Church of the Churchless

Israel-Hamas war is bringing out worst on both sides

I was planning to share more in today's blog post from Robert Sapolsky's book, Determined, which argues persuasively that free will is an illusion. But with disturbing news of the Israel-Hamas war ricocheting around in my mind, I find myself unable to focus on my original intent.

Which is how minds work. I'm going to talk about no-free-will anyway, just not in the way that I had intended.

Every experience changes us. We are nothing but our experiences, understanding that "experience" includes much more than that word implies. It encompasses the genetic experience of our bodies; the historical experience of the culture we're a part of; the evolutionary experience of all life on earth; the personal experience of our life from the womb until death; and other forms of experience. 

It's a fantasy to believe that human thoughts, emotions, and behavior are somehow orchestrated by a Me or Self that can float above all these varieties of experience and engage in acts of free will that are uncaused by all the influences bearing down upon us.

The Israel-Hamas war provides plenty of evidence for this.

Yesterday I wrote a post for my HinesSight blog, Our job is to empathize with both Israelis and Palestinians, that mostly consisted of the last part of an essay in the November 6 issue of TIME by Israeli historian and philosopher Yuval Noah Harari, "The world's job during the war."

Here's a quote from Harari.

Most Israelis are psychologically incapable at this moment of empathizing with the Palestinians. The mind is filled to the brim with our own pain, and no space is left to even acknowledge the pain of others.

Many of the people who tried to hold such a space -- like the Kutz family -- are dead or deeply traumatized. Most Palestinians are in an analogous situation -- their minds too are filled with pain, they cannot see our pain.

But outsiders who are not themselves immersed in pain should make an effort to empathize with all suffering humans, rather than lazily seeing only part of the terrible reality. It is the job of outsiders to help maintain a space for peace.

I hope this is possible.

However, it's difficult to be optimistic when this horrific war is viewed through the lens of what Sapolsky tells us is the neuroscientific truth. Trauma changes us. The Jews who control Israel feel in their bones, in their heart, in their mind, the trauma of longstanding Jewish persecution at the hands of others, notably Nazi Germany in the Holocaust.

This affects their current attitude toward their Palestinian neighbors who also have experienced trauma of a more recent variety: how they've been ill treated by Israel over about 75 years of forcible relocation and occupation. This has caused deep resentments that are one of the causes of the terror inflicted on people in Israel by Hamas's October 7 attacks.

As Harari said in his essay, this prevents both Israelis and Palestinians from seeing the suffering of the other side as deserving of empathy. Not everybody, of course, but certainly the leaders who are directing the course of the Israel-Hamas war. 

So the 1,400 deaths Hamas caused in Israel turns into an estimated 9,000 deaths Israel has caused in the Gaza Strip. And the killing continues, with many more deaths to come. I see no evidence of free will in any of this, because it is clear that the leaders of both sides are being propelled by deep reserves of anger, resentment, and hatred that have nothing to do with calm, considered, wise decision-making.

Yesterday I heard a man interviewed on CNN, I think it was, who used to be an Israeli ambassador to the United States. He was asked about the thousands of civilian deaths in Gaza from Israel's bombing, at least half of whom are women and children. His logic, if you can call it that, went like this:

Civilians in Gaza are being killed because Hamas terrorists hide among them, and Israel is justified in killing Hamas. Residents in the north of Gaza have been told to leave that area and move to the southern part of Gaza. When told by the interviewer that Israel is also attacking civilian targets in the south of Gaza, the Israeli said this was justified because Hamas terrorists hide among them there also.

So the previous ambassador believes that women, children, the elderly, and other noncombatants can be killed by Israel anywhere in Gaza, since Israel is entitled to do so just because. That's how a three year old acts: I can do it just because I want to.

Today Israel attacked an ambulance in Gaza. Again, this isn't an act of free will. This is an act of leaders of a nation who are consumed by so much rage, so much anger, so much feeling of entitlement, that they can kill innocent people for no good reason just because they have the ability to do so.

A Washington Post story tells the sickening tale of Israeli destruction in "Israel launches deadly strike on ambulance outside hospital in Gaza." Excerpts:

An Israeli strike on an ambulance outside Gaza City’s largest hospital on Friday killed at least 15 people and injured another 60, the Gaza Health Ministry said.Photos and videos of the aftermath, which were geolocated by The Washington Post, showed scenes of carnage and destruction, with bodies crumpled on the pavement and bystanders rushing to carry the wounded into the hospital grounds.

The strike was one of several attacks on schools and health infrastructure on Friday in Gaza, where Israeli forces have waged a large-scale offensive to destroy Hamas, the Palestinian group that rules the territory. More than 9,000 people have been killed in Gaza since the war started on Oct. 7. Israel launched its campaign in response to a brutal Hamas assault on Israeli communities near the border, killing at least 1,400 people.

...The dead and wounded visible in the videos reviewed by The Post included women and children and no weapons or individuals wearing military clothing could be seen. One graphic video, filmed by Gazan content creator Ahmed Hijazee, showed the inside of the ambulance targeted in the strike, including a single female patient lying on a stretcher.

So as noted before, Israel retaliates for a terrorist attack on its territory that killed over a thousand innocent people by killing thousands of innocent Palestinians. This is madness, not free will. The leaders of both Israel and Hamas are engaged in a contest to see who can act most horribly. If either side was willing freely, sanity would be more evident.

I wish "evil" could be banished from political discourse

Here in the United States, our politicians love to spout venomous talk about evildoers, the necessity to combat evil, and how some conflict is a battle between good and evil.

Prime Minister Netanyahu and his allies have been doing the same thing in Israel after Hamas terrorists attacked that country on October 7. A Daily Mail story says:

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to 'completely eliminate' Hamas on Saturday night as he revealed IDF forces have been fighting within the Gaza Strip to get rid of 'evil' and 'bring back' hostages.

He told Israeli citizens that the ongoing ground operation is the second phase of the war against Hamas, which he said would see Israeli 'good' triumph over 'evil'.

I don't like that word, evil. When combined with good, it wrongly portrays people, and reality, as being divided into two mutually incompatible camps. That sort of dualism is not only inaccurate, it is dangerous.

Calling people evil dehumanizes them. It reduces complex human beings to a single abstraction, since as soon as we try to come to grips with what "evil" really means, that attempt is doomed to result in failure.

There's no need for the word. Let's use Hamas as an example. 

Hamas terrorists committed horrible atrocities. They killed innocent men, women, and children. That's an accurate way of describing Hamas, though naturally additional details could be given about what they did.

So what's the point in calling Hamas evil? Well, the point is to draw a sharp dividing line between Evil Hamas and Good Israel, just as politicians in the United States did after 9/11 with talk of Evil Al Qaeda and Good America. 

That way atrocities committed by the good guys can be excused as being a necessary side effect of the war against evil. Today Manjit, a commenter on this blog, shared a talk by the UNICEF Executive Director on the humanitarian situation in Gaza. An excerpt:

After little more than three weeks, the devastating tally is quickly adding up, with rampant grave violations being committed against children. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, more than 8,300 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, including over 3,400 children, with over 6,300 children injured. This means that more than 420 children are being killed or injured in Gaza every day – a number which should shake each of us to our core. 

Of course, the violence being perpetrated against children extends beyond the Gaza Strip. In the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, at least 37 children have reportedly been killed. And of course more than 30 Israeli children have reportedly been killed, while at least 20 remain hostage in the Gaza Strip – their fates unknown. 

Thousands of Palestinian children have been killed by Israel in retaliation for the killing and hostage taking of about  50 Israeli children. So tell me: where is the firm line between good and evil here? Isn't it true that atrocities are being committed by both sides in the Hamas-Israel conflict?

Sure, we can debate endlessly over who is more good and who more evil. But I think a better approach is to cease using terms like "good" and "evil" and simply talk about the specifics of any given situation.

If it's wrong for Hamas to kill Israeli children, then it's wrong for Israel to kill Palestinian children. Each side can justify the wrongness by saying that the killing was necessary to achieve a desirable end, but that doesn't make killing children the right thing to do.

An Israeli historian, Gil Troy, had an opinion piece published in the Jerusalem Post back in August 2023. Here's an excerpt from "Israeli, American politics are theological good-versus-evil battles."

Clearly, epidemics of horrific leadership and atrocious behavior haunt two of the world’s greatest democracies. This rampage of recklessness left and right reflects three big, broad, bad trends.

First, all-enveloping partisanship made even a confusing, scientific dispute about mask-wearing during COVID, a partisan issue in America – and an identity-signifier. That zealousness reflects the spreading partisan blindness which has MAGA voters ignoring Trump’s alleged crimes and responsible Democrats ignoring Biden’s decline. 

Second, the all-or-nothingness surrounding most controversies has made politics theological, turning debates into good-versus-evil, rather than the better-of-two-evils whereby choices made are properly considered and balanced.

Such fanaticism riles Israelis daily with Channel 14’s pro-Bibi propagandizing as he destroys his legacy piece-by-piece, paralleled by a supposedly pro-democracy movement setting horrific precedents in unpatriotic protests that their opponents will mimic next time.

Finally, the pervasive, invasive, nature of social media freezes, weaponizes, and catastrophizes once-manageable differences of opinion into do-or-die fights between Team Good and Team Evil. 

Israel on verge of becoming a Jewish authoritarian nation

Fairly frequently religious people say that atheists like me overstate the danger of fundamentalism. The argument goes, "What's the harm in religion? Everybody should be free to believe in whatever they want to, whether it be God or whatever."

Well, what's happening in Israel right now is a great example of why fundamentalism is so dangerous. Since Israel was founded after the horror of the Holocaust, there's no problem with the country being largely Jewish.

But right-wing Jewish fundamentalists are determined to go much farther than that.

They want to put the judicial system in Israel under the control of Parliament, which means that there would be no checks on the power of the Prime Minister, which currently is Benjamin Netanyahu -- who is under investigation for several criminal offenses.

