Answering Euthyphro's Dilemma

Plato arguing with himself

Is something good because God wills it? Or does God will something because it is good? 

If the former, "good" is arbitrary; God could have willed that hatred is good, and we would have been morally obligated to hate each other.

If the latter, morality is independent of God. Murder would be wrong not because God said it, but because it's intrinsically wrong. God would be constrained by morality, precluding His omnipotence.

This is Euthyphro's Dilemma, a 2400 year old argument that undermines objective morality, the idea that there is absolute right and wrong. This ultimately undermines God: if moral values and moral duties are not grounded in God, then ultimately all morality is subjective. Murder, rape, torture and other obvious forms of immorality are not truly immoral. Indeed, Charles Darwin wrote in The Descent of Man,

"If ... men were reared under precisely the same conditions as hive-bees, there can hardly be a doubt that our unmarried females would, like the worker-bees, think it is a sacred duty to kill their brothers, and mothers would strive to kill their fertile daughters; and no one would think of interfering."

What's our answer to Euthyphro's Dilemma? In his book, On Guard: Defending Your Faith with Reason and Precision, William Lane Craig writes,

Craig argues that the dilemma isn't a true dilemma. Rather, there's a third option: something is good because God is good. If God is good, his commands are downstream of His goodness. 

He notes that a common atheist objection is, "If God were to command child abuse, would we be obligated to abuse our children?"

Craig answers that the objection is nonsensical in the vein of "Could God create a rock so heavy that even He can't lift it?", or "If there were a square circle, would its area be the square of one of its sides?"

There's no answer because the objection is logically impossible.

Bonus content: Jewish Theological Seminary graduate and musical composer Hannah Hoffman created this jazzy take on Euthyphro's Dilemma:

Fearing God produces moral courage, undermines atheist dictatorships

“The midwives of the Hebrews, fearing God, refused to do as Pharaoh had commanded; they let the Hebrew boys live.”

-Exodus 1

“Fear of God is necessary to make a society of moral individuals. Of course there are moral atheists, just as there are moral pagans, and moral individuals in even the worst cultures. But you cannot build a good world with a handful of individuals who happen to be good people. You need a universal moral code from a universal God Who is the source of that moral code, and this God must judge all people accordingly. Consequently, “fear of God” is as inevitable as it is necessary. If God judges how moral we are, of course there will be a fear of Him – just as there is of a human judge. Conversely, if God does not judge people, there is no reason to fear Him.

In our time, many people invoke the commandment to love God but ignore or even disparage the commandment to fear God. While many God-believers will engage in heroic self-sacrifice out of love of God, most God-believers are moral on a day-to-day basis because they believe they will be judged by God. That’s why, for example, in traditional Western societies, the finest people were routinely described as “God-fearing,” not “God-loving”

This fear is what gave the midwives [of the Hebrews in Egypt] the strength to carry out what is, as far as we know, the first recorded act of civil disobedience in history. Indeed, fear of God explains why a disproportionately high number of dissidents in totalitarian societies have been believers in God. When I visited the Soviet Union in 1969, I smuggled out a Soviet Jewish dissident song whose lyrics included the words: “I fear no one except God, the only one” (“Nye byusa nikovo krome boga odnavo”).

Those words were all the more remarkable in that the vast majority of Soviet Jewish dissidents were not religious. But they understood the simple moral and logical fact that if one “fears no one except God,” one can muster the courage not to fear a totalitarian state.  And these simple words also explain why totalitarian states like the Soviet Union so feared and fought against belief in God. Because belief in God posits there is something higher than Party, it constitutes a fatal threat to secular totalitarian societies. It’s why North Koreans have been horribly punished for owning a Bible.”

-Dennis Prager, The Rational Bible: Exodus 

What Technology, Science, And Medicine Can’t Solve

The Reverend Billy Graham passed away this morning at the age of 99. I think the world has lost its greatest servant of God.

Even for the non-religious, Graham is a remarkable figure. He spoke to more people than any other human being who has ever lived, reaching over 42 million people in person, preaching the message of the Jewish Messiah in 105 nations. He reached many kinds of people in different walks of life.

Graham reached me in the strangest of places.

Several years ago he gave a fantastic TED talk to a group of Silicon Valley technologists:

As a technologist myself, I was first surprised to see a preacher giving a TED talk! TED talks are for the technological, the futurists, the skeptics, the thinkers – what could an old fashioned preacher possibly say to this audience?

I was cringing before the video began, figuring it would be cliché old-hat religious pitches.

But Graham’s short 15 minutes on stage was something else entirely.

He first put me at ease with his gentleness and honesty. He acknowledged and praised the wonders of technology and modern medicine – noting how he personally benefited from science and medicine. Of the even-greater potential for technology and medicine, Graham says, “I would like to live in that [great future] age, but I won’t, because I’m 80 years old, and my time here is brief.”

Graham spoke a truth that was hard for me to swallow. In his gentle way, Graham broke a delusion that, I think, holds sway over many lovers of technology, science, and medicine. A delusion that has often held sway over my own thinking.

That truth? He showed that technology won’t – indeed, can’t –  address the worst problem humanity has. Science, technology, and medicine – for all it’s wonders and good – cannot address the human heart and its propensity for evil.

We technologists don’t like to hear this. We self-delude ourselves into thinking technology will solve virtually every problem humanity has.

For example, Google co-founder Larry Page (#9 on the world’s wealthiest people) has funded a company intended to solve death and make humans live indefinitely.

Microsoft’s Bill Gates is eradicating the last holdouts of polio around the world, and is tackling malaria next.

Amazon’s Jeff Bezos has made virtually every product available to any person with a tap of a finger.

SpaceX’s Elon Musk is bringing humanity to Mars and beyond.

Tech startups aim to disrupt nearly every industry, making life better and easier and more convenient.

Modern medicine has solved numerous diseases through antibiotics, vaccines, and new novel treatments for everything from cancer to heart disease to AIDS.

Science has helped us understand germ theory, the need for sanitation, decreasing illness and containing plagues that would otherwise kill thousands.

Science has shown us how to produce bigger crops yields, reduce draughts and prevent famines through crop irrigation, pest control, automated farming, genetic editing, and more.

The most optimistic thinkers among us believe that science-based medicine will eventually cure nearly every human disease.

And they might be right.

But you know what cannot be cured? The human heart and its bent towards evil.

Graham argues,

“Have you ever thought about what a contradiction we are?

On one hand we can probe the deepest secrets of the universe, we dramatically push back the frontiers of technology…we’ve seen under the sea, three miles down, we’ve seen hundreds of billions of years out into the future [through cosmology].

But on the other hand, something is wrong… [at this moment] we are ready to go to war with Iraq. What’s wrong with this? Why is it there are wars in every generation, in every part of the world?… We can’t get along with other people, even in our own families? We find ourselves in the paralyzing grip of self-destructive habits we can’t break. Racism, injustice, violence sweep our world, leaving a tragic harvest of heartbreak and death. And even the most sophisticated among us seem powerless to break this cycle.”

Why is it that no matter how advanced we are – and what wonders of science and technology and medicine we’ve achieved! – why is it that we’re so evil? Even increasingly so.

Why is it that in the 20th century – in which we saw the invention of the car, human flight, the computer, the internet, the eradication of polio and smallpox and a host of other diseases – why is it that we also experienced the greatest evils the world has ever seen in Nazi Germany and the brutal Communist dictatorships responsible for the death of over 100 million people in a single century?

