Wizard of God

contributed by Art Cavazos

survivor of clergy abuse

In my drunken stupor last night,
I spoke to someone about my abuse.
It hit me like Thor’s hammer,
The Wizard of Oz shares more than one use.

 When Toto pulled back the drapes,
the illusion was gone.
The struggle that ensued,
defines my struggle with Python.

 The abused are Toto,
The Wizard is Church.
Dorothy, Scarecrow, Lion, and Tin Man,
continue to tithe to the priest at his perch.

 Blindly following flawed doctrine,
not knowing they have the power to change it.
The drapes do not need any interpretation,
we struggle with Wizard and fancy gadget.

 We see the Wizard for what it is,
no fire, and smoke, no thunderous voice.
No holographic image of the boogey man,
supports the men that made the wrong choice.

 In black and white doggy sight,
Dorothy hasn't happened yet.
That's the problem with time and space,
Dorothy happens when she sees the threat.

 Dorothy the inquisitive parishioner,
who confronts the Wizard.
Not a victim at all like me,
The tithings then are scissored.

 Eventually the nutless Lion,
And the pyrophobic Scarecrow.
Will kindly ask of the tin man,
if his axe they can borrow.

 Hack to the truth,
of what Peter started.
Slough off all the pedophiles,
Secret societies thwarted.

 Toto steps out of rhythm to think,
Observing the church as they fumble.
He thinks without rhythm, rhyme, or meter,
He stops, and narrates for us without mumble:

Toto’s prose:

The nice lady in the bubble is God.
On one paw, she already knows that all Dorothy has to do,
is click her heels three times to get home.
instead, the poor girl endures a cruel journey,
just for grins and giggles.

 On the other paw,
maybe the essence of the journey,
enriches her soul as she puts together the Yellow Brick Posse.
Either way, instant gratification ruins a good movie.
Trials and tribulations, earn rewards in the end.

 The apple trees made me wet my fur.
If I had hands instead of paws,
I would have put the tin man’s axe to them.
Those flying monkeys were a trip.

These freaky moments represent our trauma and betrayal,
at the hands of the green faced clergyman on the broom.
Dorothy and I share a strange connection,
She’s on the inside, I’m on the outside.

Toto’s close:

I've ricocheted off the point just a bit,
I'll be drunk in a slight.
That will suffice for my mental red shoes.
At least for a while, tonight.

One Justice for All

Here is my problem with Harriet Miers as a nominee for Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States of America: I have a litmus test for federal judical appointees, and I am not convinced she could pass it. This doesn't mean that I think she isn't of the highest intellectual caliber. On the contrary, she is a well-educated and experienced lawyer, a leader of lawyers, and a valued crony of George W. Bush. No, smart isn't the problem. I simply suspect that she has spent her life thinking about politics and lawyering - she must have done so at some level of consciousness to guard the door of her lips so well that no word has dropped one way or the other about any current "hot-button" issues that her potential opponents could use to disqualify her out of hand.

Well, what's wrong with spending a life thinking about politics and lawyering? Nothing, except that the title of her prospective new job includes the word "Justice." And that is the subject of my one question litmus test: What is Justice? You have two hours. Talk.

On the other hand, that question is far from the clever, political, lawyerly minds of the good Senators who questioned her predecessor, John Roberts. Amid all the sparring over the respect of precedent - code for, "Will you let Roe v. Wade stand regardless of your personal feelings about it?" - the subject of Justice itself never came up. I don't expect it will emerge from the fracas this time, either.

Instead, the focus will be on the nature of Ms. Mier's Evangelical - code for "Christian Fundamentalist" beliefs, now that the Bush Administration has clumsily made an issue of it in order to mollify their perceived "Religious Right" base of support (thus outing their ultimate stealth candidate), and whether those beliefs will permit her to rule on the merits of the case (on abortion, of course) rather than based primarily on what she brings to the case.

So much for how the urge to fight over abortion demeans our public discourse, especially our discourse around appointments to the US Supreme Court. It even limits the choices of candidates to those least outspoken, indeed it makes that criterion more important than all the others. Perhaps it's out of place for me to say it, but I question the wisdom of that.

Disaster Porn and Other Bad News

Well, it took Hurricane Katrina, a major national disaster to knock the US 24-hour news spin cycle off Cindy Sheehan. I sympathize with Cindy's pain, and pity her psychopathology, but to me, she is the poster child for everything the Bastard Jihad says about America and the West regarding our hypersensitivity to casualties, our lack of memory and logic, and our lack of will to win. Spinning 24-hours per day on her may have been a way for our desperate national media outlets to fill air time until something more noteworthy came along. But it also gave comfort to our enemies, and in that, it was thoughtless and irresponsible at the very least.

What isn't making the news about Hurricane Katrina is that this is a real test of the fledgling National Incident Management System (NIMS). So far, it looks like there are a lot of bugs to work out of it. Instead of sober reporting covering and evaluating the local, state, and natiional responses (and usual lack of international response) to the disaster, the media fills our screens with "human interest" stories and graphic images of destruction. The same scenes can be replayed many times in a single day, or even a single hour, with almost no increase in information. It's a kind of disaster pornography instead of hard news.

Meanwhile, as Shiite Muslims gather for Ashura, they are betrayed by occasional Sunni Muslim sympathizers with the Bastard Jihad. Some of these sympathizers have actually handed out traditional tea and sweets to the Shiite pilgrims, but with poison in them. And a stampede on a bridge in Baghdad triggered by rumors of a suicide bomber in their midst has cost the lives of more than 600 pilgrims. That's many times more casualties that could have been caused by an actual suicide bomber.

That's the bad news. The Good News is that death and destruction are not the last Word. It's just the word for today.

So turn off all thoughts about tomorrow and get as good a night's sleep as you can. "Sufficient unto this day is the evil thereof," said Jesus, a 1st century Palestinian Jew, whom Christians regard as the Messiah, and whom Muslims regard as the Prophet Issa.

Occidentalism

Occidentalism, by Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit describes not so much a worldview, but a multifaceted prejudice against the West and Westerners. Occidentalists believe that Western ideas, including liberal democracy and capitalism, are inherently dehumanizing, and have already dehumanized Westerners to the point where they are less than human. Some Occidentalists are violent, like al-Qaeda. Some are Westerners themselves, engaging in nihilistic self-loathing. Indeed Buruma and Margalit trace the literary roots of Occidentalism to the West itself, particularly German Romanticism and its toxic offshoots, National Socalism (Nazism) and Marxism.

They quote Wagner, who stated that the dangerous, seductive Venusberg in his opera Tannhauser, "stands for 'Paris, Europe, the West': that frivolous, commercialized and corrupt world in which 'freedom and also alienation' are more advanced than in our 'provincial Germany with its comfortable backwardness.'" (p22)

Thus Occidentalism is anti-urban (specifically anti-Western urban - the West did not invent the city), but "far from being the dogma favored by downtrodden peasants, Occidentalism more often reflects the fears and prejudices of urban intellectuals, who feel displaced in a world of mass commerce." This is because "in an Americanized society, dominated by commercial culture, the place of philosophers and literati was marginal at best." (p34)

Now, however, "most devout Muslims are not political Islamists so much as advocates of enforcing public morality. They yearn for what they see as the traditional way of life, with they identify with Islam. Even if they have little idea what the ideal islamic state should look like, they care deeply about sexual mores, corruption, and traditional family life. Islam, to the believers, is the only source and guardian of traditional collective morality. And sexual morality is largely about women, about regulating female behavior. This is so because a man's honor is dependent on the behavior of the women related to him. The issue of women is not marginal; it lies at the heart of Islamic Occidentalism." (p128)

So what we have here is a prejudice against the West, which received its first expressions in the West itself. These expressions were adopted for use against the West by those who hated it, and elaborated by various non-Westerners to suit their situations. The most news-grabbing current form of Occidentalism is what I call the Bastard Jihad, which mis-identifies Islam with the pre-Islamic honor/shame cultures in which Islam took root. The role of women in these societies comes more from the honor/shame focus of these societies, which limited the liberation of women that Islam had begun.

Some in these societies feel their religion under mortal threat from Globalization (which they see as Westernization), but their religion is secure. Islam transcends culture and will survive and prosper in any case. Even their cultures will survive. It is only the honor/shame orientation of their cultures that will not withstand the onslaught of Globalization.

Well, good riddance to it. As I have stated elsewhere, Islam already transcends honor/shame morality, because it is theologically impossible to humiliate a Muslim. Yet, the rhetoric of humiliation, based on honor/shame cultures, is what the Bastard Jihad uses to whip up the hatred it needs to motivate its cannon fodder. It's not just an abomination, it's a shame.

Hiroshima Remembered

This Saturday will be the 60th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan, by the United States of America. Given the state of education in the US and the wider world, one wonders how many people realize that the attack was not unprovoked - that the attack was part of a tactic to avoid a massive invasion of the Japan and the horrendous casualties such an invasion would have cost to both to the US and Allied Forces, as well as to the Japanese military and civilian population. That the attack ended World War II. That the Empire of Japan had invaded and butchered its neighbors, and had executed a devastating pre-emptive air strike against the US Navy at Pearl Harbor 3 1/2 years earlier, in order to prevent tue US from interfering with its war in the Pacific. That Japan was so prepared to fight to the finish that it took two atomic bombings to convince their leadership to give up. That anything less that Unconditional Surrender would have been immoral, after what Japan had done to its neighbors, because anything less than unconditional surrender would have failed to dismantle the leadership that made that war.

