For months and years after the horrid attacks of 2001 we were told, again and again, that those events of 9/11 had changed everything. But should they have? Should we have allowed a tiny group of religious fanatics to have such a large effect on our country? Should we have allowed them to reshape our culture, our politics, and our psyches? The answer, of course, is no. But nine years after the planes crashed and the towers fell we as a country are significantly less free, less moral, and less rational.

The basic cornerstone of western freedom — habeas corpus — is today considered optional or luxurious, and our government now monitors our communications with impunity. We not only tolerate but extol the torture of other human beings as both necessary and moral. We allow politicians and pundits to use fear to manipulate and divide us without ever questioning their motives or rhetoric. And we have sacrificed so many lives and spent billions of dollars all in an effort to feel more secure.

Half a century ago Sayyid Qutb — the intellectual founder of Al Qaeda –  wrote of his disdain for the western notions of pragmatism, rationality and individual autonomy. He believed that these things alienated people from God, and were infecting the Islamic world. For Qutb, Islam and western liberalism were incompatible and would forever battle until one was eliminated. Sadly, Qutb’s extremist, fringe, viewpoint is today being propagated by many American religious and political leaders. Today, we are becoming the enemy Al Qaeda wishes us to be.

In 2001 our country suffered a tragic attack against our people and our values. Nine years later it’s time to reevaluate just how successful that attack was, and decide how much more successful we will let it be.

9/11, WTC, Al Qaeda, Terror

In their statement the ADL assured everyone that they “…regard freedom of religion as a cornerstone of the American democracy, and that freedom must include the right of all Americans – Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and other faiths – to build community centers and houses of worship.” Shortly after this statement, however, they suggest that that “cornerstone of democracy” shouldn’t apply when it upsets some people:

The controversy which has emerged regarding the building of an Islamic Center at this location is counterproductive to the healing process. Therefore, under these unique circumstances, we believe the City of New York would be better served if an alternative location could be found.

But then to show that they are not really caving into religious bigotry the ADL proceeds by invoking an all too familiar stereotype:

In recommending that a different location be found for the Islamic Center, we are mindful that some legitimate questions have been raised about who is providing the funding to build it, and what connections, if any, its leaders might have with groups whose ideologies stand in contradiction to our shared values.

The suggestion that the Cordoba House, the name of the community center project, is being funded by terrorists is without basis and serves to try to justify bigotry and fear. It is perhaps the most offensive element in the ADL’s missive because it attempts to justify their irrational bigotry by plucking the strings of terrorism and the hateful notion that all Muslims are somehow connected to global terrorists.

If there was a single group which would be keenly aware of religious hatred and what may result from it, one would think it would be the Anti-Defamation League. The ebbs and flows of religious bigotry in this country have a long and sorted history: from the brutalization of the Quakers to anti-Catholic violence — which my own family encountered with the Klan — to the persecution of the Mormons and to the rampant anti-Semitism of the 20th century our nation has often seen minority groups of faith persecuted and made scapegoats for the ill of their times. Time, however, has a tendency to move religious hatred around. The transitive property of bigotry almost ensures that the evils ascribed to one faith will be assigned to another in the future. After all, it wasn’t that long ago that bigots spoke of an international cabal of Jews trying to destroy western civilization and working out of local synagogues. The ADL should be keenly aware and very sensitive to this history, and yet they seem to happy to join in with the bigots and haters who claim Islam is a devil religion, or a cult, (pejoratives used in the past to describe Judaism), or with those who simply wish to fan religious enmity to gain power. By lying down with angry bigots and hucksters of hatred the Anti-Defamation League has sullied itself for years to come. For to take any future claims from the ADL of religious intolerance would be akin to giving weight to charges of racism from David Duke. To quote the great bard, “Men’s evil manners live in brass; their virtues We write in water”.

Islam, NYC Mosque, ADL, Cordoba House

The Church’s position on abortion and life is well known, and it is pointless to try to debate faith with reason. Still, for an organization which seems to show so much compassion and forgiveness for ordained child molesters to deny Sister Margaret the sacraments and Christian fellowship seems beyond cruel. It has taken a difficult decision by the mother of four and Sister Margaret and applied a simple manichean  template to it. The Church has abandoned any any  notion of the individual conscience and has replaced it with dogmatic execution. In do so the Church has also abandoned any claim it may have on compassion, forgiveness, or humanity.

I actually find it hard to believe that the Miss America pageant continues to this day. It seems so antiquated and patriarchal that I had actually thought they’d discontinued it. Yet, I find that a new Miss. America was crowned last night. Rima Fakih, Miss. Michigan, is the first Muslim woman to win the prestigious title. My immediate reaction  was an apathetic “Ok” until I read the deep thoughts of ever insane Debbie Schlussel:

The Hezbollah-supporting Shi’ite Muslim, Miss Michigan Rima Fakih whose bid for the pageant was financed by an Islamic terrorist and immigration fraud perpetrator–won the Miss USA contest.

Yes, my friends, the evil terrorists plan to terrorize us into submission by taking over our beauty pageants, for why else would they be sponsoring terrorist pageant operatives? First, Miss Michigan then Miss USA, and next Miss Universe. Can nothing stop their onslaught against us?

¹ Given the accepted efficacy of torture today to produce truthful results, we all should begin to accecpt the fact that we live in a geocentric solar system. After all, Galileo simply couldn’t lie under the threat of water boarding. 

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

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.

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.