I normally am not one to endorse Bill O'Reilly unabashedly, but he's right on with this one (from his show's Talking Points segment 11-29-06):
A new book called "Who Really Cares?" by Arthur Brooks says conservative Americans give 30 percent more money to charity than liberal Americans. Also, religious people give up four times more money to charity than secular people.
In this season of giving, that is an interesting information equation, but the key question is: why? Why are traditional Americans more generous than secular progressives?
It isn't economics. A map displayed in the book shows the wealthier states like California and New York are below average in charitable giving, while poorer states like Mississippi and New Mexico or above average.
So, what is really going on here? "Talking Points" believes it is all in the philosophy. Conservative and traditional Americans tend to be Christian. And the basic command of Jesus was to help the poor. Religious Jews and Muslims are also called upon to give alms. So religion drives charitable giving.
Secular progressives are essentially non religious in believe the government should be the driving force behind generosity. They want a huge apparatus in Washington to redistribute income — that is take money from affluent Americans and giving to those less fortunate. SPs also believe the world revolves around individual gratification and that often takes a lot of money. So there's less inclination to give their personal funds to the poor. Let the government provide largess.
The evidence gets even more interesting when you compare charitable giving in America to secular Western Europe. The average American family gives 14 times as much to charity as the Italian family does, seven times as much as the German family.
In Europe, governments provide vast entitlements so families do not have the health, education and housing costs that Americans do, yet we still give much more.
Right now, conservative Americans are far more generous to the downtrodden than their liberal counterparts, and Americans in general are the most giving people on the planet.
Thursday, November 30, 2006
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
The military draft (from WSJ 11/25/06)
Uncle Charlie Wants You! The draft would weaken the world's best military.
Harlem Congressman Charles Rangel created a stir once again this week with his call for renewing the military draft. His own party leaders quickly disavowed any such plan, suggesting just how unpopular the idea is among most Americans. Yet the proposal deserves some further inspection before it vanishes, if only to expose its false assumptions about the current U.S. military.
A vocal Iraq war critic, Mr. Rangel told CBS News recently, "There's no question in my mind that this President and this Administration would never have invaded Iraq, especially on the flimsy evidence that was presented to the Congress, if indeed we had a draft and members of Congress and the Administration thought that their kids from their communities would be placed in harm's way."
In other words, Mr. Rangel's real argument is about class in America, not over the best way to fight Islamic terrorism overseas. He's suggesting that somehow only the poor serve in Uncle Sam's Army. But his views are both out of date and condescending to those who do serve. Alas, they are shared by many on the political left, who think that the military places an unfair burden on the working class.
In this mythology, the military is overly reliant on uneducated dupes from poor communities because those from more affluent backgrounds don't want to serve. But the truth is closer to the opposite, according to a recent Heritage Foundation report on the demographic characteristics of the military. It's titled "Who Are the Recruits?" and Mr. Rangel, a Korean War veteran, might want to read it before implying that the military doesn't look like America.
According to the report, which analyzed the most recent Pentagon enlistee data, "the only group that is lowering its participation in the military is the poor. The percentage of recruits from the poorest American neighborhoods (with one-fifth of the U.S. population) declined from 18 percent in 1999 to 14.6 percent in 2003, 14.1 percent in 2004, and 13.7 percent in 2005." Put another way, if military burdens aren't spread more evenly among socio-economic groups in the U.S., it's because the poor are underrepresented.
Or consider education levels. In the general U.S. population, the high school graduation rate is a little under 80%. But among military recruits from 2003-2005, nearly 97% had high school diplomas. The academic quality of recruits has also been rising this decade. According to Heritage, the military defines a "high quality" recruit as someone who scores above the 50th percentile on the Armed Forces Qualifying Test and has a high school degree. The percentage of high quality recruits had climbed to 67% in 2004 and 64% in 2005, up from 57% in 2001.
And what about race? In 2004, about 76% of the U.S. population was white, which was only slightly above the 73% of military recruits (and 72% of Army recruits) who were white. Blacks made up 12.17% of the population in 2004, and made up 14.54% of recruits in 2004 and 13% in 2005. Hispanic Americans are also slightly overrepresented in the military compared to their share of the population, but also not to a degree that suggests some worrisome cultural chasm among the races.
The overall truth is that today's recruits come primarily from the middle class, and, more importantly, they come willingly. This makes them more amenable to training and more likely to adapt to the rigors of military culture. An Army of draftees would so expand the number of recruits that training resources would inevitably be stretched and standards watered down. Meanwhile, scarce resources would be devoted to tens of thousands of temporary soldiers who planned to leave as soon as their year or two of forced service was up.
It's true that such training would help to shape up more young Americans who could use a few weeks of Marine discipline at Parris Island, and if this is what Mr. Rangel has in mind he should say so. But the price would be a less effective fighting force, and precisely at a time when experience and technological mastery are more important than ever in a fighting force.
"The military doesn't want a draft," says Tim Kane, an Air Force veteran and author of the Heritage study. "What the military wants is the most effective fighting force they can field. They want to win wars and minimize casualties. And you don't do that when you're forced to take less-educated, unmotivated people."
What about Mr. Rangel's point that conscription would have made intervention in Iraq less likely? It's impossible to know, but this is a dangerous argument for the future in any case. The main reason for having an effective Army is to deter enemies by making them believe we have the will to fight if we must. Mr. Rangel is saying the U.S. needs a conscript Army precisely to show an adversary we'll never use it. This is a good way to tempt Iran, say, into provocations that could lead to larger conflicts in which we would have no choice but to fight.
Mr. Rangel insists he will reintroduce a draft bill "as soon as we start the new session," but for all of these reasons it isn't likely to go anywhere. In 2004 GOP House leaders scheduled a floor vote on Mr. Rangel's Universal National Service Act, which would have required "all persons" to perform military or civilian service "in furtherance of national defense." The bill lost 402-2, and even Mr. Rangel opposed it.
Harlem Congressman Charles Rangel created a stir once again this week with his call for renewing the military draft. His own party leaders quickly disavowed any such plan, suggesting just how unpopular the idea is among most Americans. Yet the proposal deserves some further inspection before it vanishes, if only to expose its false assumptions about the current U.S. military.
A vocal Iraq war critic, Mr. Rangel told CBS News recently, "There's no question in my mind that this President and this Administration would never have invaded Iraq, especially on the flimsy evidence that was presented to the Congress, if indeed we had a draft and members of Congress and the Administration thought that their kids from their communities would be placed in harm's way."
In other words, Mr. Rangel's real argument is about class in America, not over the best way to fight Islamic terrorism overseas. He's suggesting that somehow only the poor serve in Uncle Sam's Army. But his views are both out of date and condescending to those who do serve. Alas, they are shared by many on the political left, who think that the military places an unfair burden on the working class.
