Mitt Romney: "It's the Lack of Integrity, Stupid!"

Part 2 of "Mitt Romney is Perfect":

Remember Bob Jones III?  He is the chancellor of the Christian University that bears his and his father and grandfather’s name (BJU) and has, in the past, caused an uproar with some of his Christian fundamentalist points of view.

In the past he has opposed inter-racial dating, and by extension, marriage.  According to Wikipedia, “In May 1975, as it prepared to allow unmarried blacks to enroll, BJU adopted more detailed rules prohibiting interracial dating and marriage—threatening expulsion for any student who dated or married interracially, who advocated interracial marriage, who was "affiliated with any group or organization which holds as one of its goals or advocates interracial marriage," or "who espouse, promote, or encourage others to violate the University's dating rules and regulations (taken from a Court case, go to http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=461&invol=574 ).

To solidify his anti-Catholic credentials, in 1966, BJU awarded an honorary doctorate to the Rev. Ian Paisley, future British MP, leader of the Democratic Unionist Party, and Moderator of the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster, who has referred to the Pope as an Antichrist.

Reportedly he also has even slammed Mormonism, Mitt Romney’s religion: "The diminution of evangelistic enterprise to cults which call themselves Christian, including Catholicism and Mormonism, is frightening."  (Associated Press, 3/16/00)

So, is the following a surprise?

USA Today reports in October 2007 that “Dr. Bob Jones III, chancellor of the fundamentalist Christian university in Greenville that bears his name, is looking past his religious differences with Gov. Mitt Romney and endorsing the Mormon for the Republican nomination for president, he told The Greenville News Tuesday…

Asked whether Romney's religion was a stumbling block for him, Jones replied, "What is the alternative, Hillary's lack of religion or an erroneous religion?"

Terry Sullivan, Mitt Romney's South Carolina campaign manager said, "We're proud to have the support of Dr. Jones and look forward to his help in delivering Gov. Romney's conservative message to the voters."

Wait a minute!  Aren’t there other candidates whose Christian credentials are beyond doubt?  Why not support one of them?  Isn’t it surprising that Bob Jones III picks Romney out of the pack?  Isn’t it surprising that Romney welcomes this support even though he was Governor of one of the nation’s most liberal states where support from a Bob Jones III would have been unthinkable?

No, of course this is not surprising to readers of the INQUIRER.  From the September 2007 issue of the INQUIRER: “Ever wonder why the Religious Right seems to be gravitating towards Mitt Romney, the Mormon candidate for president?  I know I have!

Well, I have the answer: It’s because of all the candidates running, Gov. Romney has displayed the LEAST integrity, and it’s a lack of integrity that the Religious Right cherishes above all else.”

He’s perfect.

Part 3 of "Mitt Romney is Perfect":

As noted before in this newsletter, Mitt Romney is the perfect presidential candidate for the Religious Right (RR), even though he is a Mormon.  Why?  Because he is willing to do and/or say anything that RR might want to hear!

While it should matter that what a candidate believes to be true and accurate is in fact reasonable to believe, supernatural beliefs are generally deemed excluded from this standard, while at the same time, failing to have some supernatural beliefs is not excluded from consideration!  Ahhhh!

In other words, it’s ok if Dennis Kucinich is ridiculed for claiming to having seen a UFO (which does not mean he thinks he’s seen an alien spaceship) while Romney’s belief in a North American Jesus is never even mentioned in mainstream media, even by so-called “liberals.”

Romney has learned that these days, it’s not “it’s the economy, stupid”; no, Romney has learned “it’s the lack of integrity, stupid.”

Even Christian minister Mike Huckabee cannot compete with Romney in this regard.  Huckabee, on some issues, exhibits compassion where typically the RR prefers dogma.  The reason that the RR has not yet anointed Huckabee is their detection of a semblance of conscience in Huckabee’s makeup.

So Romney’s past positions on abortion, gay rights, immigration, sex education, health care and so on are not the disadvantages that one might expect; his flip-flopping on these items are evidence of his malleable character.

The latest display of a vacant conscience ironically has to do with Romney’s opinion of some other religious minority, Muslims.

According to a Muslim businessman, Mansoor Ijaz, Romney said in November 2007 that it was unlikely that he would name a Muslim to his cabinet because they made up such a small part of the American population.

What?  Since when have cabinets or other appointed posts been doled out in any regard to religious affiliation?  If they were, one might ask, “Where are the non-believing judges and cabinet ministers?  They certainly should outnumber Jewish, Muslim and even Mormons in government – but do not.”

So Romney’s alleged answer was ignorant and biased; there is absolutely no reason why a Muslim could not be the top fellow for some cabinet position.  To rule them out because they are so few is simply bigotry; have Mormons been ruled out for this reason as well?  Oh yes, and such a religious test is un-constitutional.

But it gets worse; Romney, in defending himself from this charge, denied ever making the comment and said instead that he would have no such religious test for his appointees.