Where is the disruptive tech startup that fixes human evil?

Where is the vaccine that prevents human wickedness?

(Or, on a smaller scale but more recent headline, why is it that 70% of the worst domestic shootings in US history occurred in the last 20 years, most recently last week’s Florida school shooting which killed 17 kids?)

Why isn’t technology addressing that?

Where is the disruptive technology startup that fixes human evil?

Where is the vaccine that prevents human wickedness?

All silly questions of course: science, technology, and medicine do not and cannot address the worst problem humanity has: the propensity for evil. It doesn’t even attempt to.

“I would like to see Oracle [the technology company] or some other technological geniuses work on this problem: how do we change man so that he doesn’t lie and cheat. So that our newspapers aren’t filled with stories of fraud in business, labor, athletics, and wherever else.”

Graham notes the real origin of the problem, and says that it cannot be addressed by science, technology, medicine, or any other future innovation.

“The Bible says it’s within our heart, without our souls. Our problem is, we’re separated from our Creator, who we call God. And we need to have our souls restored: something only God can do. ‘Out of the heart comes evil thoughts.’ Murder. Sexual immorality. Theft. False testimony. Slander.”

But he doesn’t just quote the Bible to this secular rationalist audience. He cites the rationalist’ own chief prophet, the atheist Bertrand Russell,

“The British philosopher Bertrand Russell, who was not a religious man, said, ‘It’s in our hearts that the evil lies, and it’s from our hearts that it must be plucked out.’”

I wonder how many of today’s rationalists could even agree with Russell’s statement about evil. I suspect very few could without apologizing and redefining terms. In my experience, many rationalists to try to muddy the waters by claiming there is no real evil, no real good. (One prominent atheist author stated that without a Commander, the commandment is useless; without a Lawgiver there is no real law, and morality is subjective.)

Graham mentioned his meeting Albert Einstein, and how Einstein too saw the problem of real evil:

“Einstein made this statement: ‘It’s easier to denature plutonium than to denature the evil spirit of man.’”

He shows that beneficial technology can be used for remarkable evil. Technology can be twisted to into something corrupting. Graham noted the early internet and viruses as examples – 20 years later, I’d say it’s worse than that: I am thinking of internet porn, the objectification of women enabled by it (and the corresponding bad fruit of rampant sexual misconduct we are experiencing today), blackmailing ransomware attacks, digital theft, online harassment that has caused people to commit suicide, and the nasty verbal abuse enabled by the anonymity of the web.

Technology is great, but can be used for great evil, Graham says.

“The problem is not technology. The problem is the person using it. King David said he knew the depths of his own soul. He couldn’t free himself from his personal problems and evils that included even murder and adultery.

Graham says our heart and our soul is something not measured by science, not addressed by medicine, left untouched by technology.

“And it yearns for God, and something more than technology. And it’s that part of you that yearns for meaning in life, and it seeks for something beyond this life. It’s part of you that yearns for God.”

It was Graham’s yearning for God that led him, in the early 1950s, to desegregate the churches and assemblies where he was speaking. At one notable event, Graham himself walked down and cut the ropes segregating the white and black sections of the audience, and told the people that Christianity is neither white nor black, and that the Messiah is Lord over all.

Billy Graham dead at 99. Took this in OK City, 2003. MLK said, “Had it not been for the ministry of my good friend Dr. Billy Graham, my work in the Civil Rights Movement would not have been as successful as it has been.” Graham said there was no scriptural basis for segregation. pic.twitter.com/O8SCmNdGB5

— kennerly (@kennerly) February 21, 2018

Graham’s own death today, remarkably, revealed the hearts of people, some for good, some for evil.

While past US Presidents praised Graham, others showed utter contempt:

The big news today is that Billy Graham was still alive this whole time. Anyway, have fun in hell, bitch.

— Lauren Duca (@laurenduca) February 21, 2018

The great thing about Billy Graham is that he'd forgive you for saying that. https://t.co/1ArlgIQIKc

— Judah Gabriel (@JudahGabriel) February 21, 2018

Why the hate? Evil hearts.

Some folks, particularly secular leftists, felt condemned by Billy Graham’s Bible-based preaching. While Graham boldly preached in the 1950s that “there is no Biblical basis for segregation”, it’s with that same boldness he consistently spoke against sexual immorality as defined by the same Bible: adultery, promiscuity, and homosexuality. For this, some on the left demonize him and celebrate his death today.

Celebrating the death of a righteous man is, well, wicked.

This is the same wickedness of the human heart that is left unaddressed by science, technology, and medicine.

What addresses human evil?

God gives a tangible way to solve evil. It’s not easy. It’s not glamorous.

Evil – the problem unaddressed by science, technology, and medicine – is addressed by God in this way: each person must acknowledge the evil he’s done.

That takes humility. Acknowledging your own faults before God and people. It’s good for the soul.

Then, that person asks for forgiveness – both of God and the persons wronged.

Then, that person makes restitution – both with God and the persons wronged.

Then, that person – now with a softened and humble attitude – changes his behavior. The person is transformed from a wicked person into someone who reflects God’s own character. An angry and abusive alcoholic becomes a gentle, soft-spoken and clear-minded light for humanity. A drug addict turns his life around. A man turns a corner in his life.

We’ve seen this happen a thousand times; it actually works. It’s King David’s repentance. It’s Paul life-turn-around. It’s the message of Jesus and the Hebrew Prophets. It’s a cure for the worst problem humanity has.

And Billy Graham preached that message his whole life. To paupers and Presidents. And to everyone that would listen.

"Someday you will read or hear that Billy Graham is dead. Don’t you believe a word of it. I shall be more alive than I am now. I will just have changed my address. I will have gone into the presence of God."

-Billy Graham

The world has lost – for now! – one of its greatest servants of God. His hope in the resurrection – a hope that Jews and Christians share – will one day be realized in full for the great Reverend Billy Graham. May his memory be a blessing for you as it is for me, fine Kineti reader.

The Spirit of Our Times

The German word zeitgeist describes the spirit of a period of history, the status of society and where it’s heading.

Consider where our culture is at today, in the 21st century United States. What is the spirit of our times; what are the ideals and philosophies driving us forward?

I’m no cultural expert, but I do have finger to the pulse of the culture – I’m a public speaker, a news junkie, an entrepreneur, a technologist, a congregation leader, an avid reader of subjects ranging from science to technology to religion. Through these mediums, one can sense the spirit of our times.

As I see it, the spirit of our times is:

• Increasingly secular, if not atheist. Science is pitted as the enemy of religion and faith in public discourse and in Hollywood media. People of faith are portrayed as ignorant weirdo bigots, unwilling to progress with the times.
  
  This, despite many of the scientific pioneers of the West being devout religious men, including Newton, Kepler, Copernicus, Bacon, Galileo, Descartes, Pascal, Faraday, Mendel, and a host of others. Likewise for medicine, with many hospitals founded and staffed by devout men and women of faith.
  
  In the past, science has not been the enemy of faith. Why now?
   
• Antagonistic towards religion. Despising forms of absolute morality, especially the Judeo-Christian perspective. The only morality permitted is the relativistic, make-up-my-own-as-I-go morality which is regarded as no worse than the the respected, detailed moral systems that produced Western Civilization.
    
• Irreverent of human life. Lovers of abortion; making it quick, easy, and legal to murder an unborn child for almost any reason.
  
