atheism

An ER doctor from the Pacific Northwest tells this horrific story about a child who recently came into his hospital.

It turns out the story of Abraham and Isaac is still very much alive in the 21^st century.

A young man, barely old enough to drink, well, went out and got drunk, as young men do. He was involved in a dispute of some sort involving drugs and was administered some street justice. He came in to me quite ill indeed. He had stab wounds to the chest and abdomen, as well as an actively bleeding deep cut to the left arm extending up over the deltoid and into zone 3 of the neck. The paramedics reported a large amount of blood loss at the scene, and his arm wound was still bleeding heavily on arrival.

The resuscitation went very well, considering the injuries. He was intubated and thoracostomied in a jiffy, and I tacked together that big arm wound in a temporizing fashion to stanch the blood loss. But clearly, he was going to need to get to the OR pretty soon. His hematocrit dropped dramatically after fluid resuscitation and he was showing signs of shock so we began to prepare for transfusion.

It was around that time that his parents showed up and informed us that the patient was a Jehovah’s Witness and would not accept blood products under any circumstances. Even if that meant his death. They were adamant on this point even after I explained that we were not in hypothetical territory any more — that his injuries were quite life-threatening and the blood loss might be the factor that caused him to die. They were firm and well-prepared and even showed us a piece of paper signed by the patient, fairly recently, expressly refusing blood transfusions.

You can read the conclusion of the story here.

How sickening is it that parents are still willing to sacrifice their children in order to honor an imaginary god?

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Same-sex marriage opponent Matthew J. Franck in Washington Post‘s On Faith section talks about Obama using his faith to justify his support of marriage equality, and almost — almost! — has a point:

The mere fact that the president claims to have religious reasons — specifically Christian reasons — for supporting same-sex marriage has occasioned some interesting triumphalism in recent days among those who agree with him… If the people of California can be faulted for “imposing their religion” on their fellow citizens by passing Proposition 8, then it is equally true that President Obama is “imposing his religion” on his fellow Americans when he says, as he did last week, that laws preventing same-sex marriage are unjust to gay couples desiring to get married.

I grant that I’m not thrilled about anyone using religion to justify even progressive stances that I agree with. For example, I have a problem with the death penalty because of its immutability, the fact that it doesn’t work as a deterrent, and because I have a problem with the state deciding who lives and dies, but not because a stone tablet is purported to instruct me that I “shalt not kill.” The right thing is the right thing, and you don’t need Jesus to tell you one way or the other. So I do think it’s wrongheaded for progressives to hypocritically fault conservatives for using religious justifications for conservative positions, and then turn around and use religious justifications for their own progressive positions.

Anyway, Franck goes off the rails pretty quickly, thus my vociferous “almost”:

If he is not imposing his religion on anyone, neither is anyone else.

Hooooold on there, bub. False equivalence! Saying that you think it would be nice if we treated people equally because Jesus suggested it is not the same as declaring “God commands that we codify into law the oppression of the gays.” Nor is Mitt Romney imposing his religiously-motivated will when he says that marriage is between a man and a woman. He’s expressing a theological belief. But he would be imposing it if, as president, he worked for and signed into law a ban on same-sex marriage.

One of the covers Newsweek almost went with this week

A major difference here is that if a President Romney (shudder) were to do so, he would be doing it purely for religious reasons. He may dress it up in secular-ish language about the stability of the American family or tradition or some other malarkey, but there is really no reason to oppose marriage equality unless one is doing so because one feels that the creator of the universe is squeamish about gay folks.

If Obama were to wave a wand and legalize same-sex marriage nationally, and did so purely because of his religious beliefs, he would still not be “imposing” his will on anyone. He’d be granting a right enjoyed by everyone else, and one which harms no one else. He’d be doing it for a silly reason (because a probably-mythical guy in sandals 2,000 years ago said we should be nice to each other) but he would not be forcing anything on anyone, other than maybe some local clerk who has to put a notarized stamp on the marriage certificate of Adam and Steve, and might feel grudgingly about it.

To boil it down: Saying “you may not do X” is an imposition. Saying “go ahead, guys” is not.