So that’s where it was expected to end; Romney simply denying the Muslim’s claim.

Who would Religious Right believe?  Answer: It doesn’t matter.  They probably would prefer that Romney said it and then deny it!

Well, Mr. Perfect’s record is in tact.

TPM, a news/blog site, found two Republicans in Nevada who reported being present at a meeting where Romney made similar statements as described by Mr. Ijaz.  One of them described the statements as “racist.”

Of course, this verification could be dismissed as coming from biased Republicans who are not Romney supporters.  After all, a lack of integrity is a common trait.

But wait!  In the September 2007 issue of Liberty Watch Magazine is the following account:

“When Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney recently addressed a group of a prominent local conservatives at a Las Vegas fundraiser, (Liberty Watch columnist) George (Harris) lobbed the first question: “If you are elected President,” he asked, “will you include any Muslim members in your cabinet?”

In the seconds beforeformer Massachusetts Governor Romney responded, you could have heard a pin drop.

His (admittedly, very smooth) answer in a nutshell? “Not likely.”

Now, my fellow Nevada conservatives are not stupid.  The reason a hush fell over the room was not so much due to the boldness of George’s question.  They think the same way he does, and they worry about the consequences of an expanded war in the Middle East, which will inevitably lead to increased taxes, increased fuel prices and an even higher deficit that, sooner or later, American taxpayers will be forced to pay.  More significantly, we wonder: “How can we claim to be fighting a war solely against violent Islamofacism and not the entire Arab world if the White House doesn’t contain a single member of the Arab-American or Muslim community?”  (Go to http://www.liberty-watch.com/volume03/issue06/fromtheeditor.php.)

This article, which pre-dates the current controversy, pretty much seals the deal: Romney said what he is now denying he said.

The Religious Right is loving it.  Romney remains their perfect candidate.

Tags: Mitt Romney, Bob Jones, Mansoor Ijaz, Liberty Watch

Teddy Bears and Religion and Utter Hypocrisy

By now, most people have heard the story of a British school teacher working in Sudan who was charged with insulting Islam and inciting religious hatred after it was found that she allowed school children to name a teddy bear “Mohammed”.

It came out quickly that the children and teacher did not intentionally mock the Prophet in any way; the toy was actually named after a 7-year-old student in the class named Mohammed, a very common name in Sudan.  The boy, Mohammed, has said publicly that the bear was named after him, not the Prophet Mohammed.

Al Jazeera reported him saying, "The teacher asked me what I wanted to call the teddy. I said Mohammed.  I named it after my name," he said.

The boy said he was not thinking about the prophet when he made his choice for the toy, but he named it simply after himself.

He described his teacher from Aigburth, Liverpool, as a "very nice" woman who did not mention religion in class.

But that did not prevent her from being arrested, held in jail and charged with the “crime” of insulting Islam and inciting religious hatred.

The teacher, Gillian Gibbons,

is an English citizen and works in a Christian oriented school for children of wealthier Sudanese citizens.

Al Jazeera reported that Abdel Daim Zamrawi, Sudan's deputy justice minister, told the official SUNA news agency that Gillian Gibbons had been charged with the offences on Wednesday.  "The punishment for this is jail, a fine and lashes.  It is up to the judge to determine the sentence," Zamrawi was quoted as saying.  Gibbons faces up to six months in jail, 40 lashes and a fine if she is found guilty of "insulting or degrading any religion, its rites, beliefs and sacred items or humiliating its believers", as stipulated in Sudan's penal code.

Robert Boulos, the school’s director tried to reason with authorities but told Time Magazine that police were under pressure from Islamic courts.  “There were men with big beards asking where she was and saying they wanted to kill her” he said.  A similar angry crowd also gathered at the Khartoum police station where she is being held according to Time.

Al Jazeera further reportedthat some Islamic leaders in Sudan said on Wednesday that the law should be applied against Gibbons.  North Sudan's legal system is based on Sharia, which punishes blasphemy against Prophet Muhammad.  "What has happened was not haphazard or carried out of ignorance, but rather a calculated action and another ring in the circles of plotting against Islam… It is part of the campaign of the so-called war against terrorism and the intense media campaign against Islam,” the Sudanese Assembly of the Ulemas said in a statement.

Oh.

Thank goodness the Deputy Justice Minister Zamrawi also said that the authorities were working to ensure that Gibbon would not be exposed to angry mobs should she be released.

Angry mobs?

Kill her?

Over the naming of a Teddy Bear?

The Muslim Council of Britain has also joined those calling for Ms. Gibbons to be freed and to use common sense.

"This is a very unfortunate incident and Ms Gibbonsshould never have been arrested in the first place," said secretary general Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari.  "It is obvious that no malice was intended."

Obviously not all Muslims or even most are about to join an angry mob ready to flog some kindly woman over the slightest of indiscretions.  But something is still not quite right with almost every statement that defends Ms. Gibbons, coming from Muslim and non-Muslim alike.

