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Religion

Wherein Marty demonstrates how the Right gets it wrong, twice

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Marty has posted a summary of a couple of arguments I’ve seen made a lot by those on the Right, one specific to the case of the Republican pervert Mark Foley, the other a more general case. First the specific:

Now suppose they had thrown Foley, a gay representitive, under the bus at that time with no evidence of a crime. The lefties would have been all over “those Homophobic Republicans.” Now, a year later, as soon as evidence of a crime appears Foley is confronted and resigns. The cry is, “They were hiding it until after the election! Hastert should resign!”

No, Hastert did his job correctly. The scandal casts Foley in a bad light.

Partially correct. If Hastert had proceeded by saying “Look at Foley, he’s a big sweaty gay come to corrupt our children, can’t you see the gay dripping from him?” I think the Left would have protested. If, on the other hand, he’d made discrete inquiries about the issue, perhaps speaking to some former Pages who may have felt able to speak freely about what happened, I don’t think there would have been an outcry. Even if he had gone public, announcing that accusations had been made that were serious enough to warrant a full investigation, though he remained firmly supportive of his good friend Rep. Foley, I think there would have been little basis for complaint. But instead, as Marty phrases it, “he told Foley to knock it off.” I’m no expert, but “Please don’t be a pedophile” doesn’t strike me as being tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime.

Now for the more general critique, where Marty quotes from RealClearPolitics:

“Scandal? Disgrace? I think not. Foley and others could only be so labeled if popular culture condemned, rather than promoted, immorality. Oh, sorry, there I go again, appealing to a discarded standard.”

This is based on the Christian (and some other religion’s) argument that morality is meaningless without reference to (a) God; that there is no action you can describe that can be said to be moral or otherwise without first understanding what (a) God would teach on that action. I don’t wish to debate this point – you either agree with it or you don’t, and my attempts to highlight its strengths or flaws won’t change that. But it simply does not apply here. Immorality isn’t a single entity, so popular culture cannot be said to promote or condemn it. Certainly there are things that Christians find immoral that popular culture promotes (such as casual sex), and things that I find immoral (such as the subjugation of women, which certain forms of Christianity also promote, ah the irony). But neither popular culture nor society as a whole support the idea of a 50-something man having sex with children, and to suggest otherwise is so ridiculous as to suggest some kind of brain damage.

Don’t take my word for it – ask around your place of work and try to find anyone who thinks it’s OK. Whether you work at the 7/11 or a Hollywood studio the answer will be the same. The only exception would be if I have readers who work at the execrable ManBoyLove organization, which I doubt (I’m not sure that’s its correct title, but I’m damn sure I’m not googling for it.) And they only further my point, because they’re about as far from popular culture or societal norms as it is possible to get.

All of us are, of course, free to follow a group morality or our very own invention. The choice will certainly have consequences in this world, and depending on your faith may in the next world too. Foley’s consequences now include disgrace and humiliation. Hastert and several others in the Republican leadership who appear to think that investigating credible evidence of a pedophile in your midst isn’t worth the trouble deserve nothing less.

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Addendum: I could quote approvingly from pretty much this entire piece at WorldNetDaily, which I can’t imagine being able to say about anything else they’ve ever published. Worth a read to see a sane view from the far Right.

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Update: Looks like it might be the fault of all those nasty horrible gays after all. Of course.

Go Rev

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The Washington Post had an interesting article about a supposed war on Christianity a few months ago, that I was reminded of following recent attempts to restart the subject (and here we are, only in September!) I particularly like this quote from the Rev. Robert M Franklin:

“This is a skirmish over religious pluralism, and the inclination to see it as a war against Christianity strikes me as a spoiled-brat response by Christians who have always enjoyed the privileges of a majority position”

It did get me thinking about a couple of aspects of this putative war. The majority of Americans identify themselves as Christian – 75% in fact, and that’s after a drop of several percentage points. That leaves us with a choice; either Christians are waging war on themselves, or the other 25% are able to overcome the will of the great majority of the people.

The first option prompted my first thought. How ‘unChristian’ do you have to be before you cease to be a Christian? So far as I can tell, either the huge majority of Christians are self-deluding, or the only absolute to the faith is a belief that Christ is Lord (or however you want to phrase it). Now there are obvious practical considerations in play here; could one really eat babies as a snack and believe that Christ is Lord, for example? But in general there is enough wiggle room in most Biblical teaching that you can do most ‘normal’ things and argue for your place in heaven. And even if some of those people are wrong, there’s only one judge of that, and it isn’t Jerry Falwell.

This led on to my second thought. Assuming, then, that the majority of self-identifying Christians are indeed Christians, it seems nonsensical on its face that they are waging this war. They may be guilty through apathy because they aren’t sufficiently zealous in defending their faith, but they’re not trying to eliminate their own faith. We’re left then, with the choice that 25% of the population is waging this war; an insurgency, if you like.

