Tragedy at the Hajj and the Irrelevance of Religious Morality

Once again hundreds of religious pilgrims died from trampling each other at a "holy" site in Mina, near Mecca, Saudi Arabia.  The actual death toll was over 700 as of last week.  The trampling took place near the location where the ritual of throwing pebbles at the "devil" takes place.  In 1990, 1426 died in a stampede associated with the pilgrimage, that time in a tunnel leading to "holy" sites in Mecca.

It is an obligation to make the pilgrimage at least once in one's lifetime if one is able to arrange it.  Since there are over a billion Muslims, this means many converge upon Mina and Mecca, particularly during religious holidays, and the crowds have become unmanageable leading to stampedes and the deaths of innocent people, despite the efforts of the Saudis.  Please note that this pilgrimage is entirely a religious exercise - nothing is accomplished as far as I can see that could not be accomplished without this pilgrimage, except for the pilgrimage.

It is instructive to read how a Muslim, Nima Elbagir of CNN, views the Hajj: " For Muslims to complete the Hajj is to be reborn. To die in the Hajj is a blessing.  You are considered to have been martyred, cleansed of sin.  In the space of less than a week, during the Hajj, millions of Muslims stream along prescribed routes, undertaking the same rituals within the same narrow window of time. Islam requires the rites of the Hajj be completed only once in a lifetime and even then only if you are able.  There's a reason for that -- the Hajj is hard.  I've done it only once.  It was one of my first big assignments when I joined CNN.  As a practicing Muslim, it was an almost indescribable experience. As you walk for hours among Muslims of every possible color and nationality, the physical toll of the Hajj is meant to humble you. And it does.

In the press of humanity, it doesn't take much to spark panic.  Muslims believe the rite of "stoning the devil" is a re-enactment of the temptation of the prophet Abraham by Satan on the same site.  As you throw the stones, you are conjuring your own personal demons...  

When pilgrims set off, they know there is a real possibility that they might not come home.  Many truly hope they won't...  As the families of the victims of this tragedy struggle to come to terms with their loss, they will also be struggling to come to terms with the knowledge that the risk was always there.  As they grieve, they'll be told these were the lucky ones.  And some will pray that they will be lucky, too..."

If I understand the situation correctly, some, if not many Muslims believe, or claim to believe that dying during a Hajj is a blessing and they are "martyred."  This is not unlike hearing, at a Christian funeral for example, that the deceased is "in a better place" or that God "wanted them" in heaven for some undisclosed purpose.  Many Christians who died for their beliefs, and their beliefs alone, were considered "martyred" and many have been "sainted."  They are revered by many and their deaths are seen as heroic, not futile.

These are the problems with religious belief, religious morality and religion itself; the belief in the afterlife distorts our view of our life while we're alive; and what is considered moral may have no relationship to human well being and may even be very bad for us.  If there is an eternal afterlife, our real lives on this earth in this lifetime are almost irrelevant.  What is less than 100 years in life on earth compared to an eternity in heaven?  The answer is basically NOTHING - unless heaven does not exist and/or the believer's version of the divine is in error, and then our earthly lives becomes all important and worthy of cherishing.  With an afterlife, however, dying pointlessly for some supernatural purpose otherwise becomes all important, again, unless it is in error, of course.  Please keep in mind however, that non-Muslim religious persons see no point in dying  in the Hajj while non-Christian believers see no point  in dying defending the idea that Jesus is God.  To the vast majority of humans on this planet, dying for someone else's mistaken belief system is a tragedy not a blessing and not martyrdom.  In actuality almost everyone agrees on this subject with the exception being when their own beliefs are considered.

If we want to promote a better life for humanity on this earth in our lifetimes, a humanistic approach is a requirement.  Caring about others is the source and starting point of a real morality, not belief in one or another supernatural myth.  We need to get past the martyrdom that helps no one.

What is Love?

"You say you're supposed to be nice to the Episcopalians and the Presbyterians and the Methodists and this, that, and the other thing. Nonsense. I don't have to be nice to the spirit of the Antichrist. I can love the people who hold false opinions but I don't have to be nice to them." Pat Robertson, The 700 Club, January 14, 1991

The above statement by Pat Robertson is perhaps the most illuminating statement I have ever heard or read. Seriously! This insipid statement by Mr. Robertson really got me thinking, and ultimately enlightened me!

Now in my humble opinion, Mr. Robertson, despite being a self-made billionaire and a former "credible" presidential candidate, is unbelievably stupid. As an aside, and before I get to the point, these two factoids about Mr. Robertson do not in any way shatter my understanding of the way the world works; idiots can become rich, either by luck or excessive risk taking which (luckily) then pays off; and in certain political situations and political parties, it's not what you know and what you can do that matters, it's what you say you believe. Pat Robertson fits nicely into such an understanding of the world.

