Morality

A Monkey Wrench in the Gears

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I was reading this blog post that was discussing religion and morality and came across a term I hadn’t heard before. It is called Hedonic Calculus, and is designed to weight the happiness an action will bring into the world.

“AHA!” I thought to myself. “This is it! This is someone else who thought exactly like I do!”

It seems I was overly optimistic, because my own human emotions get in the way of my motto (I am sure most of my readers know it, but it is to bring more happiness into the world than I take out of it). The very first example given was that of two sinking ships. One contains your family, one contains a rock star. By Hedonic Calculus, of course, one is required to save the rock star. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more I realized Hedonic Calculus would require, for example, that I support Justin Bieber in whatever it is that Justin Bieber does, for it makes a huge number of people happy — sort of. If you go deeper, Justin Bieber’s antics make me sad, and I would imagine the antics of daughters taking part in #CutForBieber or #DrunkForBieber counts as sadness. Too many confounding factors.

Talking about Hedonic Calculus, I realize it is very similar to the mathematical system I created for myself that governs a very large portion of my life — but unlike pure Hedonic Calculus, I left in an error margin for my own emotions because … Well, one way or another humans are emotional creatures. And again, I ended up jumping down into the giant cave that is morality, with a new tool on my belt–perhaps this time I could get deeper.

One field that is contained in Hedonic Calculus (it is more formal than I tend to be in my theoretical mathematics of sociology) is purity, described as the probability that it will not be followed by feelings of the opposite kind. To use an example from the linked Rational Wiki page with a slight twist for my own purposes, an orgy will make you feel happy or give you pleasure, but once it is over many people in the general populace will feel shame. Very low purity score, then.

To apply that to my own example of Justin Bieber, his antics may make 10-15 year old girls (is that his target demographic? I am not hip to what the jive kids are doing these days…) happy, but when their parents punish them for whatever stupid hashtag 4chan has popularized today, they will feel sadness. Liking Justin Bieber has a very low purity score, then! And it is true that he is a bad person, because now math says so! Though I won’t lie, Justin Bieber’s “Extent” score would be quite high, and that is sad, because that doesn’t change the fact that he is pretty much awful.

That being said, for anyone who says science can have no bearing on morals, I think Hedonic Calculus (not to be confused with hedonistic calculus, which is a whole different bag of dangly bits) puts at least a partial lie to that. The values may be somewhat arbitrary, but they are based on happiness. Is it a mature morality? Probably not; nothing absolute is ever mature. The world is not black and white, no matter how much math you throw at it. That being said, it is definitely something to think about.

Morality

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I have engaged in the international time waste that is the Facebook debate for as long as there have been people to debate on Facebook. I don’t know that debate is the proper term, the discussions seldom follow rules, and there is often a disconnect between the participants that prevents meaningful discussion. Recently, I was engaged in a discussion that spanned some 23 pages of text. It was sparked by this article advocating the repeal of drunk driving laws.

(A transcript of the discussion is available here. At over 16,000 words, it should kill a solid portion of your day.)

A topic that came up over and over and over again was morality. I am not moral philosopher, and when I do give my opinions on morality it should be interpreted as the opinions of a lay person. I didn’t make that clear enough during the discussion and it came back to bite me. That being said, if I were to offer the most succinct version of my own morals, it would be a morality leaning moral relativist. That is, at best, disingenuous; going back to elementary school lessons, I have just used a word to define itself.

People fear moral relativism, because it relies on the morality of the person using it. “Well, if I kill him quickly, it would be less bad than killing him slowly. By moral relativism, killing him quickly is moral.” I just made your argument for you, no reason to make that argument in the comments unless you really want to. That’s the point, though, and the point so few people want to address; morality is deeper than a single layer paradigm. (Sorry about the words there, that sounded douchey, but please let me explain.)

Many would claim to be Biblical moral absolutists, that the Bible, being the height of all moral teaching, should be adhered to in all things. That being said, when you ask them about some of the Bible’s less tenable teachings… Well, they will say they would jump if God said jump, right up until they saw the cliff. That tells you that they are not Biblical moral absolutists, they are … Something more complicated.

In the same way, a moral relativist may not be able to draw binding lines in the stone and say “I will do all that lies between these lines and nothing else,” but there is some other moral judgment at work. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, that my motto, my creed, my life goal, and a piece of short philosophy that defines many of my choices is the idea that “I will bring more happiness into the world than I take out of it.”

While it may not contain any explicitly moral content, a friend has been teaching me (with great resistance) to read more than what words say. When I am presented with a moral choice, then, I have to weigh things in the case of many decisions. Some are concluded before ever reaching my conscious mind (will raping this person bring more happiness into the world right now?), and get resolved before the question is ever asked — but even then, something in my subconscious has to have a bearing for this choice, so I assume somewhere in my brain these questions are answered.

Moral gray areas are much harder to resolve, as the debate referenced above pointed out in great detail. It ended up as an argument hinging on what I am going to call moral chaos theory versus moral order theory. The other participants may disagree, but let me explain.

My argument is something akin to moral chaos theory; letting a drunk driver into a driver’s seat begins a chain of events that could lead to the death of a person or people, and the irreversible alteration of an untold number of lives. By this chain, I could be indirectly responsible for the loss of happiness of hundreds of people, or a thousand people, even if they never saw my hand in it. If I extend that idea to the Police force, their not enforcing drunk driving laws is similar; by allowing drunk drivers on the road, they may end up indirectly responsible for untold numbers of drunk driving related accidents. Therefore, by my own personal moral chaos theory (I still find that to be an over simplification, but it at least illustrates a picture), allowing drunk driving is immoral.

Moral order theory, while again a term lacking in the required depth, is somewhat akin to that preached by my discussion partner(s). This morality theory does not plumb as deeply, though that is disingenuous (DAMN YOU, KYLE! My realization that words suck is your fault!). In any case, his approach was that of the fact that potential harm is irrelevant and shouldn’t be weighed against the real harm done by a police officer enforcing the law. The irony is that despite what became a very heated discussion, I believe our morals (my opponent and myself) would align in most cases.

The point I am trying to make here is a point as old as words themselves; trying to reduce a human being, in all of their complexity, down to a single word, or a single sentence–that is impossible. Trying to describe my morals would take a book larger than any written, and taking longer to write than the lifespan of the universe. The thing is, while morals may boil down further and further, they lose integrity as they are simplified.