And now, with hindsight, one wonders whether an invasion followed by an occupation would have led to an insurgency. Perhaps the atomic bombing led the Japanese to believe that if they tried an insurgency, the occupiers would simply have withdrawn and resumed atomic bombing.

Still, there is the realization on the part of those who developed the bombs, especially Leo Szilard, that had the US lost some subsequent major conflict, those who had much to do with the atomic bombing of Japan might have been tried for war crimes. See his short story, "My Trial as a War Criminal," in The Voice of the Dolphins, Stanford University Press, 1961.

That is to say, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and, some days later, Nagasaki, were evil in both their intent and their effects. It's just that they were less evil than the alternatives. May their like not ever happen again to any people.

The Bastard Jihad strikes again

Now it seems that the perpetrators of the 7/7 attacks in London were Shahzad Tanweer, Hasib Hussain, Sidique Khan, and Germaine Lindsay. They were four friends, three Muslims described as Britons of Pakistani descent, and the last a Jamaican convert to Islam. Britain's MI5 suspects that a fifth man, Magdy El-Nashar, an Egyptian chemical engineer, supplied the explosives they carried in the backpacks they used to turn themselves into human bombs on three subway ("tube") trains and a bus.

In other words, terrorists did not infiltrate into London from outside England. It was an inside job, carried out by 2nd-generation immigrants who meet weekly to play soccer (football). Perhaps England and the rest of Europe could do more to assimilate their new Muslim immigrants, teaching them not only soccer, but language, and most of all, respect for other peoples' lives and beliefs. But these were not new immigrants. They were second generation, born and raised in England, native English speakers. And the fact remains that of all immigrant groups, only Muslims are known for massacring their adopted countrymen in their adopted homelands. It is not politically correct to say it, but, in case it has not become obvious by now, something is wrong with Islam.

Islam is infected with the toxic ideology of Bin Laden and company, the people I have called jihaddicts. They think that Islam has declined in world power and influence because Islam has been and is everywhere under attack, and that defending it requires extreme measures, including suicide bombing. Their memory of humiliation, abuse, and defeat stretches back past the establishment of the nation-state of modern Israel in 1948, past the British mandate in Palestine, past the demise of the Turkish Caliphate at the end of WW I, past the end of Muslim rule in Spain in the late 1400s, all the way to the Crusades of approximately A.D. 1095-1271. According to their ideology, the failure of Islam to dominate the world is due to the more or less constant warfare that non-Muslims have made against Muslims for the last 1000 years or so.

The truth of the matter, however, is that Islam was expansionist from its founding in the early 600s until the Islamic Ottoman Empire was finally driven south of the Danube River in the Battle of Vienna (Austria) in 1683. The expansion faltered mostly because the Islamic world felt that it had nothing to learn from the civilizations which it was seeking to dominate. First technologically, and then economically, Islamic civilization simply fell behind. And it has stayed behind, despite the most massive infusion of wealth from the rest of the world in history (to purchase, not steal, oil).

In a word, the ideology of Bin Laden and company is paranoid. It is also narcissistic, in that it has an exaggerated sense of entitlement, insisting on rights for Muslims in non-Islamic countries that are not accorded to non-Muslims in Islamic countries. Finally, it is like borderline personality disorder in its compulsively generating conflict wherever Islam meets another culture, and psychopathic in its disregard for the moral code it claims to be striving for.

This is not to say that adherents of this ideology are psychologically abnormal - Marc Sageman presents evidence that they are quite normal. But that makes their sin worse - they are psychologically normal people who embrace an ideology that is sick.

But mostly, the ideology of Bin Laden and company (al-Qaeda and its sympathizers, hangers on, etc.) is illegitimate. It calls for defensive (and therefore unlimited) jihad in places and times where Islam and Muslims are not under attack from anyone but the illegitimate mujahidin themselves. [It strains the imagination to wonder how a single Muslim anywhere on earth is defended by blowing up trains in London or Madrid, or by the 9/11 attacks against America. Indeed, the situation of world Islam seems to have been made worse by these events.] Since another word in English for "illegitimate" is "bastard," one wonders whether it might be fair to characterize the Global Salafist Jihad as a Bastard Jihad, and its practicioners as Bastard Mujahidin, in order to distinguish them from legitimate jihad and legitimate mujahidin, such as those who fought to defend Bosnian Muslims when their lives were at stake.

Again, this is not to say that the Bastard Mujahidin are in any way illegitimate in terms of their families, their character, or their general behavior. Generally speaking, they seem to be honest people (mostly men) of good character. They are psychologically normal as noted above, of average intelligence, and have no particular bad habits. As Mike Sheuer notes in Through our Enemies' Eyes they see themselves in much the same light as America's Revolutionary Patriots of 1776 saw themselves. What makes them evil and dangerous is not their vices, but the illegitimate perversion of their virtues.

Of course, I could be wrong about my characterization of what I see as a problem in Islam, because I am neither a psychologist nor a Muslim. Further, my remarks may be self-serving because, as a non-Muslim, I am in the class of people the Bastard Jihad considers targets. But consider that I am willing to support any Muslim in their Islam who is willing to support me in my Christianity. Like the Qur'an, I consider that Jews, Christians, and Muslims all worship the same God, and are thus engaged in the common enterprise of trying to be the People(s) of God.

Which brings us to another aspect of the problem: there is a strain of thought in Islam proper that lends itself to an interpretation that is intolerant of other faiths. It is the totalitarian streak that claims that true Islam is not just a religion, but a total way of life that governs all aspects of behavior, public and private under Islamic Law, aka Sharia. Now, if an individual or a community wants to live under Sharia, that's fine. But if that individual or community wants to force Sharia on everyone, that is a recipe for conflict.

The totalitarian strain in Islam is understandable, because Islam's Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) was simultaneously a Revealer of God's sovereign word, a successful general, and a head of state. But one might note that there was division in Islam over who should succeed the Prophet from the moment of his death. Those who thought his successor should be chosen by a council of his closest followers became the Sunnis, while those who thought the Prophet's closest male relative should succeed him became the Shia. Since then there have been numerous divisions in Islam, and at times several Caliphs (Commanders of the Faithful) simultaneously.

That is, when Right Guidance was believed to flow only down from the top, from the Caliph(s) to the people, there was division, and as history has borne out, wrong guidance many times. The source of this is simple. When the power of Religion was combined with the power of the State, the temptation to exert one's will over one's fellow human beings proved too seductive, and led the leaders away from God. It took 1400 years for Western Civilization to work out the concept of separation of Church and State. But, as Farid Zakaria notes, the gap created by setting the two powers against each other provided the space for human liberty (freedom from the arbitrary power of either Church or State) to arise.

Thus, I think that Islam will become less prone to violence when it realizes that leadership must become an affair for specialists, with temporal leaders concerning themselves with what people do to each other's bodies and property, and religious leaders concerning themselves with people's souls and their relationship with God. Further, I think Islam will experience a Renaissance when it realizes that Right Guidance can also flow from the bottum up - from the collective wisdom of the mass of believers. Then I think we will see a re-establishment of the Caliphate, with the Caliph elected democratically by the believers themselves.

In the meantime, Islam and its neighbors on this planet must battle the cancer of the Bastard Jihad, which seduces its youth and steals the future they could build for Muslims and everyone else, were they not destroying themselves and everyone around them.

For more, see Li'l Johnnie's Jihad Page.

Ellowen Deeowen

"Ellowen Deeowen. London," wrote Salman Rushdie in The Satanic Verses. Ellowen Deeowen is a tough old girl, who has absorbed more than her share of bomb blasts, first from the IRA, and now from al-Qaeda. Expect her to grieve, and then to go on. But don't expect her to cave in, like Madrid. She has too much cohones for that.

But it sets me to thinking. How do we beat the jihaddicts? Michael Sheuer, author of the definitive biography on Bin Laden, thinks the West and the US should change our policies toward the Middle East so as not to anger so many Muslims. His idea is to drain away the motivation for people to volunteer to do violence.

I rather think that the jihaddicts are in business to stay in business. They will adapt. They will say, "See, we made them submit. They changed their policy. We are winning. Join us, and help us finish the Jews and Crusaders. We shall make them all Muslims or corpses." So much for appeasement. How about defense?

The problem with defense-only (aka "Homeland Security") is that it is expensive, difficult, and easily penetrated. Suppose we could detect a suspected suicide bomber, and temporarily immobilize him or her while authorities checked him or her out. The countermeasure is cheap and easy. Use a cell-phone, garage door opener, or other remote control so that the suicide-bomber's boss (hidden somewhere else) can set the bomb off.

Offense, making the bad guys insecure in their homelands, has its appeal, but it also has difficulties. To catch terrorists, you have to be able to go where they go, and hang out where they hang out, without being detected. We probably have people who can do that, but not nearly enough, and even they can't go everywhere.

Besides, even if we could get the heads of Usama Bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi delivered to the Pentagon in cardboard boxes full of dry ice, what would we really gain beyond a sense of satisfaction? As Bin Laden himself has said, more "Bin Ladens" would rise up to take his place. Well, sort of.