A New York Times story, "Netanyahu Scores Another Victory, but at What Price?", describes the role religious fundamentalism is playing in the political turmoil Israel is experiencing.

Once again, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has pushed the limits, defying a nationwide protest movement to win new curbs on the Israeli judiciary’s power to pose a check to his far-right coalition government.

But after years of brinkmanship and chaos management by the Israeli leader, this feels different. Such is the rancor and rupture caused by this particular Netanyahu victory that many Israelis wonder whether the damage to society might not be fixable — and whether Mr. Netanyahu will be able to manage the aftermath of a showdown he set in motion.

...The passing of the vote, minutes later, provided a rare moment of certainty, after a seven-month period in which it was often unclear, even until Monday afternoon, whether Mr. Netanyahu would really dare to press ahead with his unpopular proposal.

It also took Israel into the unknown.

At home, it left one half of society wondering whether their country — under the control of Mr. Netanyahu’s alliance of religious conservatives and ultranationalists — would now slide slowly into a religious autocracy.

“These could be the last days of Israeli democracy,” said Yuval Noah Harari, an Israeli author and historian of humanity. “We might witness the rise of a Jewish supremacist dictatorship in Israel, which will not just be a terrible thing for Israeli citizens, but also a terrible thing for the Palestinians, for Jewish traditions, and potentially, for the entire Middle East.”

...But to critics and supporters alike, questions remain about the stability and capacity of Israel’s armed forces, after a surge in protests from thousands of military reservists.

There is also the specter of social and economic turmoil, after major unrest broke out overnight in cities across the country, labor leaders warned of a general strike, a doctors’ union announced a daylong reduction in medical services, and high-tech businesses said they were considering moving to more stable economies, according to a new survey.

Abroad, the vote fostered greater ambiguity about the future of Israel’s alliance with the United States, after expressions of growing alarm from the Biden administration. It heightened the unease among American Jews about the trajectory of the Jewish state.

...For Israel’s secular protest movement, it was another blow, but one that many saw as a call to keep fighting. The movement’s seven-month struggle to delay the overhaul, through weekly marches and rallies, has helped re-energize a privileged sector of society that had at times been seen as apathetic or complacent about Israel’s political direction.

“This is some kind of consolation,” said Mira Lapidot, a museum curator and regular protest participant. “There is a sense of needing to decide what kind of life you want to live.”

But underpinning this rejuvenation is also a sense of fear. Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition includes a finance minister who has described himself as a proud homophobe, a security minister who was convicted of racist incitement, and an ultra-Orthodox party that proposed fining women for reading the Torah at the holiest site in Judaism.

For Israel’s Arab minority, which forms roughly one-fifth of the country’s population of nine million, the law feels like the harbinger of a dangerous new era.

Trump's arraignment reminded me of connection between law and science

Today Donald Trump was arraigned in New York City on 34 felony counts involving the falsification of business records. 

Trump at his arraignment 

I was thrilled.

Trump is a horrible human being. He has lied and cheated his way through a life that, amazingly, until now hadn't included being charged with a crime. That changed today, and almost certainly Trump will be charged with additional crimes since there are other ongoing investigations into his wrongdoing.

Following the news about the indictment against Trump that was unsealed today, I heard lots of legal analysis on MSNBC and CNN. I also read stories about legal issues involving the indictment on the Washington Post and New York Times web sites.

I find the law fascinating. I also find science fascinating. But somehow I hadn't made a connection between the two until now. At least, not consciously.

Here's some of the parallels that come to mind.

Both law and science strive for objectivity. Judges and juries are expected to leave behind their personal biases and preferences in favor of rulings that rely on facts and the law. Scientists are expected to behave similarly, making truth the foundation of their investigations, even if their findings aren't what they hoped.

I said "expected" twice in the previous paragraph because law and science are imperfect disciplines. Mistakes are made. Scandals happen. False conclusions are accepted.

However, I have little patience for religious fundamentalists who criticize science and scientists because of those imperfections. I also have little patience for those who consider our legal system to be worthless because innocent people sometimes are found guilty, and guilty people sometimes are found innocent.

Perfection isn't the goal in law and science. 

The goal is to arrive at conclusions through a method that is better than any other approach. For example, judges and juries are much more likely to reach a fair verdict than a king or queen who sits on their throne and decides the fate of people accused of crimes.

And science is much more likely to discover truths about reality than religion is. Careful observation and experimentation, along with rigorous review of claimed findings in an open process, will beat blind faith and dogma when it comes to knowing things about our world and the universe.

But law and science both are messy. In a good way. Meaning, they are designed to be productively inefficient. 

Today the judge in the Trump case said that the defense has four months to file motions. Then the prosecution has four months to respond to those motions. This means that the next hearing in the case won't be until December 2023, with the trial not scheduled to begin until January 2024 at the earliest.

And it could be even longer. The defense is hoping for spring 2024. The trial will take months, probably. Then a verdict could be appealed. 

Like many other people, I wish our legal system would move faster. But I rarely, if ever, hear expert lawyers say that. They accept that cases move at a speed that is designed to arrive at the fairest outcome, not the fastest outcome.

Same applies to science. Research can take years, if not decades. A seemingly significant finding isn't accepted without question. It has to be reviewed by other scientists. It has to be published so others can critique the validity of the finding.

By contrast, religious experiences tend to be accepted uncritically by both the person who had the experience and people who believe that the experience confirms a certain theology. Preachers aren't accustomed to someone interrupting their sermon with "Excuse me, but I think you've got that wrong."

Lawyers and scientists are very accustomed to hearing this.

Winston Churchill's quote about democracy is appropriate here. Law and science aren't perfect, but they're a heck of a lot better than the alternatives to finding justice and truth.

Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.

Trump indictment fills me with joy

Yesterday I discovered a secret to happiness: learning that Donald Trump has been criminally indicted. Check out my Salem Political Snark blog post, "Joyous day! Trump is indicted."

Religious bigotry behind hatred of transgender people

There are lots of reasons why I reject religion. One big one is that religious people, especially fundamentalists, often are extremely narrow-minded and judgmental when it comes to sexual matters.

Here in the United States, opposition to transgender individuals is a disgusting hallmark of the Republican Party -- which includes evangelicals and other religious zealots who love to hate those who don't conform to their theological beliefs about gender.

It's a plain fact that some people with a male or female body don't view themselves as being the sex they were assigned at birth. A CNN story, "GOP lawmakers escalate fight against gender-affirming care with bills seeking to expand the scope of bans," describes what gender-affirming care is all about.

Gender-affirming care is medically necessary, evidence-based care that uses a multidisciplinary approach to help a person transition from their assigned gender – the one the person was designated at birth – to their affirmed gender – the gender by which one wants to be known.

Though many of the bills introduced so far this year target trans youth and their access to gender-affirming care, at least four states saw bills introduced this session that would restrict such care for individuals over the age of 18, including at least two states where proposed bans covered people under the age of 26.

...Major medical associations agree that gender-affirming care is clinically appropriate for children and adults with gender dysphoria, which, according to the American Psychiatric Association, is psychological distress that may result when a person’s gender identity and sex assigned at birth do not align.

Though the care is highly individualized, some children may decide to use reversible puberty suppression therapy. This part of the process may also include hormone therapy that can lead to gender-affirming physical change. Surgical interventions, however, are not typically done on children and many health care providers do not offer them to minors.

I'm totally supportive of gender-affirming care. I've always identified as male, but I can understand the distress someone would feel if the sex of their body doesn't match the sex they psychologically identify with.

So it's cruel for Republican lawmakers to target transgender youth, along with a broader attack on LGBTQ people in general. Recently one conservative pundit went so far as to say that "transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely."

Obviously that isn't as bad as Nazi attitudes toward Jews, but it's highly disturbing nonetheless. How would he like it if there was a movement to eradicate conservatism from public life entirely?

Religion plays a large role in transgender bigotry. The American Bar Association discusses this in "The Role of Religious Objections to Transgender and Nonbinary Inclusion and Equality and/or Gender Identity Protection."

The core basis for many of the faith-based objections to transgender and nonbinary acceptance comes from deeply ingrained theologically grounded worldviews. Certain people see humanity as having been created by a divine being who specifically created humans as male and as female. This serves a reproductive purpose, and, for many, also differentiates the roles that people are expected to play in the world. To them, biological sex is divinely ordained and assigned to each person according to divine will.

It is therefore unsurprising that some people of faith will treat others according to their assigned sex at birth and will consider requiring them to acknowledge another’s gender identity to either be untruthful and/or unfaithful. They will not accept a person’s stated gender identity, and they will not accept the possibility that there are any nonbinary people.

This shows the absurdity of religion. Clearly there are transgender people. Clearly there are nonbinary people who don't identify as either male or female. Clearly there are people who are attracted to the same sex.

Yet because a holy book or holy person says this is wrong, reality is ignored by religious fundamentalists, causing them to deny the rights of LGBTQ people who don't conform to their ignorant theological perspective.

A 2017 survey by the Pew Research Center found that attitudes toward transgender people divide along religious lines. 

The American public is sharply divided along religious lines over whether it is possible for someone to be a gender different from their sex at birth, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis.

Most Christians in the United States (63%) say that whether someone is a man or a woman is determined by their sex at birth. Among religious “nones” – those who identify religiously as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular” – about six-in-ten (62%) say they think a person’s gender is not necessarily determined by the sex they are assigned at birth.

Well, I'm proud to be part of the religious "nones" who accept the reality that a person's gender can be different from the sex they were assigned at birth. I just wish religious people who believe otherwise would stop trying to force transgender people to conform to their dogmatism.

India's Modi doesn't want people to see BBC documentary critical of him

Politicians are much the same the world over. They hate criticism. But in countries with robust freedom of speech and a free press, like the United States, politicians find it difficult to shut down criticism of them.