Morality is more than your religion. It is more than your upbringing. It is more than your genetics.

And do you know what? For all of history, humans have fought to prove who is the most moral. “Killing in the name of peace,” is something that probably doesn’t sound unfamiliar to most reading this.

And yet… Here we are. I got in a heated argument to prove my morals were better.

I am a monster.

What was Meant

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There are two versions of this blog post, one short, and one long. I’ll put the short version first, so you can skip all the words without losing the overall message. EFFICIENCY!

Today, many people will tout that they know what the Bible means, or how to interpret the stories in it. Some will use that knowledge to preach love, some will use it to preach hate. I hope that statement isn’t overly controversial, the Westboro Baptist Church has the same Bible you do, at the very least.

But really, no matter your confidence, do we know what the people who wrote the Bible down, from Old Testament to New Testament, really wanted us to learn?

Short version answer: Nope.

Long version answer: That is a complicated question, and certainly you require a redefinition of terms at the very least to even begin to unravel the ball of yarn that is historical interpretation, translation, and intent.

To start, before the books of the Bible’s Old Testament were written down (and yea, before they could be written down) they were oral traditions. How long were they oral traditions? Well, to pin that down with any high degree of accuracy, we’d have to rely on either asking them, or having them write it dow… Wait. Nope.

So we don’t know exactly how old some of the stories are (though they do have historical markers in many of them, which help to date them). Then we continue to walk down the road of history as far as oral tradition can take us. Well, how do we know the stories that got written down were anything close to the original orations?

Well, the common rebuttal is that there were professional oral historians whose sole job was the maintain and recite history. We can see Hebrew mnemonics in certain areas of the Old Testament that are evidence of methods in use to improve recall of the stories. Certainly, a person whose sole job is to remember would do better in such an arena than would your average person off the streets… But they would have no error checking, no oversight. What would happen if or when they make a mistake?

And if you are going to tell me that stories survived 800 years orally, without any errors, I have some pieces of the original cross to sell you. Or maybe the Shroud of Turin is more up your alley?

Let me make a few modern examples to show you the flaws in that logic, in any case.

A banker’s primary role is in dealing with money. I would say the bulk of it is counting money, and ensuring accuracy in tallies and counts. They have the money in front of them, concrete, physical, unchanging. They will double and triple count money at the beginning, end, and during the day. And yet bank errors occur, despite the fact that the banker’s sole (and some would say primary) purpose is to ensure money changes hands reliably without change and… Wait, was I describing your orator or a banker? Some of those words got a little aligned there. Weird how that is.

Howe about me, in my current field of information technology. A server is designed, from the ground up, to prevent me from making errors. In order to do anything on a server that runs, say, the heating and cooling for an entire building, I will have to accept one hundred warnings, check one hundred boxes, agree to one hundred confirmations… And there are times when I, or yea, people with many years more experience than me have made errors. My sole purpose is to change these settings, to ensure they are changed properly and correctly and without error, and there are systems whose sole purpose are to stop me from making said error… But errors get made.

How about your grandparent? They will tell stories, and I am sure you have thought at times that it could not have happened like your grandparent recalled, but you’d not say anything, of course. But it is well known that dementia and Alzheimer’s are diseases primarily affecting the elderly in the population. In the earliest stages of Alzheimer’s, I’d be willing to say that your slips would be so minor that they could be attributed to a slight dimming of your recollection, to the point you (and anyone around you) would write them off simply as slips of memo–oh damn, what was the sole purpose of the orators? Memorizing things?

And who was the most revered, respected person who would pass along knowledge? The elders of the tribe? Let’s give that elder a generous age of 60 (if they lived in a nice place, a clean(ish) city, it could have happened even in time before history), and they’d be the elder for… We’ll say 20 years? Hell, give them 30 years, we’ll say for the sake of gentle argument that they were the elder for a full generation. If we assume only 800 years of oral tradition (The earliest parts of the Bible were written down in 800BC, and I know they reference events at times as early as 1600BC, though the accuracy is in question), then that was some 26 or 27 generations of elders. That is a lot of time for one of them to have had some degree of early Alzheimer’s.

But… But they obviously wouldn’t be trusted when they couldn’t recognize the face of their own kin, they wouldn’t be the elder any more! So they wouldn’t have passed on the failed stories!

You have to remember that even if we assume a generous life expectancy, they would never have had an 80 or 90 year old Alzheimer’s sufferer, or Dementia sufferer in the 10th and earlier centuries BC. The person entrusted with oration could have had slight slips of memory and died, and so the story altered over time.

But… But there would have been many orators! Many people who remembered! Several for each village, maybe!

Yes, but then you’d have conflicting versions of the story, and how would you resolve those? Well, I don’t know how they’d have done that, but it wouldn’t be hard to think that they would accede to the eldest and most respected of the elders–the one ironically with the highest chance of misremembering a detail. Even if that wasn’t their method, even if it was democratic (against all logic, since democracy was certainly not widespread at the time), you’d have younger elders who learned the slightly altered version voting for the slightly altered version.

You’d have inaccuracies creeping in over time, even if you had ten thousand safeguards. The modern translations of the Bible attest to that, for even within two years there will be versions with differing translations, errors, typos, mistakes in meaning or scholarship. Think of the monks who made copies of the Bible before the printing press; again, they had concrete copies, and yet if you look at old Bibles, you will see scholars marking “Copyist error” in the margin… And that is when they had an older version to copy-check again.

Or how about some of the earlier mass produced Bibles? There was a copy with the Commandment “Thou Shalt Commit Adultery” that was mass produced in the 17th century, only 30 years before the King James version was officially published.

So tell me again that there were no errors in the oral histories, and again I will find more evidence to show that wishful line of thinking will not hold.

How about even the word “history”? Certainly in the times of the Roman Empire, history was a much more sinuous beast, harder to catch, harder to pin down. People did not write down history as we understand the term, history was an idea, was morals and fables, not so much “writing down an accurate account of what happened.” What we call history today is more often viewed in the tax records of the time, or the census records, birth and death certificates, than it is in things that people wrote down — for what people wrote down and what happened are often at odds, and you can see what happened far more in the number of troops reported dead at some location than you can with some historian writing down about the battle. A historian may have written down that it was a great victory, where the death toll was nearly equal on both sides. This is two knives, not just a double edged sword; at work here is the fact that history was the lessons (in this case, the lesson of “we are so much better than x barbarian tribe), and also the fact that history is, was, and will be often written by the victors. In the global world we live in, it is becoming less so, and underdogs tell their tale to fanfare in these days more than ever before, but the principle still stands.

