Same Sex Marriage Made Easier…

Michael Hawkins has posted a rather facetious diagram on his site which is meant to explain the same-sex marriage debate – and looking at it, I can understand his confusion. But it’s really not that difficult to understand, in fact I can sum it up in a single statement:

The definition of marriage, from a biological, historical, social, moral, and Judeo-Christian perspective inherently excludes homosexual relationships.

There, that seems clear enough and clear enough to most of the citizens of this country as well.

It’s even clear to legislators in New York, who are generally exceedingly obtuse.

The irony of idiocy

A plethora of posts today, but I am playing catch-up.

This bit on the irony of how our rights have played out in our country; burning a flag is now Constitutionally protected, but displaying the flag apparently isn’t:

Decorated Veteran, 90, Fights to Raise Flag in His Yard

A veteran of three wars who was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor is now facing an unlikely enemy — his neighbors.

Col. Van T. Barfoot, 90, has raised the Stars and Stripes every day at sunrise and lowered them every day at sunset since he served in the U.S. Army. But on Tuesday he received a letter from the law firm that represents his homeowners’ association, ordering him to remove the flagpole from his Richmond, Va. yard by 5 p.m. on Friday or face “legal action.”

The homoeowners’ association at Sussex Square community told Barfoot that the freestanding, 21-foot flagpole that he put up in September violates the neighborhood’s aesthetic guidelines.

I normally don’t feel motivated to contribute to a legal fund, but this is one time I would certainly be willing to.

Does Christianity lead to Atheism?

An odd lead question, but the thought results from a brief quote I read some where (which I have utterly failed to find; I often read a lot in short period of time, and it is hard sometimes to track where all the bits come from) and the obvious rise of New Atheism. It is a question we need to ask as we watch our Christian culture rapidly erode.

A bit of history first; as Christianity spread across Europe, Zeus and Jupiter and Thor were all laid to rest, in large part because Christianity represents a significantly superior metaphysical system. The God of the Bible isn’t merely a glorified man with all the attendant weaknesses; He is transcendent, above and before all things, and yet intimately intertwined with the personal history of mankind. There are no squabbles in heaven; unlike Olympus and Valhalla, Christ isn’t performing in a celestial soap opera, vying with all the other gods for power and love. Christ is the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, and all alternatives are obliterated in a primarily Christian culture.

As much as this is true, only one alternative is left to the God of the Bible when a culture is primarily Christian, and that is no belief at all. As the old gods no longer suffice, and as human hearts are ever seeking their own way apart from ‘the light’ as Christ put it, many are left with no alternative but to abandon religious belief all together.

This would explain the increasing secularization of Europe, and how a Russia fully ensconced in the Orthodox faith turned to the harshest form of atheism-in-practice, namely Stalinism.

Atheists also have the advantage of tolerance in a primarily Christian country. Unlike many civilizations, original Christianity understood that belief in Christ was an act of the conscious will – that is one must choose to follow Christ; it could not be the product of compulsion. As a result, atheists are free to reject prevailing Christianity, even criticize it with little fear of reprisal – a notion that would be unthinkable in Islamic countries, or many ancient theocracies.

In addition, living in a country that is predominantly Christian affords atheists cover for a lack of moral code – they can adopt the overarching morality of Christianity while maintaining the pretense that morality can be readily derived from reason. There is no history to support the notion that the moral basis of Western nations can be derived from anything but Christianity, but once established, the origin of morality is often quickly forgotten.

This understanding sounds an ominous bell for the US. Though we remain one of the most religious countries in the world, at least according to polls, the increasing secularization of our culture seems fairly obvious. And when closely explored, the religious are less likely to believe in an orthodox (little ‘o’) form of Christianity, and in what has come to be termed Moralistic Therapeutic Deism – basically a watered down version of Christianity meant to make us feel good about ourselves and give us hope, without all the attendant challenges of obeying God and respecting His commandments, or fearing any form of judgment.

And what this portends for the US is a potential European secularization, with all the diminishments that come with such a change; increasing hopelessness, less interest in family and future, and more concern with immediate comfort and pleasure.

