Sleepycatz

Headache

There are days when my mind just can’t keep up with the insipid reasoning of the rightwing. I generally try to avoid engaging the poorly reasoned ramblings of the bloviating pundit class. But just when I thought that I was out they pull me back in.

Over at the conservative site, townhall.com, Dinesh D’Souza announced that he will be debating Christopher Hitchens on the subjects of God and religion. D’Souza has been considered to be one of the ‘great thinkers’ in the modern conservative movement. So how is this intellectual conservative defend Christianity and religion? He invokes laughable a prioric argument of Anselm of Canterbury, also known as the ontological argument for the existence of God.

For those who are unfamiliar with Anslem’s argument — later extended by Descartes — it can be stated simply as: “Humans can conceive of an infinitely perfect being (ie. God); This perfection is greater then any other perfection humans can conceive of; thus, the knowledge of this being must be a prioric, or innately known to be true; therefore this being, God, must exists.”

As any first year philosophy student will point out, Anslem’s argument is easily susceptible to what’s known as the ‘overload objection’. In other words, humans can conceive of any number of fantasitcal creatures which do not exist, pegasus, unicorns, and even invisible pink unicorns. The fact that these creatures can be conceived of but are nonexistent undermines the notion that God exists because we can conceive of God. We are left with the Anslem’s and Descartes notion of the ultimate perfection of God. We can only conceive of a single being of unmediated perfection - that being must be God.

This, however, leads to a different problem for D’Souza and others: that this perfect being is by no logical reasoning Christian. This is essentially the same problem suffered by Pascal’s Wager. We may argue that, perhaps, some God figure exists, but the arguments lead towards no evidence of the nature of that being. Even if we would blindly accept the a priori argument for God’s existence there is nothing in the argument to suggest that Christianity reflects the nature of God. If fact, we can conceive of an ultimately perfect being which is completely ambivalent towards mankind; thus, negating any need for religious devotion.

It is also worth mentioning, at this point, Immanuel Kant’s objection to the a prioric argument. Kant argues that mere existence is not a quality which defines the actual existence of an object. But that actual existence is defined by more specific properties of a thing.

Nonetheless, the silliness of D’Souza is to suggest that he can logically define or prove the existence of God in the first place. There is no rational argument which can prove the existence of God, and most conservative intellectuals have even given up trying. Even Michael Gerson, a conservative Christian and speech writer for George Bush, in a recent screed against atheists didn’t try to prove the existence of God, but instead focused on the necessity to believe in God. Gerson, like many conservatives, argues that man needs God to have moral order in this world and the next. God becomes an authoritarian necessity — an excuse to accept the ‘natural order’ and to defer unpunished injustices to the next world. For many rational conservatives this is the natural argument for the necessity, not the existence, of God.

D’Souza — who was once heralded as the new example of conservative intellectualism — seems to miss the fact that his argument for existence was dismissed over a hundred years ago and is now taught as a logical fallacy in most universities. It’s a fact that most conservatives would find it politically difficult to argue that religion is necessary for social order but has no basis in fact. This the primary reason why conservative theorists don’t engage in arguments about religion. Instead they leave those debates to the true believers. Those who — with no rational arguments — believe in their theology which supports the conservative authoritarian ideology. D’Souza is seemingly trying to bridge this gap between faith and the mind. From his essay it is abundantly clear that he lacks the intellectual ability to even begin such a meditation, let alone participate in any real discussion of the issues.

I want to make it clear that I have no love or admiration for Christopher Hitchens. I find him to be overbearing and much of his arguments flawed. His continued support of the war in Iraq has shown him to have lost any connection to a rational reality. His logic at a recent conference speaks for itself: sickening.

h/t Canadian Cynic

In Defense of Ann Coulter

Usually, I pay little to no attention to the ravings of Ann Coulter. She’s crass, vapid, and incendiary: she is the Andrew Dice Clay of punditry. However, this week she instigated one of her patented kerfuffles when she was interviewed on CNBC and I couldn’t resist commenting. Ann declared that Jews are good people that simply haven’t been perfected by Christianity:

COULTER: Well, OK, take the Republican National Convention. People were happy. They’re Christian. They’re tolerant. They defend America, they –

DEUTSCH: Christian — so we should be Christian? It would be better if we were all Christian?

COULTER: Yes.

DEUTSCH: We should all be Christian?
…

COULTER: Yes. Would you like to come to church with me, Donny?

DEUTSCH: So I should not be a Jew, I should be a Christian, and this would be a better place?

COULTER: Well, you could be a practicing Jew, but you’re not.

DEUTSCH: I actually am. That’s not true. I really am. But — so we would be better if we were - if people — if there were no Jews, no Buddhists

…

DEUTSCH: That isn’t what I said, but you said I should not — we should just throw Judaism away and we should all be Christians, then, or –

COULTER: Yeah.