In this mythology, the military is overly reliant on uneducated dupes from poor communities because those from more affluent backgrounds don't want to serve. But the truth is closer to the opposite, according to a recent Heritage Foundation report on the demographic characteristics of the military. It's titled "Who Are the Recruits?" and Mr. Rangel, a Korean War veteran, might want to read it before implying that the military doesn't look like America.
According to the report, which analyzed the most recent Pentagon enlistee data, "the only group that is lowering its participation in the military is the poor. The percentage of recruits from the poorest American neighborhoods (with one-fifth of the U.S. population) declined from 18 percent in 1999 to 14.6 percent in 2003, 14.1 percent in 2004, and 13.7 percent in 2005." Put another way, if military burdens aren't spread more evenly among socio-economic groups in the U.S., it's because the poor are underrepresented.
Or consider education levels. In the general U.S. population, the high school graduation rate is a little under 80%. But among military recruits from 2003-2005, nearly 97% had high school diplomas. The academic quality of recruits has also been rising this decade. According to Heritage, the military defines a "high quality" recruit as someone who scores above the 50th percentile on the Armed Forces Qualifying Test and has a high school degree. The percentage of high quality recruits had climbed to 67% in 2004 and 64% in 2005, up from 57% in 2001.
And what about race? In 2004, about 76% of the U.S. population was white, which was only slightly above the 73% of military recruits (and 72% of Army recruits) who were white. Blacks made up 12.17% of the population in 2004, and made up 14.54% of recruits in 2004 and 13% in 2005. Hispanic Americans are also slightly overrepresented in the military compared to their share of the population, but also not to a degree that suggests some worrisome cultural chasm among the races.
The overall truth is that today's recruits come primarily from the middle class, and, more importantly, they come willingly. This makes them more amenable to training and more likely to adapt to the rigors of military culture. An Army of draftees would so expand the number of recruits that training resources would inevitably be stretched and standards watered down. Meanwhile, scarce resources would be devoted to tens of thousands of temporary soldiers who planned to leave as soon as their year or two of forced service was up.
It's true that such training would help to shape up more young Americans who could use a few weeks of Marine discipline at Parris Island, and if this is what Mr. Rangel has in mind he should say so. But the price would be a less effective fighting force, and precisely at a time when experience and technological mastery are more important than ever in a fighting force.
"The military doesn't want a draft," says Tim Kane, an Air Force veteran and author of the Heritage study. "What the military wants is the most effective fighting force they can field. They want to win wars and minimize casualties. And you don't do that when you're forced to take less-educated, unmotivated people."
What about Mr. Rangel's point that conscription would have made intervention in Iraq less likely? It's impossible to know, but this is a dangerous argument for the future in any case. The main reason for having an effective Army is to deter enemies by making them believe we have the will to fight if we must. Mr. Rangel is saying the U.S. needs a conscript Army precisely to show an adversary we'll never use it. This is a good way to tempt Iran, say, into provocations that could lead to larger conflicts in which we would have no choice but to fight.
Mr. Rangel insists he will reintroduce a draft bill "as soon as we start the new session," but for all of these reasons it isn't likely to go anywhere. In 2004 GOP House leaders scheduled a floor vote on Mr. Rangel's Universal National Service Act, which would have required "all persons" to perform military or civilian service "in furtherance of national defense." The bill lost 402-2, and even Mr. Rangel opposed it.
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
Creationism vs Evolution
The theories of creation and evolution are obviously contentious issues in modern society. Below I'd like to paste the transcript of an unbiased radio debate, between two well-respected men, one a creationist, and the other an atheist/Darwinist. No matter which side you're on, I think you'll find it an interesting read. First, however, I'd like to make a few questions and comments of my own....really just fuel for thought.
1. Does the belief in God require more "faith" than the belief in evolution?
- For those who say "yes", where is the proof of evolution? Even Darwin himself said that the fossil record should be rife with transitional creatures; those that clearly indicate the evolution from type of animal to another. He surmised that these fossils must abound, but to date they hadn't done enough digging to unearth them. Yet 150 years later we're still without any definite fossils, the closest examples being dinosaurs that have both avian and reptilian characteristics. Examples which are too indistinct to concretely support anything, and still just a drop in the bucket in what should logically be mounds of fossil evidence "proving" evolution.
Some people point to the selective breeding of dogs, for example, as a confirmation. But this is just specialization. Scientists aren't able to turn dogs, cats, insects or anything else into a different species. And furthermore, these controlled, scientific efforts can be said to be duplicitous since they are not in accord with the "random" events process of the theory of evolution.
2. Does evolution or atheism allow for a moral standard?
- No. If life is the result of random events and a jumble of genes and molecules, then what standard is there to measure any type of morality or right vs. wrong? Any standard must be one of man's creation, and if we created it, then we can change it. Thus, our standard is temporary and arbitrary and really no standard at all.
The God Delusion: David Quinn & Richard Dawkins debate THE RYAN TUBRIDY SHOW
Now, this morning, we are asking, what’s wrong with religion? That’s just one of the questions raised in a new book called, The God Delusion. We’re going to talk to its author — the man who’s been dubbed the world’s most famous, out of the closet, living atheist — Richard Dawkins.
Ryan Tubridy: Richard, good morning to you
Richard Dawkins: Good morning.
Tubridy: It’s nice to talk to you again. We spoke before once on the similar subject matter. David Quinn is also with us here. David Quinn is a columnist with the Irish Independent. David, a very good morning to you.
David Quinn: Good morning.
Tubridy: So Richard Dawkins here you go again, up to your old tricks. In your most recent book, The God Delusion. Let’s just talk about the word if you don’t mind, the word delusion, so put it into context. Why did you pick that word?
Dawkins: Well the word delusion means a falsehood which is widely believed, and I think that is true of religion. It is remarkably widely believed, it’s as though almost all of the population or a substantial proportion of the population believed that they had been abducted by aliens in flying saucers. You’d call that a delusion. I think God is a similar delusion.
Tubridy: And would it be fair to say you equate God with say, the imaginary friend, the bogeyman, or the fairies at the end of the garden?
Dawkins: Well I think He’s just as probable to exist, yes, and I do discuss all those things especially the imaginary friend which I think is an interesting psychological phenomenon in childhood and that may possibly have something to do with the appeal of religion.
Tubridy: So take us through that little bit about the imaginary friend factor.
Dawkins: Many young children have an imaginary friend. Christopher Robin had Binker. A little girl who wrote to me had a little purple man. And the girl with the little purple man actually saw him. She seemed to hallucinate him. He appeared with a little tinkling bell. And, he was very, very real to her although in a sense she knew he wasn’t real. I suspect that something like that is going on with people who claim to have heard God or seen God or hear the voice of God.