Not so in India, where Prime Minister Modi and his allies are working hard to keep people from seeing a BBC documentary, "India: the Modi Question."

TWITTER AND YOUTUBE censored a report critical of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in coordination with the government of India, according to a top Indian official. Officials called for the Big Tech companies to take action against a BBC documentary exploring Modi’s role in a genocidal 2002 massacre in the Indian state of Gujarat, which the officials deemed a “propaganda piece.”

In a series of posts, Kanchan Gupta, senior adviser at the Indian government’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, denounced the BBC documentary as “hostile propaganda and anti-India garbage.” He said that both Twitter and YouTube had been ordered to block links to the film, before adding that the platforms “have complied with the directions.” Gupta’s statements coincided with posts from Twitter users in India who claimed to have shared links to the documentary but whose posts were later removed and replaced with a legal notice.

...The Gujarat riots, as the violence is sometimes known, occurred in 2002, when Modi was the chief minister of the state. A group of militants aligned with the Hindu nationalist movement, which encompasses Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, launched a violent campaign against local Muslims. Modi, who has been accused of personally encouraging the violence, reportedly told police forces to stand down in the face of the ongoing violence, which killed about 1,000 people.

“The documentary has unnerved Mr. Modi as he continues to evade accountability for his complicity in the violence,” Naik, the journalist, said. “He sees the documentary as a threat to his image internationally and has launched an unprecedented crackdown in India.”

Of course, when the Indian government tells people not to watch the documentary, that's tremendous free advertising for it.

I haven't watched the documentary yet. It's difficult to find it online without paying for a subscription to some video/movie service. The best source I could find was the IslamiCity web site, which says it provides "a non-sectarian, comprehensive and holistic view of Islam and Muslims."

Part 1 of the documentary is here on that site. Part 2 of the documentary is here on that site.

The BBC is a respected organization, so my bet is that the documentary mostly, if not totally, tells the truth about the Gujarat violence and Modi's subsequent embracing of extreme Hindu nationalism. 

Courageous people in India are screening the documentary despite the government's threats against those who do this. It's really disturbing that police in riot gear were sent to a university in advance of a planned screening. 

If Modi thinks the documentary is untrue or unfair to him, he could have commented on it prior to its release, as the BBC requested. But he didn't do this, which indicates to me that Modi just doesn't like the truth being revealed about his role in the Gujarat killings.

This episode puts Modi, and India, in a bad light. A Washington Post story is scathing. Here's excerpts from "Censorship, arrests, power cuts. India scrambles to block BBC documentary."

NEW DELHI — The film had already been banned, the social media posts censored. Now, the students huddled without light or electricity around glowing smartphones to watch what their government had deemed to be subversive foreign propaganda.

China? No. They were in India, ostensibly the world’s largest democracy, and watching the BBC.

The Indian government over the past week has embarked on an extraordinary campaign to prevent its citizens from viewing a new documentary by the British broadcaster that explores Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s alleged role in a deadly 2002 riot that saw more than 1,000 people — mostly Muslims — killed.

Indian officials, invoking emergency powers, ordered clips from the documentary to be censored on social media platforms including YouTube and Twitter. The Foreign Ministry spokesman lambasted the BBC production as a “propaganda piece” made with a “colonial mind-set.” One junior minister from Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) declared that watching the film amounted to “treason.”

On Tuesday evening, authorities cut electricity to the student union hall at New Delhi’s prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru University in an attempt to prevent the film being screened — a move that only provoked defiant students around the country to try to host more viewings.

...All told, the remarkable steps taken by the government seemed to reinforce a central point of the BBC series: that the world’s largest democracy was sliding into authoritarianism under Modi, who rose to national power in 2014 and won reelection in 2019 on a Hindu nationalist platform.

Raman Jit Singh Chima, Asia Pacific policy director of the digital rights group Access Now, said the episode should “give more attention” to the “dangerous situation” of eroding civil liberties in India. The government has become “far more efficient and aggressive” in blocking content during moments of national political controversy, he said.

“How is it acceptable for India, as a democracy, to be ordering such a large amount of web censorship in the country?” Chima said. “You have to look at this incident as part of a cumulative wave of censorship.”

Christian Nationalism defeated in Pennsylvania, but still scary

Politics is divisive and arouses strong emotions. Religions are divisive and arouse strong emotions. Mix politics with religion, and not surprisingly the worst qualities of each can combine in a toxic combination.

Such is evident in countries around the world where dogmatic religion fuses with narrow-minded nationalism. Iran. India. Saudi Arabia. Israel. There are others, including the United States.

This was personified in the recent midterm election here in the United States by Doug Mastriano, the Republican candidate for Governor of Pennsylvania. 

Fortunately, Mastriano lost to Democrat Josh Shapiro by a large margin: 56% to 42%. But in the runup to the election, Mastriano often was described as the most dangerous Trump-backed far-right candidate running in a swing state.

A big reason for this was that in addition to the usual power of a Governor, in Pennsylvania the Governor appoints the Secretary of State, who oversees elections. And Mastriano thoroughly accepted Trump's Big Lie that the election was stolen from him in 2020.

So the reasonable fear was that if Mastriano was elected Governor of Pennsylvania, he would refuse to accept his state's choice for president in 2024 if Trump ran and lost to the Democrat nominee.

But the pre-election November 7 issue of The New Yorker contains a story about Mastriano that includes descriptions of his Christian Nationalism which makes Mastriano an even scarier candidate, since he not only embraced a political Big Lie but also a religious Big Lie.
Download How Election Subversion Went Mainstream in Pennsylvania | The New Yorker

Here's some excerpts related to his Christian Nationalism.

Mastriano, who is tall and bald, wore a black baseball hat. His wife, Rebbie, a chaplain, stood at his right hand, her jean jacket unzipped. Mastriano reminded the audience that he was running only because, a year earlier, in this very barn, a small group of followers had begged him to. “You urged us, even with tears in your eyes, ‘Please run for governor,’ ” he said. He had also received instructions from Heaven, Rebbie added: “God said go!”

...In the past year, grassroots groups, led by Faddis and others, have come to describe themselves as part of a statewide “patriot movement,” which Borick characterized as a “broadly defined populist and xenophobic movement.” 

The movement is fuelled in some quarters by what scholars call Christian Nationalism, which is centered on the notion that America is and should be a Christian country. Few people self-identify as Christian Nationalists; in 2021, Mastriano asked me, “Is this a term you fabricated?”

But social scientists describe it as a belief system characterized by Dominionism: the idea that God has ordained Christians to exercise control over political institutions in order to prepare for the Second Coming of Christ. “They don’t believe in one person, one vote,” Philip Gorski, a sociologist at Yale, told me. “They think they’re involved in a battle between good and evil.”

In 2020, this ideology helped drive the moral call to overturn the election. “Some of their most fanatical supernatural beliefs have been mainstreamed into the maga movement, such as the notions that Democrats are demonic or engaged in witchcraft,” Jennifer Cohn, an election-security advocate, told me.

In November, 2020, Abby Abildness, the state director of Pennsylvania’s Prayer Caucus and an “apostle” with the New Apostolic Reformation, a network of pastors, hosted a series of “Jericho marches”—religious precursors to the insurrection. Followers gathered in Harrisburg, likening it to the Biblical city of Jericho, where, according to Scripture, God knocked down the walls.

At similar marches in some states, people wore animal skins and blew rams’ horns, as they imagined the ancient Israelites did on their way into battle. Abildness declared her intent that, with God’s help, Pennsylvania’s electors would “go to the President” rather than to Biden. 

...Two years later, Mastriano won a special election for the State Senate. He pushed bills that would mandate prayer in schools and allow adoption agencies to turn away same-sex couples. “ ‘Separation of church and state’—anyone who says that, show me in the Constitution where it says it,” Mastriano has said. “It’s never been there.”

In the spring of 2020, when Governor Wolf called for places of worship to suspend in-person services, Mastriano appeared at protests alongside armed men who wore fatigues and Hawaiian shirts, a look associated with a militia called the Boogaloo Bois.

...In December, 2020, Mastriano took part in two Jericho marches. Later, on a conference call, he prayed that God would help protesters “seize the power” on January 6th. He continued, “Bless these letters that President Trump asked me this morning to send to Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy outlining the fraud in Pennsylvania, and this will embolden them to stand firm and disregard what has happened in Pennsylvania until we have an investigation.” 

...Mastriano, certainly, has remained steadfast. In September, he announced that, to win God’s favor, he would undertake a forty-day fast, to end on Election Day.

How the media and Republicans got the election so wrong

Being a political junkie -- someone who has loved to follow politics since my childhood -- I feel like my immersion in the United States midterm election that happened last Tuesday, and whose votes are still being counted, should enable me to draw some philosophical conclusions from what happened.

Well, at least I'll give that a try. 

The gist of what happened, for those who don't live in the United States and/or don't follow American politics closely, is that the widely predicted Republican "Red Wave" turned out to be a Red Ripple, if even that.

Both the mainstream media and Republican leaders thought that Biden's unpopularity, combined with the historic losses that have afflicted the party of power in a midterm election (meaning, two years after a presidential election, which happens every four years), likely would propel Republicans into a clear majority in both the House and Senate.

But currently, three days after the election, Democrats are poised to maintain control of the Senate (results from Nevada should confirm that tomorrow) and control of the House is still up for grabs. At best, Republicans now are predicted to only have a 5-10 seat majority in the House, not dozens of seats as was widely thought before last Tuesday.

So why did the election turn out so differently from what was forecasted? The polls turned out to be fairly accurate in most cases. And Democrats had done well in some special elections prior to the midterms.

Thus data and facts were available that should have enabled the media and Republicans to be more realistic about the election. Indeed, some Democratic analysts correctly surmised that the election would turn out quite well for their party, which proved to be the case.

One reason that predictions didn't mesh well with the eventual reality is the same reason religious belief doesn't mesh well with reality: a longing for a pleasing narrative is prioritized over understanding how things really are.