But to the point; Mr Robertson's above utterance has profound implications even if he is unaware of them. What is love to someone like Pat Robertson? What is love to all of his millions of followers who have, basically, made him impossibly wealthy and powerful? Can you love someone and NOT be nice to them? Can you forgive someone while wanting them punished or harmed? Can you repent without making things right?

Can God love a person he has condemned to an eternity of misery?

The majority of persons on Earth are probably in the Pat Robertson camp on this and related questions, which is to say that they either haven't given this any thought or that their thoughts are incoherent.

Consider the Religious Right's typical support for the death penalty; whether it should or should not be instituted is not the question here. The real question is whether those religious persons who are "sinners" themselves (so they say) and who claim to follow a God who supposedly loves all of us should support killing a fellow sinner who happened to break a law. What about the condemned opportunity to repent and hence, be forgiven and avoid eternal damnation? Being executed could deprive a person of the chance to "be saved." Who needs this kind of "love"? Executions that could deprive a person of a chance to repent should not happen at the hands of a loving God or his followers, should it?

It does happen, however, and with a vengeance. The Religious Right are typically the staunchest supporters in society of the death penalty. And at the same time, many Religious Right types (such as ex-Governor Huckabee) seem to love those criminals who have repented and "found" God - even though these "saved" criminals are just as apt as to return to crime as those who remained "unsaved". This endless set of contradictions makes no sense, of course.

Alright: the Religious Right is both eager to kill sinners depriving them of their chance to be saved and at the same time loves sinners who did get saved before they died or were executed. Is this nuttiness confined to the death penalty? Do religious zealots believe in harming others generally in the name of God while doing so in the name of love?

How many religions promote harm to sinners, unbelievers and heretics and how many of the followers then actually do so?

From the Koran:
Sura 33: 65.
ALLAH has, surely, cursed the disbelievers, and has prepared for them a blazing fire,
33: 66. Wherein they will abide forever. They will find therein no friend, nor helper.
33: 67. On the day when their faces are turned over into the fire they will say, `O, would that we had obeyed ALLAH and obeyed the Messenger
33: 68. And they will say, `Our Lord, we obeyed our chiefs and our great ones and they led us astray from the way,
33: 69. `Our Lord, give them double punishment and curse them with a mighty curse.

Sura 5: 52.
O ye who believe ! take not the Jews and the Christians for friends. They are friends of each other. And whoso among you takes them for friends is indeed one of them. Verily ALLAH guides not the unjust people.

Now the above Koranic citation should not allow for any smugness on the part of Christian America. It was in California where many Barack Obama supporters helped pass a proposition last year making gay marriage illegal. The Pat Robertson "logic" was in full command of the situation even if Obama voters were in the majority. The problem was that a "loving" God demands that his "loving" followers not be "nice" to a certain class of fellow "sinners": homosexuals.

It is a sad thing to conclude but it's obvious: most people have a worthless definition or concept of love. It would then follow that the concepts of "forgiveness", "repentance" and so on, are also poorly conceived as well. I said that Pat Robertson's idiotic statement had profound implications...

Love should compel a person to be "nice" to the beloved. Love should preclude harming others when no just cause is at stake. A God cannot simultaneously love humans and create a hell for many of them. He certainly is a monster if some persons are pre-destined somehow to their hellish fate or if, as an omniscient being, a God knows, even before they are born, that they will spend an short time alive and the balance of their existence in hell.

Love may indeed be a "feeling" that many persons claim to experience; but so what? If I claim to love someone and then harm them, does it matter if I "loved" them or "hated" them? Answer: NO!

So "What is love?"

To a humanist who judges behaviors by their consequences, a loving behavior is a behavior that leads to the well being of those to whom this behavior is directed. This definition does not preclude the idea of "justice" which requires that those persons who have caused harm must answer for their transgressions in a way that most benefits the society that was harmed.

A loving behavior is not mere romance or the mere appearance or claims of love. Love requires loving actions. Love is being honest while diplomatic and courteous; love is being responsible and courageous; love is being kind, reliable and loyal.

Love is not a mere gesture; it is a commitment to a way of living. Yes, a good, useful love is difficult to express!

The idea that love is a mode of behavior is very humanistic since it is consequentialist. It is not religious or dogmatic since the facts now matter; it now matters whether a person's love made the world a better place or not. Whether a God was "pleased" or not is irrelevant. With humanist love, one MUST be "nice" to the beloved.

