National Coming Out Day

Welcome friends!

Certainly plenty of big issues to write about this week such as the Clown President’s most recent attacks on one of the foundations of our democracy and traditional way of life: the free press.  Yes, he apparently threatened to revoke the “license” of media outlets that don’t kowtow to his Orange Eminence in the manner of Fox “News” and such dishonest faux journalists as Sean Hannity.  No one really knows what license the man had in mind but that’s beside the point.  He often babbles nonsensically about things he clearly knows nothing about.  The noteworthy bit is just his obvious hatred for the free press.  But as I’m sure I’ve mentioned before with conservative nut jobs in the WH, dominating Congress, heading up all the Executive Branch agencies, and increasingly infiltrating the judiciary I could write something like that every week.  On the other hand, since we still do have a free press in this country at least for now maybe I can take a week off now and then and let others cover the long sad decline and quite possibly eventual fall of our American way of life under the Republican / Russian Party.  With that thought in mind I thought I’d set aside the news of the day and look to something a bit more lighthearted this week.  In case you’re not up on this sort of the thing for the past twenty-nine years October 11 has apparently been considered by some National Coming Out Day in which gay people (aka queer people or to be perhaps overly precise and prosaic homosexuals) are meant to dramatically announce their sexual orientation to the world or some carefully selected bits of it anyway.  I’ve been reading a lively debate about whether this practice is still necessary or even advisable.  It got me thinking about sexual minorities again and then as fate would have it I bumped into an article that seemed relevant to the topic about a teacher in the UK who was banned from teaching after making some homophobic comments.  Could be a coincidence I suppose but I choose to think the magical guardian fairies of Rainbow Land are trying to tell me to say a few words in defense of sexual minorities this week so let me just do that.  I’ll get back to the Conservative Menace next time or maybe the time after that.  No need to rush.  It’s going to be with us for a while.

Let’s take the latter story first.  Seems a science teacher in the UK named Joshua Onduso was recently banned from practicing his profession by some official organization known as the National College for Teaching and Leadership Panel.  Apparently a student had asked him about gay people during class at his school (incidentally for five to nineteen year olds) and he had explained they “have a disease” and “have something wrong upstairs.”  Later in the day he clarified his position by rephrasing his remarks to say gay people are “sick in the head.”  When he was eventually confronted by the head teacher over his remarks he explained that his Christian beliefs meant he didn’t condone “what gay people do.”  Now I know he might have been referring to any number of things such as holding hands or dancing or frequenting antique stores or drinking tea from fancy cups but I suspect he had something a bit more sexual in mind.  He apparently never saw any problems at all with what he had told his class and was eventually helped to the exit.  This is the sort of story that would have every red blooded conservative here in the USA up in arms.  How dare the powers that be prevent this teacher from expressing his Christian beliefs!  Oh the outrage!  Political correctness run amok!  Freedom of speech and freedom of religion both trampled under foot!  As I’m sure my readers will have already surmised I’m entirely with the authorities on this one.  Let’s break it down shall we?

While it’s perfectly fine for Mr. Onduso to follow his religious beliefs and not condone what gay people do it’s not perfectly fine for him to make up fake facts in a science class.  No mainstream medical organization in any advanced country currently considers homosexuality a “disease” and mental health professionals in such countries stopped characterizing the phenomenon as a mental disorder many decades ago.  When the student asked about the phenomenon in his science class one can only presume he or she was interested in the current science relating to the issue not Mr. Onduso’s personal code of ethics or his religious beliefs.  Indeed, as a science teacher one might have expected Mr. Onduso to well understand the conceptual difference between the positive and normative, that is, fact and value, and possibly even use the occasion to explain the difference. There is no requirement at all for a science teacher delivering comments on homosexuality to “condone” it or to repudiate his religion’s ethical stance on it or anything of the sort.  The only requirement is that a science teacher be prepared to tell the students about the science of the phenomenon.  Of course it’s quite possible given his rather obvious biases he may have simply avoided the science and not known the answer.  However, if he didn’t know the answer that would have been his best answer.  I don’t know.  Go look it up.  It’s always preferable in an educational setting to just tell people one doesn’t know something than to make things up or provide disinformation.  Anyway, one can well imagine the serious emotional damage this halfwit might have done to a young gay student wondering what current science has to say about his or her mental or physical condition only to be incorrectly informed he or she has a physical disease or a mental disorder.  If on the other hand some of his students wanted to discuss the ethics of homosexuality then they should have been directed to an appropriate venue for that sort of discussion: a course in philosophy if they were interested in discussing it in a secular context, or the local seminary, church, mosque, temple, or what have you if they were of a more otherworldly temperament and wanted to discuss it in the context of mystical beings and ancient texts.  Free speech was certainly never in any real danger.  Rather there are proper contexts to talk about certain issues in certain ways and those contexts are especially important to observe and maintain in any institution that purports to involve education.

I know what you’re thinking.  Funny story but how does it relate to National Coming Out Day?  Well, the debate on this whole “coming out” issues seems to involve on the one hand the ostensible benefit to gay people of letting other people know they exist and are not unusually diseased or sick in the head and so on and on the other hand the potential personal cost to the person coming out and on a more general note the potentially unfortunate consequences of accepting the implicit assumption that one’s sexual orientation is anyone else’s business and that sexual minorities have a choice of either hiding themselves away in the proverbial closet or making an announcement to the world.  Seems like a tough one to me because I see merit in both sides of the debate.  I certainly remember the ugly and repressive olden days here in the USA during which one would never have willingly identified oneself as gay or even spoken up in defense of a gay person for fear of being branded gay oneself and mentally or emotionally or legally or even physically attacked so I can well understand the perceived need to avoid that trap.  However, I don’t think any gay person in that sort of imminent danger should come out to anyone even now and I mean particularly young people who are not financially and emotionally secure and also people whose heads are wrapped up in the unfortunate belief systems of certain religious or cultural groups (or who have parents and friends with heads wrapped up in that sort of thing).  As Mr. Onduso’s comments serve to remind us there is still a lot of ignorance and hatred directed at gay people most of it generated and nurtured by religious ideology.  If one is not in a position to adequately defend oneself against this sort of persecution the more sensible approach would seem to me to remain mute or deny, deny, deny but of course express oneself as best as one is able in one’s private life.  That’s how gay people survived in the bad old days wasn’t it?  But did nothing really improve until gay people stopped doing that sort of thing?  Or did the more general intellectual climate change in a way that made that sort of thing increasingly unnecessary?  I don’t know.  But anyway I think if there is a case to be made for gay people coming out I think the people in the best situation to do so are gay people with educated, open minded, secular friends and family who can reasonably be expected to be able to deal with the information in a reasonable way or strong secure mature people who are prepared to sever ties with the haters in their lives possibly forever.