Perhaps we need to step back and look at the array of possible outcomes of all this struggle. All the "kinetic" options (guns, missiles, bombs, etc.) have limited effectiveness and potential undesirable side effects. Conflict done with armament alone has a way of escalating. Maybe we should work on the information end of things as well. For example, why is it that Bin Laden and company get to decide who is a Muslim and who is an Infidel? Who gave them that authority? We should seek to get Bin Laden and company marginalized to the extent that they themselves are the recognized "Enemies of God," because they commit the Sin of loving jihad more than God, illegitimately calling for defensive, unlimited jihad against those who are not attacking Muslims, contrary to established Islamic Law.

What are we getting for our sacrifices in Iraq?

First let's be clear. The insurgency in Iraq is killing more Iraqis and fewer Americans. Despite this, polls now indicate that a majority of Americans want to get out of Iraq. The insurgent leaders take note of our media and know our poll results. They now know what they have always thought: what counts in defeating the fledgling Iraqi democracy is the number of bombs they set off. Even if they mostly kill Iraqis and alienate the Iraqi people, the bombings weaken the will of America to do what it takes to support the new government. If the insurgents just keep bombing, the Americans will simply give up and go away.

What happens then? Unlike Vietnam, there is no army ready to invade Iraq the way the North Vietnamese Regular Army invaded South Vietnam after the Americans abandoned it, and refused even to supply the South Vietnamese Army with the spare parts they needed to keep their weapons working. Or is there? Iran is investing in Iraq, supplying funds and clergy to set up schools in the Shi'ite areas. Perhaps Iran has designs on Iraq. Or perhaps the insurgents hope to bring back the Baathists (Saddam Hussein's party, which blended Nazi ideology with pan-Arabism).

Either way, if Americans walk away from the Iraqi democracy before it can stand on its own, Americans will have nullified the sacrifices of American troops and their families, and betrayed the Iraqi people yet again. And instead of a democratic Iraq as the nucleus of an Islamic Enlightenment whose ideas and ideology could defeat the Global Salafist Jihad, we will have another failed state providing the Jihad with a new base of operations.

Americans will also have given up a valuable distraction. You see, if Iraq is dividing our forces in the Global War on Terror (GWOT), it is also dividing the forces of the terrorists. All those jihaddicts in Iraq are not in Afghanistan. Further, all the press about Iraq "sucks the oxygen" out of stories on Afghanistan. Whatever the jihaddicts do in Afghanistan gets no traction in the West because of Iraq. Essentially, Iraq is providing the cover Afghanistan needs as it transitions to a post-war state.

So, whether or not we moved with too much or too little haste in deposing Saddam, I think we should stay our course and leave Iraq when the Iraqi people, through their government, tell us to go, and not a moment sooner.

Because, Iraq or no Iraq, we are going to be confronting global Islamist insurgency until the insurgency burns itself out. I'd rather we do it in Iraq than in America and Europe (which is acting in its own self-interest by freeloading off the American effort in Iraq). And I'd rather that those who do not want to oppose it with violence oppose it with nonviolence instead of appeasing it or just giving in.

Intellectual Warfare: Mathematics is Culturally Relative

Diane Ravitch has an editorial in the Wall Street Journal (June 20, p A14) entitled "Ethnomathematics." She specifically cites a new college textbook for Education majors, Rethinking Mathematics: Teaching Social Justice by the Numbers which as she puts it "shows how problem solving, ethnomathematics and political action can be merged." Ethnomathematics is based on the principle that students will learn better if they are taught math in the way it was developed by their ancestral culture. [Does this mean that students of mixed ethnicity must do each lesson more than once? Must Italian kids use Roman Numerals to do long division?]

First let me say that pure mathematics is a language, which if you stick to its grammatical rules, guarantees that the statements you generate are true. You can generate falsehoods by making mistakes in the application of mathematics to real world problems, but that is applied mathematics. Pure mathematics guarantees truth because it only talks about itself.

In that respect, it is a closed system, whose structure is independent of the cultural and historical processes by which it was discovered. In other words, contrary to some multiculturalists, mathematics is not the property of Western Civilization, nor is it linked with the values of oppressors. It simply is. Whether you like it or not.

Pure mathematics serves only one cause: Truth. That is to say, mathematics is the only opportunity that humans have to encounter Absolute Truth by means of unaided reason. Mathematical statements are true, because, within the confines of mathematics, you can prove them to be true. There is a corollary to this: the only reason to do mathematics is to get the right answer!

As such, I think mathematics has a positive moral value: One can experience the limits of human will and knowledge by encountering and exploring mathematics. But those who relentlessly politicize everything including mathematics, don't want to encounter limits to their will. Ultimately they are attempting to demolish the chief obstacle to their will by deconstructing the concept of Absolute Truth itself.

I have a question for such people. When Truth is overthrown, and all is relative, what limits will you respect when you are in power, and to what will you appeal when you are out of power?

Keep mathematics pure and simple, and emphasize that in mathematics at least, there is right and wrong. Teach ways to achieve social justice in Civics class, please. And in that forum, teach ways in which social justice advocates have depended on mathematical truth. Because seeking Justice without regard for Truth leads to Tyranny.

Psychological Warfare II: God and Country are not Values

I have been told of a book on methods of psychotherapy in which the subject of values was discussed at length. Here is the list of Values Domains from the book:

1. Primary love relationship


2. Children/family


3. Friendships


4. Work/career


5. Community


6. Personal growth/development


7. Environment/planet


8. Play/recreation

Now, no such list can include everything, but one can quibble about whether it includes the most important things. The things that make us who we are. One wonders how the values of, say, Pat Tillman might fit into this scheme.

Apparently the authors consider religion and spirituality to be subsumed under personal growth and development. As if spirituality were an option like reading a book, or learning to play piano.

I have learned from VCBC's Forum thread on "God = Nature" that putting Spirituality under Personal Growth may be misleading. Maybe it should go under Environment. Or maybe, it should replace Environment, so that psychotherapists could explore their own feelings about the absence of one of their core value domains. Because for many people the Environment is the transcendent value that they substitute for the spirituality that they have rejected, or of which they are simply ignorant.

Ah, but what about "Country?" Perhaps that could be included under Community, but Community is usually understood to be one's neighborhood, or maybe one's town. Maybe it also includes one's voluntary associations. I think "Country" was left out because many psychologists think that nationalism of any kind is a negative value. Nationalism and religion just cause wars. Never mind that the Enlightenment that spawned the liberal democracies that defend individual rights with national power originally sprang from Protestant Christianity.

I wonder how they would handle a client with the Pat Tillman's values. I suppose they would struggle with counter-transferrence issues of antipathy toward religion and nationalism, and try to cure the client of both.

Imagine that. Values for psychotherapists with no room for God or Country. All I can say is that if your Boy Scout or Girl Scout has behavioral problems, choose his or her therapist very carefully.

Psychological Warfare: Defining Conservatism as Mental Illness

Here is part of the text of a bulk mailing from a Society of Psychoanalytic Psychologists advertising a Scientific Meeting:

In a culture based on male domination, and in which most things feminine tend to be devalued (even if they are secretly envied and, at times, fetishistically worhiped by men), the most important thing about being a man is not being a woman.

The adult male imperative to be unlike females, to repudiate maternal caretaking (or anything that resembles it), and enact the most hypertrophic caricatures of phallic masculinity is just as powerful in politics as it is in personal life.

... femiphobia -- the male fear of the feminine -- operates unconsiously in some men to influence their choice of candidates, their stands on a variety of political issues, and their attraction to fundamentalist world views and practices.

The mailing further mentions books like The Wimp Factor (Beacon Press, 2004), and, Taken In: American Gullibility and the Reagan Mythos, (Life Sciences Press, 1990), both of which "bring the irrational in politics into sharper relief."

Well, now we know. If you've ever voted Republican, it's because you're not rational. You've got a complex about the sufficiency of your dick.

This is an example of psychologists abusing their discipline to define as diseased those who do not share their political/philosophical orthodoxy. It smacks of the way in which psychologists in Soviet Russia confined dissidents to mental hospitals. I could be wrong, but I think their liberal orthodoxy may be every bit as dogmatic and uncompromising as some of the conservatism and fundamentalism they (and I) deplore.

In any event, I reject attempts to politicize any quest for truth, be it scientific or religious, as morally wrong.

But if you're in the business, and this is your cup of tea, you can get continuing education credits for this sort of thing.

Music of the Spheres

Normally this blog is about the intersection of religion, science, and society. But music falls into that intersection. My wife and I went to a jazz concert last night.

Laurence Hobgood began to weave the tapestry on his piano, threads both fat and thin, some dark, others iridescent, scintillating. The fabric thus established, Rob Amster began painting impressionist touches on the bass, delicately at first like Matisse, then arcing, turning, laying it down in 3D like Jackson Pollock. And behind it all, simmering, Frank Parker cooked like the Iron Chef of Percussion. Together they created a meditation, acoustically re-arranging the brainwaves of the audience, easing us onto the edge of trancendence.

That was the first five minutes. Then Kurt Elling came onstage with his voice. Elling's CDs cannot be played as background music. Your attention is captured by his voice. When he is live, onstage, your attention is riveted. It's not just the sound, it's the intonation, the phrasing, the romantic poetry, the delivery. And he plays with his voice and the microphone. He has fun, and pulls the audience right along with him. Nor is he afraid to touch upon his roots as a Divinity student. In the second of two homages to Duke Ellingtion, he sang "Lord, look down, and see my people through."