Macro Humanism and Micro Humanism

One of the things that religion pretends to be able to do is make its adherents “better” persons. How many times have you heard politicians or religious leaders bemoan the prospect of “godless” societies? How often has it pointed out that Hitler was an atheist (he wasn’t according to Hitler himself) and that the greatest wars of the last century were begun by non-believers (they weren’t.)

In fact it would be shocking indeed to hear a public official claim that religion wasn’t at the source of all morality, as if human concern for others could not have been the result of something like “natural selection” (it was.)

CFI-LI friend, Rabbi Marc Gellman often depicts non-believers as less likely to moral than believers; he’s implied that non-believers are more likely to run others over in a parking lot! There is no data to support this contention.

The lack of supporting is at long last being addressed, sort of. An article in Slate magazine noted that “In Gross National Happiness, author Arthur Brooks notes that atheists are less charitable than their God-fearing counterparts: They donate less blood, for example, and are less likely to offer change to homeless people on the street.” (Go to http://www.slate.com/id/2203614/pagenum/all.) I’m sure the experiments that led to this conclusion were very “scientific”.

On this issue, the Slate article cited a strong rebuttal argument:

“In his new book, Society Without God, Phil Zuckerman looks at the Danes and the Swedes—probably the most godless people on Earth. They don't go to church or pray in the privacy of their own homes; they don't believe in God or heaven or hell. But, by any reasonable standard, they're nice to one another. They have a famously expansive welfare and health care service. They have a strong commitment to social equality. And—even without belief in a God looming over them—they murder and rape one another significantly less frequently than Americans do.

Denmark and Sweden aren't exceptions. A 2005 study by Gregory Paul looking at 18 democracies found that the more atheist societies tended to have relatively low murder and suicide rates and relatively low incidence of abortion and teen pregnancy.”

What could be the explanation, other than the very possible explanation of falsified data, for this difference in American godless and foreign godless behavior? (Note: the possibility that American atheists are more generous after all is very real – Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, George Soros, James Simons, and Ted Turner are among the biggest philanthropists in the world – non-believers all.)

The Slate article points out, “The Danes and the Swedes, despite being godless, have strong communities. In fact, Zuckerman points out that most Danes and Swedes identify themselves as Christian. They get married in church, have their babies baptized, give some of their income to the church, and feel attached to their religious community—they just don't believe in God. Zuckerman suggests that Scandinavian Christians are a lot like American Jews, who are also highly secularized in belief and practice, have strong communal feelings, and tend to be well-behaved.

American atheists, by contrast, are often left out of community life. The studies that Brooks cites in Gross National Happiness, which find that the religious are happier and more generous then the secular, do not define religious and secular in terms of belief. They define it in terms of religious attendance. It is not hard to see how being left out of one of the dominant modes of American togetherness can have a corrosive effect on morality. As P.Z. Myers, the biologist and prominent atheist, puts it, "[S]cattered individuals who are excluded from communities do not receive the benefits of community, nor do they feel willing to contribute to the communities that exclude them."

This is an obvious explanation that makes a lot of sense. In countries where secularism is the rule, it is often religious minorities that feel most alienated, fairly or unfairly. In the US, atheists, who are seen as the ultimate “outsiders”, could understandably be reluctant to donate money to, for example, the Boy Scouts, which excludes them, or the United Way, which gives to the Boy Scouts. It may be simply too much to ask for the despised to be generous to the despisers.

Humanism and secularism would seem to have much to offer on the macro level involving public moral policy; what could be a better philosophy for public policy than a non-dogmatic approach that uses reason, science and free inquiry with a goal of making the world a better place?

Humanists have consistently advocated for freedom, justice, and peaceful means for achieving these social aims. Humanism does not necessarily imply specific solutions to specific problems but it certainly is well equipped to frame problems properly and lead to asking the right questions. Secular humanism has little to apologize for as a basis for formulating a public, national, international and/or planetary or macro morality.

But this leads to the subject at hand which was inspired by the very compelling talk given by former Baptist minister Kevin Cordle at a CFI-LI forum earlier this year and an article in Free Inquiry by Paul Kurtz noting the shortcomings of many humanists on the personal level.

Mr. Cordle was a committed minister but his scientific orientation led to his questioning of his religious beliefs. However, the clincher was the lack of success that religious belief had in making his congregants better persons. In-fighting, politics and petty arguments that were the antithesis of “love thy neighbor,” soured the sincere minister on the necessity of religion.

But while it is obvious that religious beliefs do not make the religious better persons, neither does non-theism. Yes, on the personal level, humanists can act like jerks just as easily as the next person. Some humanists cheat, lie, hurt and behave poorly – is there any doubt? They profess humanism but cannot live its principles.

Hopefully this realization should make Mr. Cordle feel a little better; in no way should he feel that he failed because his congregants continued to behave poorly or indifferently despite all his efforts. Good character on a very personal level does not depend on belief, non-belief, zealotry or apathy; neither does good character depend on interest about god, religion or science.