  Worse still, recent undercover investigation revealed that Planned Parenthood, a leading abortion provider in the United States, actually profits from taking whole unborn children, extracting and killing them, then selling their body parts to the highest bidder, roughly $120,000 month for one local Planned Parenthood operation.
  
  
  
  What great irreverence of life! That we’re willing to not only abort an unborn child for almost any reason at almost any point in the pregnancy, but we’re also profiteering off the human remains of the bloody butchery.
   
• Suppresses the proliferation of life. The spirit of our times regards the traditional life-creating family of a man and a woman as passé, and instead amplifies as equal the non-traditional unions which are unable to produce life.
  
  Despite nature’s central role for women in childbearing and rearing, being a female homemaker today is frowned upon. Career equality with men is amplified instead, resulting in an a generation with much education and skill, but little wisdom. A low birth rate, a high abortion rate, and the amplification of alternative lifestyles that do not produce life has resulted in dozens of nations experiencing a decline in population.
  
   
• Cheapens human rights. The founders of the United States wrote that “man is endowed by his Creator with certain inalienable rights”, ascribing a divine origin to human rights.
  
  By contrast, today’s “social justice warriors” remove the divine origin from human rights and reassign that role to government, create new rights out of thin air, dole them out to whomever demands them, and demonize as backwards bigots those who question the newly-minted “rights.”
   
• Celebrates drunkenness and foolishness by favoring the legalization of drugs and downplaying -- often ignoring! --the societal side effects of a healthy and productive population now seeking to get high on marijuana and other illicit drugs. It seems to me the public favoring drug legalization is in part a result of a media which glorifies drug usage.
  
  
  
  It is difficult to imagine a mother of 4 getting high in front of her kids. Hard to imagine the destructive effect that would have on a family. And yet, it’s already legal in several US states and will likely push through the remaining states within the next 5 years.
   
• Covertly despises Israel. Because Israel is a symbol of traditional values and the source of the hated Judeo-Christian morality, the one that birthed both Judaism and Christianity, the spirit of the times produces a double standard that singles out Israel and the Jews, resulting in anti-Semitism veiled as political activism.
  
  This happens on an individual, societal, and national levels.
  
  Individual: last month, after pressure from the anti-Semitic BDS movement, a Jewish music artist was disinvited from a multi-national music festival unless he issued a public statement defaming Israel.
  
  National: the UN repeatedly singles out Israel and condemns the world’s only Jewish state for human rights violations. Meanwhile, the UN remains silent on real human rights violations in North Korea and among the Palestinian terror groups; revealing a double-standard against Jews, a classic anti-Semitic play:
  
  
  
  Societal: it happens through old fashioned anti-Semitism, veiled today as anti-Zionism. I didn’t have to search too hard to find this top-rated commented on the above video of the Israeli Prime Minister:
  
  
   
  And again on the international level:
  
  

  After negotiations, in Zionist regime they said they had no more concern about Iran for next 25 years; I’d say: pic.twitter.com/dBA7oAbFPX

  — Ayatolla Khamenei (@khamenei_ir), Iranian Supreme Leader September 9, 2015

  
   
• Increasingly lazy; promoting a weak work ethic through government handouts and assistance. The welfare system in the United States has grown unruly and gargantuan – costing citizens nearly $680,000,000,000 (Six-hundred eighty billion dollars) in 2013 alone.
  
  
  
  For many struggling families, especially those broken homes with absent fathers and single mothers, this reliance on the government has produced a perverse incentive in which it is more cost effective to receive heaps of government welfare than to attempt to work for a living.

  “A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury.”

  To further the laziness, the fringes of the technology community has begun to advocate Basic Income: the idea that the government should just pay us all a basic income for doing nothing. No need to work!
  
  If the spirit of our times despises work and a hard work ethic, it’s no surprise, then, to see a socialist running for the 2016 US Presidential ticket, promising “free” government-supplied handouts as a key platform initiative in his run for the head office of the United States.
   
• Considers nothing holy. Sacredness, holiness, and the beauty of something sanctified – set apart for a higher purpose – is lost through the irreverent spirit of our times. The internet has produced an irreverent and mean-spirited people. I stumbled on a great example of this while writing this post: the 2nd Google image search result for Declaration of Independence is a defaced image with a hand-drawn penis over it, with “faggot” scrawled over the top. (Thanks, Reddit!)
  
  Nothing is sacred because the spirit of our times says morality doesn’t exist. Holiness is a superstitious idea from ancient fools with no place in the modern world. And while irreverence isn’t a new problem, it is amplified today via the internet.
    
• Feigns goodness but practices wickedness.
  • Social justice has become the term post-religious people use to make themselves feel better about living a life separated from God.
     
  • Social justice warriors fight for an ever-increasing number of newly minted "rights" which are granted not by the divine – as the US founders asserted in the Declaration of Independence – but are manufactured by the very ones demanding them. They are warriors for faux rights imagined by a lawless society aiming to justify its rebellion against God.
     
  • Hating downwards (poor, minorities) is passé, but hating upwards (wealthy, police, authority, God) is in vogue. Social justice warriors in self-righteous rants harp on eliminating downwards hate, meanwhile they practice and glorify upwards hate.
      
• Unwilling to confront actual evil. The spirit of our times says morality is subjective, and thus, real evil doesn’t exist. Because evil doesn’t exist, there’s nothing to stand against.
  
  A person with no moral compass and nothing to stand against – what is such a person to do?
  
  Instead of confronting real evils – such as Iran’s fanatical ayatollah who openly calls for the murder of  all the world’s Jews – people busy themselves fighting make-believe evils like carbon emissions and income inequality.
    
• Contemptuous of the wealthy; covetous. Those who have worked hard to build their wealth are demonized as “the 1%”, a conspiratorial-like, faceless cabal who by devious means extract the wealth of the world from the rest of us. They hoard and flaunt their wealth over the have-nots, and are unwilling to pay their fair share of taxes.
  
  Meanwhile, no one can define what “fair share” actually amounts to, everyone wants the other guy to share his wealth, but no one wants to share their own wealth. The media harps on about the perceived evil of income inequality, resulting in hatred and contempt upwards; covetousness.
   
• Promotes sensuality through the normalization of promiscuity, pornography, and homosexuality. Through print, television, and movie media, sexual deviancy is normalized, while those who see these as great moral failures are demonized as backward bigots who need to mind their own business.
   
• Hates discourse and suppresses opposition. Are you pro-life? The media labels you anti-choice and against women; Sexist. Are you a supporter of the traditional family, a life-creating man and woman with their children? Your label is Intolerant and Homophobe.
  
  Once one of the 7 Demon Labels has been applied – Sexist, Intolerant, Xenophobic, Homophobic, Intolerant, Racist, Bigot, or SIXHIRB – no discourse nor engagement is required with you, you intolerant bigot! Just label and demonize, and voila, you’ve suppress your opposition without having to engage the subject matter.
  
  This effective form of the ancient practice of societal shaming has resulted in people unable to speak and act their conscience for fear of being shamed and their names dragged through the mud. After all, who wants to be called a bigot?
   
• Despises law and societal order through the demonization of the police force. Riots and year-long protests arise because a policeman shot and killed a law-breaking thug, yet one is not allowed to speak this reality for fear of being labeled a racist.
  
