hinder", but after nine years the point had been made).

Besides, burning the Koran? Burning a book to promote literary freedom sends the wrong message.

The phrasing makes it sound as if bloodthirsty Catholic hordes were massed outside the house of the student or of Myers, ready to let rip.

I cannot speak for Cook, but Myers reports having received some 12,000 items of hate mail, including many death threats and many intimidating emails referring to his children by their first names. Cook himself, as I reported, may face expulsion. A colleague of Cook, whose only involvement appears to have been his presence in the church service on university premises, may also face expulsion.

And I might point out that there are cases of high school coaches getting death threats over sports-related issues. Does that mean sports fans are ravening, murderous hordes?

It means those who made the threats are thugs.

Consider this thought-experiment, though: had he gone out and legally bought a copy of the Jewish Publication Society tranlsation of the Old Testament (Tanakh) and painted swastikas on it or otherwise desecrated it, and posted this online; or if he had done something similar that involved racial epithets; what, then, does anyone think would have happened?

He did not do those things. He nailed a wafer and stuck it in the bin.

Also, I'm not sure how random death threats from deranged, anonymous supposed "Catholics" consitutes "encroachment of the church on academic freedom".

You seem to have entirely ignored the involvement of the Florida diocese.

I wrote Whilst I couldn't disagree more strongly with this notion of "tacit knowledge" that turmarion imported from Michael Polanyi (obviously whatever it was, it was so tacit that nobody told us Brits about it!)

Rob G | July 29, 2008 5:13 PM said: Perhaps you could start to remedy that by actually reading Polanyi.

I've no beef with Polanyi, who as a philosopher of science was writing about a process by which part of science develops as unwritten law.

Whatever unwritten laws are being broken by liberals or conservatives in the USA, it's not clear to this outsider. The liberals seem to be pushing for progressive social change and the conservatives seem to be seeking to preserve valued institutions against the deleterious effects of change. That's what liberals and conservatives do.

"I've no beef with Polanyi, who as a philosopher of science was writing about a process by which part of science develops as unwritten law."

Yes, but he also believed that the notion of 'tacit knowledge' had ramifications for politics and culture. For a variant on this idea you can also read your fellow Brit Roger Scruton.

For a variant on this idea you can also read your fellow Brit Roger Scruton.

Thanks, but I'd rather gargle in pig slurry. :)

"Thanks, but I'd rather gargle in pig slurry."

I expected as much.

Whilst I couldn't disagree more strongly with this notion of "tacit knowledge" that turmarion imported from Michael Polanyi (obviously whatever it was, it was so tacit that nobody told us Brits about it!)

I might point out that Polanyi was British! Though born in Hungary, he emigrated to Britain during the 30's to escape Nazism. He in fact became a Fellow of the Royal Society and a Fellow of Merton College, Oxford.

For more, read his excellent (and short!) book, The Tacit Dimension

Rob G: "Seems to me there's nothing beyond sentimentality to prevent an atheist from being at very least a narcissistic hedonist. Every atheist may not be Joseph Stalin, but why not be Hugh Heffner?"

That seems like that is something you could actually research and find an objective answer to. Write that grant proposal and somebody might even fund your study!

My guess is that you would find most atheists are not narcissistic hedonists because morality is an instinct resulting from natural selection. Basically moral behavior is less of a choice than you'd like to think.

One problem you'll have is defining the terms and getting people to admit to it since there's a major social stigma against atheism. Also, do you count the 15% of the population who says that have no religion, the 3% of the population that states they are an atheist or agnostic, or only the anti-theist new atheists?

I wrote: just as the black power salute at the 1968 Olympics appeared crude and drew "boos" from the crowd

Derek Copold | July 29, 2008 4:44 PM replied: It was crude, and unnecessary. The major civil rights acts had been passed at that point. The only thing this middle finger gesture did was alienate otherwise supportive whites.

I agree that it alienated a lot of people.

