Monthly Archives: January 2012

Marriage vs. Religious Freedom

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Black and white hands, claspedCatholic League president Bill Donohue hates the idea of same-sex marriage:

There is no world religion that embraces the bizarre idea that two men can get married, and there is no state in the nation where the people have directly chosen to approve it.  Yet because of some judges and state lawmakers, the prospect of same-sex marriage looms.

In fact, the Seattle Times reports about my own state, “The state Senate is just two votes shy of making Washington the seventh state to approve gay marriage.”  No, that wouldn’t be by a referendum of the voters, but so what?

Donohue is pleased, however, by “Marriage and Religious Freedom” a document recently signed by a number of conservative U.S. religious leaders that predictably rejects same-sex marriage.

The letter declares that ministers forced to conduct same-sex weddings is a manufactured fear, and it trusts in the First Amendment to rule out this possibility.  The real problem, it says, is same-sex married couples imposing on religion.  For example:

  • Religious adoption services couldn’t discriminate against same-sex married couples.
  • Marriage counselors couldn’t reject same-sex clients simply because they’re homosexual.
  • Religious employers couldn’t discriminate when giving health benefits to employees’ spouses.
  • Nor could they demote, reassign, or fire anyone for a same-sex marriage.

I’m not swept away with concern for the church.  Here’s why:

However free the exercise of religion may be, it must be subordinate to the criminal laws of the country.

That is part of the opinion of the Supreme Court in Davis v. Beason (1890), which effectively made polygamy illegal in the U.S.  In other words, when the state conflicts with religion on the definition of marriage, the state can prevail.

Another important Supreme Court case is Loving v. Virginia (1967), which overturned anti-miscegeny laws (that is, laws that prohibited mixed-race marriages) in 17 states.  Time declared this one of the “Top 10 Landmark Supreme Court Cases.”

Today’s fight over same-sex marriage closely parallels this fight over mixed-race marriage.  Let’s consider the facts in this case.  In 1959, Mildred and Richard Loving, a mixed-race couple, were convicted by a Virginia court for the crime of being married.  The judge used Christian justification for the decision:

Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents.  And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages.  The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.

Do you see the parallels?  Here’s another comparison.  First, consider this proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution from 1912:

Intermarriage between negroes or persons of color and Caucasians or any other character of persons within the United States or any territory under their jurisdiction, is forever prohibited.

Compare this to Proposition 8, a 2008 amendment to the California Constitution:

Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.

If the first restriction is outrageous, why allow the second?

After listing some of the problems between religious organizations and same-sex couples, the “Marriage and Religious Freedom” manifesto says,

The refusal of these religious organizations to treat a same-sex sexual relationship as if it were a marriage marked them and their members as bigots, subjecting them to the full arsenal of government punishments and pressures reserved for racists.

Bingo!  Now you’re seeing the parallels.

Imagine if the manifesto whined about restrictions on religious organizations because of the legalization of not same-sex marriage but mixed-race marriage.  Adoption agencies couldn’t reject mixed-race couples who wanted to adopt.  Marriage counselors would have to accept mixed-race couples as clients.  Religious employers would be forced to give health benefits to (if you can believe it!) a “spouse” of another race.  And they would be barred from taking any kind of punitive action against an employee who married outside their race.

It’s amazing that the signatories to this document are high-level leaders within the Christian church.  Aren’t they supposed to be the enlightened, compassionate ones?  Aren’t they supposed to be the ones encouraging society onto the correct moral path?  Why is it the other way around?

I’m optimistic that the parallels between prohibitions on mixed-race marriage and same-sex marriage are too close for them to not eventually be treated the same.  But take note of the status quo.  Remember these religious arguments against same-sex marriage, because in 20 or 30 years, when same-sex marriage is as uncontroversial as mixed-race marriage, conservative Christians will be shocked that their leaders ever rejected it.

We’ll need to remind them of the harm that religious thinking can cause.

Photo credit: WolfSoul

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Related links:

  • Christopher Shay, “Loving Day,” Time, 6/11/10.
  • “Time for Washington Legislature to legalize same-sex marriage” Seattle Times editorial, 11/14/11.

What Does the Bible Say About Abortion? Not Much.

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Novel about Christianity and atheism (and Christian apologetis)The Old Testament patriarchs would scratch their heads at the problem conservative Christians have invented and seized upon.  “That’s not what ‘Thou shalt not murder’ means!” they’d say.  “It means that you shouldn’t take a stick and beat someone over the head until he’s dead!  We kill people around here at the drop of a hat—both our own people when they transgress the Law and people of other tribes when we get into border squabbles.  And God has no hesitation in killing people.  To simply make someone not pregnant is vastly different.  People try lots of folk remedies to bring about that very thing, and our only complaint is that they’re not effective.”