  
  Riots in Ferguson, Missouri. A fair trial and a jury of peers found the police officer who shot a man in self-defense to be innocent of crimes. Even so, the protestors turned violent, characterized by looting of businesses and destruction of property.
    
• Loving the obscene; our magazines and media are covered in sexualized, objectified women, with banners of gossip, obscenities, and sensationalist garbage that slanders public figures.

A write this not as a complaint – I feel utterly blessed to live in this age.

Rather, I write this because it’s helpful to understand where we are today. To survey the obstacles and figure out where we need to go. Only then can we move forward, beyond the so-called progressive – better called regressive – agenda of the spirit of our times.

The spirit of our times is increasingly secular, hates discourse, loves the obscene, promotes sensuality, despises work and covets the possessions of those who work, is unwilling to confront evil, feigns goodness, considers nothing holy, celebrates drunkenness, hates Israel and the Jews, cheapens human rights, and does not revere human life.

This is how I see the spirit of our times, the zeitgeist of 2015. How do you see it? Sound off in the comments.

Our mucky gray world: Why the West can’t call Hamas evil

Modern war.

If we judge right and wrong by the who has the most civilians killed, Nazi Germany and its 5 million civilian deaths would have been deemed righteous.

Nor can we judge right and wrong by how many pictures of bloodied children you can tweet, photoshopped or real.

And you can’t call it by who started it. Nazi Germany’s evil existed regardless of who started the conflict.

What matters is who’s conscience and actions are morally right. It’s a matter of discerning evil. We can’t rightfully judge a conflict without knowing evil.

Nazi Germany was evil. It’s conscience was based on hatred of Jews and a racist, genocidal domination of the world by paranoid, racist madman. That’s an evil. War against that evil was justified, even with civilian deaths, deliberate or otherwise, even with the millions of German children that died. That great evil had to be confronted, fought, and destroyed lest it consume the whole world and the Jewish people cease to be.

Friends, today in the West, the political left doesn’t wish to acknowledge the existence of evil, let alone discern it from goodness. We like to pretend that everything’s equally good and bad. A world of mucky grays with no great evil, no great goodness. “Who am I to judge?” is the repeated motto for the golden value of tolerance. No one stops to ask whether it’s right to tolerate evil, because we don’t like to even think about evil. We pretend it doesn’t exist.

There’s an escalated conflict between Israel and Hamas going on right now. It appears war will break out in the next day or two. Is there a right and wrong here? Is there a good? An evil?

• One group of people love Zion (Jerusalem) and desire peace for Israel. It’s even in our religious texts.
  
• The other group’s very existence is predicated on hatred of Israel and its total destruction. Read their charter yourself. It wishes the genocide of Jews in democratic Israel, replace her with an Islamic theocracy called Palestine.

So forget all the hype and propaganda and tweets and liveblogs for a moment. Set that all aside and consider the morality of the conscience and motivations of Israel and Hamas. Then you decide who’s in the right.

If you believe Jews in Israel should be killed and an Islamic theocracy setup their place, and that dissenters should be shot in the back of the head without due process, you should absolutely defend Hamas and #freegaza of the “Zionist occupier.” That’s what these people believe:

But if you believe that murder of Jews in Israel is a great evil, if you believe an Islamic theocracy is bad for humanity, the replacement of Israel an evil proposition made by religious madmen, then you must come to the conclusion that Israel is not only right to defend herself from rocket attacks, but she must also summon the moral courage to confront, fight, and destroy the evil group that is Hamas, despite what the naysaying, obscene, morally blinded world shouts from their peanut galleries.

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem.

Forming your conscience correctly, Egyptian democracy epic fail, and why John Lennon’s lyrics sound good but really aren’t.

Fine blog reader, consider these statements and guess what they have in common:

• “Follow your dreams.”
• “Avoid name calling.”
• “Follow your conscience.”
• “Never compromise on your ideals.”
• “Don’t speak ill of other people.”
• “Be true to yourself.”
• “Treat everyone with respect.”

What do these statement have in common?

Answer: they all sound good, but they’re not really true. They may be true on some basic level, but unless you dig deeper, they’re almost meaningless.

For example: Follow your dreams. That’s good, right? No, actually, what’s more important than following your dreams is that your dreams are good. If your dreams are to invade Poland to restore national pride, then you’d be well advised not to follow your dreams.

Don’t just follow your dreams; go a level deeper and ensure your dreams are aligned with good. Then follow your dreams.

Or how about, “Don’t call people names”, isn’t that a good sentiment? No, not really. Name calling in itself is not evil. In fact, name calling can be good. What’s more important than avoidance of name-calling is ensuring that the name with which you’ve labeled is accurate. If you called a person “thief”, the morality of that act depends entirely on whether that person is a thief. If he is a thief, then name calling was not only permitted, but may actually be required of you. And that applies for thief, adulterer, dictator, control-freak, hateful, whatever.

Don’t avoid name-calling; go a level deeper and ensure your what you’ve said is accurate. Then, yes, go name calling.

And by all means, never compromise your principles. Unless your principles are bad, in which case you should compromise as much as you can.

See the pattern here?

These nice-sounding sentiments upon which western culture seems to rely on so much are not actually good for moral guidance.

Name calling is good

A few months ago, it bothered me that you fine Kineti readers were name calling in the comments to this blog. “One Law Messianics are supersessionists!”, “Bilateral Ecclesiology Messianics are racists!”, and so on. The name calling went back and forth, and finally I put my foot down and said, “No more name calling, or I delete your comment.”

And much DEL key pressing ensued.

However, this foray into censorship bothered me because, on some level, those accusations could be accurate. And if they are accurate, then I was, on some level, deleting truth. (Suddenly I feel very zen.)

It reinforced the reason I almost never delete comments: removing evidence of what people think doesn’t solve anything. It’s basically censorship; generally it does little good.

Democracy is bad

In the present hour, political upheaval is taking place in Egypt.

Riots in the streets, people getting shot, government smack down stuff. Big stuff.

The standard commentary I’m hearing from our western media is: “The Egyptian people have a right to vote! They have a right to choose their leaders!”

The New York Times, a popular left-wing publication in the US, has had numerous opinion pieces saying, albeit with more flowery words, this very thing.

But stop for a moment and go a level deeper: yes, it may be basically true that the Egyptian people should be able to choose their own leaders. But more important than the right to choose your own leader is ensuring your motives are aligned with good. Forgive the premature invocation of Godwin’s Law, but the German people had a right to choose their leader in 1932, and choose they did, with 13,745,800 Germans choosing an evil greater than any the modern world had seen.

That isn’t to say Egypt will choose some evil on par with Hitler.

But on the other hand, the future’s not looking too bright for Egypt. The party looking to make the most gains from the Egyptian upheaval is the Society of the Muslim Brothers, or Muslim Brotherhood for short.

Are the Egyptian people making a good choice in ousting its dictator and replacing it with the Muslim Brotherhood?

Probably not.

Unless you define good as an Islamic theocracy that suppresses religious and social minorities, this group doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in its running towards goodness. It’s founding credo, for example, states,

Allah is our objective; the Quran is our constitution, the Prophet is our leader; Jihad is our way; and death for the sake of Allah is the highest of our aspirations.

And the modern Egyptian head of the Muslim Brotherhood recently told a newspaper they will institute stoning for adulterers and the death penalty for those who leave the Islamic faith.

I mean – ferchristsake – their logo is comprised of swords with the subtitle, “Islam is the answer”.