Speaking as a former eleven-year-old English schoolboy, I can honestly say it completely changed my perception of the race issue. For the first time, I noticed that the white people around me were distinguishing between "good" black people, who won races and acted as if there were no racial issues in America, and "bad" black people, who had been led astray by communists, won races, and then misused the Olympic games to protest about their own concerns. These were white people were English, too, not Americans. It took me a while to articulate, as a child, what was wrong with that.

As recently as 1964, four civil rights workers had been murdered in Mississippi. Martin Luther King had been assassinated in April of the same year as the Mexico Olympics, shortly after addressing a rally in Memphis. In 1971, Klansmen used bombs to destroy ten school buses in Pontiac, Michigan. In 1981 Michael Donald was picked at random by two Ku Klux Klan members in Mobile and lynched.

I wrote "Only actively defying the attempt to impose religious dogma on academics would work in this instance."

Derek Copold | July 29, 2008 5:52 PM wrote: I simply boggle that you insist on repeating this exploded claim, Tony. No one is imposing religious dogma on academics. No one is asking Myers or Cook to affirm the Immaculate Conception or the Athanasian Creed or anything of the sort. What's being asked is that they not thieve other people's property for the sake of crude vandalism or theatrics.

To which thief are you referring? I remind you that Cook and his colleague, who merely attended the service with him, are suspended and may face expulsion. All Cook appears to have done is to try to remove the wafer from his mouth at the rail (he was forced to put it back) then remove it again on reaching his seat (again there appears to have been an effort to force him to swallow it) and finally leave the service.

A little disruptive perhaps, but on the absolute worst construction a student prank gone wrong.

The Catholic diocese complained, and in responding to the intervention the quite innocuous, or at worst mildly annoying, behavior of Cook is being made a major issue. The diocese itself referred to Cook's actions as "a hate crime" and "sacrilege".

So please don't claim again that Roman Catholic doctrine isn't being imposed by a Catholic diocese on a member of an academic institution.

And speaking of which, since we're measuring each other's national tallywhackers, I note that a certain country came within an ace of reinvigorating its anti-blasphemy laws. Now I know you don't support that sort of thing, but it should give you pause before you sneer at America and its creationists.

I'll sneer at America and I'll sneer at the US, when sneering is merited.

I said (on the proposal to compare only crimes amongs white Americans with the crime rates in Europe): Yes, of course, if you miss out many of the poorer, disadvantaged people you get a picture of a happy and prosperous nation. :)

Derek Copold | July 29, 2008 5:06 PM replied: Whites aren't uniformly wealthy. They range from Warren Buffet to the rednecks. They're present at all levels of society, which makes them a better population to compare to European populations. If I wanted to tailor a best behaved population, I'd drag out the East Asians.

Black people in America represent 12% of the population. The unemployment rate for black Americans is 10.3%, while the unemployment rate among white people is 4.7%. An employed black American earns just 65% of the wages of a white American in a comparable job. To skim off some of the poorest paid people in a society, then present the remainder as comparable in some way to people at all income levels in another society, makes no demographic sense. No demographic sense at all. It doesn't matter if some of those remaining are also poor. It still makes no sense. It's as if I gave you a deck of cards with the red picture cards missing but insisted on comparing it with a deck containing all 52 cards. Does not compute, Mister.

As recently as 1964, four civil rights workers had been murdered in Mississippi. Martin Luther King had been assassinated in April of the same year as the Mexico Olympics, shortly after addressing a rally in Memphis. In 1971, Klansmen used bombs to destroy ten school buses in Pontiac, Michigan. In 1981 Michael Donald was picked at random by two Ku Klux Klan members in Mobile and lynched.

All those acts were illegal, and they were treated as such. And as a proportion of violent crime, white hate crimes are statistically insignificant, especially compared to the violent crime committed by blacks, not only against other blacks, but against those of other races (and it is definitely motivated by racial hatred).

So, yes, the '68 gesture was the act of a couple of jerks, and it didn't advance the cause of civil rights. In fact, from a liberal POV, it helped set it back, as it fueled the white backlash of the 70s.

I remind you that Cook and his colleague, who merely attended the service with him, are suspended and may face expulsion.