Jesus saves. God has a plan for you. Notions like those provide a foundation for religions to construct stories that make their believers say Amen! when they hear them. The religious believers are destined to have wonderful things happen to them because that's what the narrative they embrace says.

Pretty much the same thing happened prior to the election.

Both the mainstream media and Republican leaders embraced a narrative that Biden was unpopular, inflation was high, voters didn't really care about abortion restrictions all that much, history was on the side of the party not in power during a midterm election, so Democrats were going to have a horrible election as Republicans triumphed.

Facts that didn't support that narrative were ignored or downplayed. So now the blame game has started as to why Republicans did much worse than expected and Democrats did much better. 

The simple answer is that voters rejected the crazy conspiracy theories and right-wing extremism being pushed by many Republican candidates who won their primaries by spouting crazy conspiracy theories and right-wing extremism. 

Along the way the Republican Party forgot that almost always an election can't be won just by appealing to the Republican base, their core supporters. A candidate has to reach out to independent voters and Democrats also. But Republicans had so much faith in their crazy ideas, they assumed that other voters would also.

Which turned out, not surprisingly, to be an incorrect assumption. Faith only works when someone accepts the tenets that accompany that faith. Otherwise faith just seems like crazy talk. Not being a Christian, I have no interest in Jesus saves or God has a plan for you. 

Likewise, lots of American voters had no interest in the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, which became an article of faith for any Republican candidate who wanted Trump's endorsement -- as many did. So Trump became a sort of religious leader at the head of the Republican party. To disagree with Trump was to be an apostate, an infidel, an unbeliever, a skeptic.

And that meant political suicide in a Republican primary.

So many Republican candidates lost in the midterm election because they cozied up to Trump, their Dear Leader, instead of tuning in to what voters actually cared about: not that Trump lost the 202o election, but that American democracy was in danger by people who went along with the Big Lie that Biden won that election in a fraudulent fashion. 

Moderate Republican candidates did quite well in the election. This is reassuring. Most voters in the United States want democracy strengthened, extreme political positions weakened, and elected officials to be caring, compassionate, and competent.

Three words that definitely don't describe Donald Trump. So Republicans paid the price of putting Trump into an exalted position as the head of the Republican Party who can't be questioned, and of embracing a political narrative that felt good, yet wasn't founded in reality.

Meaning, they acted like religious believers. 

Why unhappiness with tomorrow's election will be universal

With today being midterm election day here in the United States, I may be too obsessed with following election results on TV tonight to write a post for this blog.

But a post I wrote yesterday for my political blog, "Everyone will be unhappy with tomorrow's election," has some philosophical undertones. Maybe even overtones. 

It ends with:

So soon I'll be looking on the bright side. And also on the dark side. Such is life. And politics.

Putin is an autocrat. So are many religious leaders.

Today Vladimir Putin, the autocrat who controls Russia with extremely little opposition or checks and balances, did what authoritarians like him do.

Act horribly.

In Putin's twisted psyche, he has the right to unilaterally declare that four regions of eastern Ukraine now are part of Russia, following sham referendums in those regions where soldiers knocked on doors and demanded that people vote yes or no on joining Russia.

Not surprisingly, the fake voting produced strong majorities in favor of becoming part of Russia. Now Putin can claim that if Ukraine attacks those regions, as it certainly will keep on doing, that's an attack on Russia.

So nuclear weapons could be used to defend the fictitious motherland. 

That's crazy. But few people in Russia will call out Putin's craziness, because he holds virtually all of the power in his country, having smashed dissent and a free press.

On the whole, I prefer religious authoritarians who preach their own brand of craziness, because they don't control nuclear weapons or command armies. At least, I hope they don't. If Iran or ISIS were to get a nuclear weapon, I'd be deeply worried at religious zealots being able to carry out their destructive fantasies. 

The appeal of autocrats is perplexing. 

Many gurus, for example, attract throngs of disciples who want to be told how to behave and what to believe. I guess not thinking for yourself is easier than being spiritually independent. I fell partly into this trap when I was a member of a guru-centered religious organization for 35 years.

However, I retained a healthy amount of skepticism even as I outwardly complied with various rules. And almost certainly a large proportion of the Russian population is skeptical about Putin's ability to rule their country.

Problem is, autocrats -- whether political or religious -- appeal to the darker side of human nature. They put forward a vision where following their dictatorial orders will lead to great rewards, material or spiritual. Reportedly Putin's speech was autocratic in both regards, political and religious.

Thankfully, Putin has few allies in the world. Even China and India are lukewarm toward his claim of eastern Ukraine now being part of Russia, though they do business with Putin in other regards.

I can only hope that autocrats have a steadily diminishing fan base.

Yes, it can be easier to follow an authoritarian than to chart your own course in life. But I've never regretted leaving behind the religious autocracy of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, led as it is by a guru whose utterances are viewed as divine commands.

One day, perhaps in the far future, Russia will become a democracy. I'm less confident that autocratic religious organizations will do the same, but it's certainly possible. 

School board ditches pledge of allegiance due to "under God" language

Nice to see the Fargo, North Dakota school board did the right thing and stopped saying the Pledge of Allegiance at its meetings after a school board member made some great arguments about why this didn't fit with their policy of inclusion.

After all, "under God" does indeed refer to the Judeo-Christian god. If the pledge said "under gods, or no god," that would be an accurate reflection of the wide variety of religious beliefs in the United States, which includes atheists and agnostics who don't believe in any god.

To see a brief video of the persuasive argument used by the school board member, check out Fargo School Board nixes Pledge of Allegiance due to 'under God' phrase.

Christian nationalism a threat to American democracy

Most Christians are normal people who happen to believe in Jesus as their savior. I've got no problem with that, though I think they're wrong about Jesus, plus the rest of their Christian dogma.

Religions can be false (all are, in my atheist opinion) but not dangerous.

However, Christian nationalists are a distinct threat to American democracy, as evidenced by Doug Mastriano winning the Republican nomination for Pennsylvania governor in last Tuesday's primary election.

A day after the election, Greg Sargent, a columnist for the Washington Post, wrote "Say it clearly: Republicans just nominated a pro-Trump insurrectionist." In his piece Sargent describes how Mastriano views himself as doing God's will by overturning election results where a Democrat wins.

This is exceedingly dangerous. Mix right-wing political fanaticism with Christian nationalist religious fanaticism, and you've got a double-dose of zealotry devoted to overturning democracy.

Here's excerpts from Sargent's column pertaining to Mastriano's twisted worldview.

For the love of democracy, please stop using the phrase “election denier.”

Now that Doug Mastriano has won the GOP nomination for governor in Pennsylvania, countless news accounts are describing him with that phrase. This is meant to convey the idea that Mastriano won’t accept Donald Trump’s 2020 presidential reelection loss.

That’s true, but it’s insufficient. Let’s state this plainly: Pennsylvania Republicans just nominated a full-blown insurrectionist who intends to use the power of the office to ensure that, as long as he is governor, no Democratic presidential candidate wins his state again.

Mastriano’s victory also highlights another story that’s bigger than this one contest: The role of Christian nationalism in fueling the growing insurrectionist streak on the right. This nexus underscores the danger this movement poses in a way that also demands more clarity about the worldview of candidates like Mastriano.

...Mastriano is running on what is functionally an open vow to use the power of the governor’s office to nullify future election losses, even if they are procedurally legitimate, and even if he knows this to be the case.

This becomes unavoidable once you look closely at Mastriano’s own conduct. And his Christian nationalist sympathies underscore the point.

...As governor, Mastriano would likely handpick a secretary of state who would resist certifying a razor-thin legitimate Democratic victory. And Mastriano would likely try to certify sham electors for Trump or another GOP candidate.

The 2024 election in Pennsylvania might not be close; either the Republican or the Democrat might win easily. Alternatively, such an effort by Mastriano might fail. But let’s be clear: He’s telegraphing a willingness to attempt such a thing, and that he’d likely see it as a righteous act as well, even if there’s little actual voter fraud, and even if he knows this.

This may seem like a leap, but to experts in Christian nationalism, it makes perfect sense. Sarah Posner, a scholar of the religious right, has extensively demonstrated that Mastriano’s efforts for Trump were infused with Christian nationalist fervor, which holds that Trump was installed in the White House by God as “restorer of America’s white Christian heritage.”

Mastriano hinted at this in his victory speech Tuesday night. “God is good,” Mastriano said. “He uses people like you and me to change history.”

The idea that Mastriano’s victory shows God using him to “change history” is a textbook Christian nationalist trope, notes Posner. As she says, this worldview holds that the United States was founded as a Christian nation, and that this is being subverted by satanic and secular forces that Christian nationalists are duty-bound to resist.

“It’s their patriotic duty as believers to fight for that Christian nation,” Posner told me. That’s been “orthodoxy” for a long time, Posner says, but the new ingredient is the eagerness to overturn elections in service of that higher end.

Mastriano is saying he’s “empowered as a believer to overturn election results to achieve God’s will,” Posner said. To prevent the subversion of the “Christian nation,” Posner added, he hopes to take “the God-given power to change election results” to the governor’s mansion.

In this telling, liberal democratic proceduralism is inherently nonbinding. Even procedurally legitimate electoral outcomes can be deemed out of step with God’s plan and subject to nullification. Vox’s Zack Beauchamp describes these tendencies as “American Orbanism,” after Hungarian leader Viktor Orban: It relies on religiously inspired culture-warring to energize and justify the curtailment or abandonment of democracy.

It should be obvious that phrases like “election denialist” and “election conspiracist” don’t do justice to what we’re really seeing here. Getting it right on what’s at stake in places like Pennsylvania is truly urgent.

Leaked Supreme Court opinion shows abortion rights about to be overturned

Christian fundamentalists in the United States are happy right now.

Today Politico reported that a leaked draft Supreme Court opinion indicates that Roe v. Wade, which found a constitutional right to abortion in that 1973 case, is about to be overturned.