Not exactly subtle about that “we hate non-Muslims” thing.

Admittedly, if Islam is right, and Allah is God and Islam the only way to God, then we should be cheering for beheadings of infidels and suppression of minority religions and all that. But I say Islam isn’t right, in fact, it’s so bad for humanity, it is worth fighting against.

So when you hear, “Egypt has the right to choose their leaders!”, go a level deeper and ask whether their choice for a new leader is good. More important than the right to choose your own leader is ensuring your motives for change are aligned with good. If you’re going to choose badly, better to not choose at all. Or, in the words of Mark Twain,

It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.

Right now, it’s looking bad for Egypt. I hereby offer the heretical view that it is better for Egypt to suffer in its current dictatorship than it is to institute the bad choice of leadership it is now putting into power. I predict Egypt will, in the next 10 years, suffer more than they ever have under the old dictatorship. And I predict the surrounding nations, particularly Israel, will also suffer because of Egypt’s choice.

Democracy is only as good as the people it puts into power.

John Lennon, and why his lyrics sound so good but are actually really bad

I’m a fan of music. I find beauty in all kinds of music. I like classical, I like rock, I like Messianic, I like metal. I can find good in almost all kinds of music, really.

Most of all, I am a fan of the Beatles. And I like John Lennon’s music.

But it dawned on me the other day that John Lennon’s lyrics are rather terrible. They are great on the nice sounding platitudes for change, but dig a level deeper, and they’re actually quite horrible if implemented.

Take, for example, the famous John Lennon hit, “Imagine”:

Imagine there’s no countries, it isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too
Imagine all the people living life in peace

You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one
I hope some day you’ll join us, and the world will live as one

Sounds great!

Well, maybe not the “no religion” part so much, but hey, I’ve always been a Cowboy Religionist anyways, so who needs religion when you can have God? And besides, nothing to kill or die for? Oh man. Sign me up to be one of the dreamers, I want to live as one!

But hold on, while it does sound appealing to any peace-loving person, is it really good? Go a level deeper.

Yes, no killing is good, everybody wants peace. But what about having something to die for? Or having something to live for?

When a man feels passionately enough about something, he is willing to give his life for it. A man willing to lay down his life for his wife, or for his friend, a man willing to die for his ideals & beliefs, a person standing up for what’s right.

Without anything to die for, this all sounds like Equilibrium, some kind of Orwellian nightmare, where all emotion and expressions are frowned upon by the society. After all, emotion might breed passion, or worse, lead to fear, and fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, … and suddenly we’re all fighting again.

Lennon’s utopian lyrics sound nice, but considering a world without religion, without anything to die for, without any ultimate justice (“no hell below us, above us only sky”), I think his utopia would actually be hell on earth.

Make no mistake, if religion were to disappear tomorrow, people would still fight – and kill and die – for the things they feel passionately about. Nations, beliefs, philosophies, races, pride, grievances, women, name any motivator, good or bad. Remove the big ones (religions, nations, races), we’ll just move onto fighting about the small ones. Humans fight for what we believe in, but – get this – that’s not always a bad thing.

Sometimes it is good to have something worth fighting for, worth dying for.

More important than not fighting is fighting for what’s good, standing up for what’s right. And doing nothing in the face of evil is not some great act of peacemaking, but one of great moral cowardice.

In summary, I’m insane, but I think I’m right

The morality and ethics of all the west is based on what are essentially nice-sounding catch-phrases like “Be kind to all people”, “Follow your dreams”, etc. And all it takes to debunk them is going a level deeper. But most people just stop at the nice-sounding part.

I’ve finally moved past that nice-sounding part. And I’m feeling a bit freer in my thinking already.

More important than your obligation to follow your conscience, or at least prior to it, is your obligation to form your conscience correctly. Nobody — remember this — neither Hitler, nor Lenin, nor any despot you could name, ever came forward with a proposal that read, ‘Now, let’s create a really oppressive and evil society.’ Hitler said, ‘Let’s take the means necessary to restore our national pride and civic order.’ And Lenin said, ‘Let’s take the means necessary to assure a fair distribution of the goods of the world.’

In short, it is your responsibility…not just to be zealous in the pursuit of your ideals, but to be sure that your ideals are the right ones. That is perhaps the hardest part of being a good human being: Good intentions are not enough. Being a good person begins with being a wise person. Then, when you follow your conscience, will you be headed in the right direction.

-US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia

Being good starts with being wise. For such an important foundation, you’d think wisdom would be taught in schools.

Read this %$!ing obscene post!

Last week, in Atheist Contempt For Judeo-Christian Values, I lamented how our culture is in a downward spiral. The increasing things in our culture seem to be:

• Obscenities in our movies, games, books, music, media.
• Pornography
• Atheism

I think these increases are bad for society, in fact, I say these things, combined with a general amorality, will be the downfall of the west.

Now, if I’m right, if these things really are increasing, there should be evidence to support it, yeah? Otherwise, I’m just being a prude puritan, and these things have always existed at their current levels.

Good news: we’ve got some hard data to back this up.

For 6 years, Google has taken 5 million books (!) and turned them digital. Thanks to the internet and the ability to quickly search through millions of books in seconds, this lets us do some interesting experiments that would not have been possible in previous generations.

The experiment I want to run is on the obscenities used in pop culture in the last 100 years. And what better way to measure than than by looking at the common media form in use for this last century: books!

So, has obscenities increased in our books? Or is my prudish mind just imagining things?

Amusing, ain’t it? Up, up, and away! To Obscenity Boulevard we go!

Particularly amusing is the “s***” and “f***” lines (blue and red, respectively), showing a heavy increase in usage with the advent of the 1960s. It’s also worth noting a steady increase in all those obscenities since the 1960s.

That timing shouldn’t be surprising. As I wrote in Atheist Contempt,

In some ways, our current culture is an inheritance of the values of the 1960s: politically left, free love, drugs, free everything. But now the sexual liberation has been extended, and the “spirit in the sky” is now a myth of the ancients.

Sexual terminology, especially taboos, have likewise increased:

Rape has greatly increased. References to pornography has increased steadily since the 1960s, with a major increase during the 1980s. This timing may be explained by the invention of the internet, which put pornography at everyone’s fingertips.

The increase in references to homosexual terms is also interesting, picking up the largest gains since the 1980s, even more than pornography. The term “gay” increased as well, but there was already significant usage of that term prior to 1960s, due its alternate, innocuous meaning (“happy”).

Amusingly, the only one that hasn’t increased much is adultery, perhaps due to it being a longstanding and perhaps more common sin in western society. Or perhaps I’m just using the wrong search terms.

One thing is certain: obscenities and violence and sexuality is increasing in our pop culture, in our books, movies, music, games, and media. Our culture is in a downward spiral.

And if you don’t agree, you’re #!$%ing blind.

Pat Robertson on Haiti

The recent devastating earthquake in Haiti, with the death toll estimated between 100,000-200,000, has dominated the news.

Also in the news is the prominent evangelical pastor and TV show host Pat Robertson, and his comments on the earthquake. He suggested Haiti’s problems are rooted in spiritual matters. Here’s Robertson’s quote:

Something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it. They were under the heel of the French. Napoleon III. And they got together and swore a pact with the devil they said, “We will serve you if you free us from the French.” True story. And so, the devil said, “Ok it’s a deal.”

They kicked the French out, the Haitians revolted, and got themselves free.