It looks like musically, that is what's happening. We no longer have Sinatra with us, but we will be all right. We have Elling. And the best thing is that he is about 15 years younger than I am. There's a good chance I will get to enjoy new Kurt Elling material every now and then for the rest of my days.

Those Progressive Germans

Let's say you're a Volga German, a Russdeutscher, one of those ethnic Germans who descends from German settlers invited into Russia by Catherine the Great to serve as a buffer between the Russians and the Chechens. Things happen, a couple of world wars, the collapse of Communism, and in the newly independent republics, all the jobs are for the natives, not for the transplants, i.e., the Volga Germans. So, you decide for the sake of your children to move back to Germany, a land neither you nor your parents have ever seen. What happens to you?

Well, since you're now on the dole, the German government gets to decide where you live. They break up your extended family, which has just spent a generation living on one street, and settle each nuclear family in a different city or suburb. Why? To force you to interact with Germany's Germans, to re-Germanize you. It's basically a planned program of intensive assimilation. And it is very effective. Within five years, you give up many of your old ways of dress and speech. Your children are all either in school or have good jobs. Within ten years, all that remains to distinguish you outwardly from the other Germans is your willingness and aptitude for hard work and thrift (fixing up your new house yourself), and a slight accent. And well, maybe you're still more likely to vote CDU than SPD, but not much more likely.

But if you are a Muslim immigrant from the Gulf states, you might wind up on the dole, but there is no intensive program of assimilation for you. You are left in a virtual ghetto, you keep your old speech, and you keep your old values. Except, maybe as a second-class citizen of Germany (even though you may be a third generation citizen), you may become radicalized.

Now maybe intensive assimilation would be poorly received by both the Muslim immigrants and by the native Germans. I know one ethnic German who was assaulted by other Germans in a German city, because he looked "like one of those Turks." Perhaps the new Muslim immigrants would not fare well in the isolation that would be part of an intensive assimilation program. And perhaps the Muslim community would view intensive assimilation as an attempt at cultural (and religious) genocide on the part of the Germans. Or maybe it's just that the German people and government don't want the Muslim immigrants to be assimilated, or just don't care, or maybe they just don't think about it.

Without intensive assimilation of non-ethnic German immigrants, Germany is allowing the creation of a reservoir for radicalism to take hold. Remember that Mohammed Atta, the ringleader of the 9/11 attacks, was trained in engineering in Germany. He was not a radical when he entered Germany, but he was certainly radicalized by the time he left. If Muslims were more intensively assimilated, they would remain Muslim, but they would perhaps absorb some of the West's humanism, rather than merely be repelled by its secularism and consumerism. Such might have been the case with Atta.

Now, I could as well pick on any European country regarding the failure to assimilate new immigrants. I only single out Germany, because I happen to be more familiar with it. For that matter, the United States is no longer very intentional about assimilation, about "The Great Melting Pot." But the American culture is somehow better at assimilating immigrants anyway, mostly because everyone in America is decended from immigrants, unless their ancestors walked across the land bridge between Asia and Alaska at the end of the last Ice Age.

If I ran Guantanamo

It's too late now, but if I ran Guantanamo, I would turn it into an Islamic Studies Institute. I would hand each new internee a Qur'an in their native language (if such translation were obtainable) with parallel translation into English, and of course, parallel Arabic original text. I would assign each internee an American interrogator, with instructions to both internee and interrogator that the internee is to spend 1 hour per day instructing the interrogator in Islam, according to the internee's best understanding, and according to the Qur'an.

It may sound preposterous, but at least it would get the internees to talk. And it would provide us with a deep insight into how they understand God, Islam, the world, and themselves. We might not get the factual information we seek, but we would get to know our enemies in a profound and human way.

And they would get to know us. I would instruct the interrogators to challenge the internees' erroneous assumptions and conclusions, and I would give the interrogators plenty of backup: psychologists, theologians (of their own faith as well as Islam) philosophers, and sociologists. That way, when the internees are finally released (as most of them have been already) they would have been exposed to a different viewpoint.

Finally, it would get the US better press. Nah. That's hoping for too much.

Treasonable Bias

Newsweek has retracted its story that interrogators at Guantanamo Bay desecrated the Qur'an. They made a mistake, they say. Meanwhile people have been killed in rioting in Afghanistan, and the US image around the world has been done irreparable harm. Like the calumny against Proctor & Gamble (they were repeatedly accused of encouraging witchcraft until they changed their charming Man-in-the-Moon logo), this story will resurface indefinitely, because so many people either want to believe it, or - more to the point - want others to believe it. I suspect that Newsweek took the attitude that "Yeah, that sounds like something those bastards would do," and printed the story without corroboration. If so, then they have given aid and comfort to the enemy in time of war. If they weren't journalists, it would be treason.

Contain or Kill

A long time ago, I quit watching CBS's "Sixty Minutes." Every week the show would report one or more carefully chosen outrages to get its audience's blood boiling. I decided that I did not need to exercise my "fight or flight" reaction that regularly. Well, this weekend, I screwed up, watched the show, and there it was: an expose on the northern California prison gang, "Nuestra Familia." Our Family, as it is called in English, has its leadership based in solitary confinement in Pelican Bay State Prison's Secure Housing Unit (SHU), and is in the drug-trafficking and murder business. Now, I am normally against the death penalty, and have proposed legislation to substitute social isolation for execution.

But the example of Nuestra Familia shows makes me think I have been too naive. I now think that if a convict commits a capital crime in prison, or engages in a conspiracy to do so, then that convict should be subject to total isolation. By that I mean no contact with other inmates and no visitors (other than his or her attorney), ever. Further, the convict should not be allowed to send anything to anyone anywhere — no messages, no postcards, nothing. Any materials that go into the cell must be destroyed when they come out. That should be sufficient to restrain the convict from committing further capital crimes or engaging in conspiracies to commit them. But if that is not enough, then maybe execution is the only alternative.

On the other hand, the proposal California's Governator is considering is this: disperse the "Generals" of Nuestra Familia from Pelican Bay to other states. The idea is that the miles of isolation from each other will "break up" the gang. The reality is that the gang will nucleate new gangs in other states.

No, I think we should keep Nuestra Familia in Northern California and deal with it there. It's criminally stupid to send their leaders off to teach their tradecraft nationwide.

Bring on the Filibuster!

It looks like the US Senate will take up the issue of changing Senate rules to permit cloture (ending a filibuster) by a simple majority, rather than by by the currently required 60 votes, at least in the case of voting on presidential nominees to the federal judiciary. The so-called "Nuclear Option" of gutting the filibuster rules is a bad idea for everyone, and a better solution exists.

At issue are some 7 judicial nominations that have been stalled in the Senate, one for nearly four years. The Republicans blame the Democrats, asserting that their threat of filibuster (blocking a vote by endless debate because they don't have enough votes to win it) has caused the delay. But the Republicans are the majority and control the schedule. The Republicans have caused the delay by not bringing the contested nominations to the Senate floor, and forcing the Democrats to begin their threatened filibuster.

The filibuster is available to prevent the majority from tyrannizing the minority. If the Republicans change the rules, the American public will see it for the over-reach and power-grab that it is, and will turn the Republicans out. Even if the Republicans can maintain their majority for an election cycle or two, eventually the Democrats will get back in power. And then, when the Republicans want to filibuster an outrageously left-wing nominee, whatever will they do? The Republican Party has been billing itself as the folks who play by the rules, of late. It now seems they, too, want to change the rules in the middle of the game when when the rules prove sufficiently inconvenient.

To avoid the "Nuclear Option," some Republicans and Democrats are trying to work out a compromise in which Democrats allow four of the seven to come up for a vote, but veto the other three. This would allow the Democrats to effectively control the Senate without being in the majority. Such a compromise is also a bad idea, because it is undemocratic. Although the majority must not tyrannize the minority, neither should the minority dictate to the majority.

What I fear is that the various strategies to avoid a filibuster will (over a couple of election cycles as control of the Senate sloshes between the two major parties) result in a judiciary that reflects the current polarization in American politics. A judiciary of left- and right-wing looney tunes who can't agree on anything of importance.

What I would like to see is a good old-fashioned, talk till you're hoarse filibuster. Debate for days on end, for as long as the Democrats can talk. Either they will make sense, and constituents will tell their Republican Senators to withdraw the nominees, or the Democrats will embarass themselves, and their constituents will tell the Democrats to shut up and vote. Either way, We the People will have been well served.

Why are the Republicans afraid of going through with a Democratic filibuster? Is it because they're afraid their nominees can't stand up to a protracted debate?

Mothers' VE Day

Mothers' Day and VE Day (the anniversary of Germany's unconditional surrender, which ended WWII in Europe) coincided this year. Sixty years ago today my mother was in America celebrating, because the world as she knew it had been saved. My wife's mother was in the American Sector in Germany, wondering what would happen now that the world as she knew it had been destroyed.

At one point, while my mother was recuperating from an illness, and my wife's mother was preparing to go back to Germany for a while to care for her elder sisters, they were both living with us. It is a tribute to both women that it worked out well enough.

Happy Mothers' Day. And let us remember our heroines and heroes, present and fallen.