All this hand-wringing about the safety of a single cell, less than one trillionth the size of an infant, would baffle them.  God is happy to slaughter (or order slaughtered) lots ’n lots of humans—men, women, and children.

If the Big Man doesn’t care, why should we?  That’s a rhetorical question—of course we should care.  It’s just that we shouldn’t imagine an argument against abortion based on what the Bible says.

About Babylon, it says, “Happy is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks” (Ps. 137:9).  And: “Their children also shall be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their houses shall be spoiled, and their wives ravished” (Is. 13:15–16).  Whether God uses genocide against the other guys, poisonous snakes against his own people, or an old-fashioned global flood against everyone, God has a broad palette of options when it comes to death, and he makes no special provision for children, infants, or fetuses.

The Bible even describes a potion to deliberately induce a miscarriage, used by the priest when a woman is suspected of adultery.

God himself has a hand in abortions.  Roughly half of all pregnancies end in spontaneous abortion, a far greater rate than that of clinical abortions.  If God exists, he’s the biggest abortionist of all.

Why imagine that the Bible is against abortion?  Maybe it’s that whole “thou shalt not murder” thing.

But you do know that “thou shalt not murder” isn’t in the Ten Commandments, right?  Let’s review the story.  Moses comes down from Mt. Sinai with the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20) and then smashes them when he sees the golden calf.  He goes back up for another set (Ex. 34), but God must’ve been stoned when he dictated them the second time because it’s quite a different set of rules.  But these rules aren’t just an addendum of some sort; these are the replacement Ten Commandments.  Exodus 34:28 makes this clear: “[Moses] wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant—the Ten Commandments.”  In other words, if you’d been able to peek inside the Ark of the Covenant to see this Ten Commandments 2.0, nowhere would it have said, “Thou shalt not murder.”

But let’s ignore that and assume that the scripture say not to murder.  What is “murder”?  Is capital punishment murder?  It’s illegal in Europe, and many people think it’s murder in the U.S., and yet it’s legal in 34 U.S. states.  What about killing in wartime?  Or killing in self-defense?  Or killing accidentally?  Or killing animals?  Or euthanasia?  Murder is undefined, so “Thou shalt not murder” is meaningless.

You’d think that this vaguely supported legal opinion that God is against abortion would give Christians pause, but I guess the hearts of pro-life Christian soldiers are resolute.  They’re quick to argue that God’s actions are beyond our understanding when it suits them—when confronted with the Problem of Evil or the justice of hell, for example—but at other times they acknowledge no vagueness and know for certain what God wants.  In particular, they know that God is against abortion!

Why is abortion that big a deal from the Christian standpoint when abortions send souls to heaven without the risk of doing the wrong thing in adulthood?  That murdered babies go straight to heaven was one way William Lane Craig tried to wriggle out of the moral consequences of God ordering the Canaanite genocide (“Christianity Can Rot Your Brain”).

Using Craig’s logic, abortion clinics may save more souls than churches!

Next time: 16 Arguments Against Abortion, with Rebuttals.

Photo credit: Wikimedia

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Word of the Day: Beg the Question

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Novel of Christianity and atheismTo beg the question does not mean “to invite the question.”  Here’s a faulty use of the phrase: “Bill’s report shows too many returns on our Mark 20 widget, which begs the question, ‘How will we improve our manufacturing quality?’”  Or, “The weeds in this lawn beg the question, ‘Why is it so hard to get a good gardener?’”

As a rule, if some variant of “beg the question” is used in a sentence with an embedded question, the phrase is used incorrectly.

Used properly, begging the question (petitio principia) is a logical fallacy that means to assume the conclusion in your premise.

For example: “(1) The Bible is the word of God; therefore (2) it’s correct.”  This one leaves much unsaid:

  1. God exists [unstated assumption, and the reason for the fallacy]
  2. (1) the Bible comes from God [stated premise]
  3. therefore (2) the Bible is correct [stated conclusion]
  4. therefore the Bible is correct when it says, “God exists” [unstated conclusion].

Question begging often hides in convoluted prose.  Wikipedia gives this example: “To allow every man an unbounded freedom of speech must always be, on the whole, advantageous to the State, for it is highly conducive to the interests of the community that each individual should enjoy a liberty perfectly unlimited of expressing his sentiments.”  In other words: freedom of speech is essential because it is good.  A simplifying restatement can often uncover this fallacy in both others’ arguments and our own.