But ever since they have been cursed by one thing after another. Desperately poor.

That island of Hispaniola is one island that’s split right down the middle. On one side is the Dominican Republic, on the other side is Haiti. The Dominican Republic is prosperous, healthy, full of resources, etc. Haiti is in desperate poverty. Same island.

They need to have, and we need to pray for them, a great turning to God. And out of this tragedy, I’m optimistic something good may come. But right now we’re helping the suffering people, and the suffering is unimaginable.

I had never heard of this Haitian pact with Satan.

Doing a bit of research suggests Robertson was referring to the meeting at Bois Caïman, a Voodoo ceremony which took place on August 14th, 1791. In the ceremony, after performing a ritualistic pig sacrifice, Haitian slaves vowed to kill all white men on the island. They succeeded to some extent, and eventually the native Haitians gained their independence. That said, some intellectuals questions whether the “pact with the devil” part ever took place.

Needless to say, virtually everyone shat themselves upon hearing Robertson’s remarks.

Seriously, everybody got angry at Pat Robertson. Newsmakers, secularists, even some religious. There are Facebook groups devoted to condemning Robertson’s remarks. Now, your grandma hates Pat Robertson. Newsmakers are saying Robertson “should be put to sleep.” The Haitian ambassador appeared on television to publicly condemn Robertson’s remarks. I’m told that even baby Jesus hates him now.

Now, it should be said that the context for Robertson’s remarks were not a distant, cold, “God’s sending you to hell”, as some have made it out to be. On the contrary, Robertson has been actively raising funds to aid in the Haitian relief. And Robertson ended his remark not with a cold “let God damn them”, but rather a “we must help them, we must stop the immense suffering”, and backed it up with fundraising for Haiti.

Nobody talks about that part, of course.

Still, my God, what a remark! Hundreds of thousands of people are dead – families crushed under buildings. And some old WASP televangelist is saying it’s God’s wrath for their pact with the devil? Earthquake-as-God’s-judgment? Jeez.

This isn’t the real issue, of course. Robertson’s controversial remarks, I mean. For most, the real issue, and the issue that secular folks will scoff and mock at, is the idea that spiritual darkness brings about God’s judgment. Virtually everyone upset at Robertson also laughs at the idea that God judges anyone. (…and a good deal of them laugh at the very idea of God.)

As Hebrew Christian apologist Dr. Michael Brown put it,

[some have called it] “Theological nonsense.” The idea that voodoo worship or Satan worship could bring on disaster or leave you unprotected is theological nonsense.

Actually, it’s not theological nonsense. It would be a sound biblical principle that if people didn’t worship the one true God – especially if that people had a covenant relationship with him at one point, like the people of Israel – and they gave themselves over to following demons, and the devil, and doing ungodly, destructive things, and raising kids in the midst of darkness – you’re going to tell me that Biblically that wouldn’t bring judgment, Biblically that wouldn’t bring some kind response?

Of course, who’s to say Haiti is such a place? And even if it is, is it really deserving of divine judgment? For ancient Israel, God’s covenant people with whom he has historically intervened, that’s one thing. Haitians aren’t ancient Israel.

Closing Thoughts

My thoughts are that it is awfully confident (arrogant?) of a human to claim to know God’s intentions. Unless there’s engraved writing on the wall, fire from heaven, bare arm of the Lord coming down from the clouds, gosh. Without that, it’s all speculation, isn’t it?

Did Robertson say God revealed this to him? Not that I see. And even if he made such a claim, how do you know whether to believe him? Religious people are famous for making false prophecies.

Religion folk are too quick to lend to the supernatural what can be explained by the natural. Earthquakes happen, folks. Not every catastrophe is divine punishment.

What do you fine blog readers think? Is Robertson’s remark insensitive and wrong? Or is there a possibility God is judging a nation’s sins by killing 200,000 of its citizens?

Feelings-Based Morality of the Secular World

"I don't push my values on anyone, not even my children."

Ever hear that before?

Gosh, it's got such a good ring to it. It's all non-confrontational, non-judgemental. You're not imposing anything. ("Imposing" has such as negative connotation, doesn't it?) You're not forcing anyone to do anything. You're the good guy. You don't push your values on anyone, not even your children.

:Post-Enlightment warm fuzzy feeling coming on. Wait for it... there it is. Ahhh mmmmmm.:

Think about that statement, "I don't force my values on anyone, even my children."

I call BS. Sorry, but that's a load of spineless, humanistic crap.

Do you teach your children to wash their hands? Do you teach your children to brush their teeth?

"But Judah, that's cleanliness! Of course I teach my child cleanliness!"

Cleanliness is a value. Aha! You impose your values on others, you disrespecter of personal freedom.

An amusing anecdote:

Yesterday, a female founder of a new singles magazine was being interviewed on a national radio show. The magazine puts forth the modernist idea that being single is a complete life and is just as fulfilling as the life of a married person.

The woman started,

"I never tell people to get married. Being single is in no way inferior to being married. You can live a complete, fulfilling life without marriage. And who am I to judge someone's personal decision to be single? Who am I to say marriage is superior to a single person's life of satisfying friendships and romances?"

Everyone nods their head in agreement. Who are we to judge?

The radio show host responded,

"Marriage is superior. It is the ideal for men and women to have a deep, lasting relationship, for children to have a mom and a dad, it's superior for families; better for all of society. If one is disallowed to state this fact, then neither could one say, for example, eating a low-sugar diet is superior to eating junk food. Or that hearing is superior to deafness."

The magazine author responded to this obviously close-minded radio show host,

"But so many single people are hurt and insulted and feel inferior when married people say that! Even if it's better for families, why say that and hurt the billions of single people on the planet who now feel incomplete and inferior to married people?"

The radio host who _obviously_ has no respect for personal freedom replied,

"It's one thing to insult a person. It's another thing to speak truth. If a person is insulted by truth, well, I feel sorry for that person. What is it that are you suggesting, we lie so as to not insult anyone?"

Feelings-Based Morality

Make someone feel good? Congratulations, you've done a great moral deed for the world, fellow human being. Fellow enlightened inhabitant of Planet Earth.

Make someone feel bad? Who are you to judge, you outdated, intolerant bigot!

Good morality, bad morality. This is how the world's moral system works:

Smiley face == good morality.
Sad face == bad morality.

It's a toddler's version of morality. And it's the moral code of the modern, secular world.

If imposing your values on others is a terrible proposition to this world, what greater frown the world sneers if you impose values on your own children!

Some of the world's wisest -- enlightened in man's latest understandings of the world around him, enlightened in human terms, feeling good about his own morality because he's lowered his carbon footprint -- told us these things:

Don't give your son toys for boys.



You know, trucks and cars and robots and building blocks and cowboy outfits. Cowboy outfits are insulting to Native Americans. And besides, don't impose your values of a heterosexual family Dad onto your son! For all the world knows, your son wants to grow up to be a feminine, gay prostitute. And who are *YOU* to judge? The world says, don't impose your ancient, irrelevant morality here, you close-minded bigot.

Don't give your daughter toys for girls.



Barbie dolls and playhouses and toy ponies, that kind of thing. Maybe she doesn't want to be a Susie Homemaker. For all the world knows, she wants to be a feminist power woman who needs neither man, nor children, nor family, nor God; no one but herself. And who are *YOU* to judge? The world says, don't impose your values here, or she'll become just another barefoot, pregnant woman in your kitchen, oh backwards man with your old, deprecated ideas!