Of course it is typically inappropriate for a teacher to insult an icon representing a student’s religion; but in this case the school was a private school, not a public school.  Private religious schools even in the US regularly espouse religious hatred – and if it’s private, a private school is constitutionally allowed to spout that hate.  (Don’t blame secular humanists for this!)  Public schools cannot do this (although the Religious Right would like to either see their hatreds aired in Public Schools or ban Public Schools altogether.)

Now contrast this with the situations in many other countries where governmentally supported religiously-oriented schools, sometimes known as madrassahs, are built upon hatred of the (non-orthodox) non-believer.  We need not go into details on this, other than to note that the “West” is not innocent in this practice; government vouchers paid for Catholic and Protestant schools in Northern Ireland with both sides teaching religious hatred for decades.  This is just the way it is in religious schools.

Many private religious schools in countries where religion and state are separate and many religious schools elsewhere absolutely often insult the beliefs and icons of non-believers!  Inherent in Christianity and Islam is the belief that only “true” believers are saved or destined for paradise and that others have a moral failing for their lack of belief.  Other religions preach that followers are chosen or blessed or simply more moral than those who do not profess the “true” belief.  It is the rare religion that praises non-believers for their morality!

So the problem in Sudan is not generic insulting of any religion; it’s the insulting of the prevailing version of the prevailing religion ONLY.  The prevailing religion can issue insults in schools, public or private, and elsewhere at will.  But it cannot countenance a moment of being slighted in the least bit itself.

And here is the problem with many of those who are defending Ms. Gibbons: they are claiming that she “meant no harm”.

It should not matter whether her “insult” was deliberate or not or whether she “meant no harm” or not.

Religious freedom requires that a person (acting in a non-governmental role) must have the right to make the claim, for example, that a religion that would punish a person with a flogging for naming a toy after a religious icon is a bad religion, or at the least, a bad version of that religion.  Religious freedom requires even the unreasonable insult of a religion as long as it’s not in a governmental capacity!

If one really wanted to defend Ms. Gibbons and future victims of religious intolerance, one would make it clear that we should not require everyone to just “make nice” about religion.  What we need is a defense of real freedom of the mind, a defense of separation of religion and state, and not a defense of the dictatorial rule of the prevailing religious orthodoxy or even acquiescence to the censorship of all religious criticism.  Freedom is there to protect not just the popular or orthodox beliefs; indeed, they rarely need protecting.  Religious freedom’s greatest value is in protecting the right of those who espouse unpopular beliefs; and of course, proven once again, the first victim of religious intolerance is the religious dissenter.

Tags: Gillian Gibbons, Teddy Bears, Sudan, Islam

Our Democracy in Trouble, Part 2

It is one thing to be ignorant about the facts that are impacting our lives and values as citizens of the United States; some misinformation is probably unavoidable, although the extent of our lack of understanding of important facts implies some willful ignorance is part of the mix.

And it is also understandable that after a lifetime of being taught that faith (defined as belief without justifying evidence) is a virtue, that many do not value reason as a way of understanding the universe.

But how charitable can one be when assessing the results of a poll by the First Amendment Center, a non-partisan educational group?

Here’s a brief summary of what they found:

·         Sixty-five percent of Americans believe that the nation's founders intended the U.S. to be a Christian nation and 55% believe that the Constitution establishes a Christian nation, according to the “State of the First Amendment 2007” national survey released Sept. 11 by the First Amendment Center…

·         Just 56% believe that the freedom to worship as one chooses extends to all religious groups, regardless of how extreme — down 16 points from 72% in 2000…

·         34% (lowest since the survey first was done in 1997) think the press “has too much freedom,” but 60% of Americans disagree with the statement that the press tries to report the news without bias, and 62% believe the making up of stories is a widespread problem in the news media — down only slightly from 2006…

·         25% said “the First Amendment goes too far in the rights it guarantees,” well below the 49% recorded in the 2002 survey that followed the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001, but up from 18% in 2006…

·         Just 74% said it was essential to have “the right to practice the religion of your choice,” down from 81% in 1997 and 83% in 2002.  The right to “speak freely about whatever you want” saw a similar drop, to 66% from 72% 10 years ago and 75% five years ago.

·         58% want teacher-led prayers in schools…

·         43% endorse school holiday programs that are entirely Christian and devotional…

·         50% would allow public school teachers to teach the Bible as a “factual text” in history classes…

·          The right to practice one’s own religion was deemed “essential” or “important” by nearly all Americans (97%); as was the right to “speak freely about whatever you want” (98%) and to “assemble, march, protest or petition the government (94%).”  Still, Americans are hard pressed to name the five freedoms included in the First Amendment… Speech is the only one named by a majority of respondents (64%), followed by religion (19%), press and assembly (each 16%) and petition (3%)… (End of poll results.  Go to http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/sofa_reports/index.aspx .)