In the gospels Jesus tells a parable of a man who, once free of an evil spirit, does nothing to fill the emptiness in his soul, merely orders his life without seeing it transformed:

“When an evil spirit comes out of a man, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that man is worse than the first. That is how it will be with this wicked generation.”

I think the truth Jesus meant to impart here is that a mere veneer of spirituality is not sufficient to maintain fruits of a Christian life; indeed it can open the door to a state worse than having been a Christian culture at all.

In short, our generation in the Western world enjoys a home put into order by others before us, but to the degree we don’t experience for ourselves sincere belief and personal transformation, the emptiness that remains invites evils much worse than those Christendom originally displaced.

When good scientists go bad.

Though it’s a bit of old news now (‘old news’ in this day and age meaning older than one 24 hour news cycle) the scandal that has come to be known as ‘Climategate’ continues to reveal the depth of the corruption in climate research.

Though there are a number of aspects that could be commented on (the media and leaders ignoring the story, the legitimacy of gaining information through hacking, etc.) I think what is most telling as the whole event unfolds is the degree to which scientific endeavors are corruptible by human nature. Science, which is understood by the materialist to be the be all and end all of human knowledge, is held up as ultimately reliable because it is based on testable observations, rigorously reviewed by knowledgeable peers, who have no interest in a particular result.

Of course that is the ideal; in reality science is conducted by human beings, and if there is one certain universal truth about human endeavors, it is Lord Acton’s axiom, “Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely”. That truth is a cornerstone of American political philosophy, but it is a concern in any human institution – economic, religious, and yes, even the scientific sort.

In the case of the climate research going on at University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit, whose work was central to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) purposes, hacked e-mails reveal that power and politics did indeed do the work of corrupting reason and research. And it isn’t just the occasional remark which indicates how the research was manipulated; lengthy chronicles of the manipulation of data are now available that show how little of the research was based on robust, consistent data, but instead was massaged, directed, and contradictory data was ignored.

And to add to this travesty of ‘science’ is the revelation that the original data upon which the studies were based has all been lost, keeping others from effectively examining the research.

But most of this is little surprise when one realizes that climate research has become big business and big politics – governments make international treaties based on this research, politicians and celebrities make movies and win awards by advancing the claims, and those who give knowledge gain a prestige that is hard to come by in the course of ordinary academic investigation. Power and fame are the most addictive intoxicants known, and being a scientist does not make one immune to their effects.

The reality is that science is best when it limits itself to readily observable phenomena, providing explanations and solutions for those events which can be reproduced in controlled circumstances, researched by multiple independent observers, whom are free to express dissent and skepticism of the ever changing consensus.

Science is at its worst when it strays outside of this pervue into politics and metaphysics, where it’s pronouncements are based on vague and unique data sets, susceptible to interpretation based on the bias of the researcher, which take the form of unassailable dogma. This sort of ‘science’ mocks dissenters and skeptics, insists on adherence to a consensus, and resists contrary explanations in an attempt to hold onto power and reputation. In short science that has given way to all too human inclinations. Such tendencies are common to all human institutions, but science has all too often held itself up as a special form of knowledge which is immune to human nature, when it is in fact only one of a number of forms of human knowledge, limited to certain uses, but impotent beyond that.

Understanding and acknowledging these limitations is critical not only to good science, but to good policy and a good society. Lord Acton added to his common dictum these less well known thoughts:
“Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or certainty of corruption by full authority. There is no worse heresy than the fact that the office sanctifies the holder of it.”

Our society would do well to remove science and scientists from the pedestal of authority they now enjoy, if for nothing else, to save science itself.

Who can tax the sunrise…?

Warning – viewing this video may cause you to murmur the lyrics for days after listening. I am not sure if it’s because they are catchy and clever, or because they are oh so true…

The Contradictions of the Healthcare debate

I am certainly no healthcare expert, nor am I a noted economist (or even an ignored economist), so I don’t feel adequate to delve into the nitty gritty of the current House bill. However, it doesn’t take an expert to observe that over the course of the debate about health care from the current administration, there have been numerous contradictions, both in terms of logic and fact. Many of these get short shrift in the 30 second analysis we get from the media.