Tubridy: And we’re back to delusion again. Do you think that anyone who believes in God, anyone of any religion, is deluded? Is that the bottom line with your argument Richard?
Dawkins: Well there is a sophisticated form of religion which, well one form of it is Einstein’s which wasn’t really a religion at all. Einstein used the word God a great deal, but he didn’t mean a personal God. He didn’t mean a being who could listen to your prayers or forgive your sins. He just meant it as a kind of poetic way of describing the deep unknowns, the deep uncertainties at the root of the universe. Then there are deists who believe in a kind of God, a kind of personal God who set the universe going, a sort of physicist God, but then did no more and certainly doesn’t listen to your thoughts. He has no personal interest in humans at all. I don’t think that I would use a word like delusions for, certainly not for Einstein, no I don’t think I would for a deist either. I think I would reserve the word delusion for real theists who actually think they talk to God and think God talks to them.
Tubridy: You have a very interesting description in The God Delusion of the Old Testament God. Do you want to give us that description or will I give it to you back?
Dawkins: Have you got it in front of you?
Tubridy: Yes I have.
Dawkins: Well why don’t you read it out then.
Tubridy: Why not. You describe God as a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.
Dawkins: That seems fair enough to me, yes.
Tubridy: Okay. There are those who would think that’s a little over the top.
Dawkins: Read your Old Testament, if you think that. Just read it. Read Leviticus, read Deuteronomy, read Judges, read Numbers, read Exodus.
Tubridy: And do you, is it your contention, that these elements of the God as described by yourself are what has not helped matters in terms of, say, global religion and the wars that go with it?
Dawkins: Well, not really because no serious theologian takes the Old Testament literally anymore, so it isn’t quite like that. An awful lot of people think they take the Bible literally but that can only be because they’ve never read it. If they ever read it they couldn’t possibly take it literally, but I do think that people are a bit confused about where they get their morality from. A lot of people think they get their morality from the Bible because they can find a few good verses. Parts of the Ten Commandments are okay, parts of the Sermon on the Mount are okay. So they think they get their morality from the Bible. But actually of course nobody gets their morality from the Bible, we get it from somewhere else and to the extent that we can find good bits in the Bible we cherry pick them. We pick and choose them. We choose the good verses in the Bible and we reject the bad. Whatever criterion we use to choose the good verses and throw out the bad, that criterion is available to us anyway whether we are religious or not. Why bother to pick verses? Why not just go straight for the morality?
Tubridy: Do you think the people who believe in God and in religion generally who you think that have, you use the analogy of the imaginary friend, do you think that the people who believe in God and religion are a little bit dim?
Dawkins: No, because many of them clearly are highly educated and score highly on IQ tests and things so…
Tubridy: Why do you think they believe in something you think doesn’t exist?
Dawkins: Well I think that people are sometimes remarkably adept at compartmentalizing their mind, at separating their mind into two separate parts. There are some people who even manage to combine being apparently perfectly good working scientists with believing that the book of Genesis is literally true and that the world is only 6000 years old. If you can perform that level of doublethink then you could do anything.
Tubridy: But they might say that they pity you because you don’t believe in what they think is fundamentally true.
Dawkins: Well they might and we’ll have to argue it out by looking at the evidence. The great thing is to argue it by looking at evidence, not just to say “Oh well, this is my faith. There’s no argument to be had. You can’t argue with faith.”
Tubridy: David Quinn, columnist with the Irish Independent, show us some evidence please.
Quinn: Well I mean the first thing I would say is that Richard Dawkins is doing what he commonly does which is he’s setting up straw men so he puts God in the same, he puts believing in God, in the same category as believing in fairies. Well you know children stop believing in fairies when they stop being children, but they usually don’t’ stop believing in God because belief in God to my mind is a much more rational proposition than believing in fairies and Santa Claus.
Tubridy: Do we have more proof that God exists than we do for fairies?
Quinn: I will come to that in a second. I mean the second thing is about compartmentalizing yourself when he uses examples of… well you’ve got intelligent people who somehow or other also believe the world is only 6000 years old and we have a young Earth and they don’t believe in evolution… but again… I mean that’s too stark an either or… I mean there are many people who believe in God but also believe in evolution and believe the universe is 20 billion years old and believe fully in Darwinian evolution or whatever the case may be… Now I mean in all arguments about the existence or nonexistence of God often these things don’t even get off the launch pad because the two people debating can’t even agree on where the burden of proof rests. Does it rest with those who are trying to prove the existence of God or with does it rest with those who are trying to disprove the existence of God? But I suppose you know if I bring this on to Richard Dawkins’ turf and we talk about the theory of evolution…The theory of evolution explains how matter — which we are all made from — organized itself into for example highly complex beings like Richard Dawkins and Ryan Tubridy and other human beings but what it doesn’t explain just to give one example is how matter came into being in the first place. That, in scientific terms, is a question that cannot be answered and can only be answered, if it can be answered fully at all, by philosophers and theologians. But it certainly cannot be answered by science and the question of whether God exists or not cannot be answered fully by science either and a common mistake that people can believe is the scientist who speaks about evolution with all the authority of science can also speak about the existence of God with all the authority of science and of course he can’t. The scientist speaking about the existence of God is actually engaging in philosophy or theology but he certainly isn’t bringing to it the authority of science per se.
Tubridy: Back to the original question, have you any evidence for me?
Quinn: Well I will say the existence of matter itself. I will say the existence of morality. Myself and Richard Dawkins have a clearly different understanding of the origins of morality. I would say free will. If you’re an atheist, if you’re an atheist logically speaking you cannot believe in objective morality. You cannot believe in free will. These are two things that the vast majority of humankind implicitly believe in. We believe for example that if a person carries out a bad action, we can call that person bad because we believe that they are freely choosing those actions. … And just quickly an atheist believes we are controlled completely by our genes and make no free actions at all.
Tubridy: What evidence do you have, Richard Dawkins, that you’re right?
Dawkins: I certainly don’t believe a word of that. I do not believe we are controlled wholly by our genes. Let me go back to the really important thing that Mr. Quinn said.
Quinn: How are we independent of our genes by your reckoning? What allows us to be independent of our genes? Where is this coming from?
Dawkins: Environment for a start.
Quinn: Well hang on but that also is a product of if you like of matter. Okay?
Dawkins: Yes but it’s not genes.
Quinn: What part of us allows us to have free will?
Dawkins: Free will is a very difficult philosophical question and it’s not one that has anything to do with religion, contrary to what Mr. Quinn says…but…
Quinn: It has an awful lot to do with religion because if there is no God there’s no free will because we are completely phenomena of matter.