But on the more general question of whether this sort of coming out is even necessary or advisable these days I just don’t know.  I wonder if we’ve moved past this point at least in the USA.  Everyone and certainly gay people would I’m sure prefer to live in a world in which one’s sexual orientation was like any other aspect of one’s personality.  We don’t have days on which we’re meant to proclaim if we are or would like to be married, have or would like to have children, are more physically attracted to blonds or brunettes, are partial to the missionary position or doggy style, or anything else of a relational or sexual nature.  If one wants to find out about such things for some reason such as perhaps one is looking for a suitable mate or to start a family then I suppose one can always ask someone about them.  Might be a bit rude or obnoxious to ask random people simply to assuage one’s curiosity.  Perhaps we’ve reached that stage for sexual orientation?  Perhaps gay people can just live their lives not in the proverbial closet but freely and openly and yet also not feel a need to announce their presence to all and sundry?  Perhaps we’ve reached a stage where young gay people can simply look for other young gay people if they want to form relationships with one another and if they’re unsure can simply ask one other people if they’d go for it?  Or will the stultifying and oppressive weight of religious conformity and hatred toward sexual minorities descend the moment gay people put away their rainbow flags and stop making announcements and marching and just in general making a fuss?  One would certainly hate to have to go through the whole thing again.  A year ago in the USA I would have leaned toward supposing political gestures were no longer necessary in this country.  Today I’m not so sure.

So what’s the answer?  Sorry.  No idea.  Sometimes I just talk.  I guess if you’re gay and you want to make a public gesture in support of equal rights for gay people and you’re in a position to handle any haters then knock yourself out.  If you’re gay and you or your partner have relationships with people whose minds have been twisted into knots by religion or other unfortunate belief systems and you want to maintain those relationships as long as possible then maybe no need to rush to come out to anyone.  Maybe just keep things on the down low. I can’t recommend a closet though.  Too stuffy and confining.  If people can’t be bothered to remain purposefully ignorant and meet you halfway and it’s either you or them then I suppose you should probably choose you.  It’s always nice to be nice to other people but living solely to uphold the values of other people and not speaking up for your own rarely works out well in the long run.  Other people come and go but you will always have you.  Best wishes to you all my brothers and sisters.  Happy Coming Out Day!

References

Thatcham teacher Joshua Onduso banned over homophobic comments.  October 11, 2017.  http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-berkshire-41581774.

Muslim Immigration

About time we had some good news right?  Seems our friends in France have managed to beat back the always unpleasant Le Pen clan and reaffirm their commitment not only to all things French as they certainly should but also to Europe and even more expansively the world.  After the UK packed it in and the USA abruptly took leave of its senses and joined the circus I really wondered if the Europeans would follow suit and go on holiday as well.  Thankfully that does not appear to have been the case despite our good frenemies the Russians trying to pull a Trump on them at the last moment.  Got to love the French.  Tougher than they seem sometimes.  Not all brie and a nice bottle of wine that’s for sure.  Anyway, I thought this might be a good excuse to take one more shot at the whole immigration issue as it appears to be a pretty big deal overseas.  Well, here too I suppose but not really the same thing.  Folks in Europe are a lot closer to all the mayhem going on in the Middle East right now, have done a lot more to help the refugees from that benighted region of the world, and have been trying to assimilate people a lot more foreign and sometimes dangerously anti-social than the occasional bad hombre arriving in the USA from our long suffering neighbor to the south.  So let me say a few more words this week about immigration with Muslim immigration as the specific example.

First let me just say this issue I feel has nothing or should have nothing really to do with how one personally feels about the religion of Islam... Sorry but only selected archived (previous year) posts are currently available full text on this website.  All posts including this one are available in my annual anthology ebook series available at the Amazon Kindle Bookstore for a nominal fee.  Hey, we all need to make a buck somehow, right?  If you find my timeless jewels of wisdom amusing or perhaps even amusingly irritating throw me a bone now and then.  Thank you my friends!

Problematic Sexuality (and Violence Too)

Welcome friends!

I suppose you read about the latest outrage perpetrated by a self-proclaimed Islamic terrorist here in the USA?  Yes, seems a local fellow of Afghan descent, Omar Mateen, managed to force his way into a nightclub in sunny and fun loving Orlando Florida armed with an assault rifle and pistol and cowardly and in cold blood murder forty-nine innocent unarmed young people and maim an additional fifty-three.  According to reports he was laughing as he killed his victims.  The cops eventually put some bullets in his head and he wasn’t laughing so much after that.  Such an irritating story on so many different levels.  Seems Omar had been praising Islamic terrorist groups and mocking their victims as far back as the attacks of 9/11 when he was still in high school.  A fellow employee at the security firm where he worked described him as a violent nut who spewed hatred toward all manner of people and talked enthusiastically about mass murder.  Apparently this behavior made no impression at all on his school system, his employers, the local Imam, or his father, who characterized Omar after the murder spree as a good son.  Indeed according to his dad Omar erred only in forgetting “God will punish homosexuals.”  Such a fine line isn’t it?  One minute you’re helping God do his / her / its work and the next minute you’re one of the worst mass murderers the USA has ever seen.

I’m not sure but I think British-born Islamic cleric Sheikh Farrokh Sekaleshafar may be able to help us with subtle distinctions of this sort.  He now resides in Iran but for some reason was lecturing somewhere near Orlando last April.  Hey, don’t ask me; I just live here.  In 2013 he gave a lecture at the University of Michigan in which he explained Muslims have a religious duty to kill gay people.  In his words, “Death is the sentence.  There’s nothing to be embarrassed about this.  Death is the sentence.”  Anyway, he seems quite the expert on fine distinctions relating to Islam and murder.  For example, he rejects the way Islamic State terrorists have been murdering gay people and notes with disdain they belong to the Sunni sect of Islam.  He belongs to the rival Shia sect.  He thinks Muslims should kill gay people in an official judicial context.  Pretty funny isn’t it?  I’m certainly no expert on the issue but I think many Muslims here in the USA and other modern democracies don’t really believe they have a religious duty to kill gay people in either an official or unofficial capacity.  Anyway I hope that’s the case.  Not really sure which sect they belong to.  How many are there anyway?  Does anyone even know?  And how the hell does one tell them apart?  Well, doesn’t matter much to me.  Not really my cup of tea.  In my opinion if a Muslim of any sect manages to come up with some rationale for not murdering people or exhorting other people to murder people then I’m satisfied.  I don’t need to know the details.  Can’t ask for too much in this world you know.  Anyway, Mr. Sekaleshafar is currently a guest of the Imam Husain Islamic Centre in Sydney Australia but local authorities are trying to help him back across the border so he may not be there much longer.  I can’t imagine he would want to return to Iran.  Who would?  I suppose he’ll probably be on a plane back to the USA to give us another lecture on Islam.  So much ignorance in the world don’t you think?  Hey, maybe we can ask his opinion on the morality of mass murder.  I’m not joking.  I’d like to know what he thinks.  We’re not going to start killing gay people in a judicial context in this country because we don’t live in a Stone Age hellhole and we know a little something about human sexuality and believe in personal freedom and so on and so forth.  In that context I wonder if the holy man sees any ethical merit in mass murder as a sort of fall back position.  Perhaps not perfect according to his belief system but better than doing nothing at all?