They're not facing expulsion due to their beliefs. They're facing expulsion due to their actions. They entered the service, and one took a wafer and refused to consume it or return it, as he is supposed to do if he takes it in the first place (which he did NOT have to do). They trespassed and then attempted to steal an item. They haven't apologized for this act of theft, so I feel no sympathy for them.

Black people in America represent 12% of the population. The unemployment rate for black Americans is 10.3%, while the unemployment rate among white people is 4.7%. An employed black American earns just 65% of the wages of a white American in a comparable job.

What you're pointing out here is how far out of the margin blacks are, which is why you can't compare them with countries that do not have such a large minority to make useful comparisons. The composition of White Americans alone compares better to place like Germany because you can eliminate a big variable like religion without other large variables distorting the comparison.

Tony,

It's also worth noting that most violent crime in this country goes on in cities, most of which are run politically by liberals and progressives, most of the time.

The violent crime rate only started to explode in this 1960's, and it did so as material conditions were improving for the under-class, and as political conditions were improving as well -- especially in the cities -- for the black community.

I think most commentators agree that the liberalization of social attitudes from the 1960's on should bear at least a part of the blame for the conditions that breed violent crime, if not for the violent crime itself.

Since the 1960's, liberals and progressives have had ample opportunity to deal with violent crime and with its causes.

Their success in doing so has been decidedly mixed.

Whatever else might be said about their effort, one cannot say that it has been guided by Middle American ideals.

I write this as politically a moderate, an Independent in party registration -- which is to say, I write this in the name of realism not of partisanship.

Tony,

No worries. It's hard to communicate clearly in comboxes. Thanks for the clarification.

To your point, conservative and creationist are not the same. I don't know if that's clear. Even among conservatives, YEC types are a minority, and a lot of their policy problems could probably be cleared up with some sort of voucher system that lets them get some of their tax money back for private education. Mind you, with the money we waste per pupil over here, we could give them half their taxes back and still see a profit.

Funny enough, I remember from Dawkins' video that in England there's a school funded by the government that teaches creationism. Doesn't that rather put the ball in your court? And there is that blasphemy law. In the theocracy threat game, I'd say we're quite a ways from there, so Dawkins and his followers aren't exactly in a position to throw stones at the U.S.

Tony,

I only started reading this thread the past few posts, so if you have been engaging in this sort of crude ad hominem attack all the way through, then I regret that I wasted my time in trying to reason with you.

Your recourse to a kind of "Amos n' Andy" dialect that hasn't been used in the U.S. even for satirical purposes in many years says more about *your* attitudes toward race than it does my own.

Also, has it never occurred to you that one reason Britain may not have some of the social pathologies the U.S. does (though it does have many of its own that the U.S. does not) is that Britain had an empire of colonies to which it could remove the "troublesome" parts of its population -- those disadvantaged, disenfranchised, displaced, and dispossessed at various points in British history by political and economic policies every bit as brutal as any that have ever been pursued over here.

This is to say nothing of the fact that Britain like the U.S. was a country built on slavery -- albeit slavery conducted at a "safe" remove from Britain itself, in circumstances which allowed the British not have to deal in later generations with the legacy of what their ancestors did, the way Americans have.

Finally, I hate to touch on a sensitive point, but Britain also had the advantage of a certain former colony that came to its aid at a certain point in time of which we are all aware.

Without that intervention, you, my friend, would be eating sauerkraut right now, and this discussion would be moot.

Derek Copold | July 29, 2008 9:43 PM writes: After taking income into consideration, black crime rates are still much higher than other groups.

This may be true, but they're still Americans. Selectively removing a high crime rate group from your figures is a bit blatant, frankly, and I'm surprised that you're so insistent about this.

This may be true, but they're still Americans. Selectively removing a high crime rate group from your figures is a bit blatant, frankly, and I'm surprised that you're so insistent about this.

I'm insistent about this because it's a relevant issue when you're thumping your chest, trying to make comparative claims about societies. That that group can be so easily identified by economically, culturally and historically unique situations makes it all the more relevant. Yes, we acknowledge they're Americans, but their situation is unique from other societies, even the one with your immigrants, who were largely self-selected.