Mr. Faraj, the Libyan

That's approximately what the name Abu Faraj al-Libi means. You may wonder, "Who in Hell is that?" If you aren't continually glued to your TV or internet connection, it's a good question. The coverage of his capture by Pakistani authorities on May 2 was so scant and so short-lived that one could easily not know or even notice that al-Qaeda's Number Three, the current Head of International Operations, was taken into custody. I certainly hadn't noticed. An acquaintance had to tell me, and I had to check it out on Google, because the scant media blip it caused was already over.

If the media had made a bigger deal of it, I might feel more assured that we in what Thomas Barnett calls "The Functioning Core" of globalization have what it takes to suppress al-Qaeda and the other components of the Global Salafist Jihad. But it wasn't a big deal at all. Do we have too short an attention span? Or is it that we have fallen into such a winner-take-all mentality that only the capture of Number One - Bin Laden himself - will capture our imagination?

The combination of our short attention span and our "only number one counts" mentality is what shakes my confidence. The current conflict is what Bin Laden and company call "The Jihad Against the Jews and Crusaders," or simply "The Jihad," as if there were no other. The Jihad had been gathering strength for 15 years, striking massive death here and there, but not really getting our attention until the 9/11 attacks. If we get Bin Laden, will we then then turn our attention to other things, and give the Jihad another 15 years to regrow?

The Power of the Human Mind

Believe it or not, you can actually read this:

I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulacity uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phanonmeal pweor of the hmuan mnid. Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabridge Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig, huh? Yaeh, and I awlyas thgohut slpeling was ipmornatt.

It turns out that it is merely an internet meme, and does not specifically refer to actual research, although Graham Rawlinson did a PhD thesis on a related topic. You can read the facts about it here. But the point is made. The power of the human mind to do pattern recognition is astounding. A possible explanation of how we do it has been offered by Jeff Hawkins, the inventor of the Palm Pilot and now a researcher in cognitive neuroscience.

It was the idea of whole word reading that got many educationists into so-called whole-language methods of teaching reading, which were failures. It turns out that you need to teach phonics and let the children construct their whole word reading from the bottom up.

What tripped up the educationists, is what trips us all on more occasions than we care to admit. They saw a pattern of behavior (whole word reading) and inferred a way to train and elicit this pattern, which did not work. We often see patterns, yet infer causes incorrectly. We even see patterns that are not actually there, or are there but mean nothing. It's just the way our minds work: we are continually pattern-processing everything we perceive, even before we are conscious of perceiving it.

The implication for Science is that we have to test every conclusion, over and over. The implication for Religion, which deals with things untestable, is that we need to exercise caution, and yes, skepticism. I think of a Fundamentalist friend of mine who showed me his method of Bible interpretation. To him, the Bible interprets itself. All you have to do to understand a particular word or phrase is to find all the other occurences of that word or phrase in the Bible (using a Concordance that gives the original Hebrew or Greek) and compare and contrast them. Never mind that the Bible is not a book, but a library that came together over some 1000 years. It is the record of a people's perceived encounters with God, and what they made of those encounters. During that time their culture, language, and mindset all changed. Merely comparing one portion with another without knowledge of or reference to those changes may cause one to see patterns that are not actually there, and blind one to patterns that are there.

The poverty of that kind of analysis is being impressed upon me with great force as I work my way through the massive three-volume tome, A Marginal Jew by Fr. John P. Meier. It is a minute analysis of all the extant works from the time before, during, and immediately after Christ, in search of the "historical Jesus." Specifically, Meier is after those words and deeds that can be attributed to Jesus with some degree of probability using the methods of historians. The Jesus of Christian Faith is specifically not his object. As a Catholic Priest and Professor, he is well aware that some things are accessible to Faith alone. But he is careful to distinguish those that are accessible by scholarly inquiry, and to pursue them. Not only does he read his Bible minutely in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, he also reads his Josephus in Latin, and the works of other scholars on the same quest in English, German, and French.

After about 6 months, I am about halfway through Meier's scholarly tour de force. He has covered an outline of the difficulties and methods of historical Jesus research (some of which are based on recognizing textual and literary forms and patterns), a biography that sketches only a few probable turning points in Jesus' life, and two major points of the message Jesus uniquely proclaimed. I will never be able to look at my old Bible the same way again. It has become a much richer treasure to me than I had previously imagined.

You might wonder how the Catholic church could place its imprimatur on such a book. It has to do with the Catholic Church's continuous, living tradition of passing on Christian teaching through the generations. For the Catholic Church, the Bible is the major, but not the only element of its Depositum Fidae (Deposit of Faith). This is in contrast to Protestantism, and insulates Catholicism from a narrow Bibliolatry (an idolatrous worship of the Bible instead of, or even parallel to, a true worship of God).

Meier's work stands as the most careful work of pattern processing by a religious person that I have ever seen. The attention to detail, and the level of detail sought are truly inspiring. But then, Meier had the time (and probably the graduate students to help him) to do it. For the rest of us, for most of our activities of daily living, we process patterns on autopilot. We benefit by our autopilot freeing our conscious minds up to do other things. We can lose though, when our autopilot pattern processing tricks us into prejudice.

Justice and Human Nature

Naturalism v. Supernaturalism in pursuit of Justice

He hath shown thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God? — Micah 6:8

Justice. Without Justice there can be no peace. The opposite of Justice is oppression. But what is Justice? Justice for whom?

For the ancient Greek philosophers, and for everyone else since, it comes down to this: To do Justice is to do what is Good for Humankind. What is good for Humankind, of course, is that which is accords with Human Nature. Thus we arrive at the quintessential Humanist question: What is Human Nature? That depends on your theology.

If you believe that human beings are purely natural, evolved only by natural forces selecting variations in response to the circumstances of earth's natural history, you arrive at one set of conclusions. If you believe that human beings are partly supernatural, having been brought into existence (whether through instant creation or gradual evolution) by a God who has certain inconvenient ethical expectations, you arrive at another. On the one hand, we are meaningless accidents, of no more intrinsic value than any other living or non-living thing. On the other, we are made in, and bear the Imago Dei, the Image of God.

The naturalists can be noble. As the only known rational animal, we alone can make choices for ourselves and for all other beings on earth. That is, with our rationality comes responsibility. We should choose with wisdom and caring.

The naturalists can also degenerate into self-loathing. Because of our success as a species, we are covering the earth, re-making its surface, air, and water in our own image, causing the wholesale extinction of species as if we ourselves were a cometary impact on our planet. Since we are only one species among many, the planet would be better off without us.

Implicit in naturalistic self-loathing is the idea that success, dominance, is in itself evil. An idea borrowed (and twisted) unconsciously from Christianity, the repository of supernaturalism. After all, Jesus was not successful or dominant during his public ministry — he was killed by a successful, dominant empire.

The supernaturalists can be noble as well: The sanctity of human life is a Christian idea. Since we are sacred to our Creator, none but our Creator can lawfully take our life from us. Our bodies, and the use of our bodies are likewise sacred: we cannot lawfully be tortured or enslaved.

The supernaturalists can also degenerate into self-loathing. Because we are sinners, unworthy of the salvation freely offered us by God, we deserve nothing beyond the bare necessities to prolong our lives just enough to have an opportunity to accept God's great gift. And those who believe and teach otherwise must be ostracized in the community of faith. (In the past, heretics were killed, but modern Christianity has moved beyond that, thanks to challenges from within the faithful, as well as from the naturalists.

Contemplating the downside offers little from which to choose. The history of both camps has been blighted by malevolence, hypocrisy, and violence. One side can decry the Inquisition, the other the massive genocides under Facism and Communism. Ideologies from both camps have been used as a pretext for war.

On the other hand, the upside potential of the supernaturalists is clearly greater. Instead of being a thing, an object, I am a subject. I am more than an intrinsically meaningless lump of thinking, dreaming, talking meat. I am sacred to my Creator. So are all beings, plant, animal, and other. Imagine living in a world where everything and everyone was treated with a certain minimal standard of reverence, instead of the disregard and contempt we see and experience. That is the upside of the supernaturalist position. The naturalist position has nothing comparable to offer.

As we are swept into the future, naturalism offers the confidence to invent and explore technology and technique. Supernaturalism speaks to the purpose of invention and exploration. Naturalism seeks knowledge in order to understand and to use. Supernaturalism seeks knowledge in order to revere. As we understand ourselves and our cosmos in ever greater detail, let us grow, rather than diminish, in our reverence for each other and our Creator.

And let that reverence inform our administration of justice. I would rather stand before a judge who appreciates the sacred dimension of my being, than one who regards me as miscreant meat.

Habemus Papam

"Habemus Papam!" We have a pope, Benedict XVI, the former Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger. All the conservatism of John Paul II, and none of the charisma. Where will he lead the ship of the Church? I suspect he will keep her headed on the same course as his predecessor (whom he advised for 24 years). Other than that, I think he will have the crew swab the decks. I hope that will entail some house-cleaning, especially in the American Catholic Church. The American Catholic hierarchy has for too long tolerated (and in some cases protected) the breaking of the vow of celibacy, which, as long as celibacy is the rule, is the breaking of the office of the priesthood.

Benedict XVI, in his younger days, was instrumental in the suppression of Liberation Theology. This may sound like a bad thing, but Liberation Theology was essentially a syncretism of Catholicism with Communism. The two didn't go together well at all in Europe, and one could hardly expect a European pope, or his theological advisor, to be sympathetic. Liberation Theology, which was used as a tool by the Sandinista insurgency, is less popular now that most of the autocratic regimes in South America are no more. But it had the merit of raising social justice concerns that the Church must address if it is to do the Gospel and not just proclaim it.