Can you imagine that 65% of Americans actually believe that (without even a mention of Christianity or Jesus) the Constitution establishes the US as a Christian Nation?  If you subtract the non-Christians from the population and assume that they are not quite as deluded, it might be fair to say that 70% or more of the Christians in this country think that the Constitution actually somehow, somewhere, establishes a “Christian” nation, whatever that means and whatever that implies legally.

65% to 70%!

Imagine the other contradictions in the opinions of the American Public: they believe that freedom of speech is important but that the “Press” has “too much freedom.”  Exactly how distinct from free speech is a free press?  They want “freedom” of religion for themselves (97%), but not so much for others (56%)!

And of course, the most frightening finding of all: 25% think the First Amendment, about which they are clueless, “goes too far in the rights it guarantees.”

This is not a matter of ignorance: in the poll they are given the actual wording of the First Amendment and asked the question, “Based on your own feelings about the First Amendment, please tell me whether you agree or disagree with the following statement: The First Amendment goes too far in the rights it guarantees.”

I guarantee I know what the problem is for this 25%: they have no problems with their own rights of freedom of religion, press, speech, assembly and petition; their problem is with YOUR rights.

Oh yeah, don’t forget that typically our elected officials are chosen by 25% of the voting public since only half of us vote.

Our democracy is in trouble.

 

Tags: Democracy, United States, religion, separation of church and state

Our Democracy is in Trouble (duh!)

Al Gore’s recent book, “The Assault on Reason,” could not have been timelier: for a mainstream politician to point not only at his political adversaries for embracing irrationality, but also the voting public for irrational thinking, is amazing.  Sadly, though Mr. Gore has become more popular and high profile due to his campaign on global climate change and has been prescient regarding the war on Iraq, his useful book ranks as only #264 on the Amazon.com best sellers list; respectable but not earth-shaking.  I guess people are fine with blaming the politicians they vote for but not fine with looking in the mirror for their lousy decision-making in picking them in the first place.

This comes as no surprise to those who have received the INQUIRER newsletter over the years.  In 2004 we reported about a PIPA survey (go to http://www.pipa.org/archives/us_opinion.php) showing how voters who had the facts wrong regarding Saddam Hussein, 9-11, world opinion and WMDs in effect re-elected President Bush.  If you thought Saddam Hussein took part in the 9-11 plot and that WMDs were found in Iraq, and that the world wanted the US to attack Iraq, you were much more likely to vote for President Bush.  Coincidentally, I’m sure, if you watched FoxNews you were worst informed; but if you watched PBS news, you usually had the (three) facts straight.

Now that the average citizen has “seen the light” regarding the Iraq invasion and no longer agrees, on the average, that this was a good idea, have we learned from our mistakes of the past?

Answer: ABSOLUTELY NOT!

Here is what PIPA found in March 2006:

Though their numbers are declining, a majority of Republicans continue to believe that before the war, Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or a major program for developing them and do not think that most experts believe Iraq did not have WMDs.  A growing majority of Democrats believe the opposite on both points.  Sixty percent of Republicans continue to believe that Iraq had WMD (41%) or a major program for developing them (19%), representing only a modest decrease from the 70 percent who held such beliefs in an October 2004 Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) poll.

A majority of Republicans, though declining, maintains the belief that Iraq was providing substantial support to al-Qaeda and that clear evidence of this support has been found, in contrast to large majorities of Democrats who hold opposing beliefs.

You might argue, based on these reports that the problem is isolated with Republicans; that they are often out of touch with reality for some reason.  This would be a bad assumption.

DATE: August 2, 2006

SOURCE: Scripps Howard News Service

HEADLINE: "Anti-government anger spurs 9/11 conspiracy belief"

WRITER/REPORTER(s): Thomas Hargrove and Guido H. Stempel III

BODY: More than a third of the American public suspects that federal officials assisted in the 9/11 terrorist attacks or took no action to stop them so the United States could go to war in the Middle East, according to a new Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll…  The poll found that a majority of young adults give at least some credence to a 9/11 conspiracy compared to less than a fourth of people 65 or older.  Members of racial and ethnic minorities, people with only a high school education and Democrats were especially likely to suspect federal involvement in 9/11.   (Go to http://www.newspolls.org/story.php?story_id=55.)

Last month’s sixth anniversary of the 9-11 attacks brought out many of the conspiracy theorists who somehow are able to overlook bin Laden’s recent commemoration of the event, and his lauding of one of his 19 hijacking martyrs.

It’s as if “merely” flying two jets into the World Trade Center and one into the Pentagon would not have been enough to start the ball rolling on a retaliatory war (it would have been enough, duh!): for some reason conspiracy theorists think it was necessary to make sure they were blown up and completely destroyed!

Why?

The American public has been convinced in the past to support wars for far less reason.  In fact, going after bin Laden would have been totally justified even if the WTC towers did not fall.  You could have argued about the methodology of going after bin Laden, but all rational persons should have sought justice and security after such an attack.