Reza Aslan wrote about this in greater length and with more gravitas than I can–though if you don’t trust Aslan, you can check with any historian who specializes in the centuries around year 0 and you will find similar messages.

So what was written down in the Bible, even when it was close to the events that happened (and you must remember that the earliest gospels were at the very minimum written in 70AD, 40 years after the death of Christ) likely weren’t written with a mind for exactly what happened. They would have been written with a mind for teaching the lessons of Christ, and if those lessons were of humility and sacrifice, well… The events of his life were certainly a great parallel. Almost a perfect parallel. One might say they were perfect for teaching the lessons of his ministry, and by gosh, we’ve come full circle. Again.

I am not calling into question the lessons they taught, as they are certainly good lessons. I am calling into account the historical veracity of the Bible. The YECs may be the only faction to take the Old Testament as historical fact (or as absolute historical fact, as in a 6000 year old world created in exactly 6 days, and with genealogies that can be traced back to Adam), but most people believe the life of Jesus was reliably written down.

It wasn’t. Depending on the details you are viewing, many traditions were in the Bible that were not present at any other time. The tradition of freeing a single prisoner during passover? Find me another reference to that outside of the Bible. Or, even taking that tradition as fact, what about freeing Barabus instead of Jesus? Were there only two prisoners? When given the choice of a rabble rouser (Jesus) and a serial killer (Barabus), wouldn’t they just vote to release no one at all?

Or what about the trial before Pilate? Pilate is recorded by history as having signed so many death warrants without having even so much as read the name on them that a formal complaint against him was lodged with Rome. The crime for which Jesus was condemned, Sedition, wasn’t even a crime for which you would have been given a trial. If you were said to be guilty of sedition, it was off to the cross with you, no questions asked. And during the Passover, when tensions were already heightened? The idea of Jesus having an audience with Pilate is almost silly.

I think I’ve belabored that point extensively enough. The idea is that the Bible can’t be taken as historical fact, as it had a political fact from over a thousand years before it would even have been recognized as a cohesive book, as the Bible you know.

So the people who decide what was meant by these stories? What allegories and laws and ideas and histories and world views should be taught? That adulterers should be stoned, that it is OK to kill an abortion doctor, that homosexual sex is a sin, that Jesus would support this or that idea… Those are what you have discovered two or three thousand years separated from the person who originally came up with what you are reading. Who is to say you learned the lessons they even wanted to teach?

For those reading between the lines in the Old Testament to come up with meanings that aren’t there in a plain reading of the text, I’d like you to step back and read this story, told colloquially (I can find no reference for it aside from a newspaper clipping, so it is at best anecdotal).

When asked about the themes and morals in his book Hatchet (part of the Life of Brian series), Gary Paulsen said that he was happy that so many people have gotten so much out of his book, but that he didn’t write it with all of these themes and morals in mind. He just wanted to tell a good story.

With that in mind, how can anyone today say that it is they that have the themes of the Bible correct? That they have interpreted them correctly, when billions of Christians who came before them with likely billions of differing interpretations have obviously gotten them wrong? That is it you who knows exactly what Jesus meant when he spoke the parable of the mustard seed, when it is a completely nonsensical parable unless it is explained to you?

Again, I do not want to shake your faith or your morals, but I want you to be careful what you claim you know. You don’t know it any better than I do, and believing that someone is going to hell because they believe differently than you is condemning everyone who isn’t you to hell, because chances are their beliefs differ in some core way from yours, but you haven’t had a conversation with everyone in your congregation, and who knows what is going on in your pastor’s head. He can’t tell you one tenth of what he is thinking in all of his sermon’s combined, so who knows where you differ from him? Where your core beliefs, something you completely disagree on based on some word of Jesus or another, may shake your relationship to the core–if you ever knew.

Just some things to think about.

A Personal Kind of Excuse

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Edit: Happy 100th post everyone!!!

“I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians — they are so unlike your Christ.” -Mahatma Ghandi

“With or without [religion] you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, you need religion.” -Steven Weinberg

“I’d like to think that, thanks to my intelligence, I make very few mistakes… But when I do make mistakes, they tend to be legendary.” -Me

The above three quotes tie together so well that it almost seems some kind of magic, even some kind of miracle. I don’t think that is an accident; the quote I gave from myself is one I tend to use as a talisman to ensure I retain some level of humbleness; it is when I think I am right most often that I make the worst mistakes (I once made a mistake so legendary it made the news, though thankfully my name was removed from the story). This is not anything to do with religion, this is to do with being a human, but it ties back so often to religion and to war that I felt it important to include it as a counterbalance to the Weinberg and Ghandi quotes.

Carl Jung, a great psychiatrist and psychoanalyst of the early 20th century, has been quoted (and the quote slightly varies, but the idea is always the same) as having said “I do not need to believe [in God], I know [God exists]!” This is the type of knowledge that leads to mistakes that can end up being legendary. “In the fullness of time,” writes Sam Harris, “One side of this debate will really win and one side will really lose.” It is in this vein that I try, as best as I am able, to never make an absolute statement with regards to religion.

I will fully admit, of course, that my own brand of intelligence has led me to lose my belief in God, but I would never say “there is no God.” That being said, I am comfortable saying the following: “There is probably no God, and if there is, he/she/it is probably not of the Christian variety.” If I am wrong, and both of those statements turn out wrong (and I am comfortable saying I cannot know the truth until I die), then I am comfortable admitting that I have made a mistake that was, in fact, more grand in scope than I could ever imagine in this life. Perhaps, I am open to thinking, there is something to the Christian religion, and to the fact that I may burn in hell for the things I have come to believe about the world and nature.

That being said, many of my beliefs in nature align with Christian beliefs, though that word was chosen carefully and advisedly. Belief and practice are often two very different things, as any public atheist tends to learn in the fullness of time. It is very few, the number of atheists that have not been told they will burn in hell, or that they should die, or that they are (quoting a letter sent to Richard Dawkins) “Only alive because my God commands me not to kill.”

Perhaps it is my naive reading of the Bible that has made me come to this conclusion, but I would think that wishing a person dead is in direct breach of Matthew 5:27-28, which states that, in part, “Any man who has looked at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” It is in my own naivete that I believe this is a broader commandment, one that charges Christians to keep a pure mind, not only with respect to adultery but with respect to all of the core commandments. This is, again in my mind, bore out by the fact that one of the core commandments states that thou shalt not covet thy neighbors goods; this is not just saying “thou shalt not steal,” but is further saying “thou shalt not think about stealing.”

