This ongoing conflict between sectarianism and secularism is the raison d’etre for a non-theist movement, and it is why categorical disrespect for godlessness matters. The assumption that religious belief is essential to morality advances mistrust of secular governance. Of course, religious people have a right to their biases, and the irreligious have a right to challenge them. Non-theists can always voice their opinions individually, but, like other ideological and demographic minorities, they need a movement to amplify their voices. And regardless of their individual psychic needs for recognition (which do not interest me), non-theists have a collective political need for a movement that encourages openness about disbelief: The more godlessness is normalised, the less it will seem inherently immoral, the more likely the perspectives of non-theists will be considered, instead of reflexively condemned.
What should they bring to the church/state debates? As a small, disrespected, irreligious minority, non-theists should appreciate freedom of conscience. Non-theism is often associated with hostility toward religion, thanks partly to the prominence of a few ‘New Atheists’, but it can and should promote respect for religious liberty. People who believe in no religions are not apt to privilege any one of them: evangelicals tend to be wary of Mormonism, as the Republican primaries have demonstrated, but to an atheist or agnostic, belief in the resurrection is no more or less worthy of respect than belief in the Angel Moroni.
Scepticism is a great leveller; it favours extending equal speech and religious rights to all orthodoxies, which is the essence of civil liberty. Freedom of conscience doesn’t distinguish between new, outré religions derided as cults and traditional mainstream faiths, as former American Civil Liberties Union executive director Ira Glasser tried explaining to an interviewer years ago. He was asked about the chanting, saffron-robed Hare Krishnas, who commanded little popular respect. They were ‘weird’, the interviewer remarked to Glasser. ‘I don’t know’, he replied. ‘Have you taken a look at the College of Cardinals?’
Wendy Kaminer “In America, atheists are still in the closet”, Spiked!, 2012-04-11
April 12, 2012
QotD: Atheists in America
March 11, 2012
Tim Worstall on “Protestant” and “Catholic” laws
No, not the differing flavours of Christianity themselves, but more their different approaches to understanding and interpreting the law:
The Protestant revolution was, in part (it never does to strain these analogy/simile things too much) that the Bible, when in the vernacular, as clear an outline of God’s will as any should need. Intervention was not needed, a man could commune directly with the Word and the Will of God.
On the matter of the law I am a Protestant. As rigid and unyielding as any Puritan, Lutheran or Calvinist. With a twist of course: the law must be written so that it can be understood directly, without that intervention of the priestly caste of lawyers, accountants, diversity advisors or bureaucrat’s helplines.
If you cannot write a law with the clarity of “thou shalt not kill” then go away and think through what it is that you’re trying to enact, the language that you are using to do so until you can, with clarity, tell us what it is that we must not do at fear of time in pokey.
That modern society is complex is no excuse. If you cannot write simple and simply understood laws then better that we have fewer laws.
That the Puritans went gargantuanly off the rails by using their new found revelations of God’s Will to tell everyone else what to do is true. But I do find it interesting that our new would be ruling class, the nomenklatura, are adopting such a Catholic view of the law. We’ll make it all so complex that no individual can understand it and thus there is the necessity of that nomenklatura to tell people what to do in detail by “interpreting” it.
March 10, 2012
February 21, 2012
The real problem with forcing employers’ insurance to pay for contraception
At the Adam Smith Institute blog, Tom Clougherty discusses the biggest problem with the current American debate over contraceptives and insurance coverage:
Now, I’m no Rick Santorum. I’m a fan of contraception. But there’s so much wrong with this story that it’s hard to know where to start. Should the government really compel you to buy a service from a private company? It’s probably better than the government nicking your money and providing that service themselves, but for a libertarian it still rankles. Then there’s the insensitivity to deeply-held religious conviction, which not only exposes the ‘liberal’ left’s inability to tolerate social mores that differ from their own, but also highlights the way big government inevitably tramples on diversity and choice with its one-size-fits-all monomania. And then there’s the idiot-economics which suggests that you can force a company to provide a service without anyone having to pay for it. In this case, assuming insurance companies can’t find a way of covertly passing on the cost of contraceptive cover to church-affiliated employers, then everyone else with insurance ends up footing the bills through higher premiums.
But perhaps the biggest problem is the one explained by Sheldon Richman in this Freeman article: contraception has nothing whatsoever to do with insurance.