Let’s go further: what if the FBI had arrested the hijackers BEFORE the flights, making huge heroes out of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Tenet, Ashcroft and every other relevant Administration member for preventing the whole catastrophe.  If, after their great deed, they said we needed to go to war against bin Laden, who would have argued?  Some, perhaps, but the case for going after bin Laden would STILL had been legitimate even if there were not a scratch on the WTC.  There was no good reason for the Federal government to either conspire or allow the World Trade Centers to be destroyed by bin Laden, especially if they wanted to target Saddam Hussein in the long run.  In fact, preventing the attack would have secured this Administration’s place in history, particularly if the Iraq adventure subsequently never occurred.  I cannot think of any scenario that could have motivated the Administration to even allow or hesitate to act (other than their by now well-documented incompetence) the attack on the World Trade Center.  Irrationality inspired or caused by an incompetent administration is still irrational.

So most Republicans have the facts wrong, and many Democrats have their own blind spots.  Who is left to vote on a reasoned basis?

That is why the Center for Inquiry exists; to promote reason for humane ends in a non-partisan manner.  Still, one can’t help but look at the irrationality around us and wonder if our democracy is in real trouble when so few seem to be able to think straight.  Our task ahead is huge.

Tags: , Democracy, United States, Al Gore, PIPA, reason,

The God Squad's Bigotry Against Atheists

Recently, because of his Parkinson’s disease, Father Tom Hartman was forced to retire from active duty co-writing the God Squad syndicated column with his partner Rabbi Marc Gellman, leaving the rabbi on his own.  It did not take the rabbi long to find a way to demean atheists, one of his long-time favorite targets of derision in his typically passive-aggressive manner.

A reader wrote (Newsday, Saturday, October 6, 2007) to the God Squad that she  was sending her best thoughts and “vibrations” to the ill Father Tom with whom she often agreed.  She added that the “strange thing is, I’m an atheist.  I don’t believe in a god… I believe ‘god’ is the sum of all the souls who’ve ever lived, most over and over, until they got it right and entered a state of perfection…”

Of course, Rabbi Gellman responded as expected, with a “nice” sounding insult.  He wrote, “Even atheists can find their way to virtue and kindness as long as they have what you have – a belief that there’s something more than dirt and death in our lives and in our world…”  Would he have written “Even Muslims” if the writer had been a Muslim?  Or “Even Jews” if the writer had been Jewish?  You get the idea.

Just as Bill O’Reilly “could not get over the fact” that African-Americans could behave civilly in a restaurant, Rabbi Gellman seems to be amazed when an atheist appears to be moral.  But Gellman, in a sense, is worse than O’Reilly, who at least did not require any particular qualifications for the moral fitness of the African-Americans who so impressed him at Sylvia’s.  Rabbi Gellman did have such requirements: atheists can be virtuous as long as (and by implication, only as long as) they believe in some supernatural nonsense, such as, in this case, reincarnation.

There is one more thing; are these letters to the editor legitimate?  I for one would love to know if the writers of these fastballs-down-the-middle questions truly exist or if they are merely figments of the God Squad’s dogmatic imagination.  Is there really a reincarnation-believing atheist, Claudette from Boca Raton, Florida, who loves the God Squad?  I think it behooves Newsday to do a quick check on the facts.  (For the Newsday column go to http://www.newsday.com/news/columnists/ny-lsgod5402454oct06,0,2428350.column ; for the TMS version, go to http://www.tmsfeatures.com/tmsfeatures/subcategory.jsp?file=20070927ctngs-a.txt&catid=1709&code=ctngs .)

Tags: The God Squad, Marc Gellman, atheists, atheism, Tom Hartman

The Jena 6, Imus & O'Reilly

One of the missions of the Center for Inquiry is to defend freedom of inquiry in all areas of human endeavor.  On occasion, this mission leads us to scrutinize many prevailing orthodoxies involving society, politics and religion.  If we apply the scientific method to test the reliability or truth content of many such orthodoxies, we may conclude that they are either likely true or untrue.  If we apply humanistic standards to these orthodoxies -- in other words, we assess, to the best of our abilities, whether the practices of a prevailing orthodoxy contributes  to humanity’s well-being or whether the orthodoxy causes misery – we sometimes formulate serious moral criticisms.

Such criticisms and truth content judgments when sincerely and conscientiously applied to religious claims and practices are not examples of bigotry or prejudice.  To the contrary, this mission is highly moral if not polluted by pre-conceived biases and falsehoods.  Unfortunately, despite this “purity” of purpose, even well-intentioned religious criticism is typically poorly accepted and it is not uncommon for the religious to condemn ALL religious criticism as bigotry and an affront to religious freedom when it may actually be the opposite.  It is typical that the first victim of religious intolerance is the religious dissident whose sincere criticism of a religion is often punished by the State on behalf of that prevailing religious orthodoxy.  Yes, sometimes the many may have it exactly wrong and the few may have it exactly right.