Dawkins: Who says there’s not free will if there is no God? That’s a ridiculous thing to say.
Quinn: William Provine for one who you quote in your book. I mean I have a quote here from him. “Other scientists, as well, believe the same thing… that everything that goes on in our heads is a product of genes and as you say environment and chemical reactions. That there is no room for free will.” And Richard if you haven’t got to grips with that you seriously need to because many of your colleagues have and they deny outright the existence of free will and they are hardened materialists like yourself.
Tubridy: Okay. Richard Dawkins, rebut to that as you wish.
Dawkins: I’m not interested in free will what I am interested in is the ridiculous suggestion that if science can’t say where the origin of matter comes from theology can. The origin of matter… the origin of the whole universe, is a very, very difficult question. It’s one that scientists are working on. It’s one that they hope eventually to solve. Just as before Darwin, biology was a mystery. Darwin solved that. Now cosmology is a mystery. The origin of the universe is a mystery; it’s a mystery to everyone. Physicists are working on it. They have theories. But if science can’t answer that question then as sure as hell theology can’t either.
Quinn: If I can come in there, it is a perfectly reasonable proposition to ask yourself where does matter come from? And it is perfectly reasonable as well to posit the answer, God created matter. Many reasonable people believe this and by the way… I mean look it is quite a different category to say look we will study matter and we will ask how
Dawkins: But if science can’t answer that question, then it’s sure as hell theology can’t either.
Tubridy: Richard, if ...
Quinn: Sorry — if I can come in there — It’s a perfectly reasonable proposition to ask oneself where does matter come from. And it’s perfectly reasonable as well to posit the answer God created matter. Many reasonable people believe this.
Dawkins: It’s not reasonable.
Quinn: It’s quite a different category to say “Look, we will study matter and we will ask how matter organizes itself into particular forms,” and come up with the answer “evolution.” It is quite another question to ask “Where does matter come from to begin with?” And if you like you must go outside of matter to answer that question. And then you’re into philosophical categories.
Dawkins: How could it possibly be another category and be allowed to say God did it since you can’t explain where God came from?
Quinn: Because you must have an uncaused cause for anything at all to exist. Now, I see in your book you come up with an argument against this that I frankly find to be bogus. You come up with the idea of a mathematical infinite regress but this does not apply to the argument of uncaused causes and unmoved movers because we are not talking about maths we’re talking about existence and existentially nothing exists unless you have an uncaused cause. And that uncaused cause and that unmoved mover is, by definition, God.
Tubridy: OK. I’m going to move...
Dawkins: You just defined God as that! You just defined a problematic existence. That’s no solution to the problem. You just evaded it.
Quinn: You can’t answer the question where matter comes from! You, as an atheist —
Dawkins: I can’t, but science is working on it. You can’t answer it either.
Quinn: It won’t come up with an answer, and you invoked a mystery argument that you accuse religious believers of doing all the time. You invoke a very first and most fundamental question about reality. You do not know where matter came from.
Dawkins: I don’t know. Science is working on it. Science is a progressive thing that’s working on it. You don’t know but you claim that you do.
Quinn: I claim to know the probable answer.
Tubridy: Can I suggest that the next question is quite appropriate. The role of religion in wars. When you think of the difficulty that it brings up on a local level. Richard Dawkins, do you believe the world would be a safer place without religion?
Dawkins: Yes, I do. I don’t think that religion is the only cause of wars. Very far from it. Neither the second World War nor the first World War were caused by religion, but I do think that religion is a major exacerbater, and especially in the world today, as a matter of fact.
Tubridy: OK. Explain yourself.
Dawkins: Well, it’s pretty obvious. I mean that if you look at the Middle East, if you look at India and Pakistan, if you look at Northern Ireland, there are many, many places where the only basis for hostility that exists between rival factions who kill each other is religion.
Tubridy: Why do you take it upon yourself to preach, if you like, atheism and there’s an interesting choice of words in some ways — that you’ve been accused of being something like a fundamental atheist. If you like, the “High Priest” of atheism. Why go about your business in such a way that that’s kind of ...trying to disprove these things. Why don’t you just believe in it privately, for example?
Dawkins: Well, fundamentalist is not quite the right word. A fundamentalist is one who believes in a holy book and thinks that everything in that holy book is true. I am passionate about what I believe because I think there’s evidence for it. And I think it’s very different being passionate about evidence from being passionate about a holy book. So I do it because I care passionately about the truth. I really, really believe it’s a big question. It’s an important question, whether there is a God at the root of the universe. I think it’s a question that matters, and I think that we need to discuss it, and that’s what I do.
Quinn: Ryan if I could just say...
Tubridy: Go ahead.
Quinn: Richard has come up with a definition of fundamentalism that obviously suits him. He thinks a fundamentalist has to be somebody who believes in a holy book. A fundamentalist is somebody who firmly believes that they have got the truth and holds that to an extreme extent and become intolerant of those who hold to a different truth. And Richard Dawkins has just outlined what he thinks the truth to be and that makes him intolerant of those who have religious beliefs.
Now, in terms of the effect of religion upon the world, I mean, at least Richard has rightly acknowledged that there are many causes of war and strife and ill will in the world, and he mentions World War I and World War II. In his book he tries to get Nietzsche off the hook of having atheism blamed for example, the atrocities carried out by Josef Stalin, and saying that these have nothing particularly to do with atheism.
But Stalin and many Communists who were explicitly atheistic took the view that religion was precisely the sort of malign and evil force that Richard Dawkins thinks it is. And they set out from that premise to, if you like, inflict upon religion sort of their own version of a “final solution.” They set to eradicate from the earth true violence and also true education that was explicitly anti-religious. And under the Soviet Union, and in China, and under Pol Pot in Cambodia explicit and violent efforts were made to suppress religion on the grounds that religion was a wicked force; and we have the truth, and our truth would not admit religion into the picture at all because we believe religion to be an untruth. So atheism also can lead to fundamentalist violence and did so in the last century. And atheists…
Tubridy: We’ll allow Richard in there.
Dawkins: Stalin was a very, very bad man and his persecution of religion was a very, very bad thing. End of story. It’s nothing to do with the fact that he was an atheist. We can’t just compile lists of bad people who were atheists and lists of bad people who were religious. I am afraid there were plenty on both sides.
Quinn: Yes, but Richard you are always compiling lists of bad religious people. I mean you do it continually in all your books, and then you devote a paragraph to basically trying to absolve atheism of all blame for any atrocity throughout history. You cannot have it both ways! You cannot…
Dawkins: I deny that.