…

COULTER: No, we think — we just want Jews to be perfected, as they say.

…

DEUTSCH: But that’s even a scarier thought. OK –

COULTER: No, no, no, no, no. I don’t want you being offended by this. This is what Christians consider themselves, because our testament is the continuation of your testament. You know that. So we think Jews go to heaven. I mean, [Rev. Jerry] Falwell himself said that, but you have to follow laws. Ours is “Christ died for our sins.” We consider ourselves perfected Christians. For me to say that for you to become a Christian is to become a perfected Christian is not offensive at all.

Since her appearance, Coulter has been condemned by the Anti-Defamation League and other for being antisemitic or simply theologically ill-informed. Ann Coulter, ill-informed? Shocked, I am! Shocked, I say. . . But Ann, and her defenders, insist that she is not antisemitic, simply ‘pro-christian’. And they are correct; Ann is no more antisemitic then Christians have been throughout history. She is simply expressing a tenant of her faith — as a conservative evangelical Christian.

Conservative and fundamentalist evangelicals believe that they have the only inside scoop on ’salvation’ and are the only true Christians. But good conservative evangelicals understand the God singled out the Jews in his operator’s manual, the Bible, as special. Pastor Hagee, the fundamentalist founder of the powerful Christians United for Israel, has built a religious and political empire on his theology of imperfect Jews. For Hagee, Jews combined with the state of Israel form a prophetic key which opens a magic gate and allows Jesus to return. Unfortunately, this prophetic ‘happening’ doesn’t bode too well for the Jews, as Bruce Wilson has pointed out:

Many Christian Premillenial Dispensationalists — the theological persuasion Pastor John Hagee belongs to — believe that the majority of the Jews currently living in Israel will be killed in the period of warfare that follows the “Rapture,” when “believing” Christians ( fundamentalist Christians, that is ) are bodily transported up to safety in heaven. The standard interpretation is that 2/3 or more of Israeli Jews will be slaughtered during this period but that a righteous “remnant”, who have realized the error of their ways and converted to Christianity, will survive what Christian Zionists often call the “final Holocaust” or the “second Holocaust.”

I am not trying to assert that Ann Coulter shares Pastor Hagee’s theology, simply that the belief that Jews are imperfect is one which is very prevalent in contemporary conservative Christian culture. Certainly Coulter and Hagee share similar notions of America’s role in the world. Both desire America to attack Iran, both view Islam as threat to world order, and both see secular conspiracies all around them. And, it would seem, that both share the notion that Jews need to accept Christ as their savior or messiah in order to be better human beings.

What Ann Coulter did this week was to speak a tenant of her faith, one which is not usually spoken out loud. She voiced a tenant that is understood among believers, but rarely spoken of outside of prophesy. For this she should be applauded. Her honesty and childlike recitation of dogma helps others to better understand conservative evangelical Christianity. Her words have helped spread a knowledge of her faith, and we can only hope that those words reverberate so that every American can understand the faith which has asserted itself as the true American Christianity.

Expulsion from the Garden

Someone alerted me this evening to the story of Steve Bitterman, who was dismissed from teaching at Southwestern Community College in Iowa for telling his students that not to take the story of the Garden of Eden literally. Students viewing a simulcast of the class at a neighboring college complained that Bitterman had denigrated their religion and threatened to sue; the college responded by firing the adjunct professor. Here’s the irony: Bitterman was teaching a class in western civilization.

Anyone who has had to go through the intro to western civ sections as a college freshman understands that it was the re-introduction of reason and logic from the ancients which fueled the expansion of western knowledge and civilization. Even as early as the fifth century St. Augustine wrote:

It not infrequently happens that something about the earth, about the sky, about other elements of this world, about the motion and rotation or even the magnitude and distances of the stars, about definite eclipses of the sun and moon, about the passage of years and seasons, about the nature of animals, of fruits, of stones, and of other such things, may be known with the greatest certainty by reasoning or by experience, even by one who is not a Christian. It is too disgraceful and ruinous, though, and greatly to be avoided, that he [the non-Christian] should hear a Christian speaking so idiotically on these matters, and as if in accord with Christian writings, that he might say that he could scarcely keep from laughing when he saw how totally in error they are.

By rejecting the idea that reason should trump doctrine, Bitterman’s students are rejecting the very core of the class they are taking. They are telling their college that knowledge should not challenge their preconceptions or beliefs. By firing Bitterman the college has sided with this ignorance. Instead of telling the offended students that they should grow up — or perhaps find a different class — the college has said all students now must bathe in the ignorance of the few. They have sacrificed Bitterman to the modern inquisition of fundamentalism.

It is very apparent that if the complaining students have their way there would be no western civilization, and certainly no study of it. For they have decided to reject the fruit of the tree of knowledge and embrace ignorance. Unfortunately, they want to drag the rest of us to their fairy tale land with them.

