Dominionism

There are several arguments floating around in support of laws that agree with the Christian position. One is that the Founding Fathers were Christians and that they intended that the United States be guided by Christian principles. Another is that our nation is a democracy, and that whatever the majority votes for should be the legal standard - and since the majority is Christian, the law should be based on Christianity. More often than not supporters of our laws being based on the Bible cite a combination of both of these rationales: our laws should be based on Christian principles because our country is and always has been mostly composed of Christians. Sometimes there is a nostalgic yearning for a bygone time when religion had more of a place in the public sphere. There are several problems with this position.

The question of whether the Founders envisioned the United States as a Christian nation is far from clear. Documents can be trotted out supporting both sides of the issue, although it would be a mistake to believe that every reference to "God" or "religion" is to be interpreted as Christianity as a 21st century American would recognize it; just as it would be erroneous to believe that the Founders were complete secularists. My own opinion is that the intent was to guarantee that no religion would receive preference and that no religion would be persecuted. With a few exceptions such as Judaism, religion among the descendants of Europeans was equated with Christianity. Islam and the Asian religions were considered foreign and exotic and Native American religions were beneath contempt. It was viewed as enlightened to look at even Catholics as of worthy of equal rights as Protestants.

For the purposes of argument, let's assume that the Founders actually viewed the United States as a Christian nation and wanted it that way. Is that a good argument for keeping it that way? Sometimes we view the Founders as demi-gods whose wisdom brought order to chaos and caused the sun to rise. But consider that the Founders countenanced slavery, women had virtually no rights, native peoples were not "people" and the vote was confined to white, male landowners. In others words, our culture has changed and the way that the Constitution has been interpreted has changed with it. The United States of the 1790's is very different from the United States of the 2010's. The principle that there should be no preference among Christian denominations must evolve to include
 non-Christian groups as well as those who follow no religion at all.

The second main argument used to impose religious beliefs and strictures on everyone is that "the people" want it. The majority don't want a mosque across the street from the rubble of the World Trade Center, the majority don't want gay marriage. For Christians, this works as long as they are in fact the majority. What would their reaction be if they were the minority? Surely they would fall back on Argument #1, but would no longer have Argument #2, the Will of the People to fall back on. What most people do not realize is that we are not an absolute democracy. The will of a majority of the people does not confer legality. We have the Bill of Rights, amendments to the Constitution that guarantee individual liberty no matter what the majority has to say about it. You cannot vote to eliminate freedom of speech, or for the establishment of a particular religion. It doesn't matter if the majority wants it. Now theoretically, we could have a constitutional amendment or constitutional convention that would repeal the First Amendment (or any other part of the Constitution), but that hasn't happened and probably won't. So it doesn't matter that a majority are Christian, they do not have the right or authority to impose their religious views on the rest of us or make laws that conform to their religion if it does not serve an otherwise neutral function. For example, the biblical commandment "Thou Shalt Not Kill" can be written into law, not because Exodus says so, but because it makes good sense and serves the function of maintaining public order and protecting individual rights. On the other hand "Thou Shalt Honor the Sabbath Day and Keep it Holy" cannot be written into law, although for years laws were on the books requiring business to close on Sunday (which is not, by the way, the sabbath).

Finally, what most Christians who support no separation of Church and State, who support laws based on the bible, do not think through, is that the Christians in power under a hypothetical Christian government might not be their kind of Christian. Many Christians, especially some of those on the more fundamentalist side of the spectrum, do not consider some other Christians to be real Christians. For years I was part of a religious organization wherein many members talked about how great it would be if we had godly elected officials. Even then I considered that if we did have a "Christian" government, it would be composed of "them" and not "us". The "them" that considered my kind a dangeroud cult. I was raised a Catholic. Imagine my surprise when I learned later in life that many of the Protestant denomination did not consider me a real Christian. How many people refrained from voting for super-religious Mitt Romney because they thought Mormons weren't Christinas? Consider the situation in many Muslim countries. Many of them were excited to see an Islamic government after decades of secular dictatorship. What they hadn't bargained on was the deep distrust and  even hatred that different Muslims had for each other.