This is because the House of Lords (including those Bishops!) overruled the House of Commons and removed the relevant wording from the new bill, and the government was unsuccessful in its attempts to undo the amendment when it came back to the Commons for its final reading.

My point was that you came within an ace of having that law with teeth. We're nowhere near that in the U.S. That being the case, I think we could do without lectures on theocracy from your side of the pond, thank you very much. And I wouldn't be so sure that the law is gone for good, too, BTW.

I know this much also: I'm not going to be dragged into court because I might say something that some mullah finds offensive (where truth is no defense, I might add), as happens in other "enlightened" secular countries, like Canada, France and the U.K.

Augustus Johnson | July 29, 2008 9:12 PM writes I think most commentators agree that the liberalization of social attitudes from the 1960's on should bear at least a part of the blame for the conditions that breed violent crime, if not for the violent crime itself.

Social attitudes have been liberalized in Europe, too. A lot. Britain has a free health service, a decent welfare system, abortion on demand, sex education, condoms in schools, multicultural education, civil partnerships, gay rights, and anti-discrimination legislation. This is not unusual for a European country. Compared to some, we're stuffy and old-fashioned.

If as you claim the American violent crime rates have been worsened since the sixties because of liberalization of social policy, why has the somewhat greater liberalization in Europe, which has been extensive and sustained, not led to a significantly worse epidemic of violent crime in Europe?

I write this as politically a moderate

I don't doubt your sincerity for one moment. I just question your reasoning.

I notice that the post-war baby boom relaxed a little over the past twenty years or so. You don't suppose the large and sustained drop in violent crime in the US and in Europe over the past decade or so had anything to do with all those kids growing up, do you?

I wrote:
As recently as 1964, four civil rights workers had been murdered in Mississippi. Martin Luther King had been assassinated in April of the same year as the Mexico Olympics, shortly after addressing a rally in Memphis. In 1971, Klansmen used bombs to destroy ten school buses in Pontiac, Michigan. In 1981 Michael Donald was picked at random by two Ku Klux Klan members in Mobile and lynched.

Derek Copold | July 29, 2008 8:51 PM wrote: All those acts were illegal, and they were treated as such.

I don't doubt it! You can see, I hope, why Tommie Smith and John Carlos felt they owed it to the guys who never made it to the stadium. America was a deeply racist society, still coming out of the dark ages of Lynch law. Smith and Carlos, and all black American athletes of the time, faced apartheid in the changing room. Only on the podium could they be seen as superlative human beings, so that is where they made their statement.

In 2005, their alma mater, San Jose University, erected a 20ft statue representing the two athletes standing, shoeless as they were, making their salute.

So, yes, the '68 gesture was the act of a couple of jerks, and it didn't advance the cause of civil rights. In fact, from a liberal POV, it helped set it back, as it fueled the white backlash of the 70s.

Boy, that's really weird. On this board I sometimes get the impression that the sixties just never happened.

Time for me to move on, I think. "It wastes your time and annoys the pig."

Tony,

Why have you suddenly shifted gears and started to speak in a (relatively more) reasonable and temperate way, instead of engaging in false accusations of racism and other rather vulgar ad hominem attacks.

I wasn't referring the changes in social policy. I was referring the changes in social values, social norms, though there is an extent to which social policy encouraged changes in social values and social norms that proved to be for the worse.

Your laundry list of British social services -- many of which, believe it or not, the U.S. has too -- have no bearing one way or another on the problem we're discussing.

The U.S. had even less of a welfare state before the 1960's, let alone before the New Deal in the 1930's, than it does today, but there was much less incidence of violent crime.

Clearly something changed in the Sixties. The change was not some slashing back of the welfare provisions you describe, which increased very greatly at that time. Nor was it some intensification of Christianity or traditional bourgeois values. In fact, it was a fairly widespread weakening of each of those, a weakening which had a disproportionately negative impact on certain demographics.

You have to recognize how much stronger private -- as opposed to public -- civil society traditionally has been in the U.S. than in Europe.