So exactly how are we to nurture better behavior from fellow humanists and non-theists? Surely demonstrating that belief in god is unreasonable will not directly teach or inspire a person to treat others better.

The best approach must be setting a proper example. While humanism will definitely influence a person to denounce primitive and destructive religious practices, including FGM, sexism, many forms of bigotry and racism, religious war, religious intolerance and much more, it is much more difficult to make a person behave honestly, kindly, responsibly and courageously towards others on the personal level. But by showing others how to behave, we can practice our professed humanism on the more difficult micro level.

So what can we do to behave more humanistically? If I knew the answer to this question I would surely apply it to myself! I would figure out how to modify my own behavior so that I don’t yell at the kids, be more understanding of my wife and generally be more patient with everyone.
We are all works in progress; hopefully we’re getting better at applying the common decencies and virtues in our daily lives.

Perhaps working on an issue at a time would be a good approach to applying humanism on the micro level. Perhaps our character is too hard wired to be modified greatly, perhaps not. But we can take solace in a couple of facts; humanism is an approach that has been used to make great progress in civilizing humanity on the macro level to great benefit. Perhaps we need to discover the principles of a quantum humanism so that we can behave more humanistically toward each other every day on the micro level.

Any suggestions?

Why We’re Secular, part 240

The dogmatic just don’t get it, do they? If they did, then they wouldn’t be dogmatic! Of course, the circular logic of a dogmatic belief system is successful in preserving itself precisely because a central tenet of an enduring system of dogma is that its assertions are beyond question; or, cleverly, beyond our ability to question; or even more cleverly, that belief in that dogma is a “gift” of some sort, hence the inability of dogmatic believers and followers to break free of whatever arbitrary and capricious system of dogma that entraps them.

Dogma need not be the full foaming-at-the-mouth kind that motivates terrorists and other zealots. Dogma can, in fact be totally mainstream and socially acceptable in polite company, but its acceptability renders the acceptor incapable of arguing against competing dogma even if it is indeed full foaming-at-the-mouth style dogma. A baseless and faith-held belief system has as much reason to support it as the next one.

Take for example our old friend, the God Squad’s Rabbi Marc Gellman. Considered a “moderate” by many, he seems unable to recognize the pointlessness of even bothering to use reason or logic (even poorly) when answering religious questions. Check out this exchange which appeared in Newsday on Saturday, March 07, 2009:

Question from a reader: I'm sorry that as a Jew you cannot accept the biblical fact, but Jesus Christ is the Messiah, and He came to save the world from sin and give us eternal life. If you accept this, you are saved; if you don't, then you're not. The scripture is clear that we are told these things so we may know that we have eternal life. Can't you acknowledge this truth? – B. via email

Answer: Not.

Does Rabbi Gellman realize that his answer to this reader’s question would suffice as an answer to his own question posed to an atheist on whether they could accept that God exists? Duh, I guess not!

The implications of faith-inspired tunnel vision and dogmatism encapsulated in this little exchange are mind-boggling and apparently totally lost on Rabbi Gellman. If he did see the implications he’d immediately become agnostic and understand he has no answers worth offering on the question of the existence of God.

Consequently, the need to continually justify his dogma often leads him into vicious and slanderous territory. Readers of the INQUIRER are well aware of his past attacks on non-believers (and his left-handed apologies). In the same column as his dogmatic rejection of salvation from a concerned dogmatic Christian letter writer comes the following piece of nuttiness:

Question from a reader: Considering, over many centuries, events like the Inquisition, countless and unceasing religious wars, the Crusades, 9/11 and the recent Mumbai killings, can you say that, on balance, religion has caused more good than bad things to happen? -- A., Melville, N.Y. via email.

A: Group A: (Mother Teresa, Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Pope John XXIII, Pope John Paul II, Billy Graham, and Father Tom Hartman)

Group B: (Mao, Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Idi Amin)

My conclusion: Group A wins over Group B.

(Go to http://daily-journal.com/archives/dj/display.php?id=436492.)

What is implied by these two groups and by what random process did he select the groups? Group A has two genuine heroes, Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi, two homophobic Popes who believe that condom users deserve eternal damnation, a religious fanatic who believes that any woman who uses a contraceptive is incapable of love, an anti-Semite and a close friend of the Rabbi. You could ask yourself however, where are noted theists bin Laden and David Koresh?
Group B does indeed have all villains but includes Communists, a Muslim and a Catholic.