So, even if you are a believer, you'd be wise to be skeptical of those politicians who claim to support "God in government"

Always

Always
It's someone's fault
Someone who is not you it's
The Devil
or the Lord God
Not the mirror reflection
Parents
Environment
Maybe the Republicans
Always
We run away
From responsibility

Morality: Part Four - No Longer All for One and One for All

In Morality: Part Three, I mused upon what a primitive society and its morality might look like. But we all know that primitive societies did not remain primitive and that somewhere along the line we got chiefs and kings. We also got religion. There are a lot of variables that take a society from simple hunter-gatherer clan-based to a "civilization". These variables, in general, lead to greater complexity of social interactions, specialization, change from nomadic to settled existence all of which eventually lead to changes in what is viewed as moral or ethical, although some moral views outlive their usefulness and remain as traditions that no one knows the reason for or origin of. What changes in circumstance caused changes in moral outlook?

In a tribal or clan society, furtherance of individual wants is subordinated to the needs of the group simply because the group would die off if all members were not contributing their fair share. One change that changed the way that people interacted was the development of agriculture and the domestication of animals. Domestication of animals was the transition from hunting animals for their meat, skins and other parts, a labor intensive occupation, often occupying all the adults in a clan, to having those animals on hand ready to be slaughtered when their meat was needed. While far from a leisurely activity, tending to a herd of cows or a flock of sheep was very different than hunting the night's dinner one animal at a time. A related activity, at least in its affect, was the development of agriculture. Both of these changes spurred the differentiation of roles as some tribesmen tended the flocks, some raised the crops, some processed the animal products (skins, furs, bones) while others concentrated on preparing the produce for consumption. Bakers of bread and brewers of beer became professions. As the core of the people were no longer nomadic, following the seasonal migrations of the herds, people built permanent dwellings, which spurred more new professions. The need to have fields dedicated to the crops necessitated having a stable territory to control. Some of the hunters transitioned into warriors to protect this territory.

No longer was everyone the same. Now everyone had "their place".

Gates of Midnight

The Gates of Midnight
Lit by darkness, disluminating
Casting shadows of light
Caverns of Murk
Fog bound enwreathed
Where shadows lurk
The Gates of Thought
Chained against the winds
Although for naught

Nightmare

Creaking
chairs and wind
that speaks to ancient fear
shakes me awake
Shivering

Morality & Torture

"Torture is the act of deliberately inflicting severe physical or psychological pain and possibly injury to a person (or animal), usually to one who is physically restrained or otherwise under the  control or custody of the torturer and unable to defend against what is being done to him or her."

Torture, broadly speaking, has two main goals: to elicit confessions and to punish. In the category of punishment, most modern societies exempt capital punishment, i.e. execution, from their definitions of torture, even though some methods of execution could hardly be distinguished from non-lethal torture. In modern times torture as a punishment, at least as officially recognized, is illegal and is viewed by most as immoral. The United States Constitution itself prohibits "cruel & unusual punishment". However, retaliatory violence falls within the personal moral codes of many people as a reaction to physical attacks, theft or insults. Pope Francis' assertion that he would answer an insult to his mother with a punch in the nose is an example, albeit mild, of this. The Paris killings of cartoonists who "insulted" Islam's Prophet Muhammad is a more extreme example. Granted neither of these example could reasonably be called torture, but rather retaliation or revenge. 

Torture as a means to extract admissions of guilt or to yield valuable intelligence is alive and well not only in military situations, but also in many police departments. Torture has likely operated behind the scenes and unacknowledged over the years, but in the wake of the 9-11 attacks, torture has been redefined and utilized in an effort to prevent further attacks. Recently a Congressional Report on the use of torture was published with differing opinions shrilly expressed on either side. The ethics of torture of been debated and argued, but one thing stands out in the report, something that any expert on torture could have told you beforehand...

Torture doesn't work. 

Some of the biggest proponents of the use of torture in the "war on terror" admit that they gained no useful intelligence when torturing prisoners. Not only did torture fail to yield any usable information, but at least 25% of those detained at Guantanamo had committed no crime, were not associated with terror groups and in fact had done nothing wrong. Yet these people were repeatedly tortured for information that they did not have and pressured to admit to acts that they did not commit. 