Begging the question is similar to circular reasoning, but the difference is subtle.  The flaw with begging the question is that it depends on an unstated premise.  The flaw with circular logic is structural.  It is an argument of the form “A, therefore A.”  That is, the conclusion is a restatement of the premise.

An example of circular logic: “He is unattractive because he is so damn ugly.”  “He is ugly” is just a restatement of “he is unattractive.”  Or, “Dr. Smith’s Pink Pills are what you need because that’s the best treatment.”

“The Wheel of Power” illustrates an example of circular logic with more steps:

  1. “How can you be sure it’s the word of God?”  Because the Bible tells us so.
  2. “But why believe the Bible?”  The Bible is infallible.
  3. “But how do you know?”  The Bible is the word of God.  (And repeat …)

You should know what “beg the question” means so that you can understand it when used correctly, but I recommend against using it.  If you use it correctly, many people won’t understand, and if you follow the crowd and use it to mean “invite the question,” you’ll annoy those who understand the correct usage.

Photo credit: Wikimedia

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Christianity Infantilizes Adults

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Cross Examined is a novel about Christian apologetics and atheismYeah, I know the Christmas season is over, but have you heard the song “Christmas Shoes,” which came out about ten years ago?  Patton Oswalt tore it up in a clever comedy bit (video, rated R), and he makes an excellent point about the illogic of what Christians tell themselves.

The song tells the story of a guy who’s in yet another long line before Christmas, not really in the Christmas spirit.  Ahead of him in line is a grubby kid holding a pair of shoes.  When it’s the kid’s turn, he tells the clerk his story, that he’s buying his mom shoes to make her feel better.  She’s sick, and he wants her to look her best if she meets Jesus that night.

The kid counts out the price in pennies, and it turns out that he doesn’t have enough.  So he turns to our hero who feels sorry for the kid and pays for the shoes.  The story concludes:

I knew I’d caught a glimpse of heaven’s love
As he thanked me and ran out
I knew that God had sent that little boy
To remind me just what Christmas is all about.

It’s a sweet story, and lots of people filter life’s events through a Christian lens in this way to see God’s benevolent purpose behind things.  But let’s analyze this to see how “heaven’s love” worked in this situation.

God sees the cranky guy in line.  He gives the kid’s mom some hideous disease, puts the kid in line in front of Mr. Cranky, and makes the kid a little short on cash so that this Christmas miracle could happen.  In other words, God needs to make someone die and leave a kid motherless to spread a little Christmas spirit.

Is that the best explanation for the evidence?  Is that an explanation that a Christian would want?  What kind of insane deity would do that?  Perhaps good and bad things just happen, without divine cause, and we can use events in our lives to prod us to consider what’s important.  We don’t need God and we don’t need to be a Christian to be delighted by life, find silver linings, and use everyday events to remind us of things to be thankful for.

It’s easy to reinterpret events through a Christian lens.  It can be comforting, and it patches leaks in the Good Ship Christianity where reason leaks in.  But this is simply a rationalization to support a presupposition, not an honest following of the evidence, and when you stop to think of what you’re actually saying, you’ll see that the reality you’ve invented makes no sense.

When Christians wonder why atheists get agitated, this kind of empty childish thinking is often the cause.

Consider another story.  Suppose a girl sick with cancer throws a coin into a wishing well and wishes to get better.  The net effect is that the girl is a little happier, like she took a happiness pill.

But this wishing well belief is just an ancient custom.  We all know that wishing wells don’t really do anything.  Should you break the news to her?

Few of us would.  What’s the point?  She actually does feel better, and she’ll have plenty of time as an adult to deal with reality.  She has adults in her life who will protect her as necessary, shielding her so that she can hold this belief.

But as she becomes an adult, she must grow up.  We leave behind wishing wells, Santa Claus, and other false beliefs as we become independent.  No longer are the necessities of life given to us; as adults, we must fend for ourselves—indeed, we want to fend for ourselves.  The parent who sugarcoats reality or keeps the child dependent for too long is doing that child no favors.

Reality is better than delusion, happy though that delusion may be.  The doctor saying, “You’ll be just fine” feels a lot better than “You have cancer,” but if I really have cancer, which one allows me to take steps to improve my future?

Religion infantilizes adults and keeps them dependent.  That’s a good thing for the 100-billion-dollar-a-year U.S. religion industry, but what is best for the individual—a pat on the head or reality?

Photo credit: seq

What’s Wrong with the Pro-Life Position?

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Atheism and ChristianityOne commenter to this blog made the excellent point that the label “pro-life” for the anti-abortion movement is a bit odd.  In this contentious debate, I wanted to label those in each group as they prefer, but who’s not pro-life?