 One of the first logical contradictions one notes has to do with the ‘Healthcare System wastes 800 billion dollars’ vs. ‘Insurers regularly deny care’ claims. On one hand we presented with a picture of stingy health insurers, who routinely deny care in order to line the pockets of their greedy CEO’s. Meant to elicit support for healthcare legislation by generating hatred for the imaginary rich, this is standard class warfare language.

 Yet, on the other hand we are presented with a recent study, much touted by government healthcare advocates, that our current healthcare system wastes up to ‘$800 hundred billion a year’ (which coincidently at the time was exactly the same as the cost of the healthcare legislation). This waste was said to be the result of a a number of conditions, including unnecessary procedures and inefficiencies in paperwork. It would follow if the healthcare legislation could fix these cost overruns, it would practically pay for itself.

 But it only takes a minute to realize the unlikelihood that both of these arguments are generally true. If health insurers really are money-grubbing dictators trying to squeeze every last cent out of the health system, then why are they completely ignoring the waste of 800 billion dollars? Why wouldn’t they shut down those extra procedures and eliminate the paper work? That’s a lot of cash for those penny pinchers to ignore. Perhaps fixing such problems isn’t so straight forward. Indeed, the government already insures nearly half our population through Medicare and Medicaid – and it has shown no propensity to contain such costs.

 In fact, another assumption of the health reform bill is that congress will cut billions of dollars in Medicare programs in the near future. That’s great; but why haven’t they started until now? A lot of the fraud and waste is the product of the Medicare system, which is after all a government run public health insurance option – why should the electorate trust that the broader public option will create efficiencies when we already have a budget busting example of a government run program that has been anything but efficient, by the Democrats own admission?

 And finally, we come to the discussion about the public option. Perhaps the most controversial part of the current House bill, the public option will provide a government funded healthcare option, much like Medicare, for those who currently have no health insurance.

 The primary argument for this option has to do with the fact that a certain number of people in our country –either 60, 40, or 30 million people depending on the day and who is counting – don’t currently have insurance. The public option would provide for those folks who either due to lack of funds, or some pre-existing condition, have been denied private healthcare. So far so good; it’s hard to deny that basic healthcare should be more accessible.

 But the second argument is that a public option will provide ‘competition’ for the private insurers, causing them to bring down costs, and become more efficient. The problem with this though is that it is never explained how it is that insuring folks already deemed ‘uninsurable’ by the private industry will create ‘competition’; competition after all only occurs when two entities vie for a single market. Those who can’t afford insurance and those who can are in fact two different markets – so insurance companies will have no incentive to bring down costs, since they aren’t losing out by maintaining their current practices.

 The only way such a situation would be competitive is if the government were to structure the public option so that it was available to those who already had insurance, giving individuals and employers incentives to drop private insurance and adopt the ‘competitive’ (and publicly funded) public option.

 If this happened on a wide scale (and why wouldn’t it?) it would inevitably move us toward a government run, publicly funded, single payer healthcare system in our country, much like the socialized systems seen elsewhere – but I am sure that isn’t the intention behind all this at all, is it?

Another brick in the wall

I have pretty vivid memories of the Berlin Wall falling; in large part because it was the last thing I ever expected to see in my lifetime. I spent a significant part of my college years as a bit of an activist, at first on the left, and later on the right. Like a lot of people my age I felt the fear, sometimes expressed, but more often than not, that the long cold conflict we had with the Soviet Union would burst into hot war, replete with world ending bombs. That was why Reagan’s demand to Gorbachev that he “tear down this wall!” was at the same time frightening and exhilarating – it framed freedom as a gift so precious that not even the threat of annihilation could deny it. Nonetheless, I never expected to see that yearning fulfilled in my lifetime.