So, may God help Benedict XVI. In his opening remarks as Pope, the Urbi et Orbi blessing, he pretty much said he's counting on it.

Time of Ignorance, Culture of Death

Maybe there is some significance to the natural death of Pope John Paull II coming so soon after the killing by deliberate neglect of Terri Schiavo, who had been in a "Persistent Vegetative State" for 15 years. His Holiness accused Western Culture of becoming a Culture of Death in its willingness to practice abortion at the beginning of human life and euthanasia at its end.

But I would like to draw your attention to another killing and another culture of death. Hatun Surucu was a 23-year old woman of Turkish descent, living in Berlin. As WorldNet Daily put it, "Surucu had taken her 5-year-old son and run away from her husband of eight years, a cousin with whom she was united in an arranged marriage." Apparently she was killed by her brothers. It was the sixth "honor killing" in as many months, and the 45th in the last 8 years, among the 200,000 member Turkish community in Berlin. Surucu was killed because she dishonored her family by "living like a German."

In a related story, two other women, one who had married without her family's permission, and her sister who had run away from the same family to join her, were hacked to death by their axe-wielding brothers in Jordan for the same reason: to uphold the family honor. Jordan punishes such a crime with sentences as light as six months in prison.

Now, I've read the Qur'an and have no memory of any commandment in it to carry out such atrocities. Islamic clerics have also claimed as much. But many of the world's Muslims believe such "honor killings" are Islamic. They are not. Honor killings have been carried over into Islamic culture from the pre-Islamic Jahilliyah, or "Time of Ignorance."

In many Muslim countries, especially in the Middle East, the Jahilliyah is considered to be an impure and useless time, unworthy of scholarly study, unfit for retention in the popular imagination. However, if this period were better studied, and if the studies were published for a lay audience, more Muslims would realize how much of their religion is contaminated with ancient customs which the Prophet (peace be upon him) sought to reform. And Islamic culture would become less a Culture of Death for its women.

Ioannes Paulus II, Karol Wojtyla

The College of Cardinals elected Karol Wojtyla to become Pope John Paul II the year that my wife and I got married. He has been Pope for my entire adult life. Now we face the imminent prospect of his dying.

His papacy has been at once both conservative and progressive. His writings are staunchly against abortion, birth control, euthanasia, and the death penalty. He drew the Church back from any consideration of non-celibate and female clergy. On the progressive side, he was such a strong champion of human rights that he was influential in the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of Communism. By formally pardoning Galileo and in many other ways he pulled the Church forward toward the acceptance of science and the glimpses of truth that it makes available. He no doubt influenced Archbishop Desmond Tutu and President Nelson Mandela when they chose to use the power of Confession and Forgiveness to achieve a peaceful and stable transition of South Africa to majority rule. He has strengthened Catholicism and Christianity in Africa, Latin America, and Asia, even as they have declined in Western Europe. He pulled the Church forward in its relations with people of other faiths. He was consistently against war.

Even if John Paul II dies in the near future, he will continue to be a potent force in human history for decades to come, and not only because he has appointed nearly all the present Cardinals during his long papacy. His passionate, carefully-reasoned, and well-researched statements in his encyclicals will serve as sea-anchors to stabilize traditional Catholicism and traditional Christianity generally. Those, who like myself, differ with John Paul II's opinions on a variety of subjects must now argue against a formidable intellectual body of work. The challenge will force us to search our traditions, beliefs, and what we can know of God's Will for us as human beings. We cannot help but benefit from rising to the challenge.

Indeed, the world would be not only a poorer place, but a more dangerous place, physically and spiritually, were we to prevail on the cheap, without having to surmount the obstacles that Pope John Paul II leaves before us. He has lived, written and preached an Evangelium Vitae, a Gospel of Life, that will not be silenced by his passing. He has not merely stated one side of a debate. He has established its ground.

Now may God bless and keep his servant John Paul II, in this world and the World to Come.

Another Good Friday for a Protest

Tomorrow morning at around 6:45 the usual crowd of protesters plans to gather at a staging area to block traffic going into the laboratory where I work. It's a defense research lab, where among other things, scientists develop and maintain the knowledge necessary to maintain America's stockpile of nuclear weapons.

The protest is an annual Good Friday event. Head out West, do a little protesting, visit the kids. What they protest boils down to this: those of us who work at the Lab crucify Christ in a manner that is different from the way the protesters crucify Christ. They think they object to our content, but, given that they are as human as we are, I think its really just a matter of style. The world understands the dynamic of Crucifixion all too well, and admits that it does all too rarely.

What the world does not understand well is the dynamic of Resurrection. The real question those of us who are Christian should ask ourselves is "What are we doing with our lives if we really believe in the Resurrection?" The Resurrection changed the lives of the first Christians, and they changed history. Is the Resurrection changing our lives? Or are we living on autopilot, contributing to humanity's bad news instead of proclaiming and living out the Good News?

I can ignore a Good Friday protest. But a protest on the Tuesday after Easter, our first day back to work at the Lab after celebrating the Resurrection, well, that would get my attention.

All Schiavo, All the Time, All Wrong

Radio and television in the US are saturated this Wednesday of Holy Week with the plight of Terry Schiavo, the 41-year old Florida woman who has been in a "Persistent Vegetative State" for the last 15 years. Or rather, the fight over the plight of Terry Schiavo. Everyone seems to have an opinion. Everyone is wrong.

We cannot know definitively what Ms. Schiavo's wishes were, because she left no written directive about what to do if she were to end up in such a state. Few 26-year-olds do. Her husband, who has moved on to a new relationship, claims she would never have wanted to be kept alive in these circumstances, and that he is only trying to comply with her last wishes by having her feeding tube removed and allowing her to die. Her parents claim that she is minimally responsive, and that they want to keep her alive, and to take care of her. Congress has passed a special law (which the President got out of bed to sign) to authorize yet another court hearing to decide the case. And the pundits all seem to have their opinions.

The only opinion we cannot get access to is Ms. Schiavo's. Exactly what state is she in? Wakefulness is controlled by the brain stem, while conscious awareness (possibly distinct from consciousness) resides in the cerebral cortex, the "outer shell" of the brain. Does she experience wakefulness without conscious awareness? Or does she experience both wakefulness and conscious awareness, but without functioning efferent nerves (ingoing connections, carrying sensory inputs like sight, sound, touch, smell, taste) or afferent nerves (outgoing connections carrying motor impulses that result in voluntary muscle movement)?

If she has no conscious awareness, then presumably she is not suffering. If she is conscious but unplugged (missing either sensory or motor connections or both) then she may be in a living hell, best described by the title of a Harlan Ellison short story, "I have no mouth and I must scream." In the face of the possibility of such profound and inexpressible suffering beyond human capability to imagine, I dare not mouth standard Christian theology on the "redemptive value of suffering" in this case! Therefore, a presumption to prevent or cut short suffering would indicate that she be allowed to die, with medication to mitigate any discomfort associated with hunger and dehydration. On the other hand, if she is not suffering, a presumption in favor of life, that life is an intrinsic and not a contingent good, would indicate that Mr. Shiavo should turn guardianship of his wife over to her parents, who want to care for her. That would at least mitigate their suffering.

We cannot know the interior world of Ms. Schaivo. Thus all parties are in a state of profound ignorance on the essential question necessary to decide this case. The pundits are irrelevant, and Congress and the courts have inserted themselves where they have no moral standing, because they have no competence. They are all wrong.

Frankly, I don't know what to do about poor Ms. Schiavo. Since no decision is still a decision in this case, I'm wrong too.

How about that? A situation in which it is impossible to know the right thing to do. It happens more often than we want to admit. That's why Forgiveness is so necessary, so powerful, and so Redeeming.

American Empire

"Everybody in Europe says that America is an empire!" That's one of the things I like about travel. I was seated next to an Austrian radio and television journalist, who was kind enough to enlighten me regarding the attitude in Europe toward America's foreign policy.

"Every country in the world pays tribute to America," he added. On questioning, he stated that he thought buying US debt instruments (government and corporate bonds, I assume) was a form of tribute, of paying protection money to the seat of Empire. I pointed out that the Global Capital Markets don't see it that way. They see it as a good bet that they'll get a positive return on their investments. And that if America disappoints those markets, America will get poor in a hurry, just like any other country.

No, America does not maintain an Empire. If we did, we would be much more intentional about it, and we would run it better. The American People do not want to run the world. We want the world to run itself. But we do get cranky when it doesn't run itself our way.

Psychology Trancendent

People I know who are currently doing graduate studies in Psychology in Northern California give me the impression that, if Religion is discussed at all, it is relentlessly pathologized. As if the only role that Religion could play in a person's life were as a crutch to make up for his or her deficiencies. I get the impression that most of the students and their professors are - in psychotherapeutic parlance - completely unprepared to deal with the counter-transferrence issues they would face, if they were to have a devoutly religious client.

How refreshing to read an article by Paul C. Vitz in the current issue of First Things entitled, "Psychology in Recovery." Vitz observes that psychotherapeutic psychology is outgrowing some of its early hubris as it turns from "negative psychology" (the study of traumas and mental illness) to "positive psychology"(the study of personal strengths and mental health).