The Supreme Court has voted to strike down the landmark Roe v. Wadedecision, according to an initial draft majority opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito circulated inside the court and obtained by POLITICO.

The draft opinion is a full-throated, unflinching repudiation of the 1973 decision which guaranteed federal constitutional protections of abortion rights and a subsequent 1992 decision – Planned Parenthood v. Casey – that largely maintained the right. “Roe was egregiously wrong from the start,” Alito writes.

“We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled,” he writes in the document, labeled as the “Opinion of the Court.” “It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.”

This is the first time a Supreme Court opinion has been leaked to the press.

It shows that someone at the court, perhaps a law clerk, recognized how horrible overturning abortion rights will be, and wanted to give a head start to the outrage rather than wait until late June or early July when the abortion decision was expected to be released to the public.

There are decent reasons to oppose abortion and even better reasons to support the right of women to choose an abortion. But a truly lousy reason to be against abortion is that this is what God wants. As in Texas Governor Greg Abbott saying, "Our creator endowed us with the right to life."

That's absurd. 

Since there is no demonstrable evidence of a creator God (or any other sort of God), obviously there's no basis for claiming to know what God has done or wants people to do.

I can understand why someone objects to abortion. A fetus is a potential human life. But a pregnant woman is an actual human life. Women are at greater risk of dying from pregnancy than from an abortion. 

So abortion is justified for that reason, along with other reasons, including simply this being what a woman chooses.

A terrible reason is that an embryo must be treated as a person at conception, which is the teaching of the Catholic Church, according to a BBC article. Obviously a few cells isn't a person. Thus probably the notion of an immortal soul is the reason for viewing those few cells as deserving more protection than the woman in whose womb the cells reside.

Six of the nine justices of the Supreme Court are Catholic, with five of those six being part of the 6-3 conservative majority. The sixth conservative, Neil Gorsuch, is Episcopalian but was raised Catholic.

So even though the final decision on abortion will be couched in legal terms, pretty clearly religious belief plays a large part in how the justices view abortion. Opposition to abortion flows largely from fundamentalist churches.

Those opposed to abortion, even in cases of rape and incest, appear to have won this Supreme Court battle, but the war for women's rights and individual freedom will continue. Hopefully the backlash over the forthcoming Supreme Court decision will lead to voters punishing Republicans at the polls in the November election.

LIfe lessons from Ukrainian military success

As I've noted before, and surely will again, I find the courage and determination of the Ukrainian people deeply inspiring.

Vladimir Putin, the Russian tyrant, thought he could send his forces into Ukraine and enjoy an easy victory.

President Zelensky would flee the country. Russian tanks would roll into Kyiv after minimal resistance. A puppet government would be installed, making Ukraine part of the Russian sphere of influence.

Thankfully, Putin was very much wrong.

He underestimated the Ukrainian military. He underestimated the will of the Ukrainian people to keep their country independent. He underestimated the willingness of the United States and our allies to back Ukraine in its fight against Russia's unprovoked invasion.

Yesterday The Atlantic published a story, "Ukraine's Three to One Advantage: It’s not technology or tactics that has given Ukrainian fighters their greatest edge."

Before sharing what does give Ukrainian fighters their greatest edge, the story's author, Elliott Ackerman, discusses other reasons they're doing so well. I see some parallels here with religious fundamentalism versus open-minded inquiry.

First, Ackerman talks about the benefits of an anti-platform-centric military. Meaning, instead of basing a battle plan around gigantic tanks and ships like an aircraft carrier, small portable missiles can demolish much larger weapon systems.

A single Ukrainian solider can carry a Javelin missile capable of destroying an armored Russian vehicle like a tank. So bigger doesn't always mean better. 

Second, Ukrainian tactics rely much more on individual initiative. Top-down control, which is how most religions are organized, lacks creativity and flexibility.

Russian doctrine relies on centralized command and control, while mission-style command and control—as the name suggests—relies on the individual initiative of every soldier, from the private to the general, not only to understand the mission but then to use their initiative to adapt to the exigencies of a chaotic and ever-changing battlefield in order to accomplish that mission.

...“The Russians don’t empower their soldiers,” Zagorodnyuk explained. “They tell their soldiers to go from Point A to Point B, and only when they get to Point B will they be told where to go next, and junior soldiers are rarely told the reason they are performing any task. This centralized command and control can work, but only when events go according to plan. When the plan doesn’t hold together, their centralized method collapses. No one can adapt, and you get things like 40-mile-long traffic jams outside Kyiv.”

So thinking for yourself as a situation changes is better than sticking to a rigid plan of attack. This fits with my long-held commitment to spiritual independence, rather than obeying the dictates of a religious leader, guru, holy book, or such.

Then there's the Three to One Advantage -- the most important of all.

When someone is fighting a righteous battle against a malevolent aggressor who has invaded their homeland, the advantage goes to the defender, who holds the moral high ground.

The longer we talked, the more the conversation veered away from the tangible, technical variables of Ukraine’s military capacity and toward the psychology of Ukraine’s military. Napoleon, who fought many battles in this part of the world, observed that “the moral is to the physical as three is to one.” I was thinking of this maxim as Jed and I finished our tea.

In Ukraine—at least in this first chapter of the war—Napoleon’s words have held true, proving in many ways decisive.

In my earlier conversation with Zagorodnyuk, as he and I went through the many reforms and technologies that had given the Ukrainian military its edge, he was quick to point out the one variable he believed trumped all others.

“Our motivation—it is the most important factor, more important than anything. We’re fighting for the lives of our families, for our people, and for our homes. The Russians don’t have any of that, and there’s nowhere they can go to get it.”

This also explains why most of the world, aside from a few autocracies like China who support Putin's authoritarianism, is backing Ukraine. As Zelensky frequently observes, Ukraine isn't fighting just for itself. Ukraine is fighting for democracies everywhere.

If Ukraine can be invaded by Russia for no good reason, then other large countries will be emboldened to do the same.

And to those who may be thinking, What about the American invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq?, I'd respond that those situations are quite different from Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Afghanistan harbored those responsible for 9/11 and was dominated by the repressive Taliban. Iraq was ruled by a cruel tyrant, Saddam Hussein. 

True, Iraq didn't have weapons of mass destruction, as the Bush administration wrongly alleged. But the United States set a goal of making Iraq into a democracy, which was to our credit. Putin has no interest in democracy. He only cares about the raw exercise of power and re-establishing the old Soviet Union to the greatest possible extent.

Putin is an authoritarian. So are most religious leaders.

There are lots of reasons to support Ukraine after it was invaded by Russia. One key reason is this: it wasn't Russia that invaded Ukraine. It was Vladimir Putin, the authoritarian ruler of Russia.

Now, defenders of what Russia did might say that in the United States, the president is the commander-in-chief of the military. So a decision to go to war rests with the president. 

Actually, that isn't true. Our Constitution gives Congress the right to declare war. Recently American presidents have usurped that power in various ways, but the Constitution hasn't changed. 

But in Russia, Putin is completely free to start a war on his own. He didn't become the so-called "president" of Russia in a free and fair election. He got that office through underhanded means, which is how he has remained in power for several decades, with no end in sight unless he is overthrown.

Speaking of no end in sight, that's a decent description of how long the tables are when Putin meets with those who report to him. Here he is with two of his generals after the Ukraine invasion.

This is an apt image of an authoritarian.

No sitting in a circle with some colleagues, having a free-spirited discussion where everybody's opinion is valued. One man at the head of a table, staring at two generals who know that agreeing with Putin is a must if they value their jobs. And their lives.

I've been using "authoritarian" frequently in my blog posts about Putin's totally unjustified invasion of Ukraine. I see this word as a noun as well as an adjective, as in Putin is an authoritarian.

Today it dawned on me that while Putin is an authoritarian, along with the leaders of China, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, and some other countries, and Donald Trump is a would-be authoritarian, the dictionary definition of the word applies to many religious leaders also.

The Pope is chosen by a bunch of cardinals. He isn't elected by all Catholics. After becoming Pope, he isn't responsible to anyone else, so far as I know. Others can advise the Pope, but no one can impeach the Pope or otherwise remove him from office.

Ditto with gurus.

If they don't announce themselves as a guru, usually they are appointed by a previous guru. Then they remain the leader of their religious sect until they die or quit. Their followers typically are expected to have blind faith in their authority.

Which, the way I see it, makes them authoritarians. 

Or course, there are degrees of authoritarianism. Putin is a truly nasty authoritarian. He murders journalists and political opponents. He makes dissent a crime in Russia.

Often the prime minister of India, Narendra Modi, is lumped in with authoritarian leaders, but Modi was elected and while he's an extremist, I view him as a moderate authoritarian -- not at all a compliment, but a step down from an extreme authoritarian like Putin.

The same applies to religious authoritarians. The current Pope strikes me as kind and gentle, as does the Dalai Lama. Both enjoy concentrated power as the head of their religious organizations, yet they're decidedly mild authoritarians. 

The Supreme Leader of Iran, by contrast, has enormous political and religious power. So I'd definitely call him a high level authoritarian.

Writing that last sentence caused me to realize that I've always used "him" in connection with "authoritarian." Maybe there's a woman who is an authoritarian ruler, either political or religious. I just can't think of one. 

Russia invading Ukraine makes religiosity seem irrelevant

This morning I had an idea for a Church of the Churchless blog post. I jotted down the topic: Embrace what's real, not an ideal. 

It had struck me that many, if not most, of our personal problems stem from expecting too much from life. We think, "Ideally, I wouldn't be ______" (fill in the blank).

Having so much pain. Failing to enjoy my job. Arguing with my teenage child. Wondering why I'm not happier. So many possible ideals that reality doesn't match up with.

Probably I'll revisit this subject later.

Right now, I find it hard to concentrate on anything except the breaking news that Russia has invaded Ukraine, with explosions, reportedly from missile strikes, being reported in various parts of the country. 