As a side note, we may see more of this kind of thing. In an interview at Religion & Politics, Mark D. Johnson notes that the Jesus example is often undergirding a push for equality:

I’m sure that the President’s invocation of faith was considered carefully beforehand. But that doesn’t make it insincere. And the way he invoked it echoes what a growing number of Christian writers have reported over six decades. Many devout Christians — members of the clergy, lay leaders, theologians and religious educators — have become convinced not just that discrimination against homosexuals is a violation of basic human rights, but that it goes directly against the teachings and the example of Jesus of Nazareth. So I was struck that the President spoke not just about the moral principle of the Golden Rule, but about Jesus’ sacrifice.

So there’s another way of looking at it: If Jesus is an example as a person, and his story is one that makes you wish to behave toward others in a certain way because it has inspired you, that’s very different than doing so because you think you’ve been instructed to by a guy who’s been dead for millennia. Or by his dad. Who is also him. Or whatever.

Logic has been around a long time. Probability theory has been around since the 17th century. Decision theory was developed in the 20th century. So we know how to make rational decisions and that we should prefer rational decisions, right? Well... maybe not.

For one thing, you make way too many decisions over the course of the average day to imagine for a second that you generally make those decisions based on sober, rational reflection. And this isn't just true about the "simple" decisions, either...

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Irrational Decision-Making May be Right originally appeared on About.com Agnosticism / Atheism on Thursday, May 17th, 2012 at 12:00:13.

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For centuries science and religion have been at war. Both explain, or try to explain, the world around us in their own way. The more we observed, measured, and probed, the less we needed our gods. The gods of biscuits and hairdos soon made way for bakers and hairdressers and the gods of thunder and harvest made way for meteorologists and, well, meteorologists. Monotheism came and gave us one convenient god who made all these wonderful things for us to observe, measure, and probe. But the more we discovered, the less likely it seemed there was such a god.

This paved the way for the religious and atheist apologists. This is not a new phenomenon. People through the ages have been trying to marry their beliefs to what they see around them. Scientists have explained their findings and stretched reality in order to fit in their predetermined beliefs. Religious leaders conveniently forget certain parts of their Scriptures if they no longer fit in today’s society while hammering on others. Intelligent design, though a bad theory, is a good example of the religious trying to marry scientific observation with religious teachings.

On April 24^th, a new book came out about this dichotomy and the problems with religion and religious apologetics in modern society. The book was called God and the Folly of Faith: The Incompatibility of Science and Religion by Victor J. Stenger. It is extensive, substantial, all-inclusive, informative, and beautiful in its own right, but I will get to that shortly.

First, I would implore you not to read the book.

Buy it — do buy it — but for the love of all that is, well, known to science, do not read it. And if you insist on reading it, then please, do not read it in one session. Not like you would any other book. God and the Folly of Faith is a textbook and should be used as such.

Stenger is obviously a knowledgeable and well-read individual. He has done a copious amount of reading and research and, as a result, he wants to impart as many facts as possible onto his readers. I don’t know Dr. Stenger personally, but I imagine he is a wise and friendly man, popular among his friends and feared by his enemies. And though he is probably all these things and more, he is not a good writer. Wherever he could use only five words, only two sentences, only one paragraph, he used a multiple of that. The man is as longwinded as you would expect a professor of both physics and philosophy to be.

According to Stenger, the marriage between religion and science is a ridiculous concept. He goes into a lot of background and history of the issue. He picks apart earlier arguments made by religious and atheist apologists (who also believe science and religion are compatible) and explains how a world without religion would have looked very different. He shows how some religions have stymied the development of science and how others have helped it flourish. The content is interesting; the execution, not so much.

Apart form being dry and monotonous, the tone of the book is also very angry. Stenger is obviously fed up with the lovey-dovey, hippie-esque, “Why can’t we all just get along?”-mentality and he lets his readers know this. The work is one angry diatribe against everything from mass prayer to saying “Bless you.” If it has even the lightest whiff of the occult, Stenger is there to tell us how awful it is. Many pages read like the author is screaming at you from the top of his lungs. The book preaches to the choir and the negative tone alienates the very theists who would benefit from it the most. Sure, he outlines how Islam helped science develop, rather than suppressing it, but that is just a tiny speck of positive light in an otherwise long, dark and bitter rage on everyone who has ever tried to marry religion and science at any time in our known history.