Oh yeah, I get it – in Group B they’re all really atheists because they are evil no matter whether they actually believe in God or not. The actual facts are irrelevant. I did notice that noted non-theists Christopher Reed, Pat Tillman. Albert Einstein, Mark Twain, Robert Ingersoll, Carl Sagan, Bertrand Russell, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Kurt Vonnegut and John Lennon were omitted from Group B; it must have been an oversight!

But in the same newspaper edition that Gellman is attempting to claim that Group A (the “religious”) are better than Group B (the “atheists”) we have the following reality checks:
Senior leaders of Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah offered international support Friday to Sudan's president after he was charged with war crimes in Darfur, a sign that the bid to prosecute him could sharply radicalize his regime.

For a third straight day, President Omar al-Bashir's supporters marched and vowed to defend him against what his government called a "colonial" conspiracy to overthrow him. Hundreds emerged from mosques after Friday prayers, chanting "jihad," or holy war, and shouting, "With our souls and blood, we will sacrifice ourselves for you, al-Bashir."

After the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant Wednesday for al-Bashir, Sudan's government responded by expelling 13 of the largest aid organizations in Darfur.
The U.N. human rights office said in Geneva that it was examining whether the expulsion could itself constitute a war crime.

The order opened a giant hole in the safety net that has kept many Darfur civilians alive during six years of war in the vast, arid region of western Sudan. Without the groups, 1.1 million people will be without food, 1.5 million without health care, and more than 1 million without drinking water — and outbreaks of infectious disease are a greater danger, the U.N. said.

"To knowingly and deliberately deprive such a huge group of civilians of means to survive is a deplorable act," said its spokesman, Rupert Colville. "To punish civilians because of a decision by the ICC is a grievous dereliction of the government's duty to protect its own people…"

Jennifer Cooke, head of the Africa program at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the Western reaction "may drive al-Bashir further to the hard-line radicals."

"He is framing the ICC's decision as yet another Western attempt to undermine the sovereignty of a Muslim developing state," she said. "And realizing he can rally support, whether from the Arab League or more radical elements, and possibly the (African Union), it gives him less incentive to move back on his decisions." (Go to http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iZQb2negfyNKgNesbro4mnMW1AHAD96OPMUO0 .)
Yes, support is lining up behind al-Bashir on a religious basis with supporters of al-Bashir depicting the “secular West” as colonialists when their only true motivation is mere religious chauvinism. (This is not to say that the religious elements in the “West” do not at times exhibit the religious chauvinism as well.)

If a religious “moderate” takes exception to the above story as non-representative, we offer another story regarding the supposedly non-extremist Catholic Church, the largest church on earth:

“The Vatican has defended the excommunication of those involved in helping a nine-year-old girl get an abortion in Brazil after she was allegedly raped by her stepfather.

Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, the head of the Roman Catholic Church's Congregation for Bishops, told the Italian daily La Stampa over the weekend that the unborn twins the girl was carrying had the right to live.

"It is a sad case but the real problem is that the twins conceived were two innocent persons, who had the right to live and could not be eliminated," he said.

The senior cleric's comments come after Brazil's president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, criticised Jose Cardoso Sobrinho, the Brazilian archbishop who excommunicated the girl's mother and the doctors involved in aborting the baby, but not the stepfather who allegedly raped the girl.
Lula said that as a Catholic, he deeply regretted the archbishop's "conservative attitude".

"It is not possible to allow a little girl raped by her stepfather to have that child because it could put her life at risk," he said.

"I believe that in this sense, medicine is more correct than the church."

But the cardinal said "life must always be protected, the attack on the Brazilian church is unjustified".

The nine-year-old from the northeastern state of Pernambuco in the world's largest Roman Catholic nation, was found to be four months pregnant last week after allegedly being raped by her stepfather.

Abortion is a crime under Brazilian laws except in cases of rape, if the woman's life is in danger or if the foetus has no chance of survival

Doctors said they decided to terminate the pregnancy because the girl's life was in danger due to her young age, and because she was carrying twins.

But Sobrinho, the archbishop of Olinda and Recife, in declaring the excommunication, said the abortion went against "the law of God".

The stepfather was not excommunicated because the church said that his action, although deplorable, was not as bad as ending the life of an unborn child.

"It is clear that he committed a very serious sin, but worse than this is the abortion," Sobrinho said.

Under church law, excommunication is automatic for followers who have, perform or help procure an abortion.” (Go to http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2009/03/20093911932836487.html .)

Let’s summarize: the Roman Catholic Church position is that the raped 9 year old child should risk death so that the product of her rape not be terminated – not that they have a good chance of surviving this pregnancy anyway! In other words, a form of involuntary human sacrifice to an angry God! Yes the girl and her doctors would go to hell, but her rapist just needs to turn to Christ and he’ll be welcome in heaven!