In the Christian view, life on earth is “the cramped and narrow foyer leading to the great hall of God’s eternity” (William Lane Craig).  What a dismal view of life—something simply to be endured as we wait for the real Life to begin.  By contrast, the atheist, certain of only the one life we all know exists, is the one who lives life to the fullest.  It can be argued that the atheist is the one who’s truly pro-life.

But let’s leave the conventional labels alone and consider the pro-life position.  If there were no downsides of carrying a fetus to term, if carrying the fetus to term were nothing more than a minor inconvenience for the mother, the abortion question wouldn’t be an interesting issue.  But of course there are downsides—big ones.  To bring a child into the world, poorly cared for in the womb, unwanted and unloved by its mother, abandoned by its father, neglected or abused, or growing up in squalor or in an abysmal home—for me, that potential harm eclipses the harm of denying a cell the chance to grow into a person.  Demanding that the state step in and declare that it knows the consequences better than the mother seems an odd position to take for typically conservative Christians.

The pro-life advocate has a quick answer: carry the child to term and give it up for adoption.  But this does nothing to address the problem of the woman unable to or uninterested in caring for herself and the baby properly during the pregnancy.  Or of the baby with identified birth defects.  Unhealthy babies are far more likely to live out their childhood in foster care.

“Just put it up for adoption” is hopeless naïve when only two percent of all births to unmarried women ended in an adoption.  For teen mothers, the rate is even less.  Let’s not pretend that if the mother’s life and home situation aren’t conducive to raising a baby until adulthood that she’ll always put the baby up for adoption.

Even if a teen mother chose to have her baby adopted, the consequences of the pregnancy are dramatic.  She’ll miss school, she’ll be ostracized, and she’ll go through an emotional meat grinder when it comes time to give up her baby.  And since the statistics say she won’t, that she will almost surely keep the baby, she’ll have no chance to get back on track for the life she had planned.

I have a mental image of an anti-abortion activist looking with satisfaction on the girl he just talked out of having an abortion, with no understanding of the shackles he may have placed on her life or the hellish environment to which he has may have consigned that child-to-be.  Infuriating.

The alternative to abortion rights is compulsory pregnancy.  My claims are simple: that (1) some lives are truly abysmal and (2) creating such a life (for the mother or the child) is a bad thing.  I doubt that my argument has convinced any pro-lifers to budge in their position, but I do demand that they acknowledge the terrible burden that making abortion illegal would place on a million women each year.

Next time: What Does the Bible Say About Abortion? Not Much.

Photo credit: Wikimedia

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“Cross Examined” Available on Kindle!

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My novel is now available on Kindle, with more electronic formats in process.

If you haven’t heard about the book, here’s the one-liner: a young man takes a reluctant journey into the defense of Christianity and realizes that the truth of religion is something you must decide for yourself.

The book targets two audiences.  First, I want to give thoughtful Christians something to think about and to encourage complacent Christians to critique the foundations of their religion.  Many Christian leaders make exactly this point, that they too want to push Christians to think.  I think of the book as an intellectual workout—a taxing project, perhaps, but one that leaves the reader a stronger person.

Second, I want to reach atheists who might enjoy approaching these intellectual arguments in fiction rather than in the usual nonfiction form.

The book is set in Los Angeles in 1906, in an odd new church that is suddenly world famous.  The pastor’s prediction of imminent disaster had been front-page news the day before the great San Francisco earthquake—true story.  Here’s the back-cover summary:

In 1906, three men share a destiny forged by a prophecy of destruction.  That prophecy comes true with staggering force with the San Francisco earthquake and fire, and young assistant pastor Paul Winston is cast into spiritual darkness when his fiancée is among the dead.  Soon Paul finds himself torn between two powerful mentors: the charismatic pastor who rescued him from the street and an eccentric atheist who gradually undercuts Christianity’s intellectual foundation.

As he grapples with the shock to love and faith, Paul’s past haunts him.  He struggles to retain his faith, the redemptive lifesaver that keeps him afloat in a sea of guilt.  But the belief that once saved him now threatens to destroy the man he is becoming.

Paul discovers that redemption comes in many forms.  A miracle of life.  A fall from grace.  A friend resurrected.  A secret discovered.  And maybe, a new path taken.  He realizes that religion is too important to let someone else decide it for him.  The choice in the end is his—will it be one he can live with?

Cross Examined challenges the popular intellectual arguments for Christianity and invites the reader to shore them up … or discard them. Take the journey and see where it leads you.

Buy Cross Examined at Amazon today (270 pages, paperback, $11.95 or Kindle version, $2.99).

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  • Read excerpts of the book here.