Blessed are the hateful

As I was poking about the nutty side of the blogosphere today , I came across the following invocation:

Father God,

In our hearts we believe that you will hear our prayers and will put all these curses upon our enemies and on those who hate us, who persecute us. We will keep not silence, for the mouths of the wicked and the mouths of deceit are opened against us; they have spoken against us with lying TONGUES. They have compassed us about also with words of hatred, mockery, and deciept; and have fought against all that is Holy without a cause. In return for our agape love they are my adversaries, but we now resort to prayer. They have rewarded and laid upon us evil and slander for good, and hatred for love. Set a wicked man over them as judge, and let a malisious accuser stand at their right hand come Judgment Day.

When Liberal talk show host Randi Rhodes and her followers; when the wicked and mockers at Democratic Underground are judged, let them be condemned, and let their prayers for leniency be turned into sins. Let their days be few; and let others take their offices and charge. Let their children be parentless and their souses become widowed. Let their children be continual vagabonds as was Cain and beg; let them seek their bread and be driven far from their ruined homes.

IN JESUS NAME, I BIND UP EVERY DEMON COMING ACROSS THE COMPUTER LINES, AND I RETURN THEM AND ANY CURSES.

In Your Name, Amen.

As an example of an imprecatory prayer, or curse, it’s pretty mediocre, but the mere idea of such a prayer would strike many as anti-christian. We can easily imagine that muslim fundamentalists pray for similar retributions against American citizens. The barbarity of religion begins when hate turns to prayer and then prayer turns to action. It seems that we are two-thirds there.

Do No Harm

Some time ago, I wrote about whether or not health care workers should be allowed to withhold services or treatment due to moral or religious beliefs. My belief remains that health care providers should not be allowed to assert their own morality on to the patient — as long as the patient has expressed informed consent. This has come to mind again with Guadalupe Benitez’s appeal to the California Supreme Court. In 2000, Benitez was refused artificial insemination by her fertility doctors because she was a lesbian. In the first legal action, the court held that the doctor’s religious beliefs took precedence over Benitez’s desire for a child.

Much of what has been written on this case focuses either on the right to procreate, or the physician’s right to invoke objection of conscious. Neither of these arguments address the real concerns for society which underlines the case. For instance, what if Benitez was seeking a prosthetic leg and the doctor refused, either because he did not treat lesbians or because he felt that the injury which took her natural leg was a punishment from God, and he cannot in faith interfere with divine judgment? Certainly, one can live without either a prosthesis or a child, and obviously the right to a prosthesis is less personal then the right to procreate. However, in both cases the physician declares a Benitez less worthy of his or her medical care. The natural extension of this is a fractured society in which balkanized groups of citizens are unable to interact due to “moral objections”. If a doctor can refuse elective treatment based upon his religious judgment of the patient, why can’t a Muslim professor refuse to allow an atheist in his class? Why can’t a Baptist lawyer refuse to represent a Catholic? Why can’t a Mormon optician refuse to fit anyone other than Mormons? All of these are of median value when compared to medical care.

Doctors and nurses hold a special place in our society. They are charged with caring for their fellow women and men with the primary charge of first doing no harm. To allow them to pick and choose treatments and patients based upon their religious faith irreparably harms our society. It allows them to designate a class of citizens as less worthy then others. It fosters an inherent conflict between people of differing religious beliefs and values: the same type of conflict which has ravaged nations since the first prophet appeared from a desert. If we are going to abandon the notion of a pluralistic society then we must be prepared for the bigotry and violence that will eventually ensue. The doctors who refused to treat Guadalupe Benitez placed their moral outrage over the sworn duty of their profession: to first do no harm.

Army of God

Among conservative evangelicals there has often been a subtle argument that in order to defeat Islamic fundamentalist terrorists, Americans must adopt the same religious fervor seen in our enemies. The most overt display of this philosophy was seen recently in Jesus Camp, where children’s minister Becky Fischer remarked: “I want to see young people who are as committed to the cause of Jesus Christ as the young people are to the cause of Islam. I want to see them as radically laying down their lives for the Gospel as they are over in Pakistan. . .”

Fischer is not alone in her desire to bring religious zeal to our conflicts. For some time there has been an on going effort to evangelize those in our armed forces. Now comes Operation Stand Up (OSU). OSU is an evangelical group focused on providing entertainment and morale to US soldiers serving in Iraq. As they say on their site:

We perform these shows specifically for military soldiers. Our shows are specifically geared to be intriguing to the hard core soldier. Spouses and children are welcome but we make no bones about the fact that we are speaking directly to the soldiers of the greatest fighting force of in the world. No “mamsie pamsie” stuff here! Even our ventriloquist is rated one of the top 5 in the world and has soldiers busting a gut with laughter.