To the reader; ask yourself what is the cruelest thing that a person could do to another person? The easy answer by definition would be to consign another person to an eternity of the ultimate in torment, misery and suffering. The Roman Catholic Church, believing in the reality of hell, has purposely and willfully committed the cruelest act possible; this is the horror of what they think they have done via ex-communication! And they have no remorse! They’re, in fact, righteous about their infinite punishment to a finite “crime.”

But wait! You might argue that an abortion, even to save the life of a child, is somehow immoral. Let’s go with another example of the “moderation” of the moderate and non-radical or extreme Roman Catholic Church, the world’s largest church.

While visiting Cameroon, where AIDS is a huge problem, the Pope said about the battle against AIDS, “You can’t solve it with the distribution of condoms. On the contrary, it increases the problem.” (Go to http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iLJ2gzRRfTYc_YuS7r1yuwnmne-gD970K3CG0 .)

France’s health minister, Roselyne Bachelot said that the Pope “proffered a monstrous scientific untruth.” In other words, the Pope lied.

Rebecca Hodes, head of policy, communication and research for Treatment Action Campaign in South Africa said the Pope should be promoting condom use if he wants to help fight AIDS. “Instead,” she said, “his opposition to condoms conveys that religious dogma is more important to him than the lives of Africans.”

While the Pope lies, people die.

In the meantime, back in the US, one of the leading activists on behalf of the suffering people of Darfur is actor George Clooney.

Here is a quote from Mr. Clooney: "I don't believe in Heaven and Hell," he says. "I don't know if I believe in God. All I know is that as an individual, I won't allow this life -- the only thing I know to exist -- to be wasted."

Rabbi Gellman, where does Mr. Clooney go: Group A or B and where does the pious al-Bashir and all his sanctimonious supporters belong?

To give you a clue, in recorded history, probably no war has been fought in the name of a non-belief (not counting self-defense) such as atheism or a failure to believe in capitalism. Wars are motivated by a strong positive belief in an economic system or religion or a form of nationalism; by something that compels many to give up their lives for an idea – in other words, a dogma.

Doubt leads to introspection and consideration of all the possibilities; it is certainty that can lead to fanaticism.

Advice to Rabbi Gellman: he should begin to appreciate the non-dogmatism of secular humanism.
At least we don’t think he deserves to rot in hell forever for his failure to accept the alleged “Truth” as some of his “fans” do.

How Does a Humanist Approach Economics?

Exactly what should a humanist think regarding the economic woes that we are suffering through in the US and around the world? What economic approach should a humanist embrace or are there a number of approaches that can be embraced?

There have been volumes written on the subject, of course, with points of view that are literally diametrically opposed to each other and everything in between. Ayn Rand, a non-theist, advocated unfettered capitalism; Karl Marx, another non-theist, advocated a communistic approach. Closer to the mainstream, Adam Smith, Milton Friedman and John Maynard Keynes have all exerted differing influences on economic thinkers and policies that have followed.

Indeed, if you enjoy contradiction and opposing opinions, listen to a number of different economists and economic forecasters explain what has happened and what is about to happen and you will undoubtedly hear everything ranging from a prediction of the next great depression to the next economic boom being just around the corner.

And this is the problem for the freethinking humanist; economics is most certainly still an inexact “science.” There are simply too many factors involved, not the least of which is almost completely factor of unpredictable human nature at play in the economies of an increasingly complex world. “Random” stimulus such as weather, war, corruption and good and bad luck conspire to make the future nearly totally unpredictable. Add human emotions such as fear and euphoria and it becomes clear that forecasting the economy requires more than complex math; it requires complex psychological analyses of masses of human beings as well!

That is why it is unwise, in this writer’s opinion, to have an unswerving approach to economics. The guidelines that we should respect in the economic field involve those common decencies that we revere in all areas of human endeavor, such as not causing unnecessary harm, enabling individual freedom to the degree that others are not harmed, honesty, responsibility, fairness and reasonableness.

This approach does not rule out many moderate economic approaches; it would rule out, for example, communism which promotes a dictatorship of a particular class and may disallow the individual right to be enterprising. A humanistic approach would also rule out a fascistic alliance of large businesses with government. These two approaches are not compatible with fairness or individual freedom, not to mention the fact that fanatical followers often will accept human suffering rather than sacrifice any aspect of their economic belief system.

What is left for us to decide as rational agents is to figure out in each economic situation, what approach harmonizes with the common decencies; what approach allows for individual freedom and, in addition, works well to raise our standard of living and mitigate human suffering! What may work for auto-making or banking may not be the right approach to a utility or other business involved with common areas of a nation, such as roads, police, the army or schools.