Returning to our story, can you believe the incompetence of our security forces?  We’ve got a creature who celebrated terrorist attacks and whose dad praised the Taliban terrorist organization on his local access TV show and yet he slithers into a gun shop in Florida and buys an assault rifle, which is something no one but a terrorist or criminal really needs in this country.  He tried to buy military grade body armor as well and was unsuccessful only because he went to the wrong shop.  When did the Three Stooges take over at FBI?  Do you know?  I missed it.  Omar: “I’ve proclaimed my love and admiration for terrorists and murderers for years.  I’ve come to the attention of the FBI on two different occasions on suspicion of supporting international terrorism.  My dad supports the Taliban terrorist group on local TV.  Can I please have an assault rifle right away?  I need it for … something.”  Florida and FBI in unison: “Why soitanly!  Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk!”  Omar: “I also need some military grade body armor.  I’m talking about the good stuff.  It must be able to take a high power sniper round and allow me to keep on shooting.”  Florida: “Sorry fresh out but maybe you can get some at the shop around the corner.”  FBI: “Woo woo woo woo woo woo woo!”  I mean really.  It’s embarrassing.  Can we pick up our game a bit here?  The incompetence and ineffectiveness of our security people in this case is just mind boggling.  It’s a problem but old hat I suppose.  Violent bigoted conservatives have been murdering innocent people for years all around the globe and of course in recent years Islamic extremists have all but cornered the market.  That’s not really news.  Indeed, it would be news if a day went by and Islamic extremists didn’t murder some random young person.  Can’t do a blog post on that.

Fortunately, I saw another article that got the old brain working again.  This article told a rather disturbing tale about a relatively young man (39 years old) named Sebastien who is currently trying to end his own life through Belgium’s legal euthanasia system on the grounds of extreme psychological suffering due to what he characterized as being gay.  WTH?  Whenever I try to stop talking about sexual orientation there it is all over the news again.  Did I mention the nightclub where our domestic Islamic terrorist Omar murdered all those people had a mostly gay clientele?  Yes, seems Omar was hanging out with gay people for quite some time before he started murdering them.  Trolling for victims or casing the joint are possibilities I suppose.  Of course I did read he had been going to that particular nightclub for about three years prior to his murder spree.  Seems quite a long time to be casing a joint.  Must have had one hell of a complicated set up.  Like breaking into Fort Knox.  And when it came to it he didn’t seem very particular about his victims.  He was also apparently active on gay dating apps for some time.  Not really sure how that helped.  Doing research I suppose.  Of course, there are other explanations.  I’ve been reading a lot of speculation that maybe we’re talking about a gay person who was so mentally and emotionally screwed up by his religion he was driven to murder those tempting him down the path of unrighteousness with all their dancing and kissing and loving and friendship and other fiendish devices.  Usually in cases like this we’re talking about deranged straight people imbued with religious fervor killing the wanton women they believe are enticing them into the unnecessary sexual activity Middle Eastern religions find so distressing but I guess the gay version works as well.  What is it about sex that sets conservatives so on edge anyway?  Honestly, I feel sometimes I’m living in Crazy Town.  Can we get some top psychiatrists working on it?  Maybe they can develop some sort of medication to help conservatives dial down their sexual anxieties a few notches.

Anyway, to get back to Sebastien, my initial reaction was to lash out at the sort of internalized homophobia or really hatred of gay people that would make a conflicted gay person want to kill himself, which I suppose would be pretty similar to whatever might cause a conflicted gay person to want to kill other gay people.  I was going to blab on about how incredulous I was that something like that could take place in a more or less modern country like Belgium (as opposed to the sort of overseas pisspot one assumes Omar would have found appealing) but really there’s not much interesting to say there either.  We get it.  Once one gives up one’s reason and humanity funny things start to happen.  Can’t write a blog post on that.  Thank goodness after thinking about it a bit more I now suspect something a bit more interesting might be going on at least in Sebastien’s case.  Yes!  A possible blog post at last!  (This must be a personal record.  I’ve been talking for five paragraphs and I’ve just now gotten to what I hope is the point.  I salute anyone who has managed to stay with me this week.)

I think we’ve wasted enough time on the preliminaries so let’s just dive right in.  As I was saying I  thought at first Sebastien might be someone so indoctrinated with hatred for gay people he just can’t handle the fact he is gay himself.  (One hears stories like that from time to time.  Pretty strange if sexual orientation is a choice as some conservatives believe, right?  Maybe after we consult Islamic religious scholar Sheikh Sekaleshafar on the ethics of mass murder we can consult conservative windbag Ben Carson on the mystery of why Sebastien doesn’t just choose a different sexual orientation.)  What makes me suspect this might indeed be all we’re talking about is that Sebastien made reference to a “strict Catholic ethos” existing in his household as he was growing up.  I feel anytime anyone is subject in his or her youth to any strict form of any religion but particularly any religion with any connection at all to the Middle East then that person’s mental health in later life is likely to become a major concern.  If that is the case then it would be sad and a little ironic because of course the age of religious ignorance and intolerance is passing in the USA and other modern countries (although surely still going strong in the more backward regions of the world) and it’s disheartening to think of anyone in a generally modern country like Belgium killing himself or herself for this reason at this point in history.  Rather like dying on the last day of a war.  (If you’re not following me on this point and have trouble imagining what happens when human sexuality collides with religiosity inside someone’s head check out the reference below on internalized homophobia.  Take a look in particular at the account of the young Muslim fellow who explains how he was driven to increasingly extreme religious behavior in a vain attempt to compensate for the self hatred he experienced after realizing he was gay but committed to a religion that presents being gay as a fatal moral failing.)

However, I then noticed Sebastien added he was attracted specifically to “young men and adolescent boys.”  Oh.  Wait a minute.  Adolescent boys?  Is that what we’re talking about?  Is the issue not so much he’s gay but he’s sexually attracted to underaged kids?  To me that’s a rather different issue and certainly not specific to gay people.  Lolita ring a bell?  Anyway, if that’s the case then that seems to me a rather more interesting sort of question.  I’m sure I’ve commented before that current research suggests sexual attraction and orientation are of uncertain origin, established very early in life, buried pretty deeply in one’s psyche, and considered by mental health professionals to be basically impossible to change.  So what is one to do?  Well, I’m not a trained psychologist but off the top of my head I suppose there are two main ways to go: The first is an all out assault on one’s brain to eradicate unacceptable sexual thoughts.  That approach doesn’t seem to me very likely to work.  Sounds quite similar to trying to change one’s sexuality, which I’ve already noted most knowledgeable people now think is impossible.  I suspect if one tries that approach a bit too strenuously one might just end up doing oneself a mischief.  The second is the rather more modest approach of accepting one’s lot but taking steps to manage the problem.  That sounds to me more like something that might actually work.  As far as that goes I have to wonder if Sebastien has tried the traditional home remedy for managing funny sexual urges: porn.