If all OSU was offering our soldiers is a Sargent Slaughter ventriloquist act one could hardly object, except perhaps on grounds of comedic taste. But speaking of their upcoming tour to Iraq the founder & CEO of OSU stated:

We are most excited about this crusade and yes we are willing to go to the front lines with a very encouraging word straight from God, to our troops. We feel the forces of heaven have encouraged us to perform multiple crusades that will sweep through this war torn region.

This statement coupled with the fact that OSU is sending copies of the video game Left Behind: Eternal Forces in care packages to troops certainly suggests that they are attempting to theocrotize both the military and its operations. For those unfamiliar with Eternal Forces, the game play consists primarily of converting or killing non-Christians.

The fact that the Pentagon is both supporting and endorsing OSU should make us all a little queasy. Do we as a nation want our military to become a group of Christian Crusaders? At what point does personnel religious belief become the policy of of military — and what will happen to the people who that military is suppose to protect who don’t live up to that religious belief?

Jonathan Hutson has a good look at OSU at TalktoAction — wherein he examines the homoerotic merchandise offered on their website — the hyper-masculinity is very similar to that seen in illustrations by Tom of Finland.

h/t: Liz

of Beasts and Priests

Recently proto virtual-world Second Life banned in-world gambling using it’s native currency, Linden Dollars. This really shouldn’t have come as a shock to anyone, given the government’s recent war against online gambling. Linden Labs, who administers Second Life, could not take the chance that the feds would come and seize their business. States have lobbied hard to eliminate online gambling, as it undermines their total control of the industry: an arrangement which is ripe with enormousness state revenues and corruption.

Now comes word that Second Life may ban bestiality among avatars. Controversy over alternative sex practices are nothing new in the virtual world. There has been, and remains, a long standing controversy over age-play, in which adults maintain avatars which appear significantly younger than themselves, and occasionally engage in sex acts with each other or with older appearing avatars.

Technology and sex have been intertwined since man first developed civilization. Some of the erotic pottery and writings of ancient Greece and Rome are still with us to, The great Print Culture of 17th century Europe gave us not only Shakespeare and Dunne , but also”Sodom” by John Wilmot, the first printed pornography. In the 19th century the new technology of photography was quickly adapted to nudes and erotic imagery. The first truly erotic and fetish films began appearing around 1910, less than tens years after the equipment became readily available. The availability of consumer computers in the 1980s spurred sex related bulletin board systems (BBS): there were Gay BBS’, Straight BBS’, Fetish BBS’, and a huge host of others that were simply a potpourri of sexual desire. With the first coherent Internet nodes came sex - alt.sex newsgroups, sex.* IRC channels, sex.stories ftp reservoirs, etc . . .

Technological sophistication does seem to bring to light more unusual sexual practices then seen in lower forms of technology. No doubt, Freud would argue that anonymity coupled with our unease with new technology is a breeding ground for perversity. However, human sexual imagination is not limited by technology. The various fetishes encountered in Second Life, or online in general, would not disappear if the technology to act them out ceased to be. At this point, the technology is simply a tool which allows human sexuality to be explored — it does not engender the desires it reflects. Thus it seems particularly silly, and perhaps overbearingly paternalistic, to suggest that certain sexual acts — virtual acts at that — between consenting players be limited in Second Life. Even in areas which are legally abhorred, such as age-play, there is adult consent, and therefore no law is, or should be considered, broken. Some elements in all societies are always preoccupied with the sexual practices of others. There is always a great wringing of hands and cries of sin and damnation. But these acts are never eliminated. The questionable acts are simply further hidden from the hand wringers. Advanced networking has allowed humans to explore their sexual desires and identities. The purpose of technology must include the furthering any understanding of ourselves and each other; otherwise, it serves no real purpose.

Given the amount of apparent sinning and perversity occurring in Second Life, it should come as no surprise that Catholics have taken a strong interest in the world. Recently, the Jesuits have decided to pursue an evangelical mission into the virtual world. There really is no better choice to journey to this badly rendered 3D wilderness then the Jesuits. They have missions in nearly every country in the world, and though the order contains many great scholars and thinkers, they are fanatical in their beliefs: as their founder Ignatius Loyola said, “I will believe that the white that I see is black if the hierarchical Church so defines it.”

Of course, theology in Second Life raises far more questions then issues of sexuality. For instance, does an avatar have a soul? Is that soul an equal extension of the player’s soul, or is it a minor or lesser extension? Does praying in Second Life carry equal weight as prayer in real life? Can one receive virtual communion? Can one commit virtual sin? All of this should generate a great theological debate, not unlike the age old stercorarian debates in the church — which argue about the nature of the transubstantiated host during digestion.

Of course one must wonder what a good religious man will do when confronted by a twenty-something year old man, appearing as a 15 year old girl asking her parish priest for a spanking. . . . .