We have always had a very strong network of intervening institutions between individual and state -- clubs, guilds, charities, churches, etc. -- all of which have administered resources of private charity that one must account for in assessing the degree of social welfare that the U.S. has had.

Because those institutions are private, they tend to decline when the government attempts to intervene in roles they have traditionally played.

And because they have tended to be grounded in religion or in secularization thereof as bourgeois values, they have tended to suffer in conditions where religion and bourgeois values have come under not just healthy criticism but aggressive attack.

Each of the above -- state intervention and aggressive attack on tradition -- occurred in the 1960's.

My guess is that both played a part in eroding our cultural conditions, but more so the latter than the former.

Like it or not -- and I'm assuming you don't -- the U.S. is a country where social solidarity is and always has been grounded in religion, for better and for worse, though mostly for the better, I believe.

The U. S. simply isn't -- I repeat -- *is* *not* Europe or (even) the U.K.

We do things our own way here, and our way tends to work fairly well when it is left to its course.

What happened in the 1960's was a hollowing-out of many of the institutions that formerly had lent a coherence to American life.

That hollowing-out was mostly unintended.

It was carried out as what some believed to be "progress," but it seems clear by now that there were losses as well as gains from the enterprise.

I don't see why this need be controversial to say -- especially to you, since you are not American yourself
and for that reason less informed than Americans about conditions here.

It wouldn't occur to me -- or most Americans -- to weigh in on British social problems in the rather bullheaded way that you have here.

Don't try so hard to score points. Just listen and gain some food for thought.

If I'm being unfair, I apologize. But, again, your initial reply was incredibly rude.

"So what keeps you from being a narcissistic hedonist?"

Boy, there's no way I can stick around here to keep up with all this love.

Regarding the question above, for me, I couldn't stand the pain. But then, I'm weak.

Well, for me it was the default position, as an agnostic. Again, "for me". I just couldn't keep it up. Thankfully I survived (sorta).

Me: Boy, there's no way I can stick around here to keep up with all this love.

After seeing that posted I realized it was, ah, next to gibberish compared to what I meant.

I meant to say that there was that there was no way I had the time today to follow this thread; way too many posts to keep track of.

Augustus, I don't think you understood my response to your first statement, and took my parody as an ad hominem.

I can only ask you to read these words again and see if they don't make you feel ashamed:

it's white, Middle-American, conservative, church-going types of the sort that Europeans don't like, folks who engage in violent crime no more than Europeans do, and who are equally appalled by such violent crime as does go on over here, in certain demographics -- not limited to African-Americans, however disproportionate their share of violent crime might be.

Encrusted with bad faith, dripping with a kind of raw racism that gets under one's fingernails, frankly I don't believe you deserved a response at all. But I gave one, and the only one possible was a rebuke. I'm sorry that it seemed to go over your head.

"Max's answer to the question shows the flaw in the Rod G.'s assumption that, sentimentality aside, narcissistic hedonism is the default position for an atheist."

Please read what I wrote again -- I didn't say that. What I wrote was that there's nothing but sentimentality (and personal preference, which basically amounts to the same thing) that PREVENTS an atheist from being a hedonist. I didn't say it was the default position.

What keeps me from being a hedonist is the same thing that keeps me from being a scofflaw: the belief that there is a universal, transcendent basis for morality, and that it is good for me as a person to adjust my behavior to it, just as it is good for my body for me to take my vitamins and exercise. That is the simplest way I can put it without using theistic language.

Tony,

So, let me get this straight.

When you accuse me -- someone you have never met -- of "dripping" with "raw racism" -- on the basis of your reading of one single sentence I wrote, which you only half-read -- then that's *not* an ad hominem attack.

I'd like to have some of what you're smoking.

On second thought, no, not so much.

If you'll go back and *read* the sentence you quote, you'll see that I take pains to stipulate that violent crime in the U.S. is *not* limited to African-Americans, though they -- or rather the impoverished young men among their number -- do bear a disproportionate share, as no one can contradict with any cogency.

I should say that while I'm not black myself, I grew up in a social setting which was more than half black.