Don't teach your children right and wrong, parents, raising them in the righteous path of the knowledge of God. For all the world knows, they want to grow up to be atheistic nihilists, living how they please, doing what they feel like doing. Not getting bogged down in whether something is right or wrong -- who needs that nonsense? And who are *YOU* to judge? Don't impose your useless Bronze Age mumbo jumbo about right and wrong!

So the world tells us.

Don't impart wisdom to your children. Let the world in its anti-wisdom educate your children. Close their ears to your wisdom. Blind them to your values. Do not instill in them righteous ways. This is the world's wisdom.

This truly -- in all reality and practical day-to-day living -- is the Age of Non-Wisdom.

The Age of Foolishness.

The Age of Anti-Wisdom.

What a mockery and spectacle will be the generation raised by the founders of Feelings-Based Morality.

Justifying an evil

Ron Paul supporter kills conscience to survive.

It's amazing what the human mind can conjure up to justify some evil. I've heard it said, when you repeat a lie long enough, the mind begins to believe it to be true.

Kind of scary to see a lie invented in plain sight of everyone, along with folks planning to promote that lie through media. Yikes. Politics is nasty. I'm entirely convinced it has the power to compromise ethics and morality in even the strongest ethical person.

Hat tip: LGF

Whacky, absurd humanistic atheists

I find the most absurd, impractical, extremist ideas come not from the religious right, but from the secular left. Peter Singer is a great example. Here's a recent online conversation and debate I've had with a supporter of his views -- ah, well, the thing is, the man doesn't really support all of Singer's views (that would be too crazy). He just doesn't want anyone criticizing Singer. Not only him, but another person, probably a humanistic atheist, has been voting down my posts during the debate, heheh.

But the cool thing is, I made my point well and I think clarity is superior to agreement. Below is some good bits of the debate:

Me:

These are the same people that equate a chicken barbeque with the Holocaust.

We live in the age of stupidity.

Just looked Singer up on Wikipedia and found it quite enlightening: he's won the "humanist of the year" award, he's an atheist, he bases his morality on whether something is pleasurable, he's petitioned the UN to grant personhood to apes. Dear Lord...

(pre-flame response: no, not all atheists or humanists have such values)

John:

Unfortunately, you are contributing to it.

You didn't find "he bases his morality on whether something is pleasurable" in Wikipedia. Apparently, like fat_boy, you are pulling your facts out of your arse.

Me:

John, actually that was on Wikipedia too:

From the article on him,

"[Singer] approaches ethical issues from a preference utilitarian perspective"

I'd never heard of preference utilitarianism before, so I looked it up and found this,

"preference utilitarians interpret the best consequences in terms of 'preference satisfaction'. This means that 'good' is described as the satisfaction of each person's individual preferences or desires, and a right action is that which leads to this satisfaction. Since what is good depends solely on individual preferences, there can be nothing that is in itself good or bad except for the resulting state of mind. Preference utilitarianism therefore can be distinguished by its acknowledgement that every person's experience of satisfaction will be unique.

Traditionally, utilitarians subscribe to a hedonistic philosophy, which states that utility consists in achieving pleasurable mental states. For example, the utilitarian Jeremy Bentham argued that the right thing to do was to produce the maximum amount of pleasure for all affected."

In essence, whatever feels good or brings the most pleasure is the morally right action. Utter and complete absurdity in the highest form, which have come to fruition in this man's views.

John:

This is a ludicrous approach to understanding someone's views. You see a two word description, look it up and take that as a satisfactory summary of Singer's views. It is like reading that John Kerry is a Catholic, looking up a statement of Catholic teachings, and assuming John Kerry supports them all (on contraception, for example). It should be self-evident that you would gain far more enlightenment by reading the article on Singer himself.

Even if that description was accurate, it is incomplete to the point of being useless. "Brings the most pleasure" to whom or what? There is a big difference, for example, between seeking pleasure for yourself and seeking to give it to others. Does caring for the sick and hungry call forth your moral disapproval? Singer has arguing very strongly for helping the world's poor.

Moreover, it is nonsense to believe that Singer favours pleasure in the narrow hedonistic "feel good" sense. For example:

This model also explains the priority that Singer attaches to interests over trivial desires and pleasures. For instance, one has an interest in food, but not in the pleasures of the palate that might distinguish eating steak from eating tofu, because nutrition is instrumental to many goals in one's life journey, whereas the desire for meat is not and is therefore trumped by the interest of animals in avoiding the miseries of factory farming.


and


An alternative line taken by Singer about the need for ethics[27] is that living the ethical life may be, on the whole, more satisfying than seeking only material gain. He invokes the hedonistic paradox, noting that those who pursue material gain seldom find the happiness they seek. Having a broader purpose in life may lead to more long-term happiness. On this account, impartial (self-sacrificing) behavior in particular matters may be motivated by self-interested considerations from a broader perspective.

Singer has also implicitly argued that a watertight defense of utilitarianism is not crucial to his work. In "Famine, Affluence, and Morality", he begins by saying that he would like to see how far a seemingly innocuous and widely endorsed principle can take us; the principle is that one is morally required to forego a small pleasure to relieve someone else's immense pain. He then argues that this principle entails radical conclusions — for example, that most Americans are very immoral for not giving up some luxury goods in order to donate the money for famine relief. If his reasoning is valid, either it is not very immoral to value small luxuries over saving many lives, or many Americans are very immoral. From this perspective, regardless of the soundness of Singer's fundamental defense of utilitarianism, his work has value in that it exposes conflicts between many people's stated beliefs and their actions



Singer is a very provocative thinker. I don't wish to suggest agreement with all his views. I do wish to express my disdain for shallow, thoughtless critiques.

Me:

But his own views, as described by the article, reinforce this point, that he equates human life with animal life, by saying sometimes he would consider saving a mouse over a disabled human, or thinks that the litmus test for whether a medical experiment is moral is whether we'd do it on a human baby. If not, then it's not fit for monkeys or mice either.

You speak of hypocrisy - I would hope this man is an exception to hypocrisy -- he'd better not drive his car down the road. You'd kill far too many insects this way.

What a sad day for a world that calls a man 'thinker' when he espouses views that devalue human life and place lesser value on disabled humans.

John:

Why do you insist on being obtuse? He does not equate human life with animal life. From his FAQ:

"Species membership alone isn't morally significant, but equal consideration for similar interests allows different consideration for different interests."

i.e., humans have some interests not shared by other animals, which entitle them to some special treatment.

I understand that this doesn't go far enough for you, but that doesn't justify telling untruths about how far Singer does go.

Clearly there are some who regard human life as distinct from and superior to animal life, a position that many will justify by claiming that humans have a special status in God's eyes, and they hold this to be true from the moment of conceptions until death, regardless of the level of consciousness, quality of life or anything else.

Singer doesn't believe in God, so he won't take the specialness of human life as a given. Instead, special treatment requires justification. Singer comes up with justifications that preserve most of the moral status quo that a devout religious person might insist on and an even larger proportion of the status quo that is accepted by mainstream society.

As I point out in another post, an absolutist position on the preservation of human life is very much a minority view, perhaps even among the religious. Severely disabled newborn babies are routinely allowed to die if that is the parents' wish, as it often is. Adults with severe brain injuries are taken off life support. People with severe cancer or even diabetes may elect to discontinue treatment and thus hasten their death.