I think the Golden Rule really needs to be more prominently on display in the Bible, and in the hearts of its readers. I really think that sending hate mail, no matter how justified you feel, is in breach of this rule. I think hating, or in any way persecuting homosexuals, is in direct breach of this rule. I think there are greater moral teachings than the Golden Rule, though it is very good, but like an artist with a block of clay, I work with what I am given. Much in the same way, now that I think about it, an apologist or Christian works with their own block of clay. There are parts of the Bible that no person can say are moral (or if you do, you are looking through some heavily tinted sunglasses), but they are there, so we work through them, all of us, even non-Christians.

Oh, but how do non-Christians deal with the Bible? I would ask the “witches” of Salem, whose belief or nonbelief in God did not matter. I would ask the “heretics” in the middle east for the hundreds of years that the Crusades lasted. I would ask the hundreds of thousands, or perhaps millions, whose delicate flesh got in the way of the Inquisitor’s hammer (That’s how that worked, right? The Inquisitors were Godly men, and thus never meant to hurt anyone, these people just happened to get in the way. By accident.).

If these examples are too archaic, then how about the Scopes trial of 1925, where science was denied in the very name of God? Or the more recent Vashti McCollum trial of 1948, where her family was ostracized, her children bullied, her name sullied for years. Is that recent enough?

I am not here to bash religion, but I am certainly not above bashing things that are done in the name of Christianity.

If we want to go even more recent, even today Teach the Controversy is being forced (or, at the very least pushed) upon a barely aware populace. The numbers from Gallup and Pew as to the scientific literacy of the United States of America are almost stunning to those outside of the country, and they seem to correlate with increasingy fundamental beliefs in certain areas of the country, rather than more progressive beliefs and education.

There is no “controversy” among the scientific populace, except perhaps between proponents of kin selection versus proponents of group selection, but even then it is a debate that is being solved by evidence and ideas.

The Scopes Trial, or the Vashti McCollum incident could have been gentle non issues; if you would treat an atheist like you would treat any other brother or sister in Christ, history would barely remember her. She would be referenced in court cases, and would certainly have a place in constitutional history, but who remembers the names of the people who pressed for constitutional amendments? No, I doubt seriously that I would be accutely familiar with (or even have heard) the name Vashti McCollum in a truly Christian world, where people practiced truly Christian beliefs.

But in a human world? Perhaps, perhaps I would have, and indeed, I have.

This is the point where you may say “AHA! You admit that being human is the problem! Well, Christianity allows us to transcend our baser instincts!” I am sorry for using a Straw Man in this case; very few people will speak to me of religion face-to-face, so I am forced to use hypothetical readers. I would like to think I am not an obnoxious atheist, but I am passionate where it comes to eliminating human suffering, so I may get more heated than I would like whenever someone defends their bigotry with the Bible… That being said, I must reiterate, I am not here to take religion away, I am here to take away the evil/bad parts of religion, and I will stay the course to that end. Worded another way, I do not want to debate, I want to discuss.

Now, off of that tangent, we are back to speaking about humans and their base instincts. I do not think it is a prevalent belief that women should be murdered wholesale, but why do you think the people of Salem held the witch trials? I do not believe they were evil people, I believe they were good people who did evil things out of fear and superstition–and they used their Bible as the justification.

It is not humanity that is evil, and it is not Christianity that is evil, but this is a case of chemistry taking two things, putting them together in a beaker, and the result is often ugly. To parallel that with something in the real world, I like mentos, and I like Diet Coke (get off my lawn, it still tastes good!!!), but I know that taking a mentos followed by a shot of diet coke is going to end poorly.

This goes back to a point I’ve made before; if we separate religion from our personal image of ourselves, we can transcend this negative interaction. If I say to you “The Bible preaches many evil things, among the good things,” your first reaction should not be one of indignation or hurt; that is a sure sign that the chemical reaction of religion/humanity is curdling your soul. If you ever defend bigotry using the Bible, that is a sure sign that the chemical reaction of religion/humanity is curdling your soul.

If, however, you admit that the Bible has a dark side, and that we can transcend it, but that religion is ultimately a force that allows you to surpass your own baser nature? I will be on your side. I will help you find Bible verses that support you. I will celebrate and trumpet your religion, but you have your humanity in one beaker and your religion in another, and you understand that they can compliment each other, but should perhaps not be directly mixed.

A moralist who takes the good of the Bible and throws out the bad has an incredibly sturdy foundation. That being said, a moralist is perfectly capable of being moral without using the Bible as their foundation, and that should be recognized, too.

We all have different ways of transcending our own personal flaws. Some use religion, though many in different ways. Some use the love of Jesus as a guide to loving thy neighbor; some use the fear of hell. These are two very different things, and I should hope that even the most die-hard Christian can see that. Some do not use religion; for me, it is my empathy. I do not believe in your God, but even so I believe in being moral and loving to those around us. I believe this should extend to the planet we live on, to those who do not share our beliefs, to those who do not share our opinions, to the animals around us. An issue I have taken with many Christians is that their Bible (and their personal beliefs) often do not extend to the protection of animals–but that, I will admit, is only a minor complaint in the big picture.

To summarize, perhaps, using the same example I’ve used before of the pastor who said he’d be a murderer if not for Jesus… You know what? If that is what it takes for you to be moral, ok, I’ll accept. The issue I take with that pastor is that he takes the Bible wholesale; he has the superiority complex that comes of one of the Chosen, he believes all people must be Christian, he believes that Muslims are the height of evil. Those are not moral beliefs, and I have a problem with his religion. His personal religion.

Do I have a problem with all Christians? Certainly not. I have a problem with the immoral Christians.

If you are Christian, I am going to ask you to take a look into yourself and ask not “What does the Bible tell me,” but “Am I doing unto others as I would have them do unto me?”

To bring out a tired example, if homosexuality were the norm and being heterosexual were punishable by ostracism (in progressive places) or death (in less progressive places), would you think anyone should have the right to decide what you do in the privacy of your own home when both parties are completely consenting? No one is harmed by your heterosexuality, you reason, and yea; no one even needs to know you are heterosexual. It has no bearing on anything outside of your love of your husband or your love of your wife.