In a strange sense, more acceptable than a scientific and humanistic approach to the claims and practices of religions is actual bigotry or prejudice!  Elected officials, such as Rep. Virgil Goode, have actually been able to object to a Muslim, Keith Ellison who was duly elected to the House of Representatives of the United States, taking his oath of office on a Koran (as opposed to the Christian bible) – without being hounded out of office in disgrace!  One wonders how many votes Mr. Goode may have actually gained via his bigotry.

But if Rep. Goode had instead said that according to the evidence, there is no reason to believe that Abraham or Moses had ever existed, or that there is no reason to believe that Jesus was divine or that Mohammed or anyone else had received revelations, and that the only appropriate printed material for an oath of office was a copy of the Constitution of the United States, his career would have possibly been over!

Here is a question: Are there more Virgil Goode types or are there more (atheist) Pete Starks types in the House of Representatives?

So it is in this wild context that it seems that a bias crime against a person of Iranian descent was committed recently on Long Island, in Locust Valley, Nassau County.  A female proprietor of an upscale nail salon was robbed at gunpoint and assaulted according to a Newsday story.  The perpetrators apparently scrawled anti-Muslim messages in her store and called her a terrorist.

THIS is bigotry, not a reasoned critique of religion.  The alleged victim has been in the US ever since the Ayatollah came to power, escaping to the US legally in 1982.  She became a US citizen as a response to 9-11, according to Newsday, and said of the US, “It’s my home now and nobody can take it away.”  She says that she is not religious.

Religious or not, this is the kind of immigrant we should be welcoming to our country, not terrorizing.  This is a person who is not a burden, and values the United States in the most important way possible – in the form of the freedoms as defined and guaranteed in our Constitution and Bill of Rights.

Another example of Islamophobia (or perhaps we should call it Muslimophobia) may be that of Long Island’s own Rep. Peter King.  According to a number of websites, King was quoted in an interview with radio and television host Sean Hannity saying that 85 percent of the mosques in this country are controlled by “extremist leadership.”

There is absolutely no way that King could have data of this detail even if we overlook the fact that simply defining “extremist leadership” is no simple task!  If he could define “extremist leadership” sensibly and produce the data supporting his contention, we’d all love to see it.

But at least his contention about Muslims leads to something we should think about: for example, if a majority (or close to it) of Christians in this country believe that the Bible is the infallible Word of God, it would mean, logically, that they endorse what is contained in the Bible, including the obligation to kill witches, unruly children, adulterers, and in some cases, non-believers.  Would that make most Christians terrorists or extremists, based on their own word?

Skeptics often point this sort of thing out and by doing so, condemn the religion in general even though most Christians would be appalled by the murder of “witches” and “unruly” children – yes appalled by their own infallible religion—if they weren’t in such deep denial.

And so it goes with Muslims.  Yes, the leadership can be dogmatic and their scripture heinous, as it is in most all religions; does this make them all “extremists”?  It makes those who know and accept what their scriptures and beliefs actually endorse “extremists” (such as Christian extremist Randall Terry); but the truth is most persons are in blissful ignorance or denial of their own religion’s extremist dogma.  They are not personally extreme even though they claim to believe in the religion completely as if it were infallible – they just don’t know what they’re talking about.  Nothing is simple when trying to figure out what a person is really saying – general incoherence must be considered in making a generalization or analysis.  This should lead us to be very precise in our accusations or condemnations.  Rep. Peter King should take note.

As skeptics, seekers of truth and humanists we must denounce and reject religion based bigotry.  It does not mean we must self-censor ourselves when we believe a religious belief is untrue or a religious practice is harmful.  There is far too little constructive religious criticism as it is.  It does mean, however, that we must judge persons for what they actually do and not for the labels we assign to them or they assign to themselves.  We all know persons who claim to be one thing but behave in ways totally incompatible with their stated beliefs, for both better and worse.

The world is truly a troubled place.  Many naively believe that the cure to all our problems is accepting their preferred dogma over some other opposing dogma, while at the same time having little idea of the content of the opposing dogmas.

Humanists have the better idea: to avoid all dogmatic beliefs in favor of promoting what actually works to lift humanity.  Humanists are concerned with deeds.  Creeds are only important in how they may affect behavior.  Creeds are to be judged, as is everything else: by their “truthiness” and their consequences on well-being.

If freedom and democracy truly are components of a better world, as most humanists would agree, we must prove to those whoeither are unconvinced or reject these ideals that freedom and democracy would improve their lives as well; and there is no better proof than proof by example.

(The whole story @ Newsday: http://www.newsday.com/news/local/nassau/ny-libias175378585sep17,0,5170531.story. )

 

 

Tags: Imus, Jena, O'Reilly, racism, Sylvia's

Islamophobia on Long Island

One of the missions of the Center for Inquiry is to defend freedom of inquiry in all areas of human endeavor.  On occasion, this mission leads us to scrutinize many prevailing orthodoxies involving society, politics and religion.  If we apply the scientific method to test the reliability or truth content of many such orthodoxies, we may conclude that they are either likely true or untrue.  If we apply humanistic standards to these orthodoxies -- in other words, we assess, to the best of our abilities, whether the practices of a prevailing orthodoxy help humanity thrive or whether they cause misery – we sometimes formulate serious moral criticisms.