Singer pushes the envelope, but not by nearly as much as his critics claim.

More rubbish. From his FAQ:

I’m not living as luxurious a life as I could afford to, but I admit that I indulge my own desires more than I should. I give about 25% of what I earn to NGO’s, mostly to organizations helping the poor to live a better life. I don’t claim that this is as much as I should give. Since I started giving, about thirty years ago, I’ve gradually increased the amount I give, and I’m continuing to do so.


Know of a lot of Nazis who followed that policy, do you?

Me:

That's what I'm contending with, that's the piece where he's absolutely wrong. Species membership has much to do with an act being moral. Killing insects or small woodland creatures, while a shame, isn't akin to murder for the specific reason that it wasn't a human that was killed. We place more value on human life than animal life, thus rendering his idea where specie membership is morally insignificant as complete hogwash.

He gives to charity. Good for him.

Since you didn't answer my question, I'll ask it again: if specie membership is morally insignificant, as he claims, isn't it hypocritical to then kill members of other species, say, insects on your windshield, by driving your car to work?

John:

This is barely an argument. "We place more value on human life". So does Singer. You are making no attempt to understand his position, thus providing further evidence in support of my contention that you are not interested in a serious discussion.

There is little point answering your questions, since you don't want them answered. Singer's web site gives the answer, but you ignore it and keep repeating the same uncomprehending rubbish.

Singer applies common moral criteria to all species but, since species differ in their attributes, the application of the common moral criteria to different attributes leads to different conclusions.

Thus if a species is capable of experiencing pain, that provides some entitlement to consideration. But species differ in their ability to experience pain. It is very doubtful that insects have conscious thoughts and hence very doubtful that they feel pain at all. Likewise, Singer attaches significance to a species capacity for memory (and hence ability to feel regret, suffer long-lasting emotional trauma etc.), their propensity for forming emotional attachments to other members of their species and so forth. Again, these differ between species.

Me:

You said, "Singer places more value on human life." No, he does it only to a point. If the human life is suffering enough, he feels it's no more valuable -- in fact, less valuable -- than a mouse. You quoted that very thing from him in this thread.

But I do want my questions answered, and I find it fascinating that you beat around the bush instead of answering the question directly, for it is a very direct question. You partially answered, saying insects probably don't feel pain -- a point which could easily be contended -- and therefore exists no moral qualm killing them en masse with your automobile. Yet you didn't answer the whole question: how about small woodland creatures? How about deer, raccoon, and other animals regularly found as roadkill next to the highway? Since they can certainly feel pain, isn't it immoral to drive your car and kill them too? By this nut-job's moral standards, we're all murderers on some level.

I understand what Singer is espousing: when considering the morality of an act, apply the same set of moral criteria to all species, but draw different conclusions based on the specie's perceived consciousness, complexity, ability to feel pain, etc. He claims if we fail to do this, we are being "speciest" -- that is, racist, only for species. Cute.

His argument falls to pieces when one considers the impractical application of his ideas -- which you have not confronted -- and the sad reality that would play out -- saving animals instead of extremely disabled people, abortion up to the time of birth and infanticide up to 30 days after birth, moral zoophilia, rejecting most all medical research on animals -- Jesus Christ, this is some sick, evil stuff. All this if we followed such an absurd system of relative morality that Singer espouses.

I've considered his position and wholeheartedly rejected it as impractical, absurd and sickening, immoral ethics born out of academic and theoretical thought that is out of touch with reality.

We truly live in a world of stupidity.

Here's a red flag that should most always send you running: an academic man espousing morality. Run like hell when that happens, for he has no basis in absolute morality and is filled with theoretical views based in humanistic thought. The end result is guys like Singer, who espouse acts that are both immoral and bad for society: from personhood for apes, to abortion up to birth, to infanticide, to moral zoophilia. This, and he was granted the "Humanist of the Year" award.

Do you know the title the world might call this man?

"Progressive".

"Free Thinker".

"Open-minded".

His allies in academia would go yet further and grant him every kind of honor and award they can fashion.

On the other hand, anyone who stands against such sickening, evil beliefs are bestowed with honors of a different kind:

"Bigot."

"Close-minded".

"Backwards."

"Extremist."

Hey, now I can add "Speciest" to that list.

Dear Lord...when will You end this madness?

Repentance

To most folks, the idea of repentance has such a negative, religious connotation, it hardly has any real-world meaning remaining. When you hear the word 'repent', the mind conjures up a man sitting in a confession box next to a Catholic priest, blabbing about his problems. Or possibly, a homeless man holding a cardboard "The end is near - repent!" sign around his neck.

In reality, however, repenting is something a bit different that our modern view of repentance.

The word 'repent' in the Bible comes from the Hebrew word 'teshuva', literally meaning "return". The idea is, turn away from that sin and return back to God. Turning your back on your wrongs and moving to a stronger faith in God. Scriptural repentance has absolutely nothing to do with confessing one's sins to a Catholic priest.

Confession and repentance does go hand-in-hand, however. How can you repent -- turn your back on sin -- if one doesn't acknowledge and admit your sin to God? (Note that this does not require a priest or any religious person.) If you've done wrong, if you've done evil, personally admit it to God and turn your back on that sin.

First Fruits of Zion covers this in detail:

A sinner should turn back from his sin, and should confess his misdeed before God as Scripture says, “When a man or woman commits any of the sins of mankind, acting unfaithfully against the LORD, and that person is guilty, then he shall confess his sins which he has committed.” (Numbers 5:6–7) The main element is remorse in the heart, in truth, over the past; and one must take it upon himself not to do such a thing ever again. This [confession] is the essential part of repentance; but the more one confesses, the more praiseworthy he is.” (Chofetz Chaim)
Commentary:

It is a mitzvah of the Torah to confess our sins and repent from them. When we sin, we are not to remain in the sin, nor are we to passively accept the fact that we are sinners. We are to strive against sin. We must humble ourselves to confess the sin and then turn away from it. It is a positive commandment, to confess one’s sins and repent from them. Therefore it is a sin to leave a sin unconfessed!

Even the smallest sin should be confessed. Confession should be made privately, but audibly, directly to God. King David says, “I acknowledged my sin to You, and my iniquity I did not hide; I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the LORD; and You forgave the guilt of my sin. Selah. (Psalm 32:5) Yochanon the beloved disciple says, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:9)

Confession and repentance work together. It says, “then he shall confess his sins which he has committed and repent.” (Numbers 5:7) Confession is the first step toward repentance. When Yochanon called Israel to immerse as a sign of repentance, they came to be “baptized by him in the Jordan River, confessing their sins.” (Mark 1:5)

But a person may hesitate. His evil inclination will accuse him and say, “How dare I confess this sin to God? Didn’t I just confess this same sin yesterday and resolve not to do it again? How dare I come before Him again with the same offense?” When this happens, we must shove away the evil inclination from our thoughts and remember that God truly does desire our repentance. “There will be more more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.” (Luke 15:7) A person must never give up on himself. He must say to himself, “God has not given up on me, neither should I. I will try again. I will start over, brand new, beginning right now. God has surely washed me clean by Messiah’s blood. I am a new creature in Messiah. He will strengthen me to walk uprightly.”

The mitzvah of confessing our sins before God is one we can carry out confidently in Messiah. Thanks to the efficacious sacrifice of Messiah, we know that our confession and repentance will always be received. “He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions.” (Colossians 2:13)