“Hey Jim, have you finished your homosexual accounting?”

“No, Charles, I did heterosexual accounting.”

“Why’d you tell me that? Now we have to fire you.”

I should hope we all find the above conversation, regardless of our religious views, ridiculous. And that’s the whole point.

So, to beat home what I have said many times on this blog, let’s all be moral, regardless of our background. If only 10% of us would choose to live that way, the world would be a better place within the week.

Everything You Ever Wanted

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I know I’ve spoken about morality and religion frequently, but each time my understanding moves forward a notch, I feel like I should post something that helps me consolidate my own knowledge.

The Old Testament is a moral mess, almost no one will argue against that. Whether you are a literalist or a moderate, the apologia you must construct for the Old Testament is a mine field of carefully constructed defense and the slightest misstep can end with your argument blown up and out. “Well, the book of Leviticus is just a set of rules for the Levites, so we can ignore that part.” That kind of thing.

But Exodus! That is a good book; it contains the Ten Commandments, and a wonderful story of redemption from slavery and a kind God who saves His people–but that’s the whole point; He saves His people. He goes out of his way to torture an entire nation (as I’ve written about before). His rules for morality and being Good in the eyes of God are a bit of a mess, too; there is specification of when it is OK to kill, there are commandments directly from God to steal from people, and the real ten commandments are odd to the modern reader, to say the least.

But let’s go back even further, to Genesis, and take an internal look at the beginning of the three Abrahamic faiths. Abraham, after whom the faiths were named.

What you have to remember about the story of Abraham is that there was no religion of God before him, whether God interacted with others; it was never formal.

So now we have a guy who heard a voice in his head that he attributed to God telling him to kill his first born son. Whether you believe that having faith in God is the highest calling, you have to admit; if your closest relative, your mother or father, son or daughter, brother or sister, came up to you and said “I’m sorry, the voice in my head that claims to be Jesus said I have to kill you,” your first reaction would generally not be “This is a reasonable statement, and I support you.”

But even then, God stopped him! To steal an example that Richard Dawkins has used in the past, what of the Judge of the people, Jephthah? He vowed to God that if he won in an upcoming battle, he would “sacrifice whatever first came out of his door when he arrived home.” That just seems to be a wildly unintelligent thing, though, because what did he expect would come out of his door? Probably not a cow or a sheep, unless he had pets of that kind, so he was left with only two options… Either it would be his wife or his only child. In the fullness of time, his own daughter comes out, and he rents his shirt in despair–but “Did to her as he vowed to do.” The whole story is recounted in the Book of Judges (11:31-39).

Whether you believe this literally happened or did not, a general Christian will accept that it is in the Bible for a reason. I am no scholar of theology, I could not tell you why this is in the Bible, but to me it indicates that “the God of Life” does not shy from death. A man sacrificed his daughter as the price for having killed hundreds of people, maybe thousands! And yet, as per the Arithmetic of Souls, we are not allowed to experiment on Blastocysts, as they may have souls? Jephthah killed without any reason to believe he was protecting lives; yea, the war he was fighting was to protect God, not people. The scientists who perform stem cell research have strong reason to believe that this may be the biggest medical breakthrough of a generation, of several generations.

To quote Sam Harris’ Letter to a Christian Nation, “A blastocyst is a collection of some 150 cells. To contrast, the brain of a fly has roughly 100,000 cells… But the rights of this blastocyst has the same rights as a seven year old girl with third degree burns over 80% of her body?”

That seven year old girl will likely die, but not before spending days or months in excruciating pain. Obviously, as per Christianity, we cannot just let her die, perhaps even if we know she has no chance of surviving. But stem cells? There is promising research to show we could regrow her skin. There is promising research that we could give quadriplegics the use of their arms and legs back, the horizon for the benefits of stem cell research is so far off we cannot even begin to imagine what this medical breakthrough could do for the good of the world–and all it would cost is a bundle of cells so small a fly would not even notice them.

One would think, as per the morality (if you can call it that) of the God of the Old Testament, we should be in full support of the death of the blastocysts to improve the lives of His acolytes. Using blastocysts to save lives and reduce suffering surely must count as a lesser evil than Moses’ slaughter of the Jews (Exodus 32:25-29), or the countless slaughters and rapes in the book of Numbers or Judges, that God is a direct party to?

How about God’s own chosen righteous? Lot, who said “Oh, you want to rape my guests? No, they’re men. Rape my daughters instead.” (Genesis 19:6-9) Or the Levite priest who was visiting Gibeah. An old man took him and his concubine in (Oh yes, the priest had a concubine), and people came to the house; “Send out your guest so we can have sex with him!”

The owner shouts back “No, this man is a guest, but my daughter is a virgin, do what you want with her. Also, he has a concubine, go nuts with that too.”

So the daughter and concubine are sent out. On the morning, the priest gets up and prepares to leave. When he opens the door to his host’s house, his concubine is laying on the doorstep. “Get up, time to go.” She does not move, for she was dead.

For good measure, the Levite cuts her body into 12 pieces and sends the parts to the 12 tribes of Israel because… Wait, what the hell? What the ACTUAL F***?! What is going on here? What am I supposed to learn?! (Judges 19:22-29) I think, at least in context, that they are supposed to be angry that the woman was killed by the rapists (that, it should be said, had full permission) when they receive the body parts… But killing someone by accident is not really grounds for serious punishment according to God, for He lets accidental killings happen (Exodus 21:12-13).

Now, all of this has been working up to a point. Most people say we can safely ignore the Old Testament, or take from it symbolic lessons — but the thing is, I do not know what I am supposed to learn. What do I learn from God wrestling Joshua, losing, then dislocating Joshua’s hip? (Genesis 32:22-30)

I think I know why Christians are so bitter towards Muslims. Muslims have had the good sense to call the Bible a holy book, but not make it binding, per se. Muhammad (PBUH, for the purposes of cultural sensitivity) cites the Bible frequently in the Qur’an and Hadith, but cites it as lessons–not as binding. I think Christians are bitter that the Muslims had foresight, and the ability to designate canonical readings of their holy books. The Hadith is a sort of magnifying glass through which you are to read the Qur’an.