Insurance arose as a way for individuals to pool their risk of some low-probability/high-cost misfortune befalling them. It shouldn’t be necessary to point this out, but coming of child-bearing age and choosing to use contraception is not an insurable event. It’s a volitional act. It may have good consequences for the person taking the action and society at large, but it is still a volitional act. It makes no sense to talk about insuring against the eventuality that a particular person will use contraception.
February 9, 2012
The heady mix of politics and religion: this is why there’s supposed to be a separation of church and state
At Reason, A. Barton Hinkle on the different ways the media reacts to religious issues under different presidents:
George W. Bush had one small office devoted to faith-based initiatives, and was savaged for it. Barack Obama, on the other hand, says faith drives much of his domestic agenda—and no one even blinks.
We are in “the fourth year of the ministry of George W. Bush,” cracked novelist Philip Roth in 2004. By then, several million gallons of ink already had been spilled warning that Bush’s “faith-based presidency” was “nudging the church-state line” (The New York Times) and was “turning the U.S. into a religious state” (Village Voice) and was “arrogant” and “troubling” (St. Petersburg Times) and was “pandering to Christian zealots” (Salon) and “imposing its values on the rest of us” (too many to name).
Obama has been just as overtly religious as Bush — “We worship an awesome God in the blue states,” he said in his 2004 keynoter at the Democratic National Convention — and even more aggressive about injecting faith into politics. In 2006, he praised a religious “Covenant for a New America.” In a 2008 speech in Ohio, he said religious faith could be “the foundation of a new project of American renewal” and insisted that “secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering into the public square.” He has kept Bush’s office of faith-based initiatives. In fact, “Obama’s faith-based office has given religious figures a bigger role in influencing White House decisions,” reported USNews in 2009.
At the National Prayer Breakfast last Thursday, the president began by noting that he prays every morning, and then devoted the rest of his speech to explaining the manifold ways in which his faith guides his policies. “I am my brother’s keeper and I am my sister’s keeper,” he said. That somnolent silence you hear is the guardians of church-state separation taking a nap.
Frankly, it still boggles my mind that there’s such a thing as a “National Prayer Breakfast” outside of the annual general meetings of churches.
January 30, 2012
Irish bishop accused of hate speech
Blogger “Archbishop Cranmer” is calling for an “I’m Spartacus” response to this pending prosecution of Bishop Philip Boyce:
The Most Reverend Dr Philip Boyce is the Catholic Lord Bishop of Raphoe. He preached a homily on 20th August 2011, entitled ‘To Trust in God’. His Grace reproduces it in its entirety, for the two sentences highlighted in bold have landed the Bishop in a bit of hot water.
Apparently, they constitute an incitement to hatred, at least according to ‘leading humanist’ John Colgan. And so the Gardai have thoroughly investigated the complaint and compiled a file which they have handed to the Republic’s Director of Public Prosecutions.
So what horrible things did the Bishop utter in his “incitement to hatred” that has John Colgan so upset?
The moment of history we live through in Ireland at present is certainly a testing one for the Church and for all of us. Attacked from the outside by the arrows of a secular and godless culture: rocked from the inside by the sins and crimes of priests and consecrated people, we all feel the temptation to lose confidence. Yet, our trust is displayed and deepened above all when we are in troubled and stormy waters. It is easier to be confident when we ride on the crest of a wave, when the tide is coming in. Not so easy, however, yet every bit as necessary, when what is proclaimed by the Church namely the truth of faith with its daily practice and influence on behaviour, is under severe pressure.
[. . .]
Indeed unless we trust in a higher power, in God himself, what hope can we have? St. Paul told his converts at Ephesus that before they came to know Christ, they were “without hope and without God in the world” (Eph. 2:12). We need the radiance of a hope that looks beyond the horizons of space and time, one as Pope Benedict teaches “that cannot be destroyed even by small-scale failures or by a breakdown in matters of historic importance” (Spe Salvi No. 35). For the distinguishing mark of Christian believers is “the fact that they have a future: it is not that they know the details of what awaits them, but they know in general terms that their life will not end in emptiness…. To come to know God — the true God — means to receive hope” (Ibid, No. 2.3). We thank God for the faith, that enables us to trust in Him.
Perhaps I’m just particularly dense but the bold sentences above are apparently the “hate speech” nuggets in question. I don’t see it myself…
John Colgan said of these two sentences: “I believe statements of this kind are an incitement to hatred of dissidents, outsiders, secularists, within the meaning of the (Incitement to Hatred) Act, who are perfectly good citizens within the meaning of the civil law. The statements exemplify the chronic antipathy towards secularists, humanists etc, which has manifested itself in the ostracising of otherwise perfectly good Irish citizens, who do not share the aims of the Vatican’s Irish Mission Church.”