Quinn: But of course you do it. Every time you are on a program talking about religion, you bring up the atrocities committed in the name of religion. And then you try to minimize the atrocities committed by atheists because they were so anti-religious and because they regarded it as a malign force in much the same way you do. You are trying to have it both ways.
Dawkins: Well, I simply deny that. I do think that there is some evil in faith because faith is belief in something without evidence.
Quinn: But, you see, that is not what faith is. You see, that is a caricature and a straw man and is so typical. That is not what faith is! You have faith that God doesn’t…
Dawkins: What is faith? What is faith!?
Quinn: Wait a second! You have faith that doesn’t exist. You are a man of faith as well.
Dawkins: I do not! I have looked at the evidence!
Quinn: Well, I have looked — I have looked at the evidence too!
Dawkins: If somebody comes up with evidence that goes the other way, I will be the first to change my mind.
Quinn: Well, I think the very existence of matter is evidence that God exists. And by the way, remember, you are the man who has problems believing in free will, which you try to, very conveniently, shunt to one side.
Dawkins: I’m just not interested in free will. It’s not a big question for me.
Quinn: It’s a vast question because we cannot be considered morally responsible beings unless we have free will. We do everything because we are controlled by our genes or our environment. It’s a vital question.
Tubridy: We are returning to the point at which we kind of pretty much began, which is probably an appropriate time to end the debate. Richard Dawkins, good to talk to you again. Thank you for your time. And to you, David Quinn, columnist at The Irish Independent, thank you very much indeed for that. The God Delusion, by the way, throws up many, many interesting questions. It’s written by Richard Dawkins and is published by Bantam Press. We’ll put details, as always on our website, www.rte.ie If you want to exercise your free will to contact us, please do so.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Ryan Tubridy. "The God Delusion: David Quinn debates Richard Dawkins." The Ryan Tubridy Show (October 9, 2006).
Published with permission of The Ryan Tubridy Show of RTE radio in Dublin, Ireland.
1. Does the belief in God require more "faith" than the belief in evolution?
- For those who say "yes", where is the proof of evolution? Even Darwin himself said that the fossil record should be rife with transitional creatures; those that clearly indicate the evolution from type of animal to another. He surmised that these fossils must abound, but to date they hadn't done enough digging to unearth them. Yet 150 years later we're still without any definite fossils, the closest examples being dinosaurs that have both avian and reptilian characteristics. Examples which are too indistinct to concretely support anything, and still just a drop in the bucket in what should logically be mounds of fossil evidence "proving" evolution.
Some people point to the selective breeding of dogs, for example, as a confirmation. But this is just specialization. Scientists aren't able to turn dogs, cats, insects or anything else into a different species. And furthermore, these controlled, scientific efforts can be said to be duplicitous since they are not in accord with the "random" events process of the theory of evolution.
2. Does evolution or atheism allow for a moral standard?
- No. If life is the result of random events and a jumble of genes and molecules, then what standard is there to measure any type of morality or right vs. wrong? Any standard must be one of man's creation, and if we created it, then we can change it. Thus, our standard is temporary and arbitrary and really no standard at all.
The God Delusion: David Quinn & Richard Dawkins debate THE RYAN TUBRIDY SHOW
Now, this morning, we are asking, what’s wrong with religion? That’s just one of the questions raised in a new book called, The God Delusion. We’re going to talk to its author — the man who’s been dubbed the world’s most famous, out of the closet, living atheist — Richard Dawkins.
Ryan Tubridy: Richard, good morning to you
Richard Dawkins: Good morning.
Tubridy: It’s nice to talk to you again. We spoke before once on the similar subject matter. David Quinn is also with us here. David Quinn is a columnist with the Irish Independent. David, a very good morning to you.
David Quinn: Good morning.
Tubridy: So Richard Dawkins here you go again, up to your old tricks. In your most recent book, The God Delusion. Let’s just talk about the word if you don’t mind, the word delusion, so put it into context. Why did you pick that word?
Dawkins: Well the word delusion means a falsehood which is widely believed, and I think that is true of religion. It is remarkably widely believed, it’s as though almost all of the population or a substantial proportion of the population believed that they had been abducted by aliens in flying saucers. You’d call that a delusion. I think God is a similar delusion.
Tubridy: And would it be fair to say you equate God with say, the imaginary friend, the bogeyman, or the fairies at the end of the garden?
Dawkins: Well I think He’s just as probable to exist, yes, and I do discuss all those things especially the imaginary friend which I think is an interesting psychological phenomenon in childhood and that may possibly have something to do with the appeal of religion.
Tubridy: So take us through that little bit about the imaginary friend factor.
Dawkins: Many young children have an imaginary friend. Christopher Robin had Binker. A little girl who wrote to me had a little purple man. And the girl with the little purple man actually saw him. She seemed to hallucinate him. He appeared with a little tinkling bell. And, he was very, very real to her although in a sense she knew he wasn’t real. I suspect that something like that is going on with people who claim to have heard God or seen God or hear the voice of God.
Tubridy: And we’re back to delusion again. Do you think that anyone who believes in God, anyone of any religion, is deluded? Is that the bottom line with your argument Richard?
Dawkins: Well there is a sophisticated form of religion which, well one form of it is Einstein’s which wasn’t really a religion at all. Einstein used the word God a great deal, but he didn’t mean a personal God. He didn’t mean a being who could listen to your prayers or forgive your sins. He just meant it as a kind of poetic way of describing the deep unknowns, the deep uncertainties at the root of the universe. Then there are deists who believe in a kind of God, a kind of personal God who set the universe going, a sort of physicist God, but then did no more and certainly doesn’t listen to your thoughts. He has no personal interest in humans at all. I don’t think that I would use a word like delusions for, certainly not for Einstein, no I don’t think I would for a deist either. I think I would reserve the word delusion for real theists who actually think they talk to God and think God talks to them.
Tubridy: You have a very interesting description in The God Delusion of the Old Testament God. Do you want to give us that description or will I give it to you back?
Dawkins: Have you got it in front of you?
Tubridy: Yes I have.
Dawkins: Well why don’t you read it out then.
Tubridy: Why not. You describe God as a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.
Dawkins: That seems fair enough to me, yes.
Tubridy: Okay. There are those who would think that’s a little over the top.
Dawkins: Read your Old Testament, if you think that. Just read it. Read Leviticus, read Deuteronomy, read Judges, read Numbers, read Exodus.
Tubridy: And do you, is it your contention, that these elements of the God as described by yourself are what has not helped matters in terms of, say, global religion and the wars that go with it?