I think everything the Christian has ever wanted is the ability to feel superior (something that comes directly from the Old Testament) while not opening themselves to moral criticism. So maybe take a page (ehehehehe) from Islam and designate the Old Testament a book of great origin, but which is not part of the True Gospel. Make the Bible contain only the New Testament, then designate the entirety of the Old Testament as the Tanakh; important reading, but nonbinding. Then you could cherry pick to your heart’s content, and close those gaping holes in your theology that let people like me read through the Old Testament and think with pure horror that people believe the Bible is a book of morality. BAM! So many problems solved.

It would seriously be everything you ever wanted.

The Laws of Morality

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So you may recall, if you are a regular reader, that I am writing a sort of “The Bible Abridged” kind of thing (I plan to vastly expand this project, as I’ve mentioned) and that means I am rereading the Bible so I can do it right. Well, I just came upon the Ten Commandments section, which contains far more than just the Ten Commandments; it contains the rules for all people in being just and moral. What does it take to be just and moral in the eyes of God? Let’s start in Exodus 21.

First, male slaves (if they are Hebrew, of course) are to be set free after 6 years of slavery. If you give him a wife from among your slaves, though, the wife is yours forever to do with as you please, and the only way he get to stay with his wife (and any children he had, which are also the lifelong property of you, his owner) is for the slave to dedicate himself as a slave for life, serving one master until he dies (or you force him to leave, and keep his wife and kids, which you can totally do).

Alright, dickish and kind of sexist, but as far as rules for slaves, it could get worse. Right? Well, hold on to your belt, suspenders, or waist band, friends. It does.

Let’s go over the good news, first, though. If you kill someone on purpose? Death penalty. If you kill one of your slaves by accident (and we are talking beating them to death here), you are exiled but are to face no other punishment.

Now, here’s the fun part; if you beat your slave with a rod but the slave recovers from their injuries, there will be no punishment. It goes on more explicitly to say “Because they are your property.” (Exodus 21:20-21)

It is also in Exodus 21 that we find the extended version of “An Eye for an Eye,” which reads, in full: “Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.” (Exodus 21:24-25) But don’t worry, this doesn’t apply in full for slaves; the above caveat (if they recover) still applies. Go nuts! But things like knocking out their tooth, or blinding them? Well, you don’t get punished, but you have to let the slave go free. JUSTICE! Thank God for such merciful justice and strong moral leadership, right?

Also, if your slave is killed not by you, but by say… Your livestock? You have to pay the owner of the bull (you) 30 pieces of silver. LOOPHOLES ARE THE BEST HOLES, AM I RIGHT?! Now, if your bull gores another owner’s property (slave), you have to pay that person 30 pieces of silver, and your bull is put to death, and that is way less fun that putting disobedient slaves in a bull pen for sport, right?

For some reason, though, Exodus 21 focuses as much on cattle (Bulls and Oxen, mostly) as on slaves (logic: they are both livestock). Now, I am not sure how often this kind of thing happens, but apparently bulls killed so many people that verses 28-36 (more than one fifth of the chapter) are completely dedicated to how one handles bull-related violence. Huh. Weird.

Exodus chapter 22 has some weird rules, too. If someone breaks into your house at night, you can kill them, no questions asked. If he breaks in during the day and you kill him, you are to be put to death. One would imagine that hiding bodies would make good sport back in the day. Then, when night rolls round, you throw them in the kitchen and cry bloody murder and call the watch! For this body, stiff with rigor mortis, clearly JUST BROKE IN! MORALITY!

The legendary point of contention, if a man sleeps with a virgin who is not married, he must pay the father restitution and marry the woman. What say does the woman have in all of this? SHUT UP AND DON’T ASK QUESTIONS! You’re married now. Go make some babies and a sandwich! (At least, one presumes that was the thought process that went into Exodus 22:16-17)

We go through a few of the more mundane rules; kill witches, kill people who have sex with animals, kill anyone who offers any sacrifice to any gods but God) but then we get to what I am going to call the “Insurance Salesman Clause”. It reads, as per Exodus 22:22-24, “Do not take advantage of a widow or the elderly. If you do, and they tell me you took advantage of them, I will kill you myself!”

There are some basic rules about banking (you are to charge no interest on money you have lent, but you are allowed to take collateral, except their coat. You can have anything except their coat. It expands this thought: If you take their coat, what will they sleep in? So leave them your coat, for I am a God of compassion. Wat. (Exodus 22:25-27)), then the basic rules of religion (kill blasphemers instantly), etc, etc.

Another slightly weird rule is that you are never to eat meat if the animal was killed by any wild animal, no matter how fresh it was (there are, listed I believe in Leviticus, extensive rules for kosher slaughter, but I can’t recall the exact chapter because I try to avoid reading Leviticus as the rules in it are so… Ugh… Well, I am working on a project that involves rereading the whole Bible, so I’m sure I will talk about the weird rules there eventually on this blog). Why does slaughter have to be done in a very specific (and, frankly, no more humane than many other methods of slaughter) way? BECAUSE SHUT UP, GOD SAID SO.

I like the opening parts of Exodus 23, this one is the lawyer cause. You shall never help a guilty person by lying on their behalf. Welp, there goes the entire idea of law as we understand it today (take that, lawyers). Also, if you are the prosecutor and you get a false conviction, and the person is put to death as a result of your prosecution, even if no one knows, and you didn’t know he was innocent, God does. And better know he will judge the everliving shit out of you. Again, take that, lawyers (in Texas)!

Now, these are quick mentions, but again go to how odd the rules in the Bible are… Exoodus 23:18-19. If you are making a sacrifice to me, it must not be made with, in, around, containing, or generally mentioned in the same sentence as, yeast. NO YEAST. This is said at least 15 times in Exodus, NO YEAST. God hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates anything to do with yeast, or yeast byproducts. When it rained bread from heaven (manna), it was flat bread, because even God can’t leaven bread without yeast, and NO YEAST! Mentioned in the same breath as that yeasty tirade (hehehe. That sounds gross) is “Do not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk.” One presumes other milk is ok, but how common was it to cook it in its mother’s milk that God put a rule in there, the penalty for breaking being… Well, that isn’t spelled out, but generally smiting is the go-to punishment.