I've gone to school with, gone to church with, worked with, and been friends with African-Americans my whole life -- none of whom would deny the disproportionality of violent crime in their midst, since they live with it every day. I'm guessing I'm more comfortable discussing these things than you are, since I've been doing so for a long, long time -- and without the reaction you had from black friends from whom I've learned a lot of what I now have to say.

This is not the first time some joker has tried to play the race card on me and it would not be the first time friends of mine who are black have had my back -- that is, if any one them had such bad sense as to waste their time in this "discussion" -- which isn't much of one.

I grant that this is merely a version of the "I have black friends" defense, but that at least seems a better defense than any you could mount to defend your outrageous claims about me.

I repeat that your recourse to "Amos n' Andy" says more about your own view of race than it does mine.

I'm also guessing it's a ploy not to deal with the substance of what I had to say to you initially.

Anyway, with that, I give you the last word. Clearly, it's important to you that you "win," that you score more points than me. So, fine, go ahead. Call me a racist once more ... with feeling.

"And is that not a personal preference - to conform your behavior to that morality?"

Yes, on one rather superficial level it is. One can, after all, call stopping at red lights or paying one's taxes an exercise in personal preference.

But on another level, it's based on the idea that the "law" is, in fact, above me, and that it is in my best interest (in more than one way) to follow it. This transcends mere personal preference.

I see that a post of mine from last night was deleted, and properly so. I included a profanity in it directed at Derek Copold, who said the following regarding Unitarians: "They're really something of a joke to most people, the sort of people so earnestly PC they have to apologize three times for some sort of oppression their ancestors committed before breakfast."

I apologize for the profanity. Such language should not be used in civilized company. However, I don't apologize for saying that I don't think Derek is in any position to talk about what most people think about anything, or what religious group is a joke or not. I certainly haven't seen any comments from him on this thread or elsewhere that lead me to believe that his judgment is something one should trust or take seriously. I also think it's rather foul to post comments mocking a particular religious group on a comment thread that is about a mass shooting at a church of that religious group, so I'm not sorry about calling him out on that point, either. But I won't use the sort of language that I used in the now-deleted post in the future. My temper got the better of me when I posted that comment, and that was wrong and the Beliefnet combox censors acted properly.

As a theist, I don't accept the notion that law is ultimately arbitrary. If that were so, it could theoretically be changed at the drop of a hat on the basis of majority preference, and that leads to moral relativism.
Posted by: Rob G | July 30, 2008 9:39 AM

So is the the case where at one time it is okay in warfare to kill all of the enemy except the virgin girls to keep for your nation's men's use, but later as a civilization evolves more universal ideas about morality, such behavior is seen as immoral an example of moral relativism?

Specific instances do not stand alone and isolated, culturally speaking, and these things need to be examined accordingly on a case-by-case basis.
Posted by: Rob G | July 30, 2008 10:21 AM

Do you believe that Jehovah ordered the Israelites to commit genocide, saving only the virgin girls?

Do you believe that Jehovah ordered the Israelites to commit genocide, saving only the virgin girls?
Posted by: John E. - Agn Stoic | July 30, 2008 10:38 AM
No.
Posted by: Rob G | July 30, 2008 10:44 AM

So then how do you decide which parts of the Bible labeled "God says thus" were actually ordered by God without appealing to sentimentalism, human reason, or moral relativism?

Recovering Ex-Pentecostal, you write: Does this 'stereotype' include the MargaretEs of the world who cling to "centuries of tradition and natural law"? Exactly how is it "mistaken" to see them as "positive agitators against social change altogether"?

Tony Sidaways writes: "I get the impression that MargaretE is interested in true political dialog, and her main complaint is that she is ostracised and condescended-to by those whom she regards as agents of liberalism in the media.... I see MargaretE's evident wish for civil dialog, and distaste for slogan-hurling, as an example to be encouraged."

Thank you, Tony. You have summed me up very well. You sir, are a gentleman, and I've enjoyed reading your thoughts in this thread.