January 4, 2012
Santorum is the “Spock with a beard” universe version of Ron Paul
Michael Tanner enumerates the Santorum attributes his evangelical conservative fans seem to find most attractive:
There is no doubt that Santorum is deeply conservative on social issues. He is ardently anti-abortion, even in cases of rape and incest, and no one takes a stronger stand against gay rights. In fact, with his comparison of gay sex to “man on dog” relationships, Santorum seldom even makes a pretense of tolerance. While that sort of rhetoric may play well in Iowa pulpits, it will be far less well received elsewhere in the nation.
[. . .]
Santorum’s voting record shows that he embraced George Bush–style “big-government conservatism.” For example, he supported the Medicare prescription-drug benefit and No Child Left Behind.
He never met an earmark that he didn’t like. In fact, it wasn’t just earmarks for his own state that he favored, which might be forgiven as pure electoral pragmatism, but earmarks for everyone, including the notorious “Bridge to Nowhere.” The quintessential Washington insider, he worked closely with Tom DeLay to set up the “K Street Project,” linking lobbyists with the GOP leadership.
He voted against NAFTA and has long opposed free trade. He backed higher tariffs on everything from steel to honey. He still supports an industrial policy with the government tilting the playing field toward manufacturing industries and picking winners and losers.
In fact, Santorum might be viewed as the mirror image of Ron Paul. If Ron Paul’s campaign has been based on the concept of simply having government leave us alone, Santorum rejects that entire concept. True liberty, he writes, is not “the freedom to be left alone,” but “the freedom to attend to one’s duties to God, to family, and to neighbors.” And he seems fully prepared to use the power of government to support his interpretation of those duties.
December 31, 2011
The Christian Post: No, you can’t be a Christian and a libertarian
The executive editor of The Christian Post explains why liberty is incompatible with the teachings of Christianity:
Dr. Richard Land, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention and executive editor of The Christian Post, said that “of course libertarians can be Christians — but so can racists.”
“If you are a Christian and a libertarian, you would have to basically ignore all of Romans 13 where God lays down a specific role that the government is divinely ordained to play which is to reward those who are right and punish those who are evil.”
“Libertarians are not being consistent in applying the Bible to their thought process,” Land contended The government not only has a right, he said, but is called upon by God to regulate societal morality.
“Slavery was outlawed by the government. Is that not a moral issue? There are laws against rape, murder, theft … all of these are moral issues that the government has and must regulate.”
The evangelical leader argues that libertarians compartmentalize their faith when their Christian faith must be first and foremost in every aspect of their life — even in politics and government.
Many Christian libertarians, for instance, argue that sin that is “victimless” — such as drug use — should not be made illegal because users knowingly chose to use the substance on their own accord, and by exercising their free will poorly, they will also have to suffer the consequences.
Conservative Christians, however, do not see any sin as “victimless” and argue that Christianity by its very nature affirms the idea of corporate solidarity. Therefore, every action, or lack of, has a ripple effect on society, which impacts the lives of others.
According to the Christian Right, libertarians put too much emphasis on individual liberties and not enough on the consequences those liberties could have on society.
December 26, 2011
Delingpole: “I wouldn’t write a rude song about Islam if you paid me a million quid”
James Delingpole is upset with the easy laughs that comedians can get for poking fun at Christianity, yet the same comic geniuses are terrified to offend the equally parody-worthy Islam — and for good reason. Write and perform a ditty about Jesus and you’re the toast of the town and get invited to all the late-night TV talk shows. Do something remotely the same on the topic of Mohammed and get a set of real death-threats and the constant need to check under your car for explosives:
Did you hear the song Aussie comic Tim Minchin wrote savagely satirising Islam for Channel 4′s Eid special? No, I didn’t either. It didn’t happen and it never would happen: first because no broadcast station in its right mind would ever allow it; second because I don’t believe that Minchin would be stupid enough to write it.
And I’m not calling Minchin out for physical cowardice on this issue. From the Danish cartoons to the Paris bombing, we’ve seen far too many cases of artists testing the right to free speech — only to find that where certain religions are concerned, such matters are strictly verboten. But what I am definitely accusing him of is hypocrisy and moral cowardice, as regards the banned song he wrote for a Jonathan Ross Christmas special likening Jesus to a blood-drinking zombie.
[. . .]