Dawkins: Well, not really because no serious theologian takes the Old Testament literally anymore, so it isn’t quite like that. An awful lot of people think they take the Bible literally but that can only be because they’ve never read it. If they ever read it they couldn’t possibly take it literally, but I do think that people are a bit confused about where they get their morality from. A lot of people think they get their morality from the Bible because they can find a few good verses. Parts of the Ten Commandments are okay, parts of the Sermon on the Mount are okay. So they think they get their morality from the Bible. But actually of course nobody gets their morality from the Bible, we get it from somewhere else and to the extent that we can find good bits in the Bible we cherry pick them. We pick and choose them. We choose the good verses in the Bible and we reject the bad. Whatever criterion we use to choose the good verses and throw out the bad, that criterion is available to us anyway whether we are religious or not. Why bother to pick verses? Why not just go straight for the morality?
Tubridy: Do you think the people who believe in God and in religion generally who you think that have, you use the analogy of the imaginary friend, do you think that the people who believe in God and religion are a little bit dim?
Dawkins: No, because many of them clearly are highly educated and score highly on IQ tests and things so…
Tubridy: Why do you think they believe in something you think doesn’t exist?
Dawkins: Well I think that people are sometimes remarkably adept at compartmentalizing their mind, at separating their mind into two separate parts. There are some people who even manage to combine being apparently perfectly good working scientists with believing that the book of Genesis is literally true and that the world is only 6000 years old. If you can perform that level of doublethink then you could do anything.
Tubridy: But they might say that they pity you because you don’t believe in what they think is fundamentally true.
Dawkins: Well they might and we’ll have to argue it out by looking at the evidence. The great thing is to argue it by looking at evidence, not just to say “Oh well, this is my faith. There’s no argument to be had. You can’t argue with faith.”
Tubridy: David Quinn, columnist with the Irish Independent, show us some evidence please.
Quinn: Well I mean the first thing I would say is that Richard Dawkins is doing what he commonly does which is he’s setting up straw men so he puts God in the same, he puts believing in God, in the same category as believing in fairies. Well you know children stop believing in fairies when they stop being children, but they usually don’t’ stop believing in God because belief in God to my mind is a much more rational proposition than believing in fairies and Santa Claus.
Tubridy: Do we have more proof that God exists than we do for fairies?
Quinn: I will come to that in a second. I mean the second thing is about compartmentalizing yourself when he uses examples of… well you’ve got intelligent people who somehow or other also believe the world is only 6000 years old and we have a young Earth and they don’t believe in evolution… but again… I mean that’s too stark an either or… I mean there are many people who believe in God but also believe in evolution and believe the universe is 20 billion years old and believe fully in Darwinian evolution or whatever the case may be… Now I mean in all arguments about the existence or nonexistence of God often these things don’t even get off the launch pad because the two people debating can’t even agree on where the burden of proof rests. Does it rest with those who are trying to prove the existence of God or with does it rest with those who are trying to disprove the existence of God? But I suppose you know if I bring this on to Richard Dawkins’ turf and we talk about the theory of evolution…The theory of evolution explains how matter — which we are all made from — organized itself into for example highly complex beings like Richard Dawkins and Ryan Tubridy and other human beings but what it doesn’t explain just to give one example is how matter came into being in the first place. That, in scientific terms, is a question that cannot be answered and can only be answered, if it can be answered fully at all, by philosophers and theologians. But it certainly cannot be answered by science and the question of whether God exists or not cannot be answered fully by science either and a common mistake that people can believe is the scientist who speaks about evolution with all the authority of science can also speak about the existence of God with all the authority of science and of course he can’t. The scientist speaking about the existence of God is actually engaging in philosophy or theology but he certainly isn’t bringing to it the authority of science per se.
Tubridy: Back to the original question, have you any evidence for me?
Quinn: Well I will say the existence of matter itself. I will say the existence of morality. Myself and Richard Dawkins have a clearly different understanding of the origins of morality. I would say free will. If you’re an atheist, if you’re an atheist logically speaking you cannot believe in objective morality. You cannot believe in free will. These are two things that the vast majority of humankind implicitly believe in. We believe for example that if a person carries out a bad action, we can call that person bad because we believe that they are freely choosing those actions. … And just quickly an atheist believes we are controlled completely by our genes and make no free actions at all.
Tubridy: What evidence do you have, Richard Dawkins, that you’re right?
Dawkins: I certainly don’t believe a word of that. I do not believe we are controlled wholly by our genes. Let me go back to the really important thing that Mr. Quinn said.
Quinn: How are we independent of our genes by your reckoning? What allows us to be independent of our genes? Where is this coming from?
Dawkins: Environment for a start.
Quinn: Well hang on but that also is a product of if you like of matter. Okay?
Dawkins: Yes but it’s not genes.
Quinn: What part of us allows us to have free will?
Dawkins: Free will is a very difficult philosophical question and it’s not one that has anything to do with religion, contrary to what Mr. Quinn says…but…
Quinn: It has an awful lot to do with religion because if there is no God there’s no free will because we are completely phenomena of matter.
Dawkins: Who says there’s not free will if there is no God? That’s a ridiculous thing to say.
Quinn: William Provine for one who you quote in your book. I mean I have a quote here from him. “Other scientists, as well, believe the same thing… that everything that goes on in our heads is a product of genes and as you say environment and chemical reactions. That there is no room for free will.” And Richard if you haven’t got to grips with that you seriously need to because many of your colleagues have and they deny outright the existence of free will and they are hardened materialists like yourself.
Tubridy: Okay. Richard Dawkins, rebut to that as you wish.
Dawkins: I’m not interested in free will what I am interested in is the ridiculous suggestion that if science can’t say where the origin of matter comes from theology can. The origin of matter… the origin of the whole universe, is a very, very difficult question. It’s one that scientists are working on. It’s one that they hope eventually to solve. Just as before Darwin, biology was a mystery. Darwin solved that. Now cosmology is a mystery. The origin of the universe is a mystery; it’s a mystery to everyone. Physicists are working on it. They have theories. But if science can’t answer that question then as sure as hell theology can’t either.
Quinn: If I can come in there, it is a perfectly reasonable proposition to ask yourself where does matter come from? And it is perfectly reasonable as well to posit the answer, God created matter. Many reasonable people believe this and by the way… I mean look it is quite a different category to say look we will study matter and we will ask how
Dawkins: But if science can’t answer that question, then it’s sure as hell theology can’t either.
Tubridy: Richard, if ...
Quinn: Sorry — if I can come in there — It’s a perfectly reasonable proposition to ask oneself where does matter come from. And it’s perfectly reasonable as well to posit the answer God created matter. Many reasonable people believe this.
Dawkins: It’s not reasonable.
Quinn: It’s quite a different category to say “Look, we will study matter and we will ask how matter organizes itself into particular forms,” and come up with the answer “evolution.” It is quite another question to ask “Where does matter come from to begin with?” And if you like you must go outside of matter to answer that question. And then you’re into philosophical categories.