I’m not kidding.  I’ve been doing a little research of my own the past several years and I’ve discovered one can find porn relating to all manner of things.  Did you know?  I infer there’s quite a bit of variation out there in what people find titillating.  I know some people feel differently but it seems to me a pretty harmless way to manage these sorts of issues.  Read a story.  Look at a drawing or a photo or a video and then use your imagination.  (And when I say a photo or a video I mean one that either isn’t pornographic or one that is but legal and aboveboard.  Looking at a photo or a video of someone else abusing an underaged kid or doing something else similarly reprehensible would defeat the whole purpose.)  Get it all out.  Then get on with life.  You know, if one is mature and sane one usually knows full well what one should do but if one imagines doing something else from time to time I guess it’s not the end of the world.  I’m a firm believer it’s what one actually does that matters in this life not what random thoughts might pass through one’s head.  Anyway, I suspect for most people porn therapy works because that’s how sexuality usually works.  One gets a bit horny for some reason and spends a few moments sorting it and it goes away.  I get that one might argue viewing porn or some types of porn anyway is giving in to the ugliness of the human condition and it would be superior to resist such unpleasantness.  I don’t know.  Maybe.  But I suspect it’s a heck of a lot healthier than pretending it doesn’t exist.  Monsters grow in darkness and secrecy.  Better to get things out in the open where you can deal with them.  Get the odd sexual fantasy out of the way and get on with the business of life including the important life task of developing meaningful emotional relationships with other people.  Don’t get me wrong.  It’s great if one manages the semi-mythical perfect union of sex and love but let’s not make a fetish out of it.  Doesn’t always work that way nor should one expect it to.  You might love your wife very much but maybe she just isn’t into dressing up like Princess Leia and licking your balls all night long.  (Pardon the vulgarity but I am doing a post on porn after all.)  Life goes on.  Go rest your head in your bedroom for a few minutes and come back when you feel better.  I think similar reasoning might apply to Sebastien.  If he has sexual feelings for underaged boys he can’t shake off then he’s probably better off trying to manage it in a positive way rather than obsessing about it.  Find a way to deal with it that doesn’t harm anyone.  If one is sincerely attracted to boys one should know as an adult one has a moral responsibility to put their interests first. That is the essence of true love after all don’t you think?  Find some way to get the funny sexual feelings out of the way and perhaps one can enjoy the beauty of boys and interact with them in a caring and supportive way as one ought to do.

Of course I suppose porn therapy probably isn’t advisable in every case.  If one has obsessive tendencies it may be the more porn one reads the more one thinks about inappropriate sexual behavior.  Or again I suppose it wouldn’t be advisable for people with a tenuous grip on reality.  The whole approach is predicated on the ability to maintain a distinction between the no holds barred private world of the imagination and the real world where one has ethical responsibilities one cannot ignore.  If one is apt to lose track of which world one is in porn therapy sounds like trouble waiting to happen.  And of course some people who have inappropriate urges might not have much in the imagination department.  They may feel they have no choice but to actually carry through on their funny thoughts.  I suppose porn wouldn’t do much for them.  What to do in these sorts of cases?  Well, I think now we’re starting to talk about some serious mental illness.  We all have responsibilities toward our fellow humans so if one knows one has an illness that puts other people at risk one has a responsibility to deal with it.  See a doctor.  Take medications.  Check yourself into an institution.   Do what you have to do.  And if those things also don’t work?  If one has done everything one can think of and is still beset with obsessive and nearly uncontrollable urges to do something reprehensible like rape little girls or what have you?  Well, I’m sorry to say so but in that case perhaps the honorable thing to do is what Sebastien has a mind to do.

A lot of talk to very little effect, right?  I just don’t have enough information to really know what to make of our fellow traveler Sebastien.  I certainly hope he’s not just a conflicted gay man terminally disabled by religious brainwashing.  Maybe it’s the humanist in me talking but I don’t see much wrong with consenting adults having a bit of how do you do now and again.  Hate to think of someone killing himself or herself over something like that.  If he’s struggling with inappropriate sexual thoughts relating to kids I hope he’s tried everything to treat it including porn therapy.  If he fears he may succumb to uncontrollable urges to harm kids and has tried every remedy and nothing is working and he wants to take the honorable path of removing himself from this world to protect others then perhaps the man deserves our respect.  I guess in some ways we all must play the hand we’re dealt but if one really tries one might exit this world with one’s humanity intact.  Can’t ask for much more than that.

References

Police: 50 killed in Florida nightclub terror attack.  Ashley Fantz, Faith Karimi, and Eliott McLaughlin.  June 12, 2016.  CNN. http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/12/us/orlando-nightclub-shooting/index.html

Shooter Omar Mateen’s father says he’s saddened by massacre, calls gunman ‘a good son’.  Tim Craig, Max Bearak, Lee Powel.  June 13, 2016.  Washington Post.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the-orlando-shooters-afghan-roots/2016/06/13/d89a8cd0-30e4-11e6-ab9d-1da2b0f24f93_story.html?hpid=hp_rhp-top-table-main_flaafghan-503am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory.

On 9/11, Omar Mateen’s classmates mourned.  Some say he celebrated.  William Wan, Brian Murphy.  June 13, 2016.   Washington Post.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/06/13/on-911-omar-mateens-classmates-mourned-some-say-he-celebrated/?hpid=hp_rhp-top-table-main_mateen_pn_1115am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.23587772c4c4.

Witness: Orlando shooter laughed during rampage.  Madison Park and Ray Sanchez.  June 14, 2016.  CNN.  http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/14/us/orlando-shooting-as-it-happened/index.html.

Australia may expel gay-hate preacher linked to Orlando.  June 14, 2016.  BBC.  http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-36524747.

Man seeks euthanasia to end his sexuality struggle.  Jonathan Blake.  BBC.  June 9, 2016.  http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36489090.

Did internalised homophobia spark Orlando nightclub attack?  Jasmine Taylor-Coleman.  BBC.  June 15, 2016.   http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-36534693.

Russian Law Mandates Stupidity

Welcome friends!