Such criticisms and truth content judgments when sincerely and conscientiously applied to religious claims and practices are not examples of bigotry or prejudice.  To the contrary, this mission is highly moral if not polluted by pre-conceived biases and falsehoods.  Unfortunately, despite this “purity” of purpose, even well-intentioned religious criticism is typically poorly accepted and it is not uncommon for the religious to condemn ALL religious criticism as bigotry and an affront to religious freedom when it may actually be the opposite.  It is typical that the first victim of religious intolerance is the religious dissident whose sincere criticism of a religion is often punished by the State on behalfof that prevailing religious orthodoxy.  Yes, sometimes the many may have it exactly wrong and the few may have it exactly right

In a strange sense, more acceptable than a scientific and humanistic approach to theclaims and practices of religions is actual bigotry!  Elected officials, such as Rep. Virgil Goode, have actually been able to object to a Muslim, Keith Ellison, elected to the House of Representatives of the United States taking their oath of office on a Koran as opposed to the Christian bible – without being hounded out of office in disgrace!  One wonders how many votes Mr. Goode may have gained via his bigotry.

But if Rep. Goode had instead said that according to the evidence, there is no reason to believe that Abraham or Moses had ever existed, or that there is no reason to believe that Jesus was divine or that Mohammed had received revelations, and that the only appropriate printed material for an oath of office was a copy of the Constitution of the United States, his career would have possibly been over!

Here is a question: Are there more Virgil Goode types or are there more (atheist) Pete Starks types in the House of Representatives?

So it is in this wild context that it seems that a bias crime against a person of Iranian descent was committed recently on Long Island, in Locust Valley, Nassau County.  A female proprietor of an upscale nail salon was robbed at gunpoint and assaulted according to a Newsday story.  The perpetrators apparently scrawled anti-Muslim messages in her store and called her a terrorist.

THIS is bigotry.  The alleged victim has been in the US ever since the Ayatollah came to power, escaping to the US legally in 1982.  She became a US citizen as a response to 9-11, according to Newsday, and said of the US, “It’s my home now and nobody can take it away.”  She says that she is not religious.

Religious or not, this is the kind of immigrant we should be welcoming to our country, not terrorizing.  This is a person who is not a burden, and values the United States in the most important way possible – in the form of the freedoms as defined and guaranteed in our Constitution and Bill of Rights.

As skeptics, seekers of truth and humanists we must denounce and reject religion based bigotry.  It does not mean we must self-censor ourselves when we believe a religious belief is untrue or a religious practice is harmful.  There is far too little constructive religious criticism as it is.  It does mean, however, that we must judge persons for what they actually do and not for the labels we assign them.  We all know persons who claim to be one thing but behave in ways totally incompatible with their stated believes, for both better and worse.

The world is a truly troubled place.  Many naively believe that the cure to all our problems is accepting their preferred dogma over some other opposing dogma.

Humanists have the better idea: to avoid all dogmatic beliefs in favor of promoting what actually works to lift humanity.  Humanists are concerned with deeds.  Creeds are important only in how they may change our behavior.  If freedom and democracy truly are components of a better world, as most humanists would agree, we must prove to those who either are unconvinced or reject these ideals that freedom and democracy would improve their lives as well; and there is no better proof than proof by example.

(The whole story @ Newsday: http://www.newsday.com/news/local/nassau/ny-libias175378585sep17,0,5170531.story )

Tags: Center for Inquiry, humanism, Islam, Islamophobia, Virgil Goode, Keith Ellison

Iraq, the Surge and What's Next

It has been a while since I’ve written about the attack on Iraq because I’ve said almost everything I needed to say about Iraq far in advance of almost everyone else saying it, so I have little to do except repeat myself; from the start I believed Iraq would be a disaster.

For example, in December 2002 I wrote “Purity of opinion or voting record does not get you to humanist heaven.  For example, voting for someone other than Al Gore if one vehemently opposed George W. Bush was reasonably expected to help elect George W. Bush, and it did.  The difference in a number of states was smaller than the number of votes for various 3rd party candidates.  As a consequence, Bush is president.  As a consequence, we have a tattered wall of separation between church and state, a tax cut for the better off, no new social programs in sight, a ballooning budget and deficit, a weak economy, no answers for Wall Street abuses, and a potentially disastrous war in Iraq on our hands.”  (Go to http://www.centerforinquiry.net/uploads/attachments/DEC%202002%20newsletter.pdf .)