Again, let me stress, this isn’t a plea to Minchin to acquire set of cojones and commit suicide through the medium of satire. I wouldn’t write a rude song about Islam if you paid me a million quid. Or even ten million. But what I equally wouldn’t do is compromise my integrity by laying heavily into one soft-target religion while treating a rival one, far more ripe for satire, with kid gloves. To do so would, I think, make me look a hypocrite and a fraud.
Update, 27 December: Sorry, fixed the broken link. Didn’t realize it wasn’t working properly until now.
December 22, 2011
December 3, 2011
Steve Jones: The problem with belief
In the Telegraph, Steve Jones talks about the growing problem that many British students have when the science conflicts with their religious beliefs:
I have tried asking students at quite what point they find my lectures unacceptable: is it the laws of inheritance, mutation, the genes that protect against malaria or cancer, the global shifts in human skin colour, Neanderthal DNA, or the inherited differences between apes and men? Each point is, they say, very interesting — but when I point out that they have just accepted the whole truth of Darwin’s theory they deny that frightful thought. Some take instant umbrage, although a few, thank goodness, do leave the room with a pensive look.
The problem is not with any particular belief system but with belief itself. Sir Francis Bacon once said that: “If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.” In other words, if you are absolutely sure that you are right whatever the evidence, you will end up in trouble; but if you are always willing to change your mind when the facts change you will emerge with a robust view of how the world works.
I sometimes wonder how many of those who pour their inane opinions about creationism into their young pupils’ ears ever consider the damage they are doing; not to my science, but to their religion. Why, when a student begins to learn the simple and convincing facts, rather than the fantasies, about how life emerged, should he believe anything else that his pastor, his rabbi or his imam has told him? Why build a philosophy based on fixed untruths, when we have so many truths, and so many things still to find out?
It’s one thing to be unhappy when the facts change, and quite another to refuse the facts because they conflict with your beliefs.
November 23, 2011
BC Supreme Court upholds law against polygamy
I’m somewhat surprised that the court upheld the existing law: I’d expected them to strike it down as overbroad.
Polygamy remains a crime in Canada, B.C. Supreme Court Chief Justice Robert Bauman ruled Wednesday. In his ruling, Bauman said the law violates the religious freedom of fundamentalist Mormons, but the harm against women and children outweighs that concern.
Bauman reserved judgment on the landmark case in April, after hearing 42 days of legal arguments during the unusual reference case, with opposing parties arguing the right to religious freedom and the risk of harm polygamy poses to women and children.
The constitutional issue was referred to the B.C. Supreme Court by the provincial government after polygamy charges laid against Bountiful, B.C., Mormon leaders Winston Blackmore and James Oler were stayed in 2009.
While this particular case involved Mormons, the majority of people whose marital arrangements would be affected are Muslims: there are an unknown (but growing) number of polygamous marriages among recent Muslim immigrants to Canada. If the existing law had been struck down, there would have been a scramble among regional and local government agencies to cope with the expected increase in demands for appropriate housing and support from newly legal multi-spouse families.
November 22, 2011
Herman Cain and the most awkward anecdote so far
I suspect Herman Cain has managed to talk himself out of the GOP nomination race with little anecdotes like this one:
Cain speaks for nearly a half an hour and despite a couple fleeting “999″ mentions, keeps his speech to topics of faith and his recent battle with cancer. He begins with a story about how he knew he would survive when he discovered that his physician was named “Dr. Lord,” that the hospital attendant’s name was “Grace” and that the incision made on his chest during the surgery would be in the shape of a “J.”
“Come on, y’all. As in J-E-S-U-S! Yes! A doctor named Lord! A lady named Grace! And a J-cut for Jesus Almighty,” Cain boomed.
He did have a slight worry at one point during the chemotherapy process when he discovered that one of the surgeon’s name was “Dr. Abdallah.”
“I said to his physician assistant, I said, ‘That sounds foreign — not that I had anything against foreign doctors — but it sounded too foreign,” Cain tells the audience. “She said, ‘He’s from Lebanon.’ Oh, Lebanon! My mind immediately started thinking, wait a minute, maybe his religious persuasion is different than mine! She could see the look on my face and she said, ‘Don’t worry, Mr. Cain, he’s a Christian from Lebanon.’”
“Hallelujah!” Cain says. “Thank God!”
The crowd laughs uneasily.
Oh, good. He’s not quite xenophobic, just religiously . . . cautious. At least he chose the right kind of place to tell this little story:
By the time Herman Cain took the stage, Jesus had already been crucified, resurrected and returned to Earth to collect the faithful once that day.