Maybe you haven’t noticed but I often seem to find myself commenting on news of people fined, imprisoned, beaten, and sometimes even murdered for expressing their views on religious matters.  The stories usually come out of the Middle East or Africa for one reason or another.  Sometimes they involve the straightforward if comically archaic religious / legal transgression of blasphemy, as bald an affront to free speech and personal liberty as one could ever hope to find, but sometimes they involve a slightly more evolved version in which the generally laudable goal of maintaining social order is thought to require preventing people commenting upon religious matters to avoid “insulting” religious people.  (In its most fanciful form the charge involves avoiding insulting not people but religions themselves.  Who knew religions were so sensitive?  I knew a little girl like that in grade school.  Religions must just get quite distressed when people criticize them.  When religions talk we should probably all just shut up and listen in awed silence to whatever they have to say.  We can straighten it all out later when they step out of the room to freshen up.  Hey, I’m just playing around.  If only I were so passive and intellectually feeble.  I wouldn’t have to write blog at all.  Think of the time I would save.)  Anyway, I’m always a little concerned readers may think I’m suggesting this phenomenon is unique to the Islamic religion because that’s the religion usually implicated in stories involving the Middle East and Africa.  I’ve tried to set the record straight before but I guess it doesn’t hurt to do it again from time to time lest anyone forget... Sorry but only selected archived (previous year) posts are currently available full text on this website.  All posts including this one are available in my annual anthology ebook series available at the Amazon Kindle Bookstore for a nominal fee.  Hey, we all need to make a buck somehow, right?  If you find my timeless jewels of wisdom amusing or perhaps even amusingly irritating throw me a bone now and then.  Thank you my friends!

Chopping for God

Welcome friends!

I wanted to get back to the near enemy of American conservatives and their evil clown act this week but then I noticed a peculiar story about some of our far away enemies, the horde of religious fanatics / violent jerks that inhabit the so-called Third World, so I thought maybe I should take another swipe at them.  I know many Americans will dismiss this as shooting fish in a barrel.  We get it.  These people are from another world.  They don’t share our values.  What they think is just and proper is offensive to the good people of our own world.  (And when I say “they” I obviously don’t mean everyone residing in these benighted regions; I mean the religious fanatics / violent jerks that are the focus of this post.)  But trust me; the story I’m talking about had a little twist.  It wasn’t your run of the mill account of Islamic terrorists beheading little kids out in some sweltering desert far far away.  No, the story I’m talking about involved a teenaged boy who was led by a noxious combination of religion, peer pressure, and probably implicit threats of violence to cut off his own hand.  What a world we live in, right?  Really a rather disgusting place if one thinks about it.  And the funny thing is we’ve had millennia to fix it up.  Oh well, I guess just keep trying.  No one ever said it would be easy.  Or is this perhaps the best we can do?  I sure hope not.

The story came out of Pakistan although I suppose it could equally well have involved any of the other countries in that part of the world... Sorry but only selected archived (previous year) posts are currently available full text on this website.  All posts including this one are available in my annual anthology ebook series available at the Amazon Kindle Bookstore for a nominal fee.  Hey, we all need to make a buck somehow, right?  If you find my timeless jewels of wisdom amusing or perhaps even amusingly irritating throw me a bone now and then.  Thank you my friends!

GOP Joins ISIS To Foment Discord

Welcome friends!

I actually had something else lined up for today but unfortunately events intervened once again and I decided to instead say something relating to our many Parisian comrades who were gunned down a few days ago in the latest CMA (i.e. crazy Muslim attack).  Before anyone gets unduly annoyed and starts running after me with the cutlery let me just clarify that the correct way to parse that phrase in my opinion is “crazy Muslim” attacks; not crazy “Muslim attacks.”  Yes, it makes a difference, which I’ll discuss shortly.  Of course, my blog is mostly about ideas so it wasn’t entirely clear to me what I should say.  I started out well enough, “murder bad,” but then found myself at a bit of an impasse.  You know me.  I need something to unravel or work through or clear up or confront or rebut.  Fortunately the group commonly known here in the US as the Stupid Party, the by now mind numbingly conservative Republican Party, managed to get it twisted and start talking about refusing Syrian refugees, closing mosques, conflicts between civilizations, etc.  Not exactly a fitting tribute to our fallen brothers and sisters in my opinion.  A bit irritating really.  Hey, now we’re getting somewhere!

Let me start out by acknowledging the small kernel of truth in the conservative argument, which is that Islam (by which I mean the Islamic religion as opposed to the collection of people living in various Middle Eastern countries) seems to be having a bit of a problem with violent interpretations... Sorry but only selected archived (previous year) posts are currently available full text on this website.  All posts including this one are available in my annual anthology ebook series available at the Amazon Kindle Bookstore for a nominal fee.  Hey, we all need to make a buck somehow, right?  If you find my timeless jewels of wisdom amusing or perhaps even amusingly irritating throw me a bone now and then.  Thank you my friends!

Christians Strike Again and Again and Again

Welcome friends!

I’m curious.  Are you one of those people so enamored of religion you simply cannot or will not recognize its all too obvious dark side?  In your opinion is religion an unequivocally positive word?  Are you perhaps a Christian who thinks people who do bad things in the name of religion simply have the misfortune of subscribing to the wrong religion?  Well, if you are then I’m afraid you may have some explaining to do.  I’m referring to an article I read in the newspaper the other day about an ostensibly Christian church rather ironically named the Word of Life Christian Church in the US state of New York that recently saw six of its parishioners taken into custody for beating a young man to death, inside the church mind you, and nearly managing to do the same to his younger brother.  Did I mention two of the miscreants were the teens’ parents?

Yes, it seems the ever so holy Bruce and Deborah Leonard along with at least four of their fellow church members were holding what police chief Michael Inserra rather euphemistically described as a “counseling session” to address the spiritual state (whatever that might be) of the two young brothers, Lucas (age 19) and Christopher (age 17), and the counseling ended with Lucas dead and Christopher in the hospital... Sorry but only selected archived (previous year) posts are currently available full text on this website.  All posts including this one are available in my annual anthology ebook series available at the Amazon Kindle Bookstore for a nominal fee.  Hey, we all need to make a buck somehow, right?  If you find my timeless jewels of wisdom amusing or perhaps even amusingly irritating throw me a bone now and then.  Thank you my friends!

Kim Davis, Religious Exemptions, and Fatassism

Welcome friends!

I was just chuckling over the latest news item on Kim Davis.  If you haven’t been reading the papers recently she’s that mildly frightening backwoods county clerk from Kentucky or Tennessee or some such place who has been in the news recently for refusing to carry out her official duties in terms of issuing marriage licenses to gay people.  Why was she doing that you ask?  Didn’t the Supreme Court just rule on that recently?  Why yes but like every conservative Ms. Davis is mostly concerned with what she herself wants to do.  In the vernacular, she don’t need no stinking laws.  Thus, like every other obnoxious power grabbing petty local bureaucrat who has ever lived she apparently felt entirely justified in doing whatever the hell she wanted to do.  In this case she looked into her blinkered heart and determined that at least in her little neck of the woods only straight people would be getting marriage licenses no matter what those power grabbing Supreme Court big shots in Washington might say about it.  To make a long story short they carted her off to the local slammer and her deputies ended up doing her job for her.  But I just read the other day she’s out again.  Maybe now she’ll do her job and then again maybe she won’t.  Don’t worry though.  Conservative Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, former governor of Arkansas, offered to take her place in jail the next time she flouts the law.  I think they should take him up on the offer.  The best case scenario would be for Ms. Davis to get canned and Mr. Huckabee to serve a long jail term thus ensuring he cannot harm any innocent bystanders via electoral mishap... Sorry but only selected archived (previous year) posts are currently available full text on this website.  All posts including this one are available in my annual anthology ebook series available at the Amazon Kindle Bookstore for a nominal fee.  Hey, we all need to make a buck somehow, right?  If you find my timeless jewels of wisdom amusing or perhaps even amusingly irritating throw me a bone now and then.  Thank you my friends!