I don't believe in religious hell. I do believe that war is hell.

Especially in cases like this one, where Vladimir Putin, who I'm reluctant to call President of Russia because Russia isn't a democracy, is engaged in a war of brute force against a neighboring smaller country.

It almost makes me nostalgic for the Cold War days I remember so vividly.

Back then the battle was between two ideologies: Communism, exemplified by the Soviet Union and Red China, versus Capitalism, exemplified by the United States and our allies.

Because this was a Cold War, not a Hot War (though arguably the Vietnam War was cold becoming hot), mostly the ideologies took center stage, not armies. Marxism-Leninism was a coherent political philosophy, as was Liberal Capitalism. 

But Putin is especially scary because he stands for nothing except his own self-interest and those of his fellow billionaire oligarchs.

Putin is invading Ukraine primarily because he fears democracy and secondarily because he wants to reconstitute the Soviet Union to the greatest extent possible by bringing previous portions of the USSR back under Russian control.

At the moment it's unclear whether Putin intends to occupy all of Ukraine, just the Eastern portion, or something in between. Regardless, I feel terrible for the people of Ukraine, whose lives are about to be turned upside down.

For most of us, life is quite predictable and dependable. This allows me to write about spirituality, religion, politics, and my personal life -- such as wearing a purple jacket yesterday. 

All of that becomes largely irrelevant for people living in a war zone. When bombs are falling nearby, staying alive is Job #1. Also, Job #2-100. We've all seen photos of the devastation in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and other places where fighting is going on.

Those situations are highly disturbing. I don't mean to discount their importance. However, the Russian invasion of Ukraine is especially worrisome, because if Putin persists with his madness, this will be the first conquest of a European country since World War II.

And we all know how that worked out, following Hitler's false claim that all he wanted was a little more room for the German people, so he needed part of Czechoslovakia. Which eventually became almost all of Europe, and the murder of six million Jews.

Putin murders his enemies. He jails journalists. He tolerates no dissent among the Russian people. He lies incessantly. 

The people of Ukraine have good reason to be afraid tonight. It's extremely unlikely that Putin amassed 190,000 troops and a huge amount of supporting materiel just to solidify Russia's hold on the separatist regions in Eastern Ukraine -- which have languished economically since falling under Russian control.

Maybe the entirety of Ukraine is too large a military bite for Putin's forces to swallow. Even if this is so, it sure looks like war has come to Ukraine, since Putin has said that his goal is to demilitarize the country.

Absent an abject surrender by Ukraine, which I doubt the proud people of that country would go along with, this means that Russia will have to destroy Ukraine's military capability. Thousands of deaths likely would result, maybe tens of thousands.

So like I said, I'm having trouble concentrating on anything but Ukraine right now. Soon I'll be back to regular posts on this blog. I just feel so bad for Ukraine, and so much anger at Putin, there's no space in my mind to write about anything else at the moment.

What the Woke Racism book says about religion

Yesterday I wrote a post for my HinesSight blog, "Woke Racism" is a great book. The subtitle of the book is "How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America."

John McWhorter, the author, is an atheist. So when he calls woke racism a religion, that's intended as a negative judgement. 

In his chapter, The New Religion, McWhorter describes the ways what he calls The Elect (meaning, those who embrace woke racism) act in a religious fashion. 

Here's some excerpts from that chapter.

With the rise of Third Wave Antiracism we are witnessing the birth of a new religion, just as Romans witnessed the birth of Christianity. The way to get past seeing the Elect as merely "crazy" is to understand that they are a religion. To see them this way is not to wallow in derision, but to genuinely grasp what they are.

One thing that will discourage a general perception of them in this way is that they themselves will resist the charge so heartily. This is understandable.Early Christians did not think of themselves as "a religion" either. They thought of themselves as bearers of truth, in contrast to all other belief systems, whatever they chose to call themselves.

In addition, in our times, it will feel unwelcome to the Elect to be deemed a religion, because they do not bill themselves as such and often associate devout religiosity with backwardness. It also implies that they are not thinking for themselves.

...To make sense of it, we must understand them -- partly out of compassion and partly in order to keep them from destroying our own lives. This can happen only if we process them not as crazed, but parishioners. 

To do this, we must examine the ways in which their new religion so closely parallels older ones. It makes what can seem like a mess of weird opinions and attitudes into something quite coherent.

The Elect have superstition. It is inherent in a religion that, amid various other tenets and commitments, one is to accept certain suspensions of disbelief. Certain questions are not to be asked, or, if asked, only politely. The answer one gets, despite being somewhat half-cocked, is to be accepted.

...Elect philosophy requires the same standpoint. One is not to ask "Why are black people so upset about one white cop killing a black man when black men are at more danger of being killed by one another?" Or one might go ahead and ask, only to receive flabby answers after which further questions are unwelcome.

...What you actually don't "get" in your quest to wring logic out of incoherent positions like these is that for the Elect, battling racism is to be questioned only in ways that reinforce the idea that the Elect are correct -- even at the cost of basic sense. This is superstition. 

The Elect have clergy. Think of the preacher praised for his sermon as people file out of church. It probably wasn't the kind of sermon that, for most of these people, blew their minds. They enjoyed it because it was a beautiful rendition of that which they knew before, and it gave them comfort. 

On race, the Elect cherish certain top-rate thinkers for their gifts in phrasing, repeating, and crafting artful variations upon points considered crucial. These are their priests, their clergy.

You need your preacher to keep telling the religion's truth, and to tell it often, since the superstitious, nonempirical wing of the ideology is easy to drift away from as real life impinges ever upon you in daily existence.

The Elect have original sin. The Elect, then, have magic, clergy, and also a conception of original sin. Under Elect creed, the sin is "white privilege." To anticipate a question, yes, I do believe that to be white in America is to automatically harbor certain unstated privileges in terms of one's sense of belonging. 

...But the issue here is not whether I or anyone else thinks white privilege is real, but what we consider the proper response to it. The Elect are to ritually "acknowledge" that they possess white privilege, with an awareness that they can never be absolved of it. 

...Coates and DiAngelo are calling these people sinners. Yet the sinners eagerly drink in the charge, revering their accusers, and come away from this self-mortification feeling energized. Cleansed. This is worship, by people embracing the self-mortification of the inveterate sinner, stained by the original sin of white privilege. 

The Elect are evangelical. "Why don't they allow people to have different opinions?" You're missing the point. The Elect can seem truly baffling -- until we see they are a religion. Specifically, an evangelical one.

To wit: Do we wonder why fundamentalist Christians do not see their beliefs as just one of many valid opinions? They see themselves as bearers of a Good News that, if all people would simply open up and see it, would create a perfect world. 

...To be Elect is to think in exactly the same way. Key to being Elect is a sense that there is always a flock of unconverted heathen. Many of the heathen are, for example, the whites "out there," as it is often put about the white people who were so widely feared as possibly keeping Barack Obama from being elected (twice).

The Elect ban the heretic. The Elect consider it imperative to not only critique those who disagree with their creed, but to seek their punishment and elimination to whatever degree real-life conditions can accommodate. 

There is an overriding sense that unbelievers must be not just spoken out against, but called out, isolated, and banned.

...The reality is that what the Elect call problematic is what a Christian means by blasphemous. 

...The Elect are members of a religion, of a kind within which the dissenter is not someone in disagreement but is a kind of environmental pollution. 

...The religious fervor is absolutist, complete with a Manichaean sense of good versus evil. Many recall Dana Carvey's Church Lady on Saturday Night Live, with her self-celebratory obsession with smoking out the doings of "SATAN?!"

...Why can't they allow other views? Remember, this is religion, not political science, and specifically a religion eerily akin to devout Christianity. To the Elect, racism is the equivalent of Satan. If I deign to walk by Satan with the idea that we just let him be, I am missing the point. I am "wrong."

Cult of Trump shows danger of blind faith

Here in the United States we're facing a scary prospect in upcoming elections, especially the next presidential election in November 2024.

A recent Forbes story captures the problem in its headline: "Poll Finds Most Americans Think An Election Will Be Overturned Because Of Partisan Sour Grapes."

In a CNN/SRSS poll of 2,119 U.S. adults released Wednesday, 51% of respondents said it is somewhat or very likely that some elected officials will “successfully overturn the results of an election” in the U.S. in the future “because their party did not win.”

That belief was held by 49% of Democratic respondents and 57% of Republicans, as Democrats have fretted about new laws in GOP-controlled states that increase partisan officials’ power over election administrators and restrict ballot access.

Republican skepticism appears to be drawn from former President Donald Trump’s baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen: 78% of Republicans agreed that President Joe Biden “did not legitimately win enough votes to win,” while 63% overall said he did.

Recent moves by Trump and his allies are likely to only worsen Republican voters’ faith in elections. Trump and California recall candidate Larry Elder, a right-wing radio host, repeatedly and baselessly claimed in the run-up to the vote that it would be stolen through widespread fraud. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, handily beat back the recall effort on Tuesday.

Religious believers like to claim that there's nothing wrong with blind faith. Actually, there is. 

Even though Donald Trump lost a free and fair 2020 election to President Biden, Trump has never stopped making the utterly false claim that the election was stolen from him.

This Big Lie has infected the minds of the vast majority of Republicans -- 78% according to the poll referenced above. That's a highly disturbing number. Over three-fourths of those who belong to one of the two main political parties in the United States have lost touch with electoral reality.

Why? It isn't that the truth of the 2020 election is difficult to find. It's plain to see by anyone with vision that isn't clouded by blind faith in the utterances of Trump, who still commands the loyalty of most members of the Republican Party.

There are clear parallels between the Cult of Trump and a religious cult.

Both cults are led by an authoritarian leader who lives by the sentiment, "My way or the highway." Meaning, you either agree with me, or you should leave the cult, because obedience to the leader is non-negotiable. 