Cain made a campaign stop Friday at The Holy Land Experience, a Christian-theme amusement park in central Florida where visitors pay $35 to watch a reenactment of the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ just minutes from Disney World.
In the park, which is run by the religious television station Trinity Broadcasting Network, employees dressed as shepherd boys, pharisees, Roman soldiers and merchants from first-century Israel lead the faithful on tours through the re-created streets of old Jerusalem, perform re-enactment shows and serve as baristas in the coffee shop. Over the course of a day at Holy Land, you can take communion — fed to you from the hand of a bearded actor playing Christ with flowing brown hair — browse an impressive collection of early Bibles, rock out to praise-song karaoke, get baptized and even have your picture taken with Jesus on a Harley.
H/T to Doug Mataconis for the link.
October 29, 2011
The Halloween fun-snatchers
Tristin Hopper has a scary list of all the folks who are out to prevent any fun from happening this October 31st:
This Halloween, some Barrie, Ont., elementary students will not go to school dressed as witches, goblins or zombies — but in simple shades of orange and black. The dress code is “an effort to respect the diverse value of … families,” according to a letter sent out by one school.
Similar ”orange-and-black” days have been decreed around Ottawa schools this year by parents and teachers. In parts of Quebec, costumes are permitted — but junk food restrictions have barred teachers and administrators from distributing candy to students.
[. . .]
Since the 1970s, Halloween fears have mostly involved tainted treats; razor blades in apples and chocolate bars injected with rat poison. Spooked by rumours of sabotaged Halloween candy, dozens of municipal councils enacted trick-or-treating bans, and home-baked treats quickly became a quaint relic. But to date, the only confirmed case of tainted Halloween candy occurred in 1974 when Houston dad Ronald Clark O’Bryan murdered his eight-year-old son as part of a life insurance scam by spiking a package of Pixy Stix with cyanide.
[. . .]
Halloween’s pagan origins have earned it official scorn from most major religions, and when trick-or-treaters come to the door of Calgary-area pastor Paul Ade, they walk away not with candy, but with a Bible.
Mr. Ade is the founder of JesusWeen, a Christian alternative to Halloween gaining traction in Canada, the United States and the U.K. Instead of chocolate bars and lollipops, JesusWeen participants hand out Bibles, pieces of scripture or other Christian-themed gifts. JesusWeen participants can even dress up — although as superheroes and princesses rather than witches or ghosts. “We as Christians believe in life, not death,” Mr. Ade explains.
[. . .]
In the United States, religious calls to ban Halloween reached a boiling in the 1990s as a retaliation to efforts by the American Civil Liberties Union to scrub any mention of religion from the school system. In 1989, a small county in Florida banned Halloween on the grounds that it was a pagan religious holiday. By century’s end, dozens of school boards across the country had followed suit. Anti-Halloween sentiment soon spread to Canada. In 1998, three Thunder Bay Catholic schools banned Halloween for promoting “evil” values.
October 12, 2011
The “Ontario education system [is] a remarkably clean and ongoing experiment in the effects of school choice”
Stephen Gordon explains why Ontario’s two parallel school systems are helping to prove the efficacy of school choice:
Public funding for the Ontario separate school system is sometimes a controversial topic for reasons I won’t get into here. But by offering one set of parents with the choice of which school they can send their children, the Ontario education system has set up a remarkably clean and ongoing experiment in the effects of school choice. Catholics have the choice of sending their elementary-school aged children either to separate or to public schools, and non-Catholics do not have this choice.
Elementary school administrators in the two systems face very different constraints:
- Public schools have a monopoly on non-Catholics who can’t afford private school.
- Separate schools face a clientele that always has the option of switching to the public school system.
Of the two, separate school administrators have the greater incentive to provide higher-quality education: if the separate system were widely known to be dysfunctional, it would likely disappear.
Basic economics would predict that the competitive pressures on separate school administrators would provide stronger incentives to provide better education outcomes. And that seems to be just what is happening. A recent study (pdf) by McMaster University economists Martin Dooley and Abigail Payne in collaboration with UC-Berkeley’s David Card that examine these effects finds “a statistically significant but modest-sized impact of potential competition on the growth rate of student achievement.” In a related study using similar data, a CD Howe study done by Wilfrid Laurier’s David Johnson finds that of the 13 ‘above-average’ school boards, 11 are in the separate school system, while none of the 10 ‘below-average’ school boards are.