Religion Can Be Toxic to the Young

Welcome friends!

I read a couple of news items recently that got me thinking about the often harmful intellectual and emotional effects of religion as well as the general inability of religious people to perceive these deleterious effects so I thought I might say a few words about that this week.  I suspect this post may be a bit challenging or dare I say annoying for some of my more spiritually minded readers and I do have some concerns about that.  Not concerned enough to shut the hell up of course.  Let’s not go crazy.  I’ve hardly ever been that concerned about anything.  But concerned enough to suggest that if you’re of a particularly otherworldly temperament and you’re a sensitive soul and especially if you tend to perceive critical discussions of your cherished beliefs as personal insults and even more so if you tend to react to perceived insults of that sort by running after random people in the street waving meat cleavers or what have you may I invite you to stop reading right now?  I don’t intend at all to challenge the ideas of anyone who is in no fit mental or emotional state to entertain any such challenge.  Come back next time and maybe I’ll be discussing something you can digest a bit more easily.  Or then again probably not, but you can always give it a try.  Are we good?  For everyone else; let’s talk.

The story that got me thinking about this issue involved a young homegrown American Muslim terrorist who appears to have been a normal kid until his father, who had emigrated from the Middle East many years before, decided it would be a good idea to get the kid in touch with his heritage and in particular his religious heritage.  He packed the kid off to some sort of religious school out in the Syrian desert somewhere and the kid came back unhappy, unfriendly, and kind of weird.  The police eventually arrested him for plotting to kill random people in a terrorist attack.  The father was duly shocked and couldn’t fathom how such a thing could have happened.  I didn’t save the reference although it shouldn’t be too hard to find.  Sorry about that.  Anyway, doesn’t really matter because as luck would have it we promptly had a similar story about a different young homegrown American Muslim terrorist, this one named Mohammed Abdulazeez, who managed to actually murder a few random people.  I think the final body count was five in that case including a young twenty-one year old fellow by the way, which is the kind of thing I find particularly irksome now I’ve gotten a bit up there in years and everyone else has gotten correspondingly younger.  All unarmed people of course just going about their everyday work although in this case I think their everyday work was at least related to national defense in some way.  Similar situation to the first story although I think I read Mr. Abdulazeez was also a drug addict and had mental problems and so on so maybe the cases are not exactly the same because of these sorts of complicating factors.  Anyway,  he was apparently able to hold it all more or less together until, like the young fellow in the other story, he took a little holiday to Syria only to return a bloody minded murderer.  Shock, amazement, and surprise all around.

How could such things happen?  Well, you know I love a good mystery so of course I immediately started thinking about potential mechanisms by which trips to Syria might transform previously unobjectionable if somewhat troubled young people into murderous terrorists.  I hate to bring up an awkward point but I suspect it may have something to do with religion.  Not necessarily Islam per se.  I don’t know enough about Islam to make that sort of argument and I most likely never will.  No, I mean religion in general.  The entire religious thought process.

I hope I’m not going out on too much of a limb when I suggest many young people are prone to experiencing a certain amount of difficulty transitioning to adult life.  (I know I had a hell of a time myself.)  I suppose this has probably always been the case quite possibly due to biological phenomena (I think I read somewhere one’s brain is undergoing major development and reorganization a good deal later than one might have expected) but it is probably more than ever now at least in the US due to the toxic influence of economic conservatism and the ensuing lack of sympathy and concern for other people and hence absence of any meaningful connection to other people or to society in general.  Of course, money, maturity, and experience all tend to act as buffers to the ignorance, cruelty, and greed that are some of the most salient features of the little world we’ve made ourselves, so if one manages to live long enough and be moderately successful in the world of work and finances one may hope to one day become totally insensate to the ugliness of our world, at least until the world hits one on the head with a rock some fine evening when one is out walking the dog.  Now young people typically live in a rather different world, which is to say, the real world.  They’re not often floating about in a state of benumbed smugness in an insulated cocoon of gated privilege.  No, they’re more often out there rubbing shoulders with the unfortunate bits of our system every day.  It’s stressful.  As one might expect they can develop all manner of unfortunate mental and emotional problems.  In these cases it’s probably natural for religious folk to think they’ll help the kids out by offering them a hit of religion.  In my opinion that’s probably just about the worst thing one can do in this situation.  Pushing religion to an already stressed young person in a misguided attempt to make him or her feel better is like trying to make a homeless person more comfortable by giving him or her a hit of crack cocaine.  It may be well intentioned but one shouldn’t be too surprised if it doesn’t end well.

The problem with foisting religion on mixed-up young people is that religious thought is basically an archaic pre-scientific not entirely rational emotion-based belief system that is totally foreign to anyone who has gone through a modern educational system.  When the modern and pre-modern worlds collide inside a troubled young person’s head strange things can happen.  Like what?  Well, I suspect they can very easily lose their already tenuous ability to evaluate arguments in the cool light of human reason because the principles of secular epistemology, logic, and science don’t necessarily line up very well with whatever mental or intellectual procedures, if any, are associated with various brands of religions thought.  A kid with no exposure to religious thought and hence no intellectual defense against the various strains of brain rot they represent is a sitting duck for any wily evildoer with a flair for eloquence.  Indeed, you may have noticed many of the most virulent religious extremists, I mean the ones who blow up little kids, run people over with cars, murder passers by with meat cleavers and so on, tend to be people who formerly had no religion at all.  Quite often they’re gang members or drug addicts or petty criminals and so on.  My understanding is that many or perhaps even most of the really psychotic killers in the Middle East have emigrated from the slums of Europe.  

The sad thing to me is there’s really no reason for this to be the case.  Education and knowledge are surely the only reliable cures for religious fanaticism and violent extremism and here in the US at least we have a quite respectable educational system.  We might not always get the top scores but then again unlike some other countries we tend to not want to give up on anyone.  Our kids should have plenty of intellectual ammunition in the form of a commitment to rationality, critical thinking, logic, secular philosophy, and the scientific method to deal with the far fetched rantings of any foreign cleric with aplomb.  Unfortunately that’s apparently not always the case.  Even though the fundamental bases of our education system are indeed reason and science we seem to have made a rather unfortunate pact with conservative forces to not enter into any sort of discussion that might reflect poorly on religion.  We have all manner of other educational requirements: language, mathematics, writing, economics, history, art, physical education.  But when it comes to the really big issues like epistemology and ethics and so on we’re just afraid to go there.  Why?  Well, let me explain.  It’s because we try give religion a big old pass.  We don’t want to offend anyone.  The implicit message for young people is that normal intellectual principles are fine and dandy for some things but just don’t really apply in a religious context. When it comes to religion we basically have this notion that one should believe whatever ones feels one ought to believe or feels disposed to believe.  This normally works out fine because most of the religions we’ve traditionally dealt with on a regular basis have been rather benign at least in recent memory, although that certainly wasn’t always the case.  And most people can eventually figure it out on their own, which is why religion in general is gradually losing its icy grip on the back of the neck of modern culture.  But it doesn’t always work out that way.  If a kid is not particularly quick on the uptake or if someone gets to them before they can figure it all out then the stage is set for something rather unfortunate to occur.