Stenger — like many New Atheists — holds that religion is basically fallacious and at the root of all our problems. I consider myself a New Atheist and as such it was hard not to agree with Stenger’s premise. This does not make the book any more readable, though. Reading the book I felt like a jungle explorer, hacking my way through quotes and dates and other peoples’ arguments to get to small nuggets of wisdom, that, like the lost city of gold, were promised before I set off on my journey. Sadly, much like the lost city of gold, the wisdom and answers were too well hidden, which leads me to believe they might not have been there in the first place. Because the book reads as one continuous piece, it is all but impossible to even find a good, succinct, quote to use for this review, let alone pluck out an eloquent and intelligent argument against the marriage of science and religion. Other than “It doesn’t work,” I can’t come up with anything.

At several points in time it has been postulated that man is made up of two parts: the body and the mind, both interacting with the world, and the soul, where the personality and the concept of “I” reside. According to proponents of this theory, this split between body and soul makes it possible for religion and science to coexist in one person. Simply put, they propose that science is far more adept at focusing on the outside world, where religious explanations are known to be primitive and untrue, and religion can provide better answers where the soul is concerned, because science can’t observe and test in this area.

This is how many religious scientists defend their beliefs, and how scientifically-curious religious people defend theirs. Stenger refutes this in his own long-winded fashion by showing how science is now able to test and observe that which the apologists would call the soul. With this he wipes this split-personality-premise off the table. There are many more of these beautiful ways in which Stenger wields reason and historical evidence to refute the idea that science and religion can coexist, but the mind-numbingly boring writing takes the shine off of most of these arguments.

If you find yourself in a discussion with a religious scientist, or a scientific theist, this book does not help. At least not as a work of reference from which you can easily look up the answer to any argument (read: fallacy) they challenge you with so you can then smash them to the ground with your perfectly logical and well-structured retort. The only way to use this book in such a discussion, would be if you had studied it long before and were able to wield it as a whole.

In conclusion, I have to say I’m on the fence.

Buy the book, but only if you’ll admit that you put it on your bookshelf because it looks pretty and it makes you look smarter.

Buy the book to read it, but read it one chapter a month and take breaks reading happier, easier fare such as A Short History of Time by Stephen Hawking.

Or don’t buy the book, be happy in the knowledge that it exists, and the next time somebody tries to convince you this marriage between science and religion could be the answer, point your opponent to it. Maybe that is the best option. We should inflict this book on people we don’t agree with. Not only do we get the satisfaction that we have annoyed them with a wholly unreadable book, but maybe, just maybe, they will be persuaded a bit. Maybe it will plant the seed of doubt. And maybe we can then finally sign those divorce papers.

For a lot of Christians, 'atheist' is a label designed to denigrate, not describe. People who don't adhere faithfully to religious doctrines are 'practical atheists.' The broader culture is 'atheistic' because if fails to embody or enforce the religious dogmas which someone deems critical. Is any of this sensible or reasonable? Has the West become atheistic and irreligious simply because it no longer upholds Christian traditions like it used to?

In some ways, modern culture has become more secular and atheistic because so many cultural institutions are not dependent upon any religious revelations or beliefs for their existence or authority. It's possible to be a secular atheist and partake in so much of modern culture without anyone noticing that they are an atheist. This is a problem for many religious believers because it's easy for people to walk away from theism and religion without suffering any negative consequences.

At the same time, though, there is no shortage of religion or theism in modern culture. References to religious theism can be found all over in politics, popular culture, and social relationships. If someone is bothered by a lack of reinforcement for their religion in popular movies, sports, or other cultural institutions, it's possible for them to bypass all (or most of) that and focus on the cultural products created by their religious institutions.

This is true for all religious believers, not just Christians -- though there is more for Christians to choose from, given their larger numbers. Is this what upsets Christians, the fact that there is so much more to choose from so that everyone can get what they want?

This abominable practice has to be stopped.