 Perhaps that was what made the recent 20^th anniversary celebration a rather disappointing affair. Unlike the still vivid memories of my youth the recent remarks of our President made no mention of Reagan – no mention of Thatcher, or Pope John Paul, or Lech Walesa. No mention of the Soviets or communism. He does however oddly make mention of himself as an icon of freedom:

“Few would have foreseen … that a united Germany would be led by a woman from Brandenburg or that their American ally would be led by a man of African descent. But human destiny is what human beings make of it,”

 As President of the United States, Obama is free to set his schedule and agenda as he sees fit. If he wants he wants to personally appear to lobby to have the Olympics in Chicago and then skip out on the celebration of the one of the greatest advances of freedom in the 20^th century, that is his prerogative; however, his office doesn’t give him the liberty to re-write history, and his failure to make note of the true champions of freedom constitutes an abrogation of duty.

Life in the balance in South Dakota

Interesting news from South Dakota concerning the recent strict anti-abortion law passed in the state legislature. Opponents of the law have managed to gather the required number of signatures to place the law on the Nov. 7th ballot, allowing SD citizens the option to vote keep the law as is or have it removed from the books.

There appear to be three possible outcomes to this effort; the first being that the opponents win the day in South Dakota and the legal barriers to abortions are removed (again). In that case, they have undermined a regular argument they have made, namely that the courts must act to preserve a women's right to abort because democratic processes aren't sufficient protectors of essential rights.

The second outcome might be that the law holds up, in which case the oft repeated idea that Roe v. Wade is a 'popular' ruling will be dealt a blow.

Of course, in the case of a loss, an appeal to the Court is likely. But this is a rather circuitous route to take; normally abortion rights groups run directly to the local judge; why attempt a democratic solution first?

I suspect this is because abortion rights advocates are afraid that the tide has turned on the court; a series of appeals is more likely than ever to end with an erosion of legal support for Roe. In that case, a number of states may move to enact such laws.

Overall this seems to be a lose-lose-lose proposition for the pro-abortion bunch; they must now utilize the democratic process they have so far disdained, and in doing so, undermine their primary venue for advancing their cause – liberal pro-abortion courts.

Of course, in the interim, the greatest loss continues to be the lives of the unborn.

Rove Cleared, Zarqawi Dead, GOP Doomed

It's been a busy week at home, so my posts have been few and far between, but I thought I would offer something light on a Friday.

I try to keep this blog fairly non-partisan (admittedly, a task virtually impossible for me) but I am not above political humor. Indeed, I consider good humor in most forms is an essential ingredient in life. On that note, I offer the latest from Scrappleface, a political humor site, on our President's 'difficult' week:

Rove Cleared, Zarqawi Dead, GOP Doomed

Revolt in Kentucky

There was a minor revolt recently in Russell Springs Kentucky, at the Russell County High School. A group of about 200 hundred students stood and began to recite the Lord's Prayer during the opening remarks by the Principal; this despite an order by the judge banning prayer at the event. The revolt continued with remarks by senior Megan Chapman, who gave credit to God for her success in life.

Surveying a discussion group about this event revealed a number of typical responses. Those against cited fears of ostracizing the non-religious, while those for brought up the need to defend religious liberties.

One commenter put it this way:

this is the reason we don't support prayer as an institutional feature, because it marginalizes people. and there the kids go, marginalizing people.

to sum, they weren't standing up for their rights because those rights were never in danger. they're creating an in-group/out-group atmosphere, and that's… well, "mean of them" is the most negative term i can use on this forum, but i assure you, i don't like this at all.

One wonders if the same commentator would be equally offended by recent commencement addresses by Jodie Foster or Thomas Wolfe, comments certain to 'margenalize' a number of listeners.

Both views I think somewhat miss the mark; I don't think what is at issue here is as much religious concern as much as it is a cultural one. Students, parents, and administrators of a southern Kentucky high school are apt to be be more religious than say those at the University of Pennsylvania. Indeed, the article quotes a resident of the town, saying, "In our little town, we've always had that prayer at commencement…Why not? That's part of our everyday life." I think the students weren't attempting to impose a particular religious belief on anyone as much as they were attempting to keep a belief system, albeit a secular statist one, from being imposed on them.

In the founding of this country our forefathers gave great leeway to the individual states to determine their own courses of action, provided they follow certain limited provisions of our Federal Constitution. There is no indication they intended to impose a monolithic secular culture on the nation, and no reason Federal judges should be attempting to impose one on the citizens of Russell Springs.