Now, things start to get a little darker. Go to the land of the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Canaanites, Hivites, and Jebusites, and kill them. This commandment is not optional. And as long as I am happy enough with how dead they are, I will make sure no one among you gets sick, hungry, thirsty, or even has a miscarriage, because I want to see those people dead SO BAD. (Exodus 23:20-30) In fact, there are three he wants dead worse than others; I will send swarms of hornets ahead of the Jews (who, you must remember, are marching to kill these nations anyway) to just… Ruin their day. Before they die. Seriously! “OH GOD! PLAGUE OF HORNETS! THERE IS NO GOD!” Then you get stabbed in the face by someone on the orders of the same God who just plagued you with hornets? Shiiiiiiiiiiiit, that’s not right, bro…

And the common rebuttal of the harsh laws of the Bible (mostly contained in Deuteronomy and Leviticus) is that “Well, those laws were for the priests.” But this is Exodus. You can’t have “The Ten Commandments”, because God never said “Here are ten specific things.” The Ten Commandments are lumped in with all of these others rules, the rules about beating the everliving hell out of your slaves, but only bad enough that they can still walk.(The actual provision is that they have to be able to walk with the aid of a walking stick within two days of the beating, WHICH ACTUALLY MAKES IT WORSE TO ME!) Also, the killing thing being not optional? Yeah, that gets reiterated over and over in Exodus 23, just make sure NONE OF THEM ARE LEFT ALIVE, NOT EVEN ONCE.

Well there you go, friends. There are your rules for morality, and these are mentioned in chapters shared by the so called ten commandments. (And, it should be said, there are numerous caveats to the commandments, like “You can kill at night, if the person was breaking into your house. But not at day.”)

Boy, I sure am glad the rules for being a good person are so clear in the Bible, and it’s no wonder Southern Christians think people without belief in God are the worst people (even worse than rapists according to Pew and Gallup)! Why, all of us who have alternate laws for morality? We might want to have mercy on those around us, but it’s a good thing God was there in Exodus to tell us that MERCY IS FOR SUCKERS. In fact, the Stand Your Ground law that was at the very forefront of public discourse in the Trayvon Martin case? Justified by God Almighty, and reiterated by Jesus, for as is stated in Matthew chapter 5: “17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. 18 For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. 19 Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20 For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.””

Time to go buy some slaves and make them marry each other. For science.

Nuremberg Morality

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The legendary Nuremberg Defense is generally accepted to mean “I performed these tasks under orders,” and it was used extensively by Nazi soldiers and officers during the Nuremberg Trials (trials after World War II to charge participants in war crimes). Why did you kill so many Jews? I was doing it under orders.

Where did those orders come from? They came from an authority above me.

Where did his orders come from? The totem pole is climbed until we arrive, eventually, at Hitler (conveniently at this time well and truly dead).

I think the true effects of this are far reaching. I am going to have a focus in this post, as I am not subtle; I have an agenda, and I won’t apologize for it. My agenda is to bring more happiness into the world than I take out of it, but to make any cake one has to break a few eggs.

Frequently throughout the Old Testament, innocents are murdered at the command of God. In Numbers, as I quoted in my previous post, men, women, children, animals, crops, everything except female virgins, were ordered killed. In Judges, the Israelites would kill anyone who stood between them and Jerusalem, as God not only told them to kill anyone who stands in their way, but to do it right. In Deuteronomy, the tale of the city of Jericho is told as an illustration of the might of the LORD your God, and God ordered the walls to fall and the people put to the sword. Why? Because Jericho stood between where the Jews were and where the Jews were going. To me, this seems odd; if the city was walled, could they not go around? Does it matter?

As per the Nuremberg defense, they were ordered to kill all inhabitants.

How does that relate to today? Now, as opposed to then, God is a God of love and mercy! Unless you worship other gods, or are gay.

The Bible is held as the moral code for just over 2 billion Christians, and for the most part the New Testament isn’t so bad, but you run into problems. The Golden Rule, the true commandment of Jesus Christ, is held in such low esteem, or pre-empted by Old Testament rules; where is homosexuality mentioned in the New Testament? Nowhere, that’s where.

So why do Christians hate homosexuals? We have mentions in Deuteronomy and Leviticus, of course, stating that homosexuality is an abomination to the LORD your God. But why? Who are homosexuals harming? As nearly as I can tell, no one; they engage in love in their way in the privacy of their home. Who is being harmed by Christian hatred of homosexuals? Millions of people who merely do not love how society says they should. Where does the Golden Rule apply here? Do unto others as you would have them do unto you? Do you want gays to hate and persecute you? Because if you do, you are working really hard to make them not like you very much.

And again, why do Christians hate the gays? As I mention above, it hardly seems to stem from the New Testament message of the Love of Jesus Christ, and it seems a blatant violation of the Golden Rule. They do it because God said so. Why did God say so? “Ours is not to know, but to do and to die.” (An interesting quote from Alfred, Lord Tennyson in his poem The Charge of the Light Brigade that applies so heavily to any religion (admittedly out of context).)

It is what I term Nuremberg morality; if the Bible is the height of moral teaching, and it teaches hate of homosexuals, then “hate because I was ordered to hate,” reads just as “I killed Jews under orders.” Did I just compare people who hate homosexuals to Nazis? No, you did, reader! I was just telling two parallel stories. *Cough*

If anyone were to think about the morality of why hating homosexuals was… You know… A thing? I think the world would be a different place. Instead of Christians (or Muslims, as the case often is) applying Nuremberg Morality, imagine what the world would look like if an internal monologue of morality sounded like this:

“Should I hate this group of people? On the one hand, I find their beliefs weird. On the other hand, are they hurting anyone with their beliefs? No, they aren’t hurting anyone. OK. Would I want anyone to hate me based on my beliefs? No. So won’t hate them because of their beliefs, as their beliefs are not impacting the happiness of anyone else.”

As I’ve often said, in about one third of all of my posts, my goal is to bring more happiness into the world than I take out of it. That is the basis of all of my moral internal discussions.

The next time someone is being persecuted, don’t lean back on the Bible. Ask why they are being persecuted. Have they hurt someone? Do their beliefs cause unspeakable evil? No? Then why are they being persecuted?

This can be applied in so many of life’s situations. The next time you ask yourself what to do in a situation involving other humans, don’t ask “What would Jesus do?”, because even the four Gospel writers had no idea what Jesus would really want in the long run. Ask “What can I do to make the most people the most happy?”

I guarantee you, if 10% of the world thought this way, the world would be a much better place within the month.

Or, you know, you could go looking through the Old Testament for a verse that says that women on their period are unclean (Leviticus 15:19), and then decide that because of this all women are far closer to demons than men are, and then persecute women for several thousand years. That’s cool too. But I like my way better.