A one-sided emphasis on negative psychology has changed our culture. Let me quote:

The general perspective provided by negative psychology is that we are all victims of past traumas, abuse, and neclect caused by other people. This victim mentality has been widely noted and criticized, quite legitimately, as having become extreme....

A further disturbing consequence of this mentality is the widespread belief that we are not responsible for our bad actions.....

Positive psychology, on the other hand, as Vitz quotes Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman from their book, Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification:

should reclaim the study of character and virtue as legitimate topics of psychological inquiry and informed societal discourse. By providing ways of talking about character strengths and measuring them across the life span, this classification will start to make possible a science of human strengths that goes beond armchair philosophy and political rhetoric. We believe that good character can be cultivated, but to do so, we need conceptual and empirical tools to craft and evaluate interventions.

Peterson and Seligman (the originator of the theory of "Learned Helplessness" as a contributor to depression) identify three conceptual levels in descending order: virtues, character strengths, and situational themes. They argue that their selection of virtues is universal, drawn from world cultures and traditions, and may even have a basis in the evolutionary biology of ourselves as a social species.

And their six core virtues are: wisdom and knowledge, humanity, courage, justice, temperance, and transcendence. As Vitz points out, these are not far from the Cardinal Virtues of prudence, charity, courage, justice, temperance, hope and faith. The mention of those last virtues, transcendence or its equivalent hope and faith, make me think here may be more than an incidental connection with Seligman's earlier work. It seems to me that if you have absolutely no hope or faith in anything, you are likely to be or to become depressed.

Psychology may be turning from an exclusive regard for the past to preparing people for the future. All things considered, it seems like a good turn to me. And I must admit, it is also refreshing to see someone pathologize un-faith for a change. Vitz is the author of a book called Faith of the Fatherless: The Psychology of Atheism.

Predestination is just a Word

"How can I be blamed for something that God knows ahead of time I'm going to do anyway?"

Good question. Those of you who believe in Predestination are welcome to take a crack at it. I, however, think the doctrine of Predestination is the kind of trip people put over on God because they don't stop to think that the Author of Time is not bound by Time.

Time consists of one dimension only, and we move along it in one direction only - but only in this Universe. Since the Creator of this Universe is not stuck in this Universe, the Creator is not constrained like a bead moving on the wire of Time. So, "knowing everything in advance" and Predestination are human ideas that may have nothing to do with the way God relates to us.

God's relation to us seems to involve kenosis, a Greek word meaning the "emptying out of oneself." I think God comes all the way into our lives to experience them as we do. I think God gives up any priveleged position (comes down off God's "Throne") to do so.

Predestination and "knowing everything in advance" are human philosophical constructs that have no meaning in this context. Since this is all the context we know, it is meaningless to speak of any other. But we can still speculate, and I speculate that in the Universe to come all of our Time is Redeemed and made whole.

In the meantime, God lives and co-creates our lives with us. And Predestination is just a fourteen-letter word.

Bleep my VCR!

If there is one thing that serves as the quintessential icon of bad human interface design it is the VCR. I mean, in my time, I've programmed everything from micro-chips to supercomputers. I can handle computers. But I fat-fingered the wrong button on the remote control to my VCR and got it into a state from which it would not exit.

The "Cancel" button would not cancel it. The "Menu" button brought up inappropriate menus. After dinner, I found the manual and turned to "Trouble Shooting." To my surprise there were two entries that mentioned something like what was on my VCR's front panel display. Both entries said the same thing: "Read Chapter 3." The longest chapter in the manual. Like I don't have enough to read.

Thumbing through Chapter 3 for a half-hour, I found that there was a button on the remote I should push. Nothing happened. A little experimentation soon showed that nothing on the remote did anything at all. I changed the batteries. Ah, success! Finally.

There used to be only one group of people whose minds I longed to illuminate with a flamethrower: the designers of the Application Programming Interfaces to ArcGIS. To them let me add the people who designed the user interface to my VCR.

Oh, yeah. And the twits who did the user interface to my long-discarded sports watch.

Re-Dreaming Christianity

Beer and Belief

contributed by Peter J. Walker*

The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned. — 1 Corinthians 2:14

 

Have you ever seen two babies try to have a serious, intimate conversation? Each baby is entirely wrapped up in what he or she wants and never listens to find out what the other baby is asking for. One baby wants milk and the other wants its diaper changed and neither is interested in the other, nor in learning how to walk the road ahead. A life of Faith often starts like that conversation. I'm learning to listen. In doing so, I hope I'm learning to walk.

Lots of my friends are not Christians. That is to say, most of them don't go to church or read the Bible often or identify themselves by any religious label. Most of my friends are spiritual, though. The Bible says that we are supposed to meet together regularly and share things about each other. The Bible says this will make us stronger. I think that's true, but Christians like to use this as an excuse to stay away from anyone who doesn't agree with their theology. This is a mistake. There are lots of Christians who aren't very close to God and lots of agnostics who are closer. I don't think God is a doctrine or denomination or political party. He's bigger than all of that.

Lately God's been moving me to listen in on what atheists and agnostics are saying about Christianity. Sometimes I find these revelations in bars or cafes. More recently, I sat down with two old friends, Chris and Bryan, over a six-pack of Fat Tire Ale.

Bryan is quiet, friendly and unshakably agreeable. In college, Bryan joined the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. He wasn't a Christian then, either. He just thought it would be a nice way to make new friends. Bryan and I have had numerous conversations about God but they always end in Bryan's openness to faith and his simultaneous lack of commitment. He doesn't feel any urgency to make a choice and it makes the fundamentalist parts of me squirm.

Chris is a self-identified philosopher and intellectual. He smokes lots of marijuana too. Once when he was high, Chris spent an hour explaining the beauty of human yearning that exists in the story of Pinocchio. When he gets started like that it's best to just let him go.

I began our conversation with a few questions: “I want to know what you guys believe about God and creation and eternity.” Not too broad, right?

“Well... okay,” Chris answered. He carefully began rolling a cigarette, first sprinkling his tobacco onto a small square of paper. “How about evolution first?” Chris licked the paper and sealed it tight. “I mean, if there's evolution, why is there still everything else? Like, why are there men and apes at the same time?” He flicked spilled tobacco leaves off his lap, “and why are fish and lizards and birds all here if they're all heading toward the same place?”

“It's random, so it doesn't affect an entire species,” said Bryan. He was staring out across the apartment complex. Not fully vested in the topic, I thought.

Randomly, Chris jumped on to a convenient tangent. He blurted out, “So, if God created Adam and Eve, maybe they were just super dope human beings! You know? Genetically! Maybe Jesus and Buddha and Gandhi were all in that bloodline,” he had a grin on his face as if that thought brought him some deep satisfaction.

I had little to say about Adam and Eve being “super dope.” I laughed and pushed into the subject Chris brought up himself with the Creation reference: “What do you think about Christianity?”
Chris thought again, paused, “Harmless.” Not what I expected. “Harmless... possibly benevolent. It's non-threatening to me… I guess the only threat is homogenization.”
“How do you mean?” I asked.

“If everyone became a Christian it would dilute the intellectual evolution of man. Just one big pool of similar ideas. No room to question things.” An interesting thought, since I've met few Christians who thought alike. I understood his point, though.

Bryan came in, “So what do you think happens when you die?”

Chris didn't answer. I followed: “Death? Do you think there's a Christian heaven?”

“That's a creatable thing,” Chris answered. “Either on earth or in actual heaven,” Chris paused on that thought, then, “If Christianity were good enough I'd be there now, but other things are good too. The path things enter my life through must be convenient. If I pick this beer up, it had better be convenient!” He gulped and Bryan rolled his eyes.

“Convenience,” Bryan chimed in now, “If you're looking for a spirituality, church doesn't have to be the end-all be-all of being spiritual. I can think about it on my own or hang out with friends like this. Church is fellowship. I can respect that. But there are so many ways to have that fellowship.”
I asked, “Then is there value in organized religion?”

“There's value in fellowship,” said Bryan. “It would have to be people whom I trusted and who were open minded. There's not a lot of value in going somewhere to have people tell you you're wrong.”

“Can I expand?” Chris asked. We nodded. “Churches are like support groups, you know, for people who want guidance... It validates them. I think marriage is a compact version of that. It's also easier for people to become excited when there are lots of people. It makes them zealous.”
“But some people go because they think they have to,” said Bryan.

“Yes. In Catholic church, my parents judged me from a standpoint of perfection instead of understanding I was imperfect,” said Chris. “I just wanted to sleep in on Sundays.”

“I wish people were more open-minded,” Bryan said. “It's intimidating to discuss all this with those who are so knowledgeable in their own religion. For me it's much more abstract. There's nothing I can gain from someone who doesn't value my questions.”

Something in that last statement rang true for me, like I needed to highlight it and pray about it and tell people to listen closely. No one had ever valued Bryan's questions; they had treated his curiosity as a battle to be won.

“And Hell is a good form of extortion,” Bryan continued, “Being good has a lot to do with it but it doesn't seem logical that someone could live an evil life and be saved on their deathbed,” A tough concept for us all. “I don't know. There are so many religions telling me so many things, and that if I don't choose one of them I'll go to hell. It just feels like extortion.” There was that word again. Extortion. Blackmail.