Many supporters of torture make the case that we should not wring our hands over the rights of "terrorists", posting pictures of the burning towers or the jumpers as a visual rebuttal to those who recoil at our use of torture. These people, perhaps with full knowledge of the point that they are making, perhaps ignorantly, are asserting that the fact that a person is accused is proof enough of their guilt and that revenge is appropriate. 

These people are advocating, not torture as a means to save other lives, not as a means to determine who is guilty and who is innocent, but as a primal response to extract the pound of flesh to make someone suffer for our suffering. 

If we are going to have a debate on this subject, let's stop pretending that it is about gaining confessions or intelligence, that it is about preventing future terrorist plots or capturing those who previously conducted acts of terror. Let's make it about whether we want to sink to the level of those who would conduct indiscriminate violence for the sake of violence, whether we want to be the people who committ atrocities over real and imagined wrongs, whether we are the people who don't really care about who actually hurt us as long as we make someone hurt. 

From what I hear from many Americans, we already are those people. 

Morality: Part Three

Morality can be looked at as how we behave ourselves, i.e. the actions that we take, primarily in how those actions relate to or affect others and secondarily actions that are undertaken in isolation, i.e. having no appreciable affect on others.

When defining "others" and their relative importance to "ourselves", we can look at the degree to which another's state of being affects ours. To what extent are others included as "one of us"? Knowing and understanding this connection will help define what is acceptable behavior. "Otherness" can be classified in several different ways: similarity toward self (family, religion, ethic group), interconnectedness (residence in the same city, working at the same business), or status (hierarchical, income, social).

One way to look at morality is as an evolutionary development to ensure the survival of the group. Before the development of agriculture, not to mention cities, most people lived in small groups, small enough to not overtax the local resources, but large enough to maintain genetic diversity. What might morality look like in a small clan or tribe of a few dozen people, or at most a few hundred? Surely individuality would not be valued; there would be no tolerance for anyone who went against the norms of the clan. People setting their own rules would lead to division and imperil the continuance of the group. An expectation that everyone contribute to the group would be a requirement as well. Freeloaders would imperil the health and welfare of the group. In short, the sense of self-preservation that an isolated individual would apply to him or herself would be extended and enlarged to include the group.

Moral laws that are common today could have had their roots in these smaller societies. A prohibition on killing would make sense: killing off members of the clan would weaken the clan, although an exception might be made when an individual's behavior put the whole clan at risk. Lying could be frowned upon due to its tendency to erode trust - in a small group, similar to a small town today - everyone knows what everyone else is doing and a known, habitual liar might be ostracized. Stealing would disrupt order, although one can imagine a communal society with common ownership as well. Other analogues to the biblical ten commandments could depend on the situation and environment in which the clan finds itself. Would what we think of as adultery strengthen or weaken the clan? Rules and standards of behavior would develop organically to respond to the need for the group to survive and thrive and to keep relations among the clan members relatively smooth.

So what about "the other"? Does the neighboring tribe or clan's existance strengthen or weaken the home clan? Or perhaps it's neutral. Are they of similar strength? In a nonspecialized, hunter-gatherer, nomadic society it's hard to imagine how the presence of another clan nearby could be a benefit; at best they would be neutral, not figuring in at all. Get close enough and another clan would be competing for the same resources: game animals and access to water. It would not be hard to imagine that internal prohibitions against killing would not apply to the "other". The continued existance of the tribe would necessitate either killing the rivals, driving them off, stealing from them or absorbing them into the tribe. All of these things happened. Stealing horses was not considered wrong by many tribes native to North America. Folk migrations were very common in Europe over the centuries as peoples displaced others in a quest for the best land or in response to being displaced themselves. Wars large and small have been a fact of human existance for as long as there has been human existance. And what were wars usually fought over? Resources, including living-space, i.e land.

So, what is morality but a taking care of one's own and defining how to best live in peace with other members of the group?

But what happens when someone, or a class of someones, within the group sees an opportunity to use the morality of the group to further an individual agenda? That's for Part Four....