Should the goal be as little government taxing as possible, with its concordant fewer government services; or should we band to together via higher taxes to create a social safety net for those who may fall into need?

Would the low tax approach allow for more human suffering? Would the higher tax approach lead to sloth and “gaming the system” lowering everyone’s standard of living?

Should the market determine the price of a product; should a government or a bureaucrat?

Once again, we know that both approaches have problems and limitations. The market approach gave us Enron, Lehman Bros., AIG, Bear Stearns, the health care system we now have and the US auto industry. And, of course, the Great Depression and our current woes.

The Command Economy approach gave the world the disastrous economies of Russia and China for much of the last century. It has only been when both those countries abandoned those failed economic policies for freer markets that their economies grew tangibly improving the lives of many citizens. Even though their new economies have brought other problems to the fore, lives have improved. It is clear already that even in Russia and China, despite capitalism’s success in improving lives, this success is not unqualified.

Admittedly this is a frustrating and not totally satisfying way of approaching the topic of economics; it’s so uncertain and non-committal. It is much easier for those who crave certainty to be total and unblinking capitalists, libertarians, socialists or communists.

But no one said freethinking and humanism would lead to simplistic answers. In the category of economics there are none.

So when you read about the next “bailout” or “rescue” or “financial stimulus” plan, do not make up your mind so quickly; there is no guarantee that this idea is not either the best or worst idea to come down the pike. Each idea should be looked at in a non-dogmatic manner and assessed in as scientifically a manner as is possible. If our economy is anything, it is complex.

We do know that the previous administration proudly took the certain dogmatic approach: pure ideology ruled until disaster stared the administration in the face.

We can safely say that the dogmatic and ideological approach has failed.

Good riddance.

On a note of hope, the approach of the new administration of President Obama, has been, on the surface, open-minded. It remains to be seen if they can truly think “outside the box,” and govern in that manner as well, but that is the image they are trying to convey. We hope that they succeed in being innovative, creative and freethinking in their economic approach and do not succumb to political pressures, from the right or left that would promote an unthinking ideology.

We shall soon find out.

With all this said I can now offer my opinion on what the approach should be going forward, in the full knowledge that even the best of all possible plans has only a certain percentage change of succeeding as intended, and that even a bad plan might work - with luck.

It is obvious that the current problem has its roots in the abuse of credit by both business and consumers. Businesses borrowed too much, relying on continued growth in the economy to enable them to pay back their loans as they expanded. Consumers borrowed heavily on both the housing front and the credit card front in the expectation that their home’s value would always rise and if they were unable to pay the exorbitant mortgage, they could simply sell their house – at a profit.

The disaster began when so many persons could not pay their mortgages at the same time that home values started to decline because of the glut of homes for sale by distressed sellers.

The situation began to snowball – if sellers could not pay their mortgages and home prices dropped, banks that lent them money had to repossess home that were now worth less than the loans that were owed. It did not help that many mortgages were fraudulently issued without proper credit checks or home appraisals – many of these are the “sub-prime loans” that were the first to go bad.

As more and more persons defaulted, and banks lost more and more money on those loans, and houses became less and less valuable, those financial entities that had bought securities based on home mortgages came to realize that those securities were becoming less valuable. In fact, the value of securities backed by mortgages declined so badly that financial institutions soon had less overall capital or value in relation to deposits and other liabilities as required by both law and common sense.

So some stopped lending, especially to each other, and others went bankrupt.

When banks stop lending, it becomes difficult to buy a house, further driving down home prices, or even buy a car.

If you’re a business, it becomes hard to refinance as you had previously. Good luck to the firm that has a loan due to be paid or refinanced!

When consumers began to realize that their homes were declining in value, and they could no longer be used to finance other purchases they did in fact do the logical thing: they stopped making purchases.

Businesses started to realize that consumers had reached their credit limits and were not buying their products anymore – so they began to lay off workers and lessen inventories.
So this is what you get when consumers have little available credit, and banks have little to lend; a huge and sudden recession.

This is a negative feedback loop if there ever was one and there are many contributing factors. Last year, crude oil soared to $147 per barrel in price; at that moment the credit related bubble began to burst in earnest. Since then practically ALL commodities declined in value, including oil, metals, real estate and even gold. With billions and trillions of dollars in “paper” wealth gone, primarily due to the decline in real estate values, stocks and mutual funds, there was less cash in existence to chase commodities and who needs commodities when you’re not making stuff anyway?

This is called “deflation” and it is deadly to the economy. Why buy something now when it will cost less later? Another negative feedback loop!

Obviously, it’s not as if people do not want to buy stuff and banks do not want to lend their money. Both borrowers and lenders are afraid to do their thing.

Businesses know this and retreat to a protective position.