A part of me used to get frustrated that I couldn't “close the deal” with friends like Bryan and Chris. The other part was always left ashamed at the way my heart for God was still thinking in sales terms. That salesman will always be an embarrassing part of my inner-self, trying to turn my passions into marketable products.

So how do I make Christianity work for guys like Chris and Bryan? Do I tailor it to fit their comforts? Do I try to make it less offensive? I think not, but my humanism desperately tries to create a politically correct apologetic. Bryan himself said there was right and wrong — he even said that evil people shouldn't deserve heaven. So Christian or agnostic, we all have judgment hiding somewhere. God tells us to let that judgment go and trust Him to cover us with love. That makes all of this so exasperating: no matter how much I try to appeal to sensibility and logic, the Biblical God still flies in the face of all our wisdom.

* Peter Walker works with youth and worship ministries, desperately trying to forget the wrong answers and recover the right questions. He also creates the Essence Project.

Speeding through Baghdad

"An Italian Intelligence officer was gunned down by Americans as he was escorting a newly freed Italian journalist, who had been held hostage in Iraq," say the meadia lead-in lines. The journalist, who was wounded in the encounter, implied that the Americans fired on her because America opposes paying ransom to terrorists.

Now lets see... The officer and journalist were driving through Baghdad at high speed at night. The Italian's car approached an American checkpoint at high speed, and tried to charge through it (presumably to preserve the secrecy of their mission, which had not been coordinated with the Americans). The driver disobeyed signals and other warnings to stop. The American soldiers had standing orders to fire at the wheels and engine of any car that tried to charge their checkpoint. If that failed to stop it, they had standing orders to fire at the driver. Now why would that be so?

Because they have had plenty of VBIEDs (Vehicle Borne Improvised Explosive Devices) driven at them, already. It's one thing to see the daily death toll that is the price of fighting an insurgency. It was quite another to talk with a young officer who was back in the States to get shrapnel from an IED removed from his knee.

So now we know that it is dangerous to drive a car at high speed at people who are armed and jumpy. This isn't rocket science, folks.

The Americans should apologize, of course, for this tragedy. But both the Americans and the Italians should try not to let it happen again.

Credit Card Theology

A friend recently commented about how "real" the Incarnation and Crucifixion could have been.

"If Jesus was truly God and truly Man, then wasn't it like a kid leaving home, but taking Daddy's credit card?" he asked.

To me, the phrase, "truly God and truly Man" means that, in the Incarnation, God became an ordinary human being, just like the rest of us. No Divine Credit Card included. Jesus would have been able to buy his way out of the Crucifixion, if he had that. It was all as real for him as it is for you and me.

All of which strikes me as capturing a major difference between Islam on one hand, and Judaism and Christianity on the other. In Islam, all the Prophets got the Credit Card, in order to maintain the Dignity of God. In Judaism and Christianity, all the Prophets got was a message to deliver, and the barest of instructions. They did what was asked of them, often at great cost to themselves, to show their Devotion to God.

A Duty to Remember

My mother told me that many Germans are comparing President Bush to Hitler. Sure enough, some are.

Now before I say what I must say next, let me point out that I speak German, and I am married to a German-American. Further, I think that Germany's embrace of the Nazis came from a quality of soul that exists in every human being and every human organization. But the Germans, alone in Western Civilization, gave in to it en masse.

Apparently, some Germans have studiously forgotten what Hitler was like, and what National Socialism (Nazism) really was. In this they commit a new moral outrage. Because, for themselves and for all humankind, it is their duty to remember.

How do you solve a problem like Korea?

North Korea isn't a country. It's a family owned and operated business that masquerades as a Communist dictatorship. Moreover, the family appears dysfunctional, and its business acumen appears to be zero.

Let me illustrate. Take a look at NASA's Night Lights of the World. Scroll over to the Korean Peninsula (just above Japan). South Korea looks like an island! Between China and South Korea there are virtually no lights, despite the presence of several nuclear reactors that North Korea used to claim were for generating electricity. What you are looking at is a picture of bad government -- so bad that it can be seen from space.

I think that the US needs to tell North Korea that the Cold War is over, and that it is time to go beyond the current truce and make formal and actual peace between North Korea and South Korea. A process needs to be put in place (with South Koreans leading it) that begins with cultural exchanges and food aid, and grows to include ever more frequent contact between North Koreans and South Koreans. Then South Korea should start building businesses in North Korea and employing North Koreans, with the goal of developing North Korean businesspeople who can create North Korean businesses for which South Korea provides investment capital. Someday the DMZ should be make into a Wildlife Sanctuary (and lucrative Tourist Destination), and lanes cleared through the minefields for some North-South roads to enable more social contact and commerce.

You get the drift. And to get Kim Jong Il and company to go along, South Korea should buy them out. Give the dysfunctional family and friends huge stipends and homes on the French Riviera for life, provided they never come back to Korea.

In other words, we need to try to stimulate the kind of reunification that East and West Germany experienced, with the people leading and the governments following. It may take a long time, but its probably the the most constructive way to deal with the North Korean nuclear weapons. A united, democratic Korea would dismantle them because they are cost too much to keep.

And what of the US? Our troop levels should decrease as the North Korean troop levels decrease. Call it constructive disengagement.

Or do I just hope for too much?

Does God have a Religion?

It depends on what you mean by religion. If religion is a set of beliefs that cannot be proven objectively, then, according to Judaism and Islam, two of the worlds major monotheistic religions, the answer is no. God does not believe, because God knows.

But, according to Christianity, God does manifest an opinion that seems incapable of objective proof: God believes that people are worth dying for.

If one had to give it a name, I suppose it could be called "Sacred Humanism."

The Shape of Politics

To me, the American Political Spectrum is shaped like a dancer's butt. Imagine that the dancer is doing a split, and then laying his or her torso on the floor, with legs outstretched, and both butt and feet sticking up. Now imagine that you are also lying on the floor, viewing the dancer's posterior, or fundamental, aspect.

What you see is something like the graph sketched above. The extremists on either end of the political spectrum are represented by the toes — they are in a distinct minority, but they do stand up. Typically they are the ones who host and call in to the Talk Shows of the Right (aka the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy) and the Left (aka the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy Theorists). On the heels of this distribution (so low in numbers that they don't show up at this scale) are the real kooks, such as the American Communist Party on the Left, and the John Birch Society on the Right.

So who are those willing to devote their time and energy working for political candidates and parties? The ones who work without pay, stuffing envelopes, making cold calls, knocking on doors, distributing leaflets and bumper stickers, delivering yard signs, et cetera? These friends, are the people of the ankles and calves, possibly extending as far as the knees. If you are a political candidate, these are the people to whom you must "play" in order to win your primary election. And even though you must pull to the center (the butt cheeks, where repose the vast majority of voters) to win the general election, you can't leave your ankles behind. Because if you do, your campaign will have no "legs," no one working for it, and you will disappear from the political stage.

This brings us gluteal part of the political distribution, the twin loaves of the Great Divide. The vast majority of Americans hold views that are remarkably similar to one another. The majority of both Republicans and Democrats want the same things, such Liberty, Peace, and Prosperity — they just differ on how to get them. That is to say, just like the groove in your butt, the divide is deep, but not very wide.

But why is the divide so deep? Why is there almost nobody down in the hole there except former President Bill Clinton (the most centrist US President in recent times)? It seems to me that the media, looking for excitement, and manufacturing it if there isn't any, and the political strategists, looking to exploit division, and manufacturing it if there isn't any, have been working separately and together for a long time to develop and use aptly named "wedge issues" to pry us apart.

Now if the majority is letting the media and pols give us a world-historical wedgie, the majority can do something about it. We need to get off our butts and volunteer for candidates and parties. And when the candidates and parties get too extreme, we have to let them know it, by speaking up in policy and strategy meetings and conventions, and by walking out when necessary. But the majority are just too apathetic to do more than drag themselves to the polls once in a while. By voting, they prove themselves to be citizens, not merely subjects, but to them, democracy is still largely a spectator sport.

Religion comes into play because, historically, Christianity has not only been the glue that held Western Civilization together, but in the form of Protestantism and its Work Ethic, Christianity has been the engine that drove it. Moreover, Protestantism has arguably been the wellspring of Liberty in the West. Those on the Right, because of their concern with tradition, generally seek to preserve the West's legacy of faith. Those on the Left, on the other hand, see the West as particular, rather than universal. In order to spread Liberty, and other Western values, they seek to universalize themselves — to universalize the West. Thus the Left tends to diminish the particular, especially the particularity of Religion. The concern of the Left for Religion thus ranges from compromise with worldly concerns and Universalism on the part of the Center-Left (the Left Cheek) to outright antipathy toward Religion on the part of the extreme Left (the Left Foot).

So much for US politics. What of the rest of the West — Europe, the UK, Australia, Canada, Central and South America? President Bush, in remarks to President Putin said that a democracy must have a functioning opposition. I think the West is a democratic polity, with America as the current Party in Power, and Europe leading the Loyal Opposition. So far, despite all the angst on all sides, it seems to be working.

In the meantime, the politics of this website has floated up from the hole at the center, spreading like a mushroom cloud of flatulence above the fray. We call our political orientation "up" as in "uppity," because we are 90-degrees up, away, and out of the box (see below) from both the Left and and the Right. Our range of opinion spreads out over both cheeks, with a few stray molecules drifting even further.