Of course, if a kid already has some exposure to religious thought then he or she has an advantage in the sense that relatively innocuous religion can crowd out more unfortunate permutations in the same way beneficial bacteria in the human gut can crowd out harmful bacteria.  This raises an interesting question.  Well, I think it’s interesting anyway.  The question is whether one is doing a kid a service or disservice by proactively introducing what one hopes is a relatively benign form of religion.  I feel it’s an interesting question because I can see two sides to the argument.  I just gave the pro side.  Against that we have the potential issue that once one gets a kid to accept these archaic forms of thinking as just as legitimate in their own way as more modern forms one may very well have facilitated unsavory people waltzing in later and convincing the kid to do literally anything.  It’s a high risk strategy.  “Yes, my son or daughter, you should believe in utter nonsense that has no basis whatsoever in human reason or science but just remember to always be careful which brand of utter nonsense you believe in.”  And then we have the psychological issues that go with having the kid’s parents involved.  Some kids crave their parents’ approval and if that means throwing reason and science out the window that’s what they’ll do.  Other kids want to separate from their parents and if their parents promote one brand of religious claptrap they will inevitably look for another most likely contrasting brand.

Well, I don’t really know the answer to this question of course.  Maybe religious inoculation sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t.  But I suppose you can probably guess what I think about the issue.  In my opinion parents are playing with fire when they subject their kids to religion.  We should be responsible adults and teach our kids philosophy, logic, science, critical thinking, and secular ethics.  They can take up and decide about religion later when they have the intellectual and emotional tools to evaluate those sorts of arguments.  We should give them room and time to grow not jump in there and brainwash them and hope for the best.  Try not to become like the bewildered dad in the story I was discussing earlier and end up wondering how your little darling could have become a crazed murderer despite all your crazed religious exhortations to the contrary.  Let’s just give the kids a break for once.

References

Chattanooga shooting: New details emerge about the gunman.  Scott Zamost, Yasmin Khorram, Shimon Prokupecz, and Evan Perez.  July 20, 2015.  CNN.  http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/20/us/tennessee-naval-reserve-shooting/index.html.

Anti-Islamization or Something

Welcome friends!

The recent murder spree by Muslim religious fanatics in Paris (as well as the efforts of a Muslim hostage to help some non-Muslim hostages escape the aforementioned murderous fanatics) got me thinking a bit more about those so-called “anti-Islamization” demonstrations in Germany and the amusing variety of reactions in the media.  So much confusion and most of it about words as usual.  I wonder; could we all please try to be a little more careful about how we say things so we can spend a little more time discussing the issues that divide us and a little less time talking past one another and getting unnecessarily annoyed?  Is that really too much to ask? ... Sorry but only selected archived (previous year) posts are currently available full text on this website.  All posts including this one are available in my annual anthology ebook series available at the Amazon Kindle Bookstore for a nominal fee.  Hey, we all need to make a buck somehow, right?  If you find my timeless jewels of wisdom amusing or perhaps even amusingly irritating throw me a bone now and then.  Thank you my friends!

Religion and Nature Revisited: The Template Problem II

Welcome friends!

I think this time I’d just like to finish my discussion from last time about what I was calling the template problem.  If you recall I was arguing in that post that religious people tend to view things through the prism of a sort of implied template of divine perfection and that doing so leads them to imbue any number of things with ethical significance that secular humanists tend to see as outside the scope of ethics.  This time I thought I’d take a look at this template idea in the context in which both religious and secular people would agree we’re talking about ethics, which in case you’ve never read my blog before would be when the actions of one person have a significant effect on another person and we end up with an interpersonal conflict that needs resolving.

This time I’m talking mostly or perhaps entirely about explicit ethical propositions relating to how one should interact with one’s fellow humans.  You can find propositions of this sort in both religious and secular ethics.  In a sense I suppose one could say it’s implied by the very idea of ethics, which is basically a template for how one believes one ought to behave in different situations.  Thus, in this case, it’s obviously not the presence or absence of a template that’s the issue.  However, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s irrelevant either.  In this context it’s the significance of the template for one’s ethics that matters, as well as the question of how the template relates to the natural world.  Both of these issues give rise to a number of interesting differences in how religious folk and secular humanists tend to think and talk about ethics.  (To avoid confusion I should point out that according to the way I’ve just framed this issue explicit directions on how people should behave when not having a significant effect on other people, which one quite frequently finds in religious systems, belong with my previous post despite the fact that in that post I was mostly discussing an implied template.)

In a religious system what typically makes ethical propositions valid or correct or whatever you want to call it (don’t get all philosophical on me now) is that they recommend behavior that corresponds to a template of correct behavior that is thought by religious folk to exist as a sort of cosmic given.  That’s what ethics is in a religious context.  Acting ethically means following God’s commands.  I think it must be this feature of the religious view of ethics that makes religious people so prone to what seem to secular humanists as exaggerated responses to seemingly minor moral issues and that are always pulling the more spiritually inclined among us toward fanaticism and extremism.  Because of the way religion frames the notion of ethics it can be very difficult if not impossible to revise or reconsider the template once it becomes established, which pretty much does away with the need for any sort of discussion or dialogue with those holding opposing views.  Even more weirdly to a secular humanist all the elements of this sort of template tend to take on equal weight or moral significance.  That’s because under the religious perspective if you give up the template you’re really giving up the entire basis of morality.  Cutting your hair a certain way (if that happens to be in the template) has the very same ethical standing and significance for a religious person as, say, not murdering your neighbor and eating his or her brain.  If you’re willing to ignore the template in one case then why would you pay attention to it in another case?  It just wouldn’t make sense for someone thinking about ethics in a religious context.  This leads religious people to adopt a very distinctive all or nothing sort of thinking when it comes to ethics and to come out with the sort of slippery slope arguments that seem to be their stock in trade.  (If we let people cut their hair any way they like then what’s next? Allowing people to murder their neighbors and eat their brains?)