Dawkins: How could it possibly be another category and be allowed to say God did it since you can’t explain where God came from?
Quinn: Because you must have an uncaused cause for anything at all to exist. Now, I see in your book you come up with an argument against this that I frankly find to be bogus. You come up with the idea of a mathematical infinite regress but this does not apply to the argument of uncaused causes and unmoved movers because we are not talking about maths we’re talking about existence and existentially nothing exists unless you have an uncaused cause. And that uncaused cause and that unmoved mover is, by definition, God.
Tubridy: OK. I’m going to move...
Dawkins: You just defined God as that! You just defined a problematic existence. That’s no solution to the problem. You just evaded it.
Quinn: You can’t answer the question where matter comes from! You, as an atheist —
Dawkins: I can’t, but science is working on it. You can’t answer it either.
Quinn: It won’t come up with an answer, and you invoked a mystery argument that you accuse religious believers of doing all the time. You invoke a very first and most fundamental question about reality. You do not know where matter came from.
Dawkins: I don’t know. Science is working on it. Science is a progressive thing that’s working on it. You don’t know but you claim that you do.
Quinn: I claim to know the probable answer.
Tubridy: Can I suggest that the next question is quite appropriate. The role of religion in wars. When you think of the difficulty that it brings up on a local level. Richard Dawkins, do you believe the world would be a safer place without religion?
Dawkins: Yes, I do. I don’t think that religion is the only cause of wars. Very far from it. Neither the second World War nor the first World War were caused by religion, but I do think that religion is a major exacerbater, and especially in the world today, as a matter of fact.
Tubridy: OK. Explain yourself.
Dawkins: Well, it’s pretty obvious. I mean that if you look at the Middle East, if you look at India and Pakistan, if you look at Northern Ireland, there are many, many places where the only basis for hostility that exists between rival factions who kill each other is religion.
Tubridy: Why do you take it upon yourself to preach, if you like, atheism and there’s an interesting choice of words in some ways — that you’ve been accused of being something like a fundamental atheist. If you like, the “High Priest” of atheism. Why go about your business in such a way that that’s kind of ...trying to disprove these things. Why don’t you just believe in it privately, for example?
Dawkins: Well, fundamentalist is not quite the right word. A fundamentalist is one who believes in a holy book and thinks that everything in that holy book is true. I am passionate about what I believe because I think there’s evidence for it. And I think it’s very different being passionate about evidence from being passionate about a holy book. So I do it because I care passionately about the truth. I really, really believe it’s a big question. It’s an important question, whether there is a God at the root of the universe. I think it’s a question that matters, and I think that we need to discuss it, and that’s what I do.
Quinn: Ryan if I could just say...
Tubridy: Go ahead.
Quinn: Richard has come up with a definition of fundamentalism that obviously suits him. He thinks a fundamentalist has to be somebody who believes in a holy book. A fundamentalist is somebody who firmly believes that they have got the truth and holds that to an extreme extent and become intolerant of those who hold to a different truth. And Richard Dawkins has just outlined what he thinks the truth to be and that makes him intolerant of those who have religious beliefs.
Now, in terms of the effect of religion upon the world, I mean, at least Richard has rightly acknowledged that there are many causes of war and strife and ill will in the world, and he mentions World War I and World War II. In his book he tries to get Nietzsche off the hook of having atheism blamed for example, the atrocities carried out by Josef Stalin, and saying that these have nothing particularly to do with atheism.
But Stalin and many Communists who were explicitly atheistic took the view that religion was precisely the sort of malign and evil force that Richard Dawkins thinks it is. And they set out from that premise to, if you like, inflict upon religion sort of their own version of a “final solution.” They set to eradicate from the earth true violence and also true education that was explicitly anti-religious. And under the Soviet Union, and in China, and under Pol Pot in Cambodia explicit and violent efforts were made to suppress religion on the grounds that religion was a wicked force; and we have the truth, and our truth would not admit religion into the picture at all because we believe religion to be an untruth. So atheism also can lead to fundamentalist violence and did so in the last century. And atheists…
Tubridy: We’ll allow Richard in there.
Dawkins: Stalin was a very, very bad man and his persecution of religion was a very, very bad thing. End of story. It’s nothing to do with the fact that he was an atheist. We can’t just compile lists of bad people who were atheists and lists of bad people who were religious. I am afraid there were plenty on both sides.
Quinn: Yes, but Richard you are always compiling lists of bad religious people. I mean you do it continually in all your books, and then you devote a paragraph to basically trying to absolve atheism of all blame for any atrocity throughout history. You cannot have it both ways! You cannot…
Dawkins: I deny that.
Quinn: But of course you do it. Every time you are on a program talking about religion, you bring up the atrocities committed in the name of religion. And then you try to minimize the atrocities committed by atheists because they were so anti-religious and because they regarded it as a malign force in much the same way you do. You are trying to have it both ways.
Dawkins: Well, I simply deny that. I do think that there is some evil in faith because faith is belief in something without evidence.
Quinn: But, you see, that is not what faith is. You see, that is a caricature and a straw man and is so typical. That is not what faith is! You have faith that God doesn’t…
Dawkins: What is faith? What is faith!?
Quinn: Wait a second! You have faith that doesn’t exist. You are a man of faith as well.
Dawkins: I do not! I have looked at the evidence!
Quinn: Well, I have looked — I have looked at the evidence too!
Dawkins: If somebody comes up with evidence that goes the other way, I will be the first to change my mind.
Quinn: Well, I think the very existence of matter is evidence that God exists. And by the way, remember, you are the man who has problems believing in free will, which you try to, very conveniently, shunt to one side.
Dawkins: I’m just not interested in free will. It’s not a big question for me.
Quinn: It’s a vast question because we cannot be considered morally responsible beings unless we have free will. We do everything because we are controlled by our genes or our environment. It’s a vital question.
Tubridy: We are returning to the point at which we kind of pretty much began, which is probably an appropriate time to end the debate. Richard Dawkins, good to talk to you again. Thank you for your time. And to you, David Quinn, columnist at The Irish Independent, thank you very much indeed for that. The God Delusion, by the way, throws up many, many interesting questions. It’s written by Richard Dawkins and is published by Bantam Press. We’ll put details, as always on our website, www.rte.ie If you want to exercise your free will to contact us, please do so.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Ryan Tubridy. "The God Delusion: David Quinn debates Richard Dawkins." The Ryan Tubridy Show (October 9, 2006).
Published with permission of The Ryan Tubridy Show of RTE radio in Dublin, Ireland.
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Ode to M. Friedman 1912-2006
Dear Milton,
You never knew me,
but I ate at your table daily.