But consider this; the recession is essentially the result of future expectations which right now are extremely bad. In other words, there is great fear and it is fear that prevents consumers from buying, lenders from lending and businesses from expanding.

Remove or reverse or moderate the fear and the recession can be ended.

What would reduce the level of fear?

The key items must be jobs and job security and the banking system’s viability. If you are secure in your existing job, you will spend normally. Obviously if you are now unemployed and then find a job, your spending should only increase. When businesses see this happening, they will expand further.

If banks are not worried about being paid back because people will not be losing their jobs, they will lend - that is unless they are too bankrupt or deficient in reserves to lend.

So it would seem the task at hand for our government is to foster jobs creation and ensure bank viability.

A stimulus package not focused on job creation may be worthless. Simply sending out tax rebates, for example, will NOT ELIMINATE FEAR! Only a secure job will do this, in my opinion, and to avoid wasting taxpayer money, the job created should be a useful and necessary endeavor, not a time waster such as digging and filling in ditches.

“Fortunately,” over the decades, we have neglected many necessary tasks, such as improving our infrastructure and making our nation energy independent. Building schools, hospitals, repairing crumbling bridges or creating an improved electrical grid or funding advanced technological research would lead to further economic expansion, keeping the economy growing even after the stimulus has run its course. Our quality of life would improve.

Fixing the financial system may be the tougher task. The Federal Government has some choices; buying preferred stock, common stock or nationalizing certain banks. Or, if a price can be calculated, perhaps purchasing the non-liquid assets (e.g.: bad loans) of banks would be the right move; or facilitating a market or exchange where this junk could be sold in an orderly and transparent manner. The choice is complex but the goals are ensuring viability while keeping the expense to taxpayers to a minimum. Letting them go bankrupt is really not a choice – see the mess the bankruptcy of Lehman Bros. has caused. It could take years to sort it all out! Imagine the mess if a Citibank were to fail!

Allowing banks to remain “too big to fail” in the future should not be a choice either. Going back to their core business of lending to consumers for more than they pay out for deposits may be boring but it has worked for centuries. Exotic financial instruments such as derivatives, credit default swaps and triple short ETFs should be regulated if not eliminated. There is much to do.
But why did banks (and other companies) get in the position they are in? They were not required to make bad loans or bad business decisions, were they? After all, not all companies made those bad decisions!

As the system now works, the CEOs of banks (and other corporations) do not necessarily have their company’s interest in mind as they drive them to bankruptcy – why should they? If a policy is likely to benefit the CEO and other higher officers of the corporation, rather than the bank or corporation, what do you think will happen – or has happened?

A $100,000,000 bonus is a difficult thing to forsake for the good of a corporation!

Here is the conflict – a corporation, if it was a sentient entity, would have a goal of surviving well, like any other sentient entity. Unfortunately, running a corporation are numerous other sentient entities – officers, directors, and laborers, all with conflicting goals. The corporation thus suffers – you wind up with Enron, Citibank and General Motors.

Therefore corporate governance, in order to protect stockholders and employees in particular, must be codified and made into enforceable law or otherwise a company is at the mercy of sentient beings with conflicting goals. Simply requiring an officer to have a fiduciary responsibility has not worked particularly when corporate boards who oversee the executives consist of the corporate officer’s “pals” who are corporate officers elsewhere. (Note: I’m available for Board of Director work.) This is simply not working in too many situations.

Ethical and responsible captaincy of a corporation has long been neglected and too many in the corporate world accept the myth that humongous corporate bonuses are “necessary” to preserve “talent” within a company.

I don’t think so. In fact it may be that the larger the bonus, the worse a corporation is run.

Limiting bonuses to executives to stock in the company, with the size of the bonus tied to size of the executive’s salary, and then not redeemable for at least 5 to 7 years so that the current stock price cannot be manipulated is a simple solution.

Consider that Major League Baseball, an industry where performance can easily be measured, mostly bans bonuses – even based on performance. Why should they do this; wouldn’t it motivate players? Their answer is actually logical.

Major League Baseball limits bonuses because they do not want players to “game” the system and go for homeruns, strikeouts and other milestones that do not 100% correlate to winning baseball. Corporations similarly should NOT want executives that game the system in order to achieve bonuses in ways that could hurt the company.

What is the most an employee/executive should be paid? If Alex Rodriguez can get by on about 30,000,000 per year, and is obviously good (though not perfect) at his job, that should be about enough for most anyone else. But of course, I could be wrong or unlucky about all of this.

We would love to hear from readers how their humanism informs their take on the current economic crisis.

(Gerry Dantone has an M.B.A. in finance from St. John’s Univ. and was elected to their chapter of the International Honor Society for Economics - http://www.omicrondeltaepsilon.org )