Ex-pentecostal, you've completely misjudged me. I don't actually "cling" to anything. I just have a problem with those who would throw out the baby with the bath water when it comes to social change. (See Augustus Johnson's explanation of what's happened to this country since the 60s.) And I'm sorry you didn't want to address the issue of natural law, which is not just a "Catholic thing." (Read all about it in "Mere Christianity," written by the Anglican CS Lewis.) Anyway, I'm not one of the poor, uneducated types you lament above, who "just doesn't know any better" than to believe in religion "based in the 19th century." I've got a BA in English, an MA in English, and was an atheist for the first 20 years of my adult life. I have come to Christianity via the intellectual route, first and foremost. Contrary to what many on this blog believe, faith and reason are hardly antithetical. It is possible to be an educated person of the 21st Century AND a believing, practicing Christian. We are not as rare as you think, though scarcer than one might hope.

Whoa. Now you've boggled my mind, Rob G. I know that Catholics and Orthodox are not required to believe in the word for word, literal inerrancy of the Bible. But I don't think I've ever before heard someone who considers himself a religious conservative say, flat out, "God didn't say that." I agree with you, of course. But doesn't this pose some problems?

The order to exterminate enemy populations is right smack bang in the middle of Deuteronomy, in a section that is clearly represented to be Moses speaking for God. If the Bible can say as clearly as possible, "Thus says the Lord," and you, a mere man, can reply, "Oh no he didn't," then what is left of your absolute, objective morality? If it doesn't come from the Bible, where does it come from?

I know you said that you as a Christian read the Bible through a Christian lens--which could mean many different things to different people--but how does that help? Jesus did not deliver a second revelation that detailed which parts of the Mosaic legacy were to be preserved and which were to be discarded. Men did that, after he was gone. And there was much argument and discussion and factional strife, just as there has been among Jews as they struggle to determine which parts of their own scriptures are determinative for all time, and how to interpret them. A social consensus of Christians decides to follow one path or another, and they then declare themselves to be divinely inspired. I don't see what is "objective" about that.

Ha ha ha ha . . . I'm ROFLing myself, because I opened my (well-worn) Bible to check on the passage I referred to in Deuteronomy, and it opened spontaneously at the following quotation from the Book of Job, 26:34, right after Job has gone another round with those who seek to make him be quiet. "So how can you console me with your nonsense? Nothing is left of your answers but falsehood!"

Ah me. Job's comforters have a hard lot in life, don't they? There was a time when I'd have thought that was a "sign!" And maybe it is . . . though I bet we'd come up with a dozen different interpretations of its meaning.

btw, rr, thanks for trying to answer my question earlier. I went away from the keyboard (imagine!) and never replied to you, but I do appreciate your effort.

Such interesting posts, rr and Rob G, and full of wisdom. I'm glad you're both regulars here. Don't let the scoffers get you down!

You write, "I don't know any conservative religious believers who would sanction the evil that Jim Adkisson did."

But isn't that exactly what Bush and his crowd in the white house did in iraq?? And on a much grander scale??

Thomas R: "If an atheist could do drugs and get away with it, what would be the reason not to? Or if he raped a woman who has a "fifty first dates" type memory problem, so therefore she will not be traumatized by it, what is the reason not to do it?"

Not sure if you're still reading this thread, but I thought I would respond. I think these hypothetical questions fall short because they pose dilemmas that can't happen and then try to explore the morality of these impossible situations.

For example in the rape scenario there are repercussions beyond the victim remembering the event. She could get pregnant or contract a venereal disease. The attacker also makes himself callus to rape and would become likely to do it to someone else.

In the case of drug abuse the addict is likely to become a burden on others. It is hard to see a scenario where this won't be the eventual outcome.

Those are good answers MH. Most of my problems with atheism aren't about ethics or morals. They're more emotional or spiritual. Atheism seems so lonely and anxiety producing. The dead are gone forever, when you're old and alone you really have no one, if you're a social misfit you can't even pretend to have someone, etc. If you're in a bad place that makes you powerless, like an ICU, well then it sucks to be you because nothing and no one will give you any real strength.

I think atheism is sort of a luxury of rich societies where people feel in control or as part of a state that's in control. Hence "healthier societies" have more atheists somewhat in the same way they tend to have more CEOs or safety inspectors.