Both cults tell their followers to distrust facts disseminated by mainstream sources: scientists, journalists, academics, government agencies. Anyone who fact-checks the falsehoods spewed by the cult leader is branded as "fake news."

Both cults promise wonderful things to those who commit to blind faith in the cult teachings. Trump's devotees are told that he'll become president again, maybe even before the 2024 election, once the truth of his 2020 victory is revealed. This is akin to a Second Coming where the faithful will be rewarded and unbelievers cast into hell.

Both cults punish heretics. Republican politicians who disagree with Trump are banished from leadership positions in their party and face a primary challenge from someone more faithful. Religious cults shame and threaten those who leave the cult.

Now, I'm not saying that all fundamentalist religious people act in cultish ways. Nor am I saying that all Trump supporters worship him as their Dear Leader.

However, it seems unarguable that when unquestioning blind faith replaces reason and independent thinking, bad things happen in both politics and religion.

Mostly people we disagree with are well-meaning

Ooh, nice! I like it! 

That was the voice that speaks inside my head after I'd written the final two sentences in a Facebook message.

Mostly people we disagree with are well-meaning. They just find meaning in their lives in a different fashion than we do.

The woman I was communicating with responded with a pleasing "Well said!" My sentiment exactly. 

I said what I did in regard to a religious group, Salem Awakening, that's been having outdoor services in a public park on the riverfront. Some people distrust Salem Awakening because they have organized protests against Planned Parenthood in the guise of the Church at Planned Parenthood.

(That isn't an actual church. It's more like a franchise, since churches in various cities use that name when they protest outside a Planned Parenthood clinic.)

Even though members of the Proud Boys militia group, which took part in the January 6 insurrection at the nation's capitol, provide security for Salem Awakening when they're doing their Planned Parenthood protest thing, I'd told the woman that I didn't think Salem Awakening was up to anything nefarious.

Like I said, almost certainly the religious people doing the protesting are well-meaning. They just find meaning in a different fashion than a progressive atheist like me, who supports a woman's right to choose an abortion, does.

More and more I'm bothered by the tendency of many to demonize people who have different values than they do -- political, religious, whatever. As noted in a recent post about extreme political correctness, "I get cited by Salem's Woke Police," a sense of overzealous righteousness can lead to viewing those with different views as not just mistaken, but contemptible. 

I don't believe in God. But I used to, an Eastern religion variety. I'm a progressive. But I was raised by a highly conservative mother, and shared her Republicanism until I went to college. 

So I can completely understand why so many people find meaning in religion and right-wing politics. I no longer share those views. However, in no way do I perceive religious believers and conservatives as being bad people. They're just people who look upon certain aspects of the world in a different way than I do.

This used to be a non-controversial perspective.

Each to his or her own. We can agree to disagree. I disagree with what you're saying, but I defend your right to say it. Catch phrases like those reflected a culture where reasonable people could discuss controversial subjects in a courteous fashion. 

Things have gone downhill in this regard. Often way downhill. On the far reaches of both the political left and right, a substantial number of zealots look upon anyone who doesn't subscribe to their extreme views as unworthy of respect. This carries over into other areas, such as religion. 

Instead of being critical of someone else's perspective, there's an effort to cancel their right to express that perspective.

Instead of viewing them as well-meaning people with a different viewpoint, they're seen as dangerous promoters of a meaningless outlook on life.

Jonathan Rauch talks about this in his excellent book, "The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth." Here's an excerpt from his chapter  Cancelling: Despotism of the Few.

Criticism seeks to engage in conversations and identify error; canceling seeks to stigmatize conversations and punish the errant. Criticism cares whether statements are true; cancelling cares about their social effects. Criticism exploits viewpoint diversity; cancelling imposes viewpoint conformity. 

Criticism is a substitute for social punishment (we kill our hypotheses rather each other); cancelling is a form of social punishment (we kill your hypothesis by killing you socially). Criticism reflects the values of the Constitution of Knowledge, seeking to inquire and learn. Cancelling reflects the values of propaganda, seeking to manipulate the information environment. 

Now, most of us don't encounter cancel culture because we aren't part of a university, social media niche, or other place where views that dissent from What is Deemed Acceptable are met with derision from those who have placed a claim on the truth as only they can know it. 

As noted above, my eyes have been opened to this distressing cultural phenomenon after being vilified on Facebook as an old white man whose views are worth precisely nothing because I committed the heinous sin of deviating from wokeness orthodoxy. 

(In that post I didn't include all the insults directed at me, only a sampling.)

I'm grateful for the experience, which admittedly was much less intense than the cancelling meted out to professors, journalists, and others who got on the wrong side of extreme left-wing dogmatism. The far right has its own brand of closed-minded dogmatism, of course.

Stuck in the middle are the vast majority of Americans, who probably constitute at least two-thirds of the United States population, but a decided minority of the outrage.

What I hope for is an outpouring in support of reasonableness that will counter the irrational screaming from the fringes. My contribution to this is a sentiment that I like a lot. Again:

Mostly people we disagree with are well-meaning. They just find meaning in their lives in a different fashion than we do.

Excessive wokeness is akin to extreme religiosity

Yesterday I wrote a post on my Salem Political Snark blog, "I get cited by Salem's Woke Police." Here I'll explore the connection between wokeness and religiosity.

Since many people who visit this blog don't live in the United States, woke is a word that means "alert to racial or social discrimination and injustice." That sounds like a good thing, which usually it is.

But as the saying goes, you can have too much of a good thing.

About three weeks ago I helped start a new Facebook group here in Salem, Oregon. The instigator was a young woman who I've never met in person. She's young, very liberal, and seemed sincere about having a Facebook group that lived up to its name, Let's Discuss Salem. 

The woman told me that anybody in Salem could join the group: liberals, independents, conservatives, anybody. That appealed to me, since I mostly associate with fellow progressives, and I thought it'd be interesting to share ideas with people of a different political persuasion.

However, as you can read in the post I wrote about the Woke Police, it didn't take long for the administrators of the Facebook group to become so amazingly woke, sometimes I wasn't sure if they were being serious. 

For example, this is a new rule for the group that got added to other equally woke rules: "7) Telling members of marginalized communities how to think, feel, and act about their own oppression is prohibited."

So only Black people in the group (if there are any) can talk to other Black people about their issues. Ditto for Latino people. As a white person, I can't express an opinion about a Black issue. Only Blacks can do that.

As I said in my Salem Political Snark blog post:

I still believe that it is better to be overly concerned about racism, sexism, nationalism, and other nasty "ism's" than under concerned. 

However, a balance needs to be struck between awareness of social problems affecting minorities and other historically oppressed groups, and an overzealous righteousness where perceived affronts to social justice are criticized in an absurd fashion.

I emailed a link to my post to some Salem friends. One wrote back to me this morning with some wise observations. 

I have just read all of what appeared in the link below. To me, your most powerful statement included "shades of gray, political nuance...." Yes, precisely. Those beating the drums on both the right and the left, including the local "Woke Police," are sending overly simplified messages.

These are designed to capture minds and memories with catchy and easily remembered soundbites. and, in many cases, to quote Shakespeare in the speech by Marc Antony "to cry havoc, and let loose the dogs of war..." to serve their particular goals.

The higher level thinking skills of critical thinking and analysis do not work well in these arenas. You have worked to challenge a general audience to think critically. Of course, that is at best a steeply uphill struggle.

The full statement she referred to said:

This is the problem with having a black and white view of the world. Nuance, shades of gray, moral ambiguity, political compromise -- that doesn't appeal to people on either the left or right who believe that how they see things is how everybody should see things.

Same applies to religious people who have a black and white view of the cosmos. In other words, fundamentalists. They view any deviation from their rigid perspective on reality as a dangerous heresy. I just read that the Taliban in Afghanistan are decreeing that music is forbidden, apparently because some weird interpretation of Islam says so.

A tiny bit of critical thinking reveals the absurdity of fundamentalism. But for those in the grip of it, that rigidity makes sense. And even is appealing. 

I sort of shudder when I remember that back in my true believing days, when the guru of the religion I followed decreed that animal rennet couldn't be eaten, I was one of the fundamentalists who obsessively read cheese labels for evidence that the rennet was animal or vegetarian. 

The woke fundamentalists of the Let's Discuss Salem Facebook page are similarly caught in the grip of a mindset that abhors reason, common sense, flexibility. Since I try to manifest each of those qualities, the Woke Police have become increasingly irritated with me.

Which not only doesn't bother me, I'm learning to enjoy it. I find a special pleasure in speaking reasonably when they talk about the necessity to not let a single politically impure post or comment appear on Let's Discuss Salem.

I have the impression that this rigidity gives that woke crowd a reason for being, since they can feel superior to fellow progressives like me who are a lot looser in our speech and attitudes. At the end of my Salem Political Snark post, I include excerpts from a The Atlantic story about research concerning the different political tribes in the United States.

It turns out that about a third of Americans are on the fringes of the left and right, so far out there they aren't interested in ratcheting down the rancor and finding common ground.

But about two-thirds of Americans do want to find common ground with those who see things differently. That's good news. Problem is, the extremists tend to dominate the news, because they're the ones screaming about this or that outrage. Same seems to be true of religion.

Most religious believers aren't dogmatic. They wear their religion lightly. They don't take themselves too seriously. They accept that people with different views are entitled to those views, and may even have something to teach them.

Capitol police are speaking the truth right now

As I write this I'm listening to televised testimony of four police officers who are appearing at the first meeting of the Select Committee on the January 6 insurrection at the nation's capitol.

Watch it, Church of the Churchless commenters who think truth is relative, that what experts and professionals say can't be trusted, that everyone is free to create their own reality, that this physical realm is an illusion, that objectivity isn't possible, and other blather spewed from your religious sensibilities.

Watch it, because the truth is being spoken by four brave men who put their lives on the line. One truthful sentence from them is worth more than a thousand bullshit comments about the relativity of truth.