In a secular humanist system, on the other hand, ethical propositions take the form of a template of correct behavior because that’s just how ethical propositions work, but ethics isn’t defined in terms of a correspondence with an external template and that’s a big difference.  Under the secular perspective we make up our own template whenever we think about ethics.  To figure out if a given proposition expresses something one would accept as ethical one needs to relate that proposition to one’s moral sensibilities though some chain of reasoning that may be short or long depending on the proposition.  Under this perspective ethics is not about following the orders of a particularly authoritative external agent; it’s about thinking through for oneself what one believes one ought to do and then using one’s reason to develop the implications of that belief.  (Well, OK, I suppose one might view ethics in that case as following one’s own orders or following the orders of one’s moral sense and intellect, but it’s not really the same thing as following the orders of an external agent, is it?  And of course a secular humanist might have ethical beliefs about following orders from an external agent but that’s also a different issue.  The idea that following orders in that context is ethical would not be based on the notion that following those orders defines what it means to be ethical; it would be based on the fact that one’s ethical beliefs imply that one should follow those orders, which is a whole different kettle of fish.)  Because of the way secular humanists conceive of ethics they are typically quite willing to reconsider and potentially revise particular ethical propositions in response to new information or arguments (or I suppose changes in their moral sentiments if that were to happen) and they tend to have little difficulty attaching rather greater ethical significance to some propositions than to others.

Another interesting difference in the operation of the template in the religious and secular contexts is that the relationship of the template to the natural world seems to me to be different.  For religious people locating the template and understanding its ostensible relationship to the natural world can be surprisingly tricky.  Indeed, I’m not at all sure all religious people are even on the same page on this one.  On the one hand, the religious template of behavior can be seen as external to humanity in the sense that the validity of the template and the associated ethical propositions do not depend on what anyone thinks about them.  Indeed, inserting one’s own feelings into the matter amounts to just so much hubris according to this common religious view.  On the other hand, I’ve also seen the argument that since the same entity that ostensibly made the template of correct behavior also ostensibly made the world, including humanity, this template must be built into people or even into the external world.  This leads to the idea that every one is truly good at some level; it’s just that some people have trouble seeing their inner light.

For secular humanists locating the template and figuring out how it relates to nature is a lot easier.  It’s certainly not floating about in the ether external to human reason.  Indeed, from the secular perspective it only makes sense to talk about the template from the perspective of someone having a given moral sense and supporting a given ethical theory.  In general people everywhere seem to have rather similar fundamental moral sentiments probably because if you go back far enough you’re just talking about the sorts of beliefs that allow humans to function effectively as social animals.  That’s why we can discuss ethics and often reach at least some level of agreement on which way to go, eventually.  But there’s no mechanism to ensure that will always be possible because reason and logic only get one so far and what ultimately matters, moral sensibilities, are not intellectual artifacts like reason and logic but aspects of the natural world more akin to human emotions.  They’re part of the natural world and as such are prone to the variation and mutability that is the hallmark of the natural world.  Thus, it’s always quite possible we might encounter people who do not share our fundamental moral sensibilities and who consequently will not be swayed by our notion of what is right.  In that sense the potential for conflict is pretty much built in to the secular humanist way of thinking about ethics.

Ironically, I think the recognition of the limitations of ethical philosophizing and the constant threat of overt conflict makes those who adhere to secular ethics less prone to actual conflict.  In my experience they just tend to try harder to reach some basis of commonality with those starting out with different views.  Religions, which tend to suppress conflict in an intellectual sense by doing away with the need for discussion and debate and often by simply assuming everyone is really the same on the inside, seem to me to be more prone to leading their adherents into actual conflict because religious people often get stuck at the stage of getting other people to accept the template as a divine artifact.  This can be a bit of a problem because differentiating one ostensibly divine artifact from all the other ostensibly divine artifacts is just not really all that easy to do, never mind the related issue of trying to convince people who believe there is no such thing as a divine template.  So the religious idea of generating an ethical society tends frequently to devolve into trying to get enough political or perhaps even military power to force everyone else to obey the one true template of behavior.

Actually, the potential diversity of moral sentiments in the secular context also seems somewhat interesting to me considering my previous argument that secular humanists tend to appreciate and accept natural variation in many situations in which religious people do not.  Here we’ve clearly gotten to a realm in which diversity is not a good thing even for secular humanists.  Indeed, this switch in attitudes about the value of diversity gets to the whole basis of the liberal ethos.  Diversity along many dimensions is natural and can even be considered good or at least not too bad.  We certainly don’t want to banish all diversity from the world as though it were some sort of generic evil.  However, when we get to ethics we’re in a whole different place.  We’re talking about interpersonal conflicts in which both people can’t have their way and although we hate to get involved we kind of have to if we’re going to live socially the way humans developed over time to live.  So for example diversity in our thinking about the acceptability of murder is not really acceptable.  We have to sit down and tackle the unpleasant and complicated task of how different people think about killing people in various situations and come up with something we’re willing to argue is ethical.  But we want to minimize the situations in which we have to take up that sort of thing.  Two people not liking the same haircut doesn’t make the grade.  Sorry, but I think we can preserve a little natural diversity there.  Being offended by an ugly haircut just doesn’t rise to the level of significant effect that would require ethical debate.  My larger point is that to understand this type of thinking one has to come from a place where one perceives a tradeoff between diversity and freedom on the one hand and the need for ethics on the other.  If you start from the religious perspective it’s all too easy to not even understand the issue.  It’s way too easy to just say, look, the haircut is incorrect.  It doesn’t correspond to the template of divine perfection.  We should ban it.  There is no tradeoff; there’s only right and wrong.

I suppose that last point brings up yet again the specter of so-called moral relativism, which is something I think people tend to get rather confused about and I’ve written about before.  (See my post on Secular Humanist Ethics from February 3, 2011.)  Under the secular perspective we need to reference a particular ethical theory to talk about morality.  Morality isn’t just floating around the natural world like a rare butterfly waiting to be discovered.  We have to decide what it is.  The fact I recognize that if my system of ethics doesn’t make sense to you because you don’t share my fundamental moral sensibilities doesn’t mean I think it’s fine if you do things your way and I do things my way, not when we’re talking about issues of true ethical significance like murdering people.  If you’re doing something to someone I think is unethical then I’m basically involved whether I want to be or not.  Yes, it’s all relative; but that doesn’t mean it’s not real or it doesn’t matter to me or you or to any other particular person.  We can duke it out if we must but we’re going to have to come to some sort of resolution.  I suppose the confusion in this context must come from conflating two contexts in which one might discuss ethics: the context of personal responsibility and adherence to one’s own ethical beliefs and the context of philosophical talk about the ultimate basis of ethics and the fact different people may support different systems of ethics.  One can’t just switch contexts back and forth like a crazy man or woman and expect to maintain any idea of what one is talking about.

Well, I think I’ve probably beaten this topic into submission, at least for now.  So let me just end with a humble plea: I think the world would be a much more reasonable and peaceful place if we gave up the notion of divine templates and commands from on high and just started talking about what we all think is ethical and why we think that.  And for goodness sake let’s try to restrict our discussions to things that really matter.  But fear not.  Losing one’s religion doesn’t mean losing one’s ethics; it just means reconsidering the basis of one’s ethics.  You will always have every reason to do what you know you ought to do, so please set your mind at ease on that point.