I WAS horrified to learn earlier this month that “a group of senior medical experts” in Australia are advocating circumcision for infant boys, claiming there is now strong evidence that circumcision reduces risk of infectious diseases and cancer.

The Circumcision Foundation of Australia, whose members include several professors of medicine, is led by Sydney University medical scientist, Brian Morris. He has written to State and Federal health ministers appealing for an end to the ban on elective male circumcision in public hospitals, and for a substantial increase in the Medicare benefit for the operation.

The Federal Government withdrew Medicare benefits for circumcision in the 1980s but quickly restored them after an outcry from the Jewish community. The Government is now considering whether the procedure should continue to qualify for Medicare payments.

The Foundation claims that about half of uncircumcised boys will suffer “an adverse medical condition as a result of their foreskin over their lifetime”, but those opposed to genital mutilation – and that exactly what it is – say there is little medical reason to circumcise an infant and that it should be withdrawn from Medicare coverage unless found to be medically necessary.

I now learn that a conference is to take place in the UK in July to discuss the issue of unnecessary circumcision. Delegates from child protection, health, equality and diversity, human rights, medical ethics and legal backgrounds will gather at the conference on Thursday, July 26 at Keele University, Staffordshire to explore how boys might be protected from being unnecessarily damaged by the practice.

According to a press release issued by Glen Poole, Strategic Director of The Men’s Network, a baby boy from Oldham bled to death after a religious circumcision. “The fatality,” the statement said, “raises major concerns for everyone working to safeguard children in the UK.”

The Oldham death will now be the subject of a manslaughter trial later this year

Meanwhile, an Oxford report revealed that 45 percent of botched circumcisions at an Islamic school led to complications, and that research from the charity NORM-UK reveals that as many as 9 out of 10 therapeutic circumcisions could be avoided.

The statement added that:

There are growing concerns that the unequal rights of boys and girls in the UK to be protected from unnecessary genital cutting, could compromise local, national and international initiatives to work with circumcising communities to protect girls from female genital mutilation.

The “How To Prevent Unnecessary Male Circumcision” one-day workshop and mini-conference is hosted by the charity Genital Autonomy.To find out more about the conference and to book a ticket see: http://www.genitalautonomy.org

For media enquiries contact Glen Poole at The Men’s Network on 07981 334222 or email: glen@themensnetwork.org.uk

Hat tip: Bill Murray (Australian report)

The largest, most violent star forming region known in the whole

(via The Atheist Pig)

It’s not just American religious leaders who do despicable things because of their homophobia.

In North Jutland, Denmark, a Lutheran vicar said he would not bury a 74-year old woman because she was a lesbian:

“I thought — can this really be possible that we have to be ashamed? I looked at my mother’s partner and she was silent. I was upset for her. What a terrible situation to put her in,” Kirsten Østergaard told DR1.

The vicar has since apologized, but little good that does now:

“What use is that to me? This is about his views about humanity, and I don’t think those have changed. He has probably regretted it, but not because of us — rather because he has put himself in a very bad light,” Østergaard tells DR.

Must be an example of religious love… it’s not enough to hate gay people during their lifetime; the bigotry has to be implemented full force even in death.

(Thanks to @rksteg for the link)

This is a guest post by Dan Carsen. Dan has been a teacher, a reporter, a radio commentator, an editor and a stay-at-home dad.

A long time ago, there was a small band of cavepeople trying to survive in a harsh world. Their two best hunters, Grog and Zog, had been tracking prey together for years. Among the many things Grog and Zog had learned was that when they worked together, they were more likely to catch the meat that helped feed themselves and their band, and to get all sorts (yes, all sorts) of adulation and affection as a result.

One morning, Grog and Zog were out hunting when a bear ambushed them. Grog knew that if he sprinted away, he’d probably survive, but his trusted friend Zog would be killed. Zog knew that if he bolted, he’d be the only reliable hunter left in the band, the thought of which saddened and terrified him. Whether they realized it or not, there was a good chance they would both survive if they both stayed and fought. For whatever reasons, they stood their ground together, fought off the bear with their spears, and lived to hunt again.

And hunt they did, that very day. They used their imaginations to “think like a deer,” employing that early form of empathy to track a big buck and eventually kill it. But soon after they hoisted the carcass onto their shoulders, a large man they’d never seen appeared on their path. He was just one man, but he looked strong, and he had a club. With the bear incident fresh in their minds, Grog and Zog decided to play it safe, stick together, and kill the man before he could hurt them.

As night fell, Grog and Zog returned to the cave to much drooling and cheering. The two hunters relayed the story of that eventful day while the others shouted and danced with abandon. Everyone ate as much as possible while the food was available. The old man of the clan, perhaps feeling left out of the hunt, warned the others not to get too happy because The Spirits could take everything away. After all, that had happened to a less-cooperative clan in the next valley: their single best hunter had been hit by lightning, and the little band had perished the following winter.

And now back to modernity.

Polls show that most Americans are people of faith, and that those who aren’t comprise the least trusted group in the nation. Among people of faith, the most persistent obstacle to entertaining the possibility that a moral nonbeliever could exist is the widespread and intuitive assumption that nonreligious equals non-moral. (If experience or careful thought hasn’t yet brought you to this conclusion about our faithful friends, take it from a writer who lives in Alabama.)

So, given this reality, wouldn’t it be useful to have a simple, reproducible way to explain how and why the baseline of human morality stems not from religious belief or ancient texts but from a natural process? What if this secular humanists’ teaching-aid was a four-paragraph story that could be read or told in roughly two minutes, with perhaps another minute of explanation if necessary?

That additional explanation, by the way, might go something like this:

Imagine the events in the story of Grog and Zog repeated hundreds, thousands, millions of times down through the generations, wherever there were people. Which individuals would last long enough to reproduce? Which would reproduce more while alive? And which types of bands were more likely to survive? (Further hints here could include the words strength, intelligence, imagination, cooperation, nurturing, and trust, as in trust in your teammates in the game of survival.)

Of course, true biblical literalists — the hardcore “New Earthers” — wouldn’t accept the point of the story because it doesn’t jibe with their archaic conceptions of the age of the universe. But in this real world of limited time and resources, it’s not the thumping thoughtless fundamentalists whom we secular humanists should try to convince of the possibility of our being moral. It’s the relatively reachable and reasonable middle – the thoughtful people of faith who sometimes ponder morality on a level deeper than “God says X” or “the Bible says Y.” To believers or nonbelievers who’ve kept up with recent science on genetic altruism and the like, and to people with the most basic grasp of human history, it’s clear that small bands of weak, slow, tiny-toothed, nearly clawless early humans couldn’t have survived and thrived in an indifferent world without working together. And the Parable of Grog and Zog — a simplified fusion of relevant events that must have happened to our ancestors countless times — offers a snapshot of how. But in this case, the snapshot comes before the bulb flashes: once a reader or listener understands that cooperation and altruism (not just fear, aggression, and greed) have worked for us through the ages, it’s a tiny leap to grasping how, over time, basic human morality came about through a natural process independent of religion. It evolved, even if that e-word is something to avoid with certain audiences.

An understanding that morality has natural roots would undercut the no-religion-means-no-morals equation. It would also help chip away at one of humanity’s most persistent sources of division, at belief systems that undoubtedly contain lots of wisdom (which can be retained) and lots of nonsense, and at the mindset that most causes humans to shirk ultimate responsibility for what happens here on Earth.

More specifically and locally, the knowledge that morality has natural roots would counteract the self-fulfilling and institution-serving notion that a newborn baby is a somehow a “sinner” — a sick, damaging concept that persists despite a growing body of research that shows humans are born with an urge to help others.

As freethinkers around the world know consciously or intuitively, and as the Parable of Grog and Zog demonstrates, basic morality is human, not Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, or Buddhist. This is not to say that religious belief hasn’t been beneficial to humanity and therefore bred into us also (there is such a thing as a helpful misconception), only that human morality — which of course is shaped, molded, undercut, or bolstered by our physical and cultural environment — evolved long before the faiths we know today. It’s sad that the idea that morality evolved is so out-of-left-field, so alien to most believers, though that mental block makes perfect sense when you’ve been taught since toddlerhood that God/Jesus/Allah/etc is what makes you and life good, or provides just a chance to be good. The lack of the knowledge that morality evolved — and is therefore shared — is the main barrier to a less superstitious view of the world, and to a less judgmental view of people who don’t buy into a particular orthodoxy or believe in a warden in the sky. The assumption that the good in humans comes exclusively from God (and the bad from nature) will always trump anti-religion metaphysical arguments about the universe. So we have to address the questions, “How would I live without my faith? “What would be my guide?”

Luckily, stories have power (see Bible, etc), and a simple tale that shows how natural processes account for the roots of human morality is no exception. The parable even illustrates how positive and counterproductive aspects of human nature — seemingly opposite traits — arose from the same process: some of what worked for us a long time ago, including preemptive aggression with spears, in generally unhelpful today. It’s a simple and elegant explanation that has the added bonus of being true. There’s no need for a God as interpreted by fallible primates in explaining the origin of morality, or for God’s horned opposite — tellingly, often a symbol of nature — in explaining our worst behavior. There’s also no need for the futile mental gymnastics required to rationalize a moral, omniscient, and omnipotent God currently allowing a starving girl to be raped and butchered by drug-addicted child soldiers. (One’s revulsion at that has nothing to do with faith. It has to do with being a human who hasn’t been made into a killing machine by horrendous external factors and/or abnormal wiring.) The believer’s Problem of Evil is sidestepped, its burden made moot by basic and increasingly verifiable knowledge of ourselves.

Nature has long been blamed for the Hobbesian nasty, brutish, and short aspects of human existence but is only recently getting credit for the other traits that have made us human, not to mention humane. Our natural heritage is complex, and it’s our job — our job — now to decide which traits to try to perpetuate and reinforce (cooperation, empathy, altruism, curiosity?) and which traits to try to mitigate or outgrow (aggression, prejudice, fear of the other, gluttony?). It turns out that the Big Ethical Question isn’t, “which faith must win out for us to live in peace?” but, “which human traits are still desirable, and which are now counterproductive?” I think most people would even agree on the answers, once the right question is asked.

Imagine a world where the vast majority of people — religious and otherwise — understood that the baseline, if not the particulars, of morality itself was something that grew out of our long history of working together, that it was something shared throughout humanity. That’s not an anti-religion idea. It’s a unifying, pro-human concept regardless of one’s faith or lack thereof.

So with that in mind, go forth, my brothers and sisters. Spread the word. Tell it. Copy it. Paste it. Post it. Email it. Snail mail it. Put it on T-shirts. Inject it in one form or another into the body societal. Make it a meme. Make it a vaccine against the insidious equation. Plant a seed of self-knowledge that sprouts up through the orthodoxies that seal off otherwise fertile minds. Go forth, fellow secular humanists, and spread the Gospel of Grog and Zog. Given a wide audience and time, it could help us all.

Reprinted with permission from the April-May 2012 issue of Free Inquiry, the bimonthly journal of the Council for Secular Humanism.

After Christ shall have risen from the dead he shall show himself unto you, my children. Many generations shall pass away, and there shall be great wars and contentions among my people. And after the Messiah shall come there shall be signs given unto my people of his birth, and also of his death and resurrection; and great and terrible shall that day be unto the wicked, for they shall perish; and they perish because they cast out the prophets, and the saints, and stone them, and slay them. All those who are proud, and that do wickedly, the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of Hosts. They that kill the prophets, and the saints, the depths of the earth shall swallow them up, saith the Lord of Hosts; and mountains shall cover them, and whirlwinds shall carry them away, and buildings shall fall upon them and crush them to pieces and grind them to powder. And they shall be visited with thunderings, and lightnings, and earthquakes, and all manner of destructions, for the fire of the anger of the Lord shall be kindled against them, and they shall be as stubble, and the day that cometh shall consume them, saith the Lord of Hosts. 2 Nephi 26:1-6

But the Son of righteousness shall appear unto them; and he shall heal them, and they shall have peace with him, until three generations shall have passed away, and many of the fourth generation shall have passed away in righteousness.

And when these things have passed away a speedy destruction cometh unto my people ... they shall reap destruction; for because they yield unto the devil ... therefore they must go down to hell. 2 Nephi 26:9-10 

It must needs be that the Gentiles be convinced also that Jesus is the Christ, the Eternal God. 2 Nephi 26:12

I prophesy unto you concerning the last days.

After my seed ... shall have dwindled in unbelief, and shall have been smitten by the Gentiles; yea, after the Lord God shall have camped against them round about ... all those who have dwindled in unbelief shall not be forgotten. 2 Nephi 26:14-15

For thus saith the Lord God: They shall write the things which shall be done among them, and they shall be written and sealed up in a book, and those who have dwindled in unbelief shall not have them, for they seek to destroy the things of God. 2 Nephi 26:17

And it shall come to pass, that those who have dwindled in unbelief shall be smitten by the hand of the Gentiles. 2 Nephi 26:19

The Gentiles ... stumbled, because of the greatness of their stumbling block, that they have built up many churches ... which cause envyings, and strifes, and malice.

And there are also secret combinations ... according to the combinations of the devil, for he is the founder of all these things. 2 Nephi 26:20-22

The Lord God hath given a commandment that all men should have charity, which charity is love, and except they should have charity they were nothing. 

But the laborer in Zion shall labor for Zion; for if they labor for money they shall perish.

For ... the Lord ... denieth none that come unto him, black and white, bond and free, male and female; and he remembereth the heathen; and all are alike unto God, both Jew and Gentile. 2 Nephi 26:30-33

According to Rebecca Kiessling, they do. She believes women who have been raped should not have the right to have an abortion if they become pregnant by their rapists. This October, she’s lined up to speak at the University of Washington in October at an event hosted by Students for Life of America and the (Catholic) Newman Center. You might have heard of them: they invited Abby Johnson to speak earlier this month on why women have “too many rights.”

Kiessling’s mother was brutally raped at knifepoint by a stranger and became pregnant as a result. This was before Roe v. Wade and her mother opted against visiting illegal abortion clinics. Still, she admits she would have gotten an abortion if it had been legal. Having been conceived by rape, Kiessling frames the issue by saying that if you support the right of rape victims to have abortions — or even to have access to Plan B, then you’re saying she deserved the death penalty:

Have you ever considered how really insulting it is to say to someone, “I think your mother should have been able to abort you.”? It’s like saying, “If I had my way, you’d be dead right now.”

No, no it is not. It’s like saying, “Your mother should have been able to abort you, just like my mother should have been able to abort me.” And if my mother had made that choice, I would not have suffered in the slightest. I just wouldn’t have ever existed.

I have some sympathy for Kiessling — she went through a great deal of personal anguish after finding out how she was conceived. But I really wish she had received proper counseling during that time instead of turning to religion. Now, she’s putting her church’s ideological views above the needs of traumatized rape victims and trivializes what they experience if they become pregnant, suggesting that looking at a sonogram of their rapists’ fetus wouldn’t be such a big deal for them.

The pro-life/pro-choice debate always boils down to one core difference: pro-lifers believe zygotes are people because they have souls. Even if we play along with this fairy tale of a supernatural-self that comes along with our bodies, this assumption still doesn’t hold water.

If every zygote has a soul, then:

• What happens to it if it divides into two or more babies? Do they divide the soul or does another pop into being? What if the zygote doesn’t separate completely, do two souls still result?
• What if two zygotes merge to form a chimeric embryo? Does the resulting baby have two souls or does their fusion destroy a soul?
• Why do the gods allow so many soul-having zygotes and blastocysts to get flushed out of women’s bodies before they even know the fertilization happened?

Rhetorical questions aside, this is ultimately an issue of the separation of church and state.  Religious/theistic people are the only ones who believe in souls and they want those souls to be recognized by the government, just like they want their gods recognized by the government. But we won’t let that slide.

The Bush Junior years — 2000 to 2008 — were interesting times, politically, here in the U.S. When Dubya’s positive polling percentage hit 29%, some of my conservative friends came out of the closet, so to speak. “Tim,” they told me, “I’m really more of a libertarian than a conservative or a Republican.”

“Don’t lump me in with those Neocons.”

Of course the realization that they no longer identified with the national G.O.P. (Grand Old Party) had more to do with the disenchantment with the Neocons than anything else. Specifically, it had become apparent that the Iraq War had been a tragic mistake — what kind of mistake exactly depends on whom you ask. Was it ill-conceived from the beginning and based on fabricated intelligence, or was it simply poorly executed? Either way, lots of weary Republicans all over the country were distancing themselves from a very unpopular president.

So now when I read news stories about the ballot initiative against gay marriage in North Carolina last week, or yesterday’s disgusting vote in the Virginia House of Delegates, I wonder what all those self-styled libertarians think. I know many libertarian-leaning people are appalled by government intrusion into citizens’ personal lives, and I wouldn’t doubt most Republicans I have known (the ones with university degrees and most of their teeth) aren’t homophobic. Will they distance themselves from this madness, too?

One of the Virginia delegates is reported to have said that the nominated judge, state prosecutor Tracy Thorne-Begland, a 20-year Navy veteran and former fighter pilot, was unfit to serve because he is “an aggressive activist for the pro-homosexual agenda.” That “agenda” apparently includes the belief in human rights, including marriage equality. Thorne-Begland and his partner are in committed relationship, and they’re raising twins together. For some conservatives, the struggle to be ordinary — the dream to be allowed to live like everybody else with the protection of the law, and to be left alone — is part of a devious agenda and tantamount to asking for “special rights.”

“Marriage is a relationship between one man and one woman — just the way my imaginary, invisible friend commanded it.”

One party in the U.S. has callously, repeatedly, and consistently used gay hatred to swing elections their way. We lived in Ohio in 2004, so I remember quite well how an anti-gay marriage ballot initiative drove enough conservatives to the polls that it swung the election. They came out to the polls to deprive their gay neighbors of their rights, and while they were there they voted for the Republican ticket — just as Karl Rove expected they would.

But the tide is turning in this country. Younger people just don’t care if their friends are gay. They know something my generation still hasn’t figured out — it just isn’t that big a deal. Here in our new home state, Iowa, gay marriage has been allowed for about three years now. Guess what. You’d never know it.

So my tolerant and open-mined libertarian friends, perhaps many readers of this blog, too, would probably agree with the kids. Johnny has two Moms?  Big deal.  Adam and Steve moved in next door?  So what. Live and let live.

“I’d like to help my gay friends, but I’m too busy trying to destroy the social safety net.”

But my question, then, is this: Is this a core libertarian principle or not? Let me rephrase that. Are human rights — basic equality, human dignity, equal justice, equal treatment — core moral values or not? I ask, since I know a lot of libertarians are going to “hold their noses” in November and vote straight “R” again, because they hate Obama, and because they think Romney is more likely to cut taxes, shrink government (seriously?), and finish dismantling the welfare state.

Don’t get me wrong — I’m not endorsing Obama. I could very easily vote Green again. I’m simply asking my libertarian fellow citizens a very serious and basic question: Is the prospect of universal healthcare so odious that you’d rather vote in a party that has promised to return to Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, that would start enforcing DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act) again, and that openly works against civil rights for gay Americans? Are you saying that human rights take a back seat to lower taxes on the rich? Is it so important that we privatize Medicare and Social Security that you’re willing to sell your homosexual friends up the river?

When they asked Jesus what the greatest commandments were, he is supposed to have said:

And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment.

And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these. (Mark 12:30-31, KJV)

If you’re like me and no longer believe in a magical, easily angered, bronze-age storm god, then you’ve tossed aside the first commandment. However, as a basis for morality and ethics you could hardly do better than Jesus’ second commandment. If your personal morality puts property and economic principles ahead of loving your neighbor, what does that say about your political ideology? What does it say about you?

This Month in Photo of the Day: Adventure and Exploration Photos

A cooking tent belonging to expedition scientists glows in the twilight on the rim of the Nyiragongo volcano—one of the most active in the world—in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

See pictures from the April 2011 feature story "The Volcano Next Door."

See more pictures of volcanoes » Watch a video about volcanoes »