Truth isn't relative. Truth is truth. It is the most important thing in life, because without truth we're living a lie. Me, I choose not to do that. Those four police officers also have chosen not to do that. 

Take some time to watch this testimony. I'm sure it will be available on You Tube.

Those commenters who consider that truth is something to play word games with, that it doesn't matter if people embrace falsehoods -- watch the four police officers talk about how a dangerous mob of thousands of Trump supporters invaded the capitol because they believed a lie, that the election was stolen from Trump.

Lies matter. Falsehoods matter.

They lead to assaults on law enforcement officers who are still recovering from their many injuries. So think about this, commenters on this blog, next time you want to defend a "everyone creates their own reality" bullshit philosophy. That's an insult to the truth-telling police officers.

None of you would have had the courage to defend the capitol. You don't even have the courage to defend the truth, which requires no physical bravery, just moral strength. So learn from the four police officers. They have a lot to teach you.

QAnon, like religion, doesn't care about truth

Last night my wife and I finished watching the sixth and last episode of HBO's "QAnon: Into the Storm." 

I've written two previous posts about how QAnon bears a lot of resemblance to religion. (See here and here.) 

QAnon devotees are like religious believers. Neither cares about actual truth, while both pretend that they understand reality in a deep sense that eludes ordinary people.

I found the HBO series fascinating.

It shows us the people behind QAnon -- the computer geeks who administer the sites where Q posted his "drops," often enigmatic and usually totally wrong observations about politics and what-not.

We also see the people who interpret Q's communications via podcasts, You Tube channels, and the like. They're akin to high priests who mediate between the Almighty and the mass of believers.

The final episode doesn't definitively say who Q is, but a lot of evidence points to Ron Watkins, including Watkins' own words. 

Ron Watkins

Watkins was the administrator of 8Chan, which morphed into 8Kun, the places that Q chose to host his posts/drops. His father, Jim Watkins, also plays a large role in the HBO series.

Both Ron and Jim are intelligent schemers. They're highly watchable, along with being highly irritating at times. 

When the closing credits of the final episode appeared, I said to my wife, "I wonder if the faith of QAnon followers would be shaken if they knew that probably Q is a computer geek who wears a green baseball cap, not a high level government official with a super secret Q security clearance."

She replied, "It wouldn't matter to them. They'd continue to believe what they want to believe and wouldn't trust that Ron Watkins likely is Q."

My wife is right. 

After all, there's no demonstrable evidence that the founder of any religion actually knew anything about God, nor that God even exists. Yet billions of people worship that non-existent entity regardless.

A FiveThirtyEight review of the HBO series made the same point. (Cullen Hoback is the director of QAnon: Into the Storm.)

But even if Hoback had managed to elicit a full confession, it likely wouldn’t have much impact on QAnon as a movement. Q followers would do what they always do when confronted with conflicting evidence to their belief system: they would either dismiss it or find a way to fold the information into their worldview.

Even if someone admitted that Q’s posts were a complete fabrication, it would not be enough to penetrate the hard outer shell of belief for many followers. Q, after all, has gone underground. He (or she or they) hasn’t posted since Dec. 8, 2020, the longest stretch of silence since Q first began posting in 2017.

It's interesting that Q's postings started in the first year of Trump's presidency and ended when it became clear that Trump had lost to Joe Biden.

These were dark years for truth-telling, in Washington D.C., at least. Now truth is making a comeback, since the Biden administration is hugely more committed to honesty, science, and transparency. 

The final episode of the HBO series ends with footage of the January 6 attempted insurrection at the nation's Capitol, where  Biden's electoral college victory was being finalized. 

QAnon believers were convinced that somehow Trump would stage a "storm" of a comeback, arresting his enemies, including leading Democratic politicians, and remaining president. When this didn't happen, the QAnon faithful were deeply shaken.

Just like religious believers when, say, the predicted second coming of Christ comes and goes with no appearance by Jesus. 

However, the power of mass delusion is very strong. QAnon still has lots of adherents, as does Christianity, obviously. Inconvenient truths aren't going to dissuade people who believe in falsehood that's immune to disproof.

In a brilliant move, Episode 6 of QAnon: Into the Storm shows the Trump rioters breaking into the Capitol as the Jefferson Airplane song, "White Rabbit," plays. 

This musical paean to going down the rabbit hole, psychedelic variety, made the attempted insurrection look like the bizarre fantasy that it actually was. Sadly, I couldn't find any clips of the final episode with White Rabbit playing.

But you can hear this classic song by Grace Slick via You Tube video. I'll also share the trailer for the HBO series and a CNN interview with Hoback where he talks about his strong suspicion that Ron Watkins is Q.

QAnon is the religion of right-wing crazies

My wife and I have watched the first two episodes of HBO's "Q: Into the Storm" because we find QAnon both ridiculous and dangerous.

Ridiculous, because QAnon faithful believe in absolutely crazy stuff -- such as Hillary Clinton and other Democrats operating a pedophile ring out of the basement of a Washington D.C. pizza restaurant.

Dangerous, because so many followers of Trump in this country accept the QAnon insanity, including that mass arrests of Democrats will take place and the Orange One (Trump) will become president again.

I can't recommend the HBO series because it is much more boring than it should be, given its subject matter. 

As a review correctly points out, the makers of this documentary went overboard on filming the people involved in the web sites Q posts on in excruciating detail. Their disputes, eccentricities, and such are mildly interesting, but what gets lost are the larger questions.

Notably, how can so many people be so infatuated with the QAnon conspiracy theories that have no basis in fact?

I don't have an answer. All I can say is that the first two episodes show how closely related QAnon is to religiosity, a subject of a previous post, "QAnon and religion are both mass delusions." 

No one knows who Q is.

However, posts from Q appear on the Internet. Likewise, no one knows if God even exists, much less what the probably non-existent God is like -- since there is no real evidence of any communications from God.

Yet QAnon believers and religious devotees spend a huge amount of time conjuring up theories about their chosen faith.

Every detail of Q's posts is examined for hidden meanings, in much the same way religious writings and utterances of religious leaders considered to have a direct connection with God are studied by the faithful.

QAnon followers wrongly consider that they're part of a truth-seeking movement.

Even when predictions by Q fail to come to pass, his acolytes are spurred to dig deeper and find the reality hidden from everyone else -- you know, the people who accept facts and reason, a group I'm proud to belong to.

This bears a lot of resemblance to religious fantasies such as the Second Coming of Christ, the Christian version of QAnon's "storm." 

A new conspiracy theory called “The Storm” has taken the grimiest parts of the internet by, well, storm. Like Pizzagate, the Storm conspiracy features secret cabals, a child sex-trafficking ring led (in part) by the satanic Democratic Party, and of course, countless logical leaps and paranoid assumptions that fail to hold up under the slightest fact-based scrutiny. However, unlike Pizzagate, the Storm isn’t focused on a single block of shops in D.C., or John Podesta’s emails. It’s much, much bigger than that.

I'm bothered by the fact that so many otherwise normal people are so easily sucked into the fact-free whirlpool of QAnon. Sure, religions have been doing this sort of sucking for thousands of years, preying upon the gullibility of humans who enjoy a good story, even if it is made up.

QAnon, though, lacks the moral foundation that most religions have, which tends to limit how destructive they can be. So far as I can tell, QAnon has no ethical standards, no commitment to caring and compassion, no respect for open debate into the nature of reality.

QAnon, like the worst of the world's religions, only cares about spreading lies. Flee from it, if you're ever tempted to embrace some aspect of QAnon craziness. 

QAnon and religion are both mass delusions

The Real Time With Bill Maher show always ends with a feature called New Rules. Most of the rules are brief and humorous, while the last takes longer to explain and is more serious, though still funny in a different way.

I just finished watching our recording of the February 5 episode. 

Maher's closing New Rule was a right-on discussion of how the craziness of QAnon relates to religious belief. Probably you're familiar with this cult, but if you aren't, a BBC story describes what QAnon is about.

At its heart, QAnon is a wide-ranging, completely unfounded theory that says that President Trump is waging a secret war against elite Satan-worshipping paedophiles in government, business and the media.

QAnon believers have speculated that this fight will lead to a day of reckoning where prominent people such as former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton will be arrested and executed.

That's the basic story, but there are so many offshoots, detours and internal debates that the total list of QAnon claims is enormous - and often contradictory. Adherents draw in news events, historical facts and numerology to develop their own far-fetched conclusions.

Here's a five and a half minute video of what Maher had to say. It's both entertaining and persuasive. Once someone believes in one thing without evidence (like religion), it is easy to transfer that gullibility to another thing that lacks evidence (like QAnon). 

The You Tube video description says:

It's fun to laugh at QAnon, but if you accord religious faith the kind of exalted respect we do here in America, you’ve already lost the argument that mass delusion is bad.

Enjoy.

Religious nationalism must be fought, no matter the religion

Nationalism is dumb. Religious nationalism is dumber.

Believing that your country is superior to all others makes no sense, since lots of people in many countries, maybe most countries, consider that they're fortunate to live in the best country on Earth.

But at least there's no doubt that these countries exist. They have governments. They have boundaries. They can be photographed. So nationalism, as misguided as it is, has a foundation in objective reality.

Religious nationalism, though, adds a fantasy -- the unproven belief that Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism, or some other religion is rooted in a supernatural realm that truly exists even though there is no demonstrable evidence of it.

This makes religious nationalism a delusion attached to a irrational assumption.

Not surprisingly, religious nationalism is destructive. Hindu nationalism leads to violence and oppression of minorities in India. Jewish nationalism makes it more difficult for Israel to reach an agreement with Palestinians. Islamic nationalism encourages terrorists. Christian nationalism fosters divisiveness in the United States.

Actually, more than divisiveness. Christian nationalists played a central role in the January 6 insurrection at the nation's Capitol that was notihing less than a coup attempt. 

An opinion