And He Became a Living Soul

I do not write in this blog very much about abortion, since I do not fully understand the issues. But I heard an interesting news report from South Carolina. Anti-abortion protestors stand at the top of the escalator in front of state senators’ offices and accost democratic senators who did not support the total ban on abortion that has just passed. Women senators have had objects slapped onto their backs, and protestors have sent children to run up to them and beg them to stop killing kids. If progressive protestors did this to Republican senators, for example regarding the death of the environment on which our lives depend, they would be jailed.

In one case, a Democratic senator knew more about the Bible than did the protestor. The protestor screamed that the Bible says abortion is murder. The senator, a woman, quoted the Bible back to him. Genesis 2:7 says that Adam became a living soul after God had breathed into him the breath of life. This implies that before a newborn breathes, it is not yet a living soul. Of course, nobody believes abortion is ethical right up to the moment of birth.

Genesis implies, but does not prove, that a fetus is NOT alive. The point is that this interpretation is just as valid as the other interpretations that the anti-abortion activists put upon it. The so-called Christian activists insist that their interpretation, and theirs alone, is correct. They will not permit anyone else to interpret scripture. Apparently God speaks through the Republican party, not through the Bible.

Only Republicans think they have the right to interpret the Bible. The Bible is their weapon, and nobody else can lay a finger on it. God is their God, not the God of the rest of us. Puh-raise Trump!

The Battle for Truth: Does It Matter?

No, not really. At least not in America.

In America today, there is only one real question when it comes to science, or society, or politics, and that is: Will you be a devoted follower of Donald Trump, or not? All data, discussions, and debates are entirely secondary. None of it matters if you have devoted yourself to Donald Trump as the Messiah who will save America, and maybe later the world, if he feels like it.

There are a few, but influential, religious groups who see Trump as the personal representative of God and Jesus Christ on Earth today. To question Him (Trump) is as unthinkable as to question God.

Whether Trump Himself actually believes this or not doesn’t matter. But He uses terminology that strongly encourages godlike reverence for Himself. For example:

Trump called Himself “the chosen one” to lead America into a trade war with China

Trump has repeated the endorsements of people who believe Him to be “the second coming of God”.

I still teach and write for the benefit of those who might be interested, but until Trump followers stop worshiping Him, it will really not make any difference.

American Exceptionalism

If there is one single idea that is central to the various conservative Republican views of the world, it is American exceptionalism. Let me attempt a definition and description of this concept.

The first component of American exceptionalism is that conservatives in America are, and always has been, God’s chosen people, whom he will exempt from any judgment or consequence. If there is any judgment upon America, it will be because of those whom they call liberals. But anything, no matter how perverse, that a conservative wants to do is, in advance, already approved by God. Modern American conservatives, alone among all people who have ever lived, are inerrant and automatically exempted from God’s judgment. They can say whatever they want, without evidence, and it’s just fine. They can believe that God created the whole world just for them to destroy for their own pleasure right now, and it’s just fine. They can use Jesus as their finger-puppet to wiggle in the air whenever they want the appearance of God’s approval on whatever they say or do, and it’s just fine. They do not worship God; God is their tool, and they sneer at him even as they exploit him. It is themselves whom they worship.

Today is not the first time that some people, calling themselves Christians, have assumed that God has already forgiven them in advance for whatever they might do. When Crusaders sacked Constantinople (which was the capital of a Christian, not a Muslim, land), the pope had forgiven them in advance for whatever brutalities they might perform. And those brutalities, which I cannot bear to list, were far beyond anything the Bosnian Serbs or the Islamic State have been able to invent. One can only hope that modern conservatives are not going to do anything like this, but they apparently believe that there is no higher authority preventing them from doing so.

So that is the first component of American exceptionalism: American conservatives, alone among all the people of the world, are exempted from judgment by God, humankind, or history, for whatever they might do.

The second component of American exceptionalism is that conservatives think that God has exempted them from any consequences of the laws of nature. They think they can release all the carbon dioxide they want to into the air, and this carbon dioxide will not, in fact, do what carbon dioxide always does. Carbon dioxide always does cause and always has caused global warming, but apparently the carbon dioxide released by American conservatives and the corporations whom they worship will not have this effect on the Earth. And if it does? Well, they don’t care. Conservatives can just stay indoors with the air conditioning on, and the heat waves will kill Europeans (as in 2003) and Pakistanis (as earlier this summer), whose lives do not matter to them anyway. The comfort, indeed every sensual whim, of American conservatives is more important than the survival of other people. If American conservatives want to release carbon dioxide, then God had better miraculously exempt the world from the consequences of it, if God knows what’s good for him.

American exceptionalism, then, is the belief that there are no laws of God or man to which American conservatives are obliged; they are excepted from all of them. American exceptionalism is a species of blasphemy. So if a conservative begins his or her line of reasoning with a defense of American exceptionalism, you know that no discourse is possible with them. As for me, I will never have any conversation with a conservative unless he or she is willing to renounce American exceptionalism at the start. And if they do—if a particular conservative individual is willing to admit that the same God (if any) judges all of us and we all live on the same Earth with the same rules—then it might be possible to have an exchange of ideas.

Some thoughts from Francisco Ayala

Last week, at the University of Oklahoma, Francisco J. Ayala gave a talk. Ayala, a member of the National Academy of Science, the Presidential Medal of Science, and a pioneer in the molecular study of evolution, made some important points about the creationist “intelligent design” (ID) movement most of us already knew, but said them in a direct and powerful way that most of us had not dared. Ayala is also a former priest, and is one of the few evolutionary scientists with formal training in theology.

Ayala said that, if creationism were true, then God was incompetent. The adaptations of organisms are imperfect and are cobbled together from whatever parts were available. No competent engineer, Ayala said, would use the same design for a car, an airplane, and a boat, yet that is exactly what we see when we compare the designs of, for example, a dog, a bird, and a whale. In particular, he mentioned the process of human birth, in which the birth canal is almost too narrow and the frequent result, before modern medicine, was the death of both mother and child during childbirth. Why would God design something like this? But from an evolutionary viewpoint it makes sense. First, natural selection makes use of whatever parts are available; that is all it can do. That is why dogs, birds, and whales have the same basic design. Second, evolution is constrained by contradictory forces. Natural selection favored, in the human lineage, upright posture (which confers an advantage on a small birth canal) and large brains (which confers an advantage on a large birth canal). These competing forces have resulted in a birth canal that is on the deadly edge of being too small. No competent supernatural designer would have used these imperfect designs.

Ayala also said that, if creationism were true, then God is cruel, even perverted (Ayala’s terms). He made reference to the many extreme examples of extremely prolonged and painful diseases such as river blindness and elephantiasis. What kind of God would design things like this? Certainly not one worthy of worship.

Ayala’s conclusion was that intelligent design was blasphemy, because it makes God out to be incompetent and cruel.

I believe, along with Ayala, that creationists need to be confronted with the consequences of their own beliefs. But I would go even further. The evidence that Ayala cited not only contradict the idea of an Intelligent Designer, but also the concept of an all-powerful God in the universe today. Why does such a God, today, allow us to suffer from the cruelty imposed by the mindless laws of nature and the brainless behavior of parasites? It is not just a matter of asking why God made the world the way it is; it is a matter of asking why God permits it to continue in such a pointlessly cruel state.

In springtime, it is easy to overlook the cruelty of the world. And our brains have an instinct to see much beauty in the world. I plan to focus on the beauty of the world. But I will do so by giving my attention to the beauty itself, rather than digging up the tangled contradictions of attributing the beauty of the world to a creator while making excuses for the world’s cruelty.