The Hold of Tradition

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So in my perusal of the Internet, I came across a reference. It wasn’t primarily sourced, but I became interested. This claim was so outlandish, I couldn’t believe it–no one seriously thinks that way. It must be a smear campaign, or something that will show up in a quick search of Snopes as “False”.

Nope.

In 2011, both Pew and Gallup did a poll in the United States. I don’t know the primary methods or p values, but I did look into the conclusion, and the fact is this: The polls were actually done, and the conclusion sounds like some kind of scare tactic, but it really is exactly as bad as the headlines led me to believe.

To add to that, the University of Oregon and University of British Columbia published independent studies showing the same conclusion.

Atheists are, among those identifying as Christian, nearly as distrusted as rapists. Some sensationalists posted “As distrusted as rapists” rather than “almost”, but that just shows that stretching the truth for headlines transcends time itself (3 years ago? Had they even invented paper yet?).

“What are you complaining about? ‘Almost as distrusted’ means atheists are more trustworthy than rapists!” Right. You know what, I’ll just throw that as a sticker next to the “And I also have never eaten a baby!” bumper sticker. It’ll make me look fantastic.

Here are three different takes on the study:

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2011/12/02/study-religious-people-trust-atheists-about-as-much-as-they-do-rapists/

http://www.suntimes.com/news/otherviews/13486541-452/are-atheists-worse-than-rapists.html#.VGvIU-HSDuM

UBC study explores distrust of atheists by believers

My personal favorite is the one by the Chicago Sun-Times, “Are Atheists worse than rapists??!?!?!?!!?!?!??!?!?!!”

I may have added some punctuation, but given psychological studies showing that even if the answer to a headline is “No, no they are not,” a majority of respondents will reply only 60 days later that they remember it being true… So whether the article tactfully defends atheists or not is irrelevant; the take away for most will be negative. I feel like the article was written by someone who is either an atheist, or is tolerant of atheism… But their editor is not. That is pure conjecture, mind you, a personal guess given the tone of the article versus the inflammatory style of the headline.

Or maybe it is just someone who is tactless, but I am more optimistic than that.

My only question is this: why does my opinion on the presence of God have any effect or bearing on the conversation? You may say “Well, where do your morals come from, if not from a deity?” It’s OK, I don’t mind you asking, and I don’t mind if you believe your better nature comes from a book, insofar as it is just that.. Better nature.

If, for example, you tell me you hate gays (or, moving slightly towards the liberal ends, hate the sin of homosexuality rather than the gays) because of your reading of the Bible (or your Reverend or Pastor’s reading of the Bible, as the case may be), I will no longer be OK with that. Where our morals agree, where we are both trying to reduce pain in the world, and practice charity, and help the needy, and supporting our friends and family, I do my best to not ask why. And I suppose the reason why this is my opinion bears some explanation.

During a trip to California to meet my wife’s extended family, I ended up in a Baptist church, and the sermon (I swear, I am not making this up, and I am not exaggerating it, and I have many witnesses) rounded out to morality based on the Bible. The pastor informed the congregated people, red faced, that he knows of people he WOULD MURDER if not for the fact that he would burn in hell for the act.

That short anecdote is why I prefer not to ask about the roots of your morality, and why I am OK with agreeing that murder is bad, and rape is bad. As long as we both agree on this, I am happy to say the question is settled. But the funny thing is that, statistically, you (my theoretical Christian reader) are statistically likely to say “I don’t care that we both agree in giving to charity, that rape is wrong, that murder is wrong. That isn’t important. The important thing is the underpinnings of your feelings. If societal pressures changed, your morality would change, and before long we’d all be married to (and, one presumes, having sex with) animals!” I will point out one immediate flaw in that line of argument, one present and relevant today; among the religious, intolerance of homosexuality is the majority opinion, and I remind you that the religious vastly and drastically outnumber the nonreligious. Conversely, among those identifying as nonreligious (not just unaffiliated with a religion, but those professing to have no religion), the majority sentiment is of tolerance and acceptance of homosexuality.

What is the point of this story? The point is that, despite majority opinion and societal pressures (primarily in the United States, and doubly so in the southern States), we buck against the trend and support the rights of our fellow humans. Perhaps if you had no God to rely on, no Bible, you would give in to your (much) baser natures and marry (and, as before, presumably have sex with) a horse, but I do not believe that of you, I really don’t. Maybe you do believe that of yourself, I don’t know, but please don’t — there is a statistically significant chance that you would not, in fact, become a cannibal horse-rapist if science (somehow) proved that god(s) didn’t or don’t exist. Honestly, though, the thought that a preacher would get up in front of over 100 people and say “I would totally kill people if not for God, and I am comfortable saying that,” terrifies me. I know I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating. That being said, you and I, Mr Preacherman, agree that murder is wrong. So let’s not ask why, let’s just be happy that we agree. I won’t care that you are Baptist if you don’t care that I am nontheist.

One thing I preach, and I will keep preaching this until I die, is to remember that everyone, everywhere, online, face-to-face, over the phone, over a text message, all of those people you know and don’t know, everyone you talk to and think about, is a human being with human emotions, so treat them as such, please? Some are broken, they rape, or steal, or kill, but the correlation between nontheism, theism, and crime is very limited. As I’ve pointed out before, though, crime rate has come down SIGNIFICANTLY since the 1970s, and there are several correlating factors–but the number of people identifying as nontheist is growing rapidly, and the crime rate is not growing as a result. I think that should give anyone pause. Let’s find out what broke them, not just assume that we know the answer without looking. Please?

And to follow up, let’s just not fight about God, or gods, please? I am happy that it gives you solace to know He/they are out there. I am happy that you have taken some moral cues from your Holy book of choice, I really am. I take my moral cues from a different place, and that is OK too. I do not want to take your religion from you, but I want to help you extract the hate from your religion and throw it by the wayside. Whatever you believe about the Christian God, I think we can all agree that Jesus, from stem to stern, preached peace and tolerance. He dined with sinners, and healed the sick, and preached loving thy neighbor, and I agree with all of that. So let’s stick to that, and throw away our prejudices and intolerance, let’s seek a mutual understanding of what is Good and what is Evil. Let’s just talk, instead of being dicks.

I know I am preaching to the choir, no one on the other side of this debate reads my blog. I get that. But honestly, I’d feel awful if I didn’t say it, because if even one person, in all of the time this blog is alive until the day it disappears into the infinite ether(net) reads this and gets even 0.01% more tolerant going forward… I will have felt like it was all worth it.