From a Keynesian darkness you freed me,
and placed tools into my battered hands...
Fiscal excess constrained,
individual spirit unleashed.
I thank you, and America thanks you.
Though the chef is gone,
his banquet feeds on.
--EAT AT MILT'S--
You never knew me,
but I ate at your table daily.
From a Keynesian darkness you freed me,
and placed tools into my battered hands...
Fiscal excess constrained,
individual spirit unleashed.
I thank you, and America thanks you.
Though the chef is gone,
his banquet feeds on.
--EAT AT MILT'S--
Comment on USA Today 11/20/06 Homosexual op-ed
Yesterday on the editorial page of USA Today, a column was written which should greatly disturb all Christians. The aim of the article was...well, let me paste the first paragraph and you'll see the aim of the column:
When religion loses its credibility
Galileo was persecuted for revealing what we now know to be the truth regarding Earth’s place in our solar system. Today, the issue is homosexuality, and the persecution is not of one man but of millions. Will Christian leaders once again be on the wrong side of history?
In the article, the author, a Baptist minister claims that there is no biblical basis for a modern condemnation of homosexuality. The crux of his argument leans on the book of Leviticus which says, "You shall not lie with a man as with a woman; it is an abomination." Leviticus 18:22. The author reasons that, "Leviticus is filled with laws imposing the death penalty for everything from eating catfish to sassing your parents. If you accept one as the absolute, unequivocal word of God, you must accept them all." He then goes on to admonish the readers to search the scriptures for themselves....intimating that in doing so we must agree with his conclusions.
But the author's statements are grossly misleading and his logic is faulty. He completely fails to adhere to a crucial tenent needed for gaining an accurate understanding of the Bible, and that is to understand the context in which particular verses are written. The author is partially correct in saying that some of the Levitical laws are outdated... he's partially correct because he doesn't go far enough. Most Christians know that the Old Testament Jewish "law" was nullified through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. The "law" no longer has a hold on believers. While this is true, morals for righteous living that are given in the Old Testament are unchangeable. It's not difficult to discern the difference between specific laws meant for a particular people in a particular time, and between Godly principles that would only change if God himself changed. Taking the author up on his advice to look at the Bible ourselves, we see that the verse addressing homosexuality is part of an entire chapter (ch: 18) speaking specifically to improper sexual relations. Going through the chapter it condemns such things as incest, bestiality, sleeping with your brother's wife, sleeping with you wife's sister, sleeping with your neighbor's wife, etc, etc. I challenge any one (excepting those who make their lives a living worship of Bacchus) to disagree with a single verse in that entire chapter. The one verse that would create debate in our modern society is verse 22, the one on homosexuality. It's clear that if you will bend for this verse in the chapter, then you must bend for every other verse in the chapter, for they all have the same purpose and speak to a universal audience.
While I believe that homosexuality is wrong (based on the Bible), I don't think that it is a worse sin than adultery, or similar transgresses. And I firmly believe that it is a sin for us to judge others, an authority given only to Christ. However, the gay agenda in the US has an insidious goal and a harmful impact which only further drags down the moral standards of our culture. And that is to hide the Truth of the Bible and turn a God-mandated moral principle into nothing more than an outdated belief for extreme bigots. If homosexuals want to sin, that's a choice they are free to make, but it makes my blood boil when they tell me I have to "approve" of their sin. I could write a book on their attack on schools, on adoption, the media, but I'll save that for another time. So, to the author of the USA editorial, Baptist Minister Oliver Thomas, I'll just say that I feel terribly sorry for your congregation. And I am saddened by another illogical and anti-biblical article printed in a national paper which confuses Americans and furthers an immoral agenda. The United States continues its decline.
To view the USA Today article click here: http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2006/11/when_religion_l.html#more
When religion loses its credibility
Galileo was persecuted for revealing what we now know to be the truth regarding Earth’s place in our solar system. Today, the issue is homosexuality, and the persecution is not of one man but of millions. Will Christian leaders once again be on the wrong side of history?
In the article, the author, a Baptist minister claims that there is no biblical basis for a modern condemnation of homosexuality. The crux of his argument leans on the book of Leviticus which says, "You shall not lie with a man as with a woman; it is an abomination." Leviticus 18:22. The author reasons that, "Leviticus is filled with laws imposing the death penalty for everything from eating catfish to sassing your parents. If you accept one as the absolute, unequivocal word of God, you must accept them all." He then goes on to admonish the readers to search the scriptures for themselves....intimating that in doing so we must agree with his conclusions.
But the author's statements are grossly misleading and his logic is faulty. He completely fails to adhere to a crucial tenent needed for gaining an accurate understanding of the Bible, and that is to understand the context in which particular verses are written. The author is partially correct in saying that some of the Levitical laws are outdated... he's partially correct because he doesn't go far enough. Most Christians know that the Old Testament Jewish "law" was nullified through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. The "law" no longer has a hold on believers. While this is true, morals for righteous living that are given in the Old Testament are unchangeable. It's not difficult to discern the difference between specific laws meant for a particular people in a particular time, and between Godly principles that would only change if God himself changed. Taking the author up on his advice to look at the Bible ourselves, we see that the verse addressing homosexuality is part of an entire chapter (ch: 18) speaking specifically to improper sexual relations. Going through the chapter it condemns such things as incest, bestiality, sleeping with your brother's wife, sleeping with you wife's sister, sleeping with your neighbor's wife, etc, etc. I challenge any one (excepting those who make their lives a living worship of Bacchus) to disagree with a single verse in that entire chapter. The one verse that would create debate in our modern society is verse 22, the one on homosexuality. It's clear that if you will bend for this verse in the chapter, then you must bend for every other verse in the chapter, for they all have the same purpose and speak to a universal audience.
While I believe that homosexuality is wrong (based on the Bible), I don't think that it is a worse sin than adultery, or similar transgresses. And I firmly believe that it is a sin for us to judge others, an authority given only to Christ. However, the gay agenda in the US has an insidious goal and a harmful impact which only further drags down the moral standards of our culture. And that is to hide the Truth of the Bible and turn a God-mandated moral principle into nothing more than an outdated belief for extreme bigots. If homosexuals want to sin, that's a choice they are free to make, but it makes my blood boil when they tell me I have to "approve" of their sin. I could write a book on their attack on schools, on adoption, the media, but I'll save that for another time. So, to the author of the USA editorial, Baptist Minister Oliver Thomas, I'll just say that I feel terribly sorry for your congregation. And I am saddened by another illogical and anti-biblical article printed in a national paper which confuses Americans and furthers an immoral agenda. The United States continues its decline.
To view the USA Today article click here: http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2006/11/when_religion_l.html#more
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