Every thing that has since occurred, while not a certainty, has been very predictable, as I, and later on, Al Gore, in his book, “The Assault on Reason,” have pointed out.  While pundits such as Chris Matthews of MSNBC (who make millions of $$) declared as Baghdad fell “that we are all Neocons,” I wrote at that very moment (May 2003) that “The days immediately following the symbolic toppling (of Saddam’s statue) brought sobering, if not distressing, news:  No weapons of mass destruction had yet been found; suicide attacks on US soldiers had occurred, leading to US soldiers inadvertently killing innocent civilians as a reaction; rival Iraqi religious leaders were hacked to death by an angry mob at a meeting designed to bring about reconciliation; looting and lawlessness broke out in major cities in Iraq; hospitals were in crisis mode due to the problems caused by war; protestors demonstrated in the Shia-dominated area of Iraq over the British choice of former Baath Party leaders to head an interim authority in Basra; some exiled Shi’ite factions boycotted a meeting of Kurdish, Sunni and Shi’ites to discuss the future of Iraq; thousands of Iraqi civilians have perished, and many other troubling problems on the ground.”  (Go to http://www.centerforinquiry.net/uploads/attachments/May%202003%2010pg.pdf .)

All of these doubts about the Iraq enterprise were the result of applying the values of secular humanism and scientific skepticism – nothing more complicated was involved than simply being conscientious enough to ask the relevant questions and rejecting fanciful conclusions.

So here we are today; Iraq is a mess with, most likely, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis now dead, who would not have been dead otherwise, plus close to 4,000 American soldiers dead plus countless others maimed and mentally injured for the following results:

1)      More Islamic terrorists and terrorist sympathizers in Iraq and in the rest of the world

2)      More than trillion dollars to be spent by US taxpayers resulting in a lowering of the quality of life (bombs tend to destroy not create)

3)      Less security for US citizens because of less money available to be spent on Homeland Security

4)      Less personal freedoms in the US

5)      Less pride in America after understanding that the US started an unjustifiable war and used its military callously and recklessly

6)      A resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan and the continued non-pursuit of bin Laden due to the diverting of military and other resources to Iraq

There is no equation that can balance the scale of lives spent and results obtained.  This war is a disaster no matter what, and the reality is far worse.  And what is the obvious reality?

The Shia see the potentialfor dominant power over Iraq and see little need to compromise; and they are not compromising - oil will pay for their future tyrrany and the security to defend it.  Security for ordinary Iraqis obtained during the current surge in US forces is being accomplished primarily by ethnic cleansing – Sunnis are being chased out of Shiite enclaves, and the goal is a Shiite Bagdhad.  The Bush Administration, being totally amoral, will cynically point to the increased security as proof of progress – and Americans will buy it.  The media will not want to rub this fact too hard in American faces.

In Sunni dominated areas the US will pursue a different cynical tact: they will support non-Al Qaeda former Sunni insurgents; yes, the very same persons who were killing Americans not long ago, and enable them to create all Sunni areas in Anbar, etc.  Of course, they will become insurgents to the Shia dominated Iraqi government, but that will be their problem.

The only saving grace to the program of ethnic cleansing, supporting insurgents and looking the other way to the vicious militias of all sorts is that it may allow us to withdraw during a period of relative calm while each ethnic territory is effectively cleansed.  Of course, what happens after that is anyone’s guess but here’s mine: Iraq and Iran will get very chummy, Saudi Arabia will continue to support Sunni militias and Iran will support Shiite militias.  Civil War will continue, and Iraq will become a failed state.

Even the division of Iraq is doomed.  Such a division would create two land-locked countries, one for the Kurds and the other for the Sunnis, and their only routes of trade would be through enemy territory (the Shiite Iraq, Iran and Turkey.)  Good luck!

Many argue that we have a moral obligation to the Iraqis - we started this and we ought to see it through.  This argument has merit but here is the problem: we have helped them hold elections; we have spent lives and money ridding them of Saddam; we have tried to reconstruct their country.  What can be done to fulfill our moral obligation that has not been tried?  My suggestion is this: convict those in the US government that perpetrated this war under false pretenses and then ineptly prosecuted this war.  At that point we will have admitted to the world that the US as a whole was duped and the dupers are being held accountable.  We will have done everything possible; other than changing history, nothing will be truly sufficient, so why continue to make things worse?

The US should have had only one military goal before the war in Iraq; the control or neutralization of Al Qaeda and bin Laden.  It abandoned that goal with the Iraq War and continues to shun this goal to the point where Al Qaeda has made a comeback.  A withdrawal from Iraq should be designed with only one military component in mind; controlling Al Qaeda in Iraq, an organization inadvertently created by the inept Bush Administration.

Unfortunately, they are totally incapable of performing or even centering on this clear task.  Nothing will resolve itself until the next Administration takes office, and it would not be surprising if this Administration does everything in its ability to avoid being affixed the blame for the disaster that is Iraq, even if it makes things worse in the long run.

Tags: Bush, Iraw, surge, Al Qaeda, Saddam, bin Laden, Al Gore