We’ve just said that a significant number of Christians may have been rendered useless by apathy. I’m going to assume that there’s nothing intrinsic to Christianity that makes its followers apathetic. So let’s narrow the field down to 12%, a pretty generous assumption given the levels of apathy I see generally (and practice myself in many areas). Let’s knock that down by half again to allow for those who don’t believe in Christianity, but wish its practitioners well in their delusion (that would include me). And while we’re on a roll, let’s halve it one more time to allow for all those evil-doers who would gladly roast Christians over an open flame, but they’re too busy at the cabin / making minimum wage / torturing puppies.

We’re left with a generous estimate of 3% of the population, under a million people, who are waging a war with alleged wild success on at least 225 million people. These people have essentially no political representation (being elected in the US is almost synonymous with being a Christian). They may have some help from overseas, but American culture is such that the influence of foreigners is pretty muted. I’m sure some of them are rich, but then so are their opponents (presumably by a 3:1 margin). Their debased message might seem appealing, except that most (75%+) of the target audience is religious, and hence inspired to resist such errancy even while their sinful natures may be drawn to it.

So what does that leave us with? I’m sure there are people in the US who genuinely wish to destroy Christianity; they certainly exist in other countries, so why not there? But we’re talking about such a small minority of people with this level of passion and the ability to do something about it that this is simply not a significant factor, certainly not for stupid cultural wars about ‘Happy Festivus’. What we have instead is a war on right-wing Christianity, the sort of narrow-minded, “you’re with us or agin us” bigotry that labels any disagreement a declaration of war. Such a war would be terrible, if the right-wing Christians are right about the nature of God. Fortunately it doesn’t take much studying to realize that so much of what they espouse is a gross perversion of Christ’s message. That doesn’t make them any weaker, of course. It just makes them wrong.

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Provocation

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For our honeymoon my wife and I spent some time in Thailand, including a memorable few days in Khao Sok National Park. The fact that it is a man-made reservoir didn’t alter the beauty of the area, and we had a great couple of nights sleeping in a small floating hut, followed by a night sleeping 50 feet up a tree while every primate in the park stopped by and had sex on our roof.

While we were there we went on a walk through the jungle. Aside from the creepy leeches that, despite lacking any apparent sensory organs, would unerringly hunt us down wherever we stopped, one of the highlights was seeing a tarantula spider in its natural habitat. Our guide evidently felt that our enjoyment of said arachnid would be enhanced if he poked it with a stick. This seemed ill-advised to me, and while I hadn’t at that time started to use Californian surfer-speak in the post-ironic way I now do, had it been available to me a hearty “Dude! You’re poking the deadly venomous spider!” would have fairly represented my thoughts.

Thinking back, I’m inspired by our guide’s spirit of adventure (though I still feel obliged to point out that he was, like, totally poking a poisonous spider with a stick!) And having read a fair amount about environmentalism, and also a certain amount about both Christianity and Christianism, it feels time to make a bold assertion that I can try to follow up in later posts.

Before I do that, though, a little reasoning. My understanding of Christianity is that the core concept is to believe that salvation can be found only through belief in God as manifested through his son, Jesus Christ. Forgive the questionable wording there, it’s the idea that counts. Many things I’ve read suggest to me that this idea is literally it, that you could theoretically do anything you wanted, however vile, and so long as you still held this belief you would be welcomed into the presence of God. But at the same time, if you do truly believe this idea then certain activities become essentially untenable. It’s almost the reverse of the ‘No True Scotsman‘ fallacy; it’s not that a ‘true’ Christian wouldn’t commit some depraved act, rather that it’s almost impossible to contain a true belief in Christ alongside the desire to do such things (we’ll ignore for a moment the fallen nature of man).

So there are certain things that could reasonably be expected of a Christian, even though there isn’t an absolute mandate for any one of them. A significant one of these, perhaps one of the central teachings of Jesus, was taking care of those less fortunate than you. This caring can take many forms, and there is very legitimate debate about how much an individual could be expected to do. For example, it’s not expected that all Christians sell all their possessions and wander forth to minister to the common man, but neither should they live as they wish without a thought for others.

Clearly that gives us a lot of leeway, and that’s before we get to political and economic ideas about what actions actually benefit the less fortunate best (trickle-down economics, socialism, libertarianism, etc.) But it’s clear that there is a line somewhere, however blurry and indistinct, beyond which a Christian should not stray. As a fun effort to define that line, therefore, I hereby assert that if you own a Hummer you are not a Christian.

Caesar

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Great quote from the guy refusing to let a creationist theme park go ahead in Florida:

“Scripture also says ‘Render unto Caesar what Caesar demands.’ And right now, Caesar demands a building permit,” County Commission Chairman Mike Whitehead said.

(HT: Pharyngula)

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