'Not a Meer Man'

Recently I pointed out the inanity of claiming that God saved the plane that recently crash-landed in the Hudson. Why did God allow the plane to go down in the first place, and why does God allow others to die horrible deaths in crashes?

I got my answer from an anonymous poster in the comments:

The answer is in your question.

Because it benefits all.

God makes His sun to rise on the good and the evil and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust.

To you this may make no sense at all, as most would never send (or give) any type of benefit to anyone except to those who can benefit themselves in someway. God is not like this. God is not like you or me, as He is God, not a meer man.

If you will read the accounts of other Flight 1549 survivors, you will see that most have a "new lease" on life. It is no longer about themselves but about others, about living life to its fullest, in the few seconds before impact,there was no one saying, how many turns does the world make a million years, is the bail out plan going to work, I wish I could just divorce my spouse... or even the dreaded "I dont believe in God so it doesn't matter as I am smarter than most".

I seriously doubt anybody was thinking that, They were all thinking about if they were going to die. The rest of life was unimportant, God became vastly important,as it states all (most anyway) were praying to GOD.

I see; God made their plane crash because he was doing them a favor. Praise be to God! Think of how much greater favor God is doing for those who don't survive, but who burn to death in fiery crashes! They're really not thinking about normal daily life, at all.

Seriously:

1. While it's true that near-death experiences encourage some people to reevaluate their lives, very often that doesn't happen. More importantly, it doesn't take a near-death experience to prompt this. I and many other people I know have fundamentally reevaluated their lives without the "benefit" of a near-death experience. Here on Planet Reality, if somebody subjected others to a near-death experience in order to prompt them to rethink life, the person would rightly be sent to prison for a long, long time.

2. The idea that people aren't thinking about themselves in a near-death experience is ludicrous. The most common reaction, I suspect, the nearly universal reaction, is something like, "Oh crap oh crap I'm gunna die!" Those who pray to God are typically praying something like, "God, please save me from a fiery death!" Sure, people will, in time of death, regret losing any loved one who happens to be stuck in the same horrifying situation. This is expected. But the focus is still extreme fear of losing one's personal values.

3. The idea that one lives life to the fullest implies that one is living one's own life. Setting goals, establishing loving relationships, and enjoying one's life are the result of taking one's self seriously, not of forgetting about one's self.

4. The idea of the anonymous comment seems to be that anything God does is the right thing to do, because we cannot possibly understand what God is up to. Here I point out merely that this is the perfect self-reinforcing dogma. Anything whatsoever "proves" God's existence. Did a plane land safely? Well, God wanted it to. Did a plane crash land with no casualties? God wanted them to reevaluate their lives. Did a plane crash, killing all aboard, Again, God knows what he's doing, and he was doing it for the victims' benefit. God is "not a mere man," so we lowly humans cannot possibly understand him. We must simply believe that he exists and that he guides the universe, and human reason cannot possibly explain it. The only proper reply is to pronounce anonymous's claim to be vile nonsense.

Toward European Secularism?

Recently I received a bizarre e-mail stating: "Obama will soon discover that government cannot legalize everything that the Bible condemns and then ask for God to bless America. Even though Obama is clever at wrapping himself with religiosity, his presidency could very well lead Americans toward joining European secularism."

I take this to mean that the writer -- and no doubt various others -- think the American government ought to outlaw everything the Bible condemns; e.g., homosexuality, false idols, back talking to parents, etc.

Recently Leonard Peikoff asked why Americans are so much more religious than Europeans. Part of the answer is that European secularism is synonymous with socialism, or at least socialism-light. In other words, the choices are God-centered religion or state-centered religion; sacrificing the individual to God or the state.

Many religious Americans rightly reject the subjectivism and socialism of the left. Unfortunately, because religion offers no more tenable moral foundation, they are increasingly turning to the subjectivism and socialism of the right.

America ought not move toward European secularism. America should move toward American secularism, and more particularly a secularism that recognizes the sovereignty of the individual.

Haggard's Miracle

"[Former New Life Church pastor Ted] Haggard said that as a Christian, he believed his faith could make him a new man. He was seeking a miracle, said Haggard, who described himself as 'not gay' but a 'heterosexual with issues' who was deeply in love with his wife."

Obviously I do not wish to speculate whether Haggard is really gay or "heterosexual with issues." What he himself has admitted, however, is that, as a married man, he hired a drug-dealing male prostitute (for something or other) and engaged in inappropriate sexual acts with a church volunteer. Clearly the guy has issues.

The practical lesson is that hoping for a miracle to reform one's character is not a good idea. Reforming one's character takes a lot of hard work, self-reflection, and moral pondering (and I've had some practice). Psychological issues require deep introspection, and possibly the help of real psychology (as opposed to, for example, the quackery of Bible-based psychology).

Hoping for a miracle to make you a better person is just an excuse to avoid doing the hard work yourself.

Life Is Improbable

Towhhall.com, the "conservative" forum, seems to spend about equal time promoting religion and beating up Democrats. Which says a lot about why the conservative movement today is in disarray, and why Democrats rule the nation and Colorado. But Townhall does provide grist for the blog. Today Bill Murchison argues:

It's hard, with it all, to see why the scientific types cling so feverishly to the creed -- alien to the whole of civilization, prior to the 19th century -- that God couldn't have dealt the cards originally. Well -- they respond -- it's because there's no evidence to show it. Possibly not. There is something else, though: a thing called common sense. Everything here and all around us just happened, without the intervention of a Designer? Isn't that just a little improbable?

I trust I need say little in response to the "everybody's doing it" argument. Nor do I need to spend much time addressing Murchison's suggestion that a strongly held belief is like an illness. What about the idea that life is improbable? Well, of all the galaxies we know that swirl around our universe, of all the solar system comprising these galaxies, so far as we know exactly one contains a planet that supports life. Yes, life is improbable. Of all the mass in the universe, life claims a miniscule, vanishingly small fraction of it. Yet something that is improbable is also possible, and in a large universe highly improbable things are bound to arise somewhere. Indeed, the very concept of probability implies that we know of something that happens in some cases but not all.

Just think of how improbable it is that you have your distinct set of DNA. Unless you have an identical twin, no other living thing on earth shares your precise DNA. You won the universal lottery.

The idea that life is improbable poses no real challenge to the claim that life arose in a causal universe. It makes sense, whether common or not.

Tax-Funded Abortions

Douglas Smith complains that Barack Obama has moved to "repeal by executive order the prohibition on using scarce federal dollars to fund groups that perform or promote abortions in foreign countries, otherwise known as the Mexico City Policy."

I quite agree that the United States government should not be subsidizing abortions internationally, or at home. But that's because I don't think the United States government should give any money whatsoever in foreign aid, nor should it fund any health care domestically. But, so long as the federal government is going to fund welfare in and out of our boarders, there's no good reason to exclude abortions.

Smith alleges that Obama's policy is "anti-life." But if Smith cares to glance at the widespread squaller of third-world nations, he might notice that forcing people to bring an embryo to term, when they cannot support a child and the attempt would only further impoverish them, is in fact the anti-life position. That doesn't mean that the U.S. has a positive responsibility to fund welfare for the world's poor, nor to ensure just laws in other nations that permit legal abortion, but it does mean that abortion funding should not be specifically targeted. It is no better or worse than other sorts of welfare funding.

The Theist's Sneer

Burt Prelutsky writes:

Human beings like to believe they're totally rational creatures. To take an extreme example, atheists are convinced they can prove that God doesn't exist. This is a particularly fascinating phenomenon because among those who believed in God’s existence are such brainy people as Albert Einstein, Rene Descartes, Albert Schweitzer, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Johann Sebastian Bach, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Thomas Aquinas, John Milton, Michelangelo, Herman Melville and even the deeply cynical Graham Greene. While representing the opposing point of view, we have the likes of Madalyn Murray O'Hair and Bill Maher. And yet, any number of atheists who have to take off their shoes in order to count up to 11 are absolutely convinced they're right.

If theists are so convinced they're right, why do some of them resort to such smear campaigns against atheists?

Prelutsky suggests that, if you're smart you believe in God, whereas if you're unserious (or worse) you don't. He substitutes an appeal to authority for an argument, yet he neglects to mention the serious authorities for atheism. (He likewise neglects to mention the various tyrants, racists, and murderers who have invoked God's name.)

Prelutsky's attack on atheists is gratuitous given his main topic: a criticism of global-warming alarmism. Indeed, his attack undermines his main case. Can Prelutsky prove that human-caused global warming doesn't exist? Many smart people claim it does, while many unserious people claim it doesn't. Why does the onus of proof apply in one case but not the other?

Most disturbing is Prelutsky's attack of the view that people are rational. Yes, he's criticizing those who feign rationality without displaying it. But his comment, in the context of his ad hominem attacks, betrays a deeper cynicism toward human rationality as such. Arguing against the belief in God, he suggests, can be no more consequential than taking off one's shoes. But what does that say about people who claim to have rational reasons for believing in God? Maybe that's why he punts on the reasons, invoking the authority of his own side while sneering at the other.

A Timely Prophesy

This analysis from the March, 1962 Objectivist Newsletter reads like a prophesy of the 2008 election, in which John McCain selected Sarah Palin to appease religious conservatives. Or a prediction of the Bush presidency:

The implications to tying capitalism to faith have come nakedly into the open in the explicit irrationalism of many "conservative" groups. Intending to bring the mystical concept of Original Sin into political theory, they declare that man is depraved by nature, that reason is impotent, that man should not attempt to create a perfect political system or to establish a rational society on earth -- but should settle for capitalism instead. ...

The greatest single threat to capitalism today is the attempt to put capitalism, mysticism and Original Sin over on the public as one "package deal." No attacks by collectivists could do more to discredit capitalism than is done by this kind of attempt.

Thanks to the faith-based politics of Bush and McCain, the collectivist Barack Obama is now president. And capitalism needs rational defenders more than ever.

Haggard, Again

Once upon a time, Ted Haggard was the respected senior pastor of the gigantic New Life Church in Colorado Springs. He was let go after news surfaced that he had hired a drug-dealing male prostitute to do who knows what. Now, the AP reports, there are new allegations that he had a lengthy sexual relationship with a male church volunteer. Oh, and HBO is coming out with a documentary about him. Can the story get any stranger?

January 26 update: Paula Woodward reports for 9News, "Former New Life Church pastor Ted Haggard's return to the national spotlight is being marred by new allegations he performed a sexual act in front of a young male church volunteer on a trip in 2006. The man tells KRDO-TV in Colorado Springs the incident was not consensual."

Roe v. Wade Anniversary

January 22 marked the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court case that liberalized abortion law. Last year Diana Hsieh and I reviewed the reasons why that's a good thing. But the religious right, driven by religious faith, ignores the reasons why abortion should remain legal.

The Rocky Mountain News reports, "Abortion is the slavery issue of our time, author Eric Metaxas told about 400 people at the annual Colorado Right to Life rally Thursday on the steps of the Capitol." Metaxis made it clear that his motive is religious faith: "God is the one who calls you to the battle."

However, the comparison between abortion and slavery completely falls apart in light of the fact that a fertilized egg is not a person, whereas a slave is. As Diana and I also point out, the true comparison is between the abolitionist movement and the progress in making abortion legal. Abolishing slavery and legalizing abortion both protect the rights of people.

Yet, not only does the religious right continue to push its faith-based politics, it makes it a priority, despite the movement's sound defeat last November. For example, Andrew Tallman writes, "[A]bortion is the single greatest moral evil of our day. Nothing else even comes close." But where is his argument that abortion is evil at all? In fact it is the prohibition of abortion that is morally evil. But, to the religious right, violating people's right to get an abortion is more important than fighting terrorism or preserving economic liberty. And that is precisely why the religious right took such a beating at the polls.

Atheism Is Not a Religion

Often we hear religious apologists claim that atheism is just another religion, and that one must have "faith" to be an atheist just as one must have faith to worship Jesus.

But atheism is not a positive belief system at all. It merely rules out belief in God and the supernatural. Atheism is no more a religion than "a-Santa-Claus-ism" is. It is possible and desirable for an atheist to build a system of beliefs rooted in the evidence and integrated by reason. Such beliefs do not compose a religion, either, nor are they expressions of religious faith.

Religious pluralism -- the ability of people of many faiths or no faith to live together in harmony -- rests on the idea that people can reach some common ground beyond religion, a common recognition of facts and reason available to each of our natural faculties. What happens when no such common ground exists?

A recent letter in the Free Press illustrates the problems:

The barriers to truth on this issue regarding prayer by government officials are primarily psychological, not logical. Most of the confusion is born from a misunderstanding of proper "church" and state separation, along with two logical impossibilities -- actual neutrality in government and genuine religious pluralism. Both assertions are nonsense. ... [A]theism actually presupposes and surreptitiously relies on theism to even have the appearance of cogency.

In other words, absent a common ground of reason, people of each religion must attempt to enforce their faith by law, to the extent of discouraging (by means unstated) other religions. The word for such a system is theocracy.

Censorship for Allah

"A right-wing lawmaker should be prosecuted for inciting racial hatred with anti-Islamic statements that include calling the Koran a 'fascist book,' a Dutch court ruled Wednesday."

Because the best way to demonstrate that the Koran is not a "fascist book" is to promote fascism in the name of the Koran.

Unfortunately, and hypocritically, the lawmaker in question "called for a ban on the Koran 'the same way we ban "Mein Kampf"'." Someone who wants to censor the Koran (or Hitler's screed) can hardly complain when somebody wants to censor him.

If the West loses free speech, it loses itself. There is no more important political issue than maintaining free speech, no matter who finds it offensive.

Rick Warren's Fine Line

I disliked quite a lot about Rick Warren's prayer at Barack Obama's inauguration. But he did have one excellent line, that we are united not by race and not by religion, but by our commitment to freedom. To the degree that the religious right -- and the religious left -- takes that insight seriously, we can all get along fine in the political arena.

This is an historic day, and I am proud to bear witness to it. Long live liberty, long live justice, for all.

'Call to Service': Means and Motives

Colorado Speaker of the House Terrance Carroll preached yesterday at the First Baptist Church in Denver, "All of us have a call to service."

He told the Rocky Mountain News, "I think here I have a lot more freedom to make appeals based on moral grounds. Across the street, I have to couch them in different terms and still try to say the same things."

This raises three issues: the connection between religion and altruism, the meaning of service, and the difference between voluntary service and involuntary servitude.

The first point needs little elaboration. Christians call for service to God and service to mankind. Collectivists of the 20th Century dropped the first part but kept the second. Modern collectivists increasingly return to their religious roots. But, to make full sense out of this, the second point is essential.

The idea of "service" packages together fundamentally disparate kinds of things. If a father drives his daughter's Girl Scout troop into the forest and helps to lead a camping expedition, he is performing a service to the group, because he loves his daughter and wants to see her do well. If someone raises funds for a cancer research organization, the person is answering the "call to service" by helping to fund something the donor regards as important. The college student who delivers pizza provides a service to his clients and gets paid for it. A student who drops out of school to move to Africa to care for the poor, thereby sacrificing her favored career for a religious calling, is performing service, too.

Many would split service into the two categories, "for monetary gain" and "not for monetary gain." However, that's not really the fundamental division. A father who works so that he can buy his daughter food acts from basically the same motivation as the father who volunteers to take his daughter's group camping. The motivation is rational self-interest, taking into account the full scope of the father's interests, which extend far beyond material gain. Rational self-interest routinely involves providing services to others, either for money or on a volunteer basis. The other basic sort of service is self-sacrificial, done against one's rational self-interest.

Carroll's case blurs this distinction. An adult who volunteers to tutor children in the community often acts from rational self-interest; the assistance offers the satisfaction of seeing a child do well and contribute positively to the community. But a child who gives up his studies to work constantly at the soup kitchen would be sacrificing his interests and his future.

Craig Biddle explains the difference in the context of business:

[B]ecause pushers of altruism frequently equivocate on the meaning of the concept of “service,” it is crucial for advocates of capitalism to grasp the actual meaning of this concept as it relates to altruism.

Altruism does not call merely for “serving” others; it calls for self-sacrificially serving others. Otherwise, Michael Dell would have to be considered more altruistic than Mother Teresa. Why? Because Michael Dell serves millions more people than Mother Teresa ever did. The difference, of course, is in the way he serves people. Whereas Mother Teresa “served” people by exchanging her time and effort for nothing, Michael Dell serves people by trading with them -- by exchanging value for value to mutual advantage -- an exchange in which both sides gain.

Trading value for value is not the same thing as giving up values for nothing. There is a black-and-white difference between pursuing values and giving them up, between achieving values and relinquishing them, between exchanging a lesser value for a greater one and vice versa.

Biddle's article addresses capitalism, so he's focused on market exchanges, but the same basic point about pursuing one's greater value applies across the board.

The third point about service is that it matters very much whether it's voluntary (whether self-interested or self-sacrificing) or forced. When Carroll preaches at church, he cannot force anybody to do anything. He must rely on persuasion. At the state capitol, he is involved in passing laws that are ultimately backed up by men with guns. Service at the point of a gun is not really "service" at all -- it is servitude.

Did God Save Flight 1549?

Karin Hill is a hero who helped other passengers evacuate the plane that recently landed in the Hudson River. Nicely done. We all can be grateful that nobody was killed, and that crew and passengers alike acted bravely.

However, I must point out the problems with a comment by Karin's understandably relieved and proud mother. She said, "Our whole family really attributes this to the grace of God. He protected her and the plane and everyone. We all feel that way." Not to take anything away from Karin's bravery, but let's think that one through.

If God was protecting the plane, then why did it crash land in the first place? Have you ever noticed that people tend to invoke God's grace only after something terrifying has happened? Where was God before the crash? Why didn't he, for instance, gently push the birds aside so that they didn't damage the aircraft? I have a hard time believing that God would be so vain as to allow the crash just so that he could take credit for preventing any deaths.

More to the point, what about all the people whom God does not save? The idea that God saved the passengers of this flight implies that God chose not to save the passengers on other flights who perished. The implication is that either these other passengers were not worth saving, or God acts capriciously, saving some and permitting others to die a fiery and horrifying death.

The passengers in New York got unlucky in that their plane went down. Then they survived through a combination of good luck and brave action. Out of respect for those who were not so fortunate, let's leave God out of it.

Sears Promotes Faith-Based Politics

Alan Sears argues "the fight for religious liberty is the fight for life," i.e., the fight to ban abortion. In other words, Sears, a former federal prosecutor, believes that the "liberty" of some permits them to impose their religious faith by force of law on others.

Sears quotes Madison, who said that one's duty to God "is precedent, both in order of time and in degree of obligation, to the claims of Civil Society." Sears neglects to mention that Madison also endorsed the separation of church and state and opposed "suffering any Sect to invade [the equal rights] of another."

Sears's entire case rests on the claim that a fertilized egg is a person, and as such properly has all the same rights as a born infant. In general, the proper purpose of government is to protect people's rights, which obviously is compatible with religious liberty. The problem with Sears's case is that a fertilized egg is not a person, and he makes no attempt to prove that it is.

Indeed, nobody from the anti-abortion side has seriously addressed the arguments that Diana Hsieh and I reviewed last year. That is because the case for outlawing abortion -- imposing criminal penalties for it -- rests on religious faith. It is not religious liberty, but religious tyranny, that seeks to violate the rights of actual people based on the faith-based fantasy that a fertilized egg is a person.

Hitchens, D'Souza Bring Road Show to Town

The Aquinas Institute for Catholic Thought is organizing a Boulder debate on religion between Dinesh D'Souza and Christopher Hitchens, Catholic News Agency reports.

If I were a Christian, I would promote this debate, too. As noted, Hitchens holds that moral knowledge is innate, an indefensible position. So, while Hitchens makes many fine arguments around the periphery, he cannot answer the central question: what is morality without God?

Ben Degrow has a little fun with a Daily Camera headline, "Conservative D’Souza, atheist Hitchens to debate God at CU." Degrow posits that a "debate against the Almighty" wouldn't "be a fair fight by any remote stretch of human imagination."

On the contrary. I'm betting that, no matter how the debate organizers prayed or promoted their event, God would be a no-show.

Georgia Again Contemplates Abortion Ban

Those who thought the religious right suffered defeat in 2008 oughtn't grow too comfy. Diana Hsieh pointed me to a new abortion-ban bill in Georgia. Georgia Legislative Watch comments:

Abortion: Two pieces of legislation dealing with abortion have been pre-filed. HB 1, introduced by Rep. Bobby Franklin (R), would make abortion a crime by defining life at conception.

HR 5, filed by Rep. Martin Scott (R), is the Human Life Amendment.

As with past sessions, neither proposal stands any chance of passing. They are only mentioned here because abortion is still a hot topic.

Here is part of the text of House Bill 1:

The State of Georgia has the duty to protect all innocent life from the moment of conception until natural death. We know that life begins at conception. After nearly four decades of legal human prenatal murder, it is now abundantly clear that the practice has negatively impacted the people of this state in many ways, including economic, health, physical, psychological, emotional, and medical well-being. These, too, are areas of legitimate concern and duty of this state. The General Assembly therefore makes the following findings of fact: (1) A fetus is a person for all purposes under the laws of this state from the moment of conception...

On the basis of the claim that "life begins at conception," Representative Franklin would declare abortion murder. However, not only is his basic argument false -- life obviously precedes conception -- even if it were true it would not establish the case, as Diana and I point out. The stated foundation of the abortion ban is so weak that it obviously masks Franklin's real motivation: to impose his religious faith by force of law.

George Mason on Freedom of Religion

Recently I reviewed William Martin's comments about the alleged Christian foundation of America. Here I quote the words of George Mason, a "Father of the Bill of Rights."

In his Virginia Declaration of Rights, Mason writes:

That religion, or the duty which we owe to our Creator and the manner of discharging it, can be directed by reason and conviction, not by force or violence; and therefore, all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience; and that it is the mutual duty of all to practice Christian forbearance, love, and charity towards each other.

This again illustrates that America was a "Christian nation" only in the weak sense that most of its founders were Christians, not in the sense that the government was Christian in nature. Here Mason and the people of Virginia declare their support for religious liberty, which requires a separation between church and government.

True, Mason attributes certain virtues to Christianity, but he does not claim that Christianity is the only road to virtue, and indeed he suggests that people other than Christians can reach similar ends. The implication of Mason's view here is that there is some moral foundation beneath Christianity, open to reason apart from religion. This is but a short step to my view, which is that the proper moral foundation is open to reason and rests entirely apart from religion.

Are Secularists Responsible for Islamic Terror?

I nominate the following quote for the Stupidest Argument of the Year award:

[The] extreme form of Western secularism is exactly what is alienating traditional Muslims and pushing them toward militant radicalism. Islamists such as Osama bin Laden actually make their case against the United States and the West on the grounds that our cultures have abandoned Christianity!

From bin Laden’s perspective and that of his allies, the conflict is between Muslim-led forces of monotheism and morality against Western forces of atheism and immorality. Though he refers to the U.S. as a Crusader state, his arguments clearly show that he believes the West is intent on imposing atheistic and pagan values on Muslims, not Christianity.

Kurshid Ahmad, the influential Pakistani leader of Jamaat-i-Islami, says, "Had Western culture been based on Christianity, on morality, and on faith, the language and modus operandi of the contact and conflict would have been different. But that is not the case." The assertion that the international campaign of political leaders against Muslim terror is a battle between two opposing forms of religious fundamentalism is patently false.

This argument is similar to one that Dinesh D'Souza makes. The writer, Steve Hagerman, is correct that the fundamental clash is not between Islam and Christianity. It is between theocracy and liberty. Sure, if the United States lived under a Christian theocracy, it might not be targeted by Islamic terrorists, because the United States would become just another third-world slum.

But what, exactly, is Hagerman's point? That we should act as crazy as the Islamists so that they no longer attack us?

ARC on Abortion Rights

The Ayn Rand Center ARC has published some great comments on abortion rights at Opposing Views.

In the first comment, ARC points out that the fundamental issue is not a "woman's right to choose," but rather "a woman's right to her life."

Next, ARC explains the fundamental importance of the first trimester, when an embryo is "a mass of relatively undifferentiated cells." ARC further explains that an embryo is a potential, but not an actual, person.

In the third post, ARC explains, "There are many legitimate reasons why a rational woman might have an abortion -- accidental pregnancy, rape, birth defects, danger to her health."

ARC's final post directly challenges the "pro-life" pretense of the anti-abortion movement:

Sentencing a woman to sacrifice her life to an embryo is not upholding the "right-to-life."

The anti-abortionists' claim to being "pro-life" is a classic Big Lie. You cannot be in favor of life and yet demand the sacrifice of an actual, living individual to a clump of tissue.

Meanwhile, the central "argument" of the anti-abortion side is an equivocation between human life in the sense of living tissue with human DNA and a human person. There is a reason why practically all advocates of abortion bans attempt to bridge that gap with religious faith.

Martin On America's Founding: Separation of Church and State

Last time I reviewed William Martin's comments on John Adams's views on religion and government. Here I link to three related articles that Martin wrote for Opposing Views.

First Martin reviews Jefferson's famous letter to the the Danbury Baptist Association in which he praises the First Amendment as "building a wall of separation between Church & State.”

Martin also further discusses the evolving views of James Madison, who also endorsed "the total separation of the church from the state.”

Later, Martin reviews:

During... the Civil War, a group of prominent churchmen calling themselves the National Reform Association began pushing for a Constitutional amendment that would amount to rewriting the preamble “acknowledging Almighty God as the source of all authority and power in civil government, The Lord Jesus Christ as the Governor among the Nations, and His revealed will as of supreme authority, in order to constitute a Christian government..."

Neither Lincoln nor Congress took no action on the proposal, and subsequent efforts likewise went nowhere.

Martin On America's Founding: Adams

Here I continue my review of William Martin's comments on America's founding. In his article on the early presidents, Martin summarizes:

The Founding Fathers were cosmopolitan intellectuals devoted to the rationalism of the Enlightenment, but they were not, for the most part, humanistic atheists or opposed to religion. On the contrary, they regarded morality as indispensable to a healthy state and religion as a primary foundation of morality, as well as of charity and concern for one’s fellows. But the state itself should be secular.

Martin quotes John Adams, who lauded government "founded on the natural authority of the people alone... without a pretense of miracle or mystery;" such a government favors "the rights of mankind."

Martin also quotes the 1797 treaty with Tripoli as signed by President Adams:

As the Government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the law, religion or tranquility of Musselmen [Muslims]... it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinion shall ever produce an interruption of harmony existing between the two countries.

"Not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion."

Clearly the nation's founders were influenced both by the Enlightenment and by Christianity. The simplistic argument that the nation was founded on Christianity because many of the founders were Christian neglects to sort out the causes. What was unique to America's founding was the Enlightenment, not Christianity, which had dominated Western politics for centuries.

Republicans Stay the Losing Course

Kathleen Parker writes that "the six Republicans competing for lead dog of the GOP leadership... are pro-life," meaning they want to ban abortions.

In other words, Republicans have learned nothing from the 2008 elections.

Martin on America's Founding: Jefferson and Madison

William Martin has written a series of short articles for Opposing Views countering claims that America is a Christian nation.

In his article on Jefferson and Madison, Martin recounts the story of Jefferson's Bill to Establish Religious Freedom. Jefferson argued, among other things, that people should not be forced to support religion and there should be no religious test for public office. Jeffersons' bill failed in Virginia in 1779, Martin notes, but passed in 1786.

And here's what Martin has to say about Madison:

Madison was not concerned solely with oppression. Government support of religion, he insisted, would lead inevitably to the corruption and weakening of religion itself. Fifteen centuries of governmental entanglement with Christianity had made clear that neither institution benefited from the relationship. He noted that ecclesiastical establishments “have [in some instances] been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of Civil authority; in many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny; in no instance have they been seen the guardians of the liberties of the people.... A just government... will be best supported by... neither invading the equal rights of any Sect, nor suffering any Sect to invade those of another.”

If the claim that America is a Christian nation reduces to the claim that most Americans have adhered to the Christian religion, then the claim is trivial. If the claim is that America was founded to promote Christianity, then the claim is false.

Religious Findings from Pew

I was checking out Pew's survey results today, and I thought I'd summarize some of the interesting findings.

Nearly 4 of 5 people (78.4 percent) are Christian. Half of Americans are Protestants (51.3 percent), and a fourth are evangelical Protestants (26.3 percent). A fourth are Catholic (23.9 percent).

The same fraction of Americans -- 1.6 or 1.7 percent -- are Mormon, Jewish, or atheist.

Most people of all American religions, except Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses, think "many religions can lead to eternal life." That's a little bit funny, because that means most Mormons believe that 98.3 percent of the nation is not headed for eternal life, while most Jehovah's Witnesses believe that 99.3 percent of the nation is doomed. I suppose small sects have to be particularly strident in order to retain followers.

Some people seem to be confused, because Pew claims that 21 percent of Atheists believe in God, and 6 percent of atheists believe in a "personal God." Huh.

71 percent of the population claims they are "absolutely certain" that God exists. Not surprisingly, only 41 percent of Jews are so certain.

"Only" 56 percent of the population claims "religion is very important in their lives," while 39 percent "attend religious services at least once a week."

Palin's Anti-Abortion Allies

Before the election, I discovered a document from Alaska Right to Life. An article by Bob Bird, former president of the organization, deserves a look:

Well, what do the federal courts and presidents have to do with Alaska? Simply this: these erroneous attitudes have trickled down into the state level as well. Listening to our pro-life legislators, lawyers and governor lament and berate the latest 3-2 Alaska Supreme Court decision striking down the "Parental Consent" law is praiseworthy -- yet every one of them fail to realize that no court's opinion need be obeyed. ...

Scan both the federal and state constitutions until you go blind, and you will not find any provision requiring the chief executive to enforce court opinions. Indeed, the executive’s opinion is clearly superior to the courts', as the constitution (either state or federal) must be defended, even from those other members of different branches of the government who wish to usurp the limits placed on their powers. ...

[A] pro-life Congress could pass a statute removing the court's jurisdiction on human life cases. ...

[P]assing a constitutional amendment is admitting that the Supreme Court indeed has the right to sweep away state laws. This is a dangerous admission, for the courts have absolutely no such right. ...

Governor Palin and the others asked for public support. Indeed, they deserve it, for their hearts are in the right place, if not their heads. The support they need is a massive flood of POM's, e-mails and letters, telling them to give the state Supreme Court a message: "You've made your opinion. Now try to enforce it!"

Bird's position is extraordinary. He is claiming that governors are not bound by state courts and that the president is not bound by the Supreme Court. He is claiming that the Fourteenth Amendment offers no protection from state tyranny. Bird's position implies that the president need not abide by any of the Supreme Court's rulings regarding any part of the Bill of Rights. Ultimately Bird would throw out the separation of powers on which our nation is built and open the door to dictatorship.

Does anyone wish to claim that the politics of this faction of the ant-abortion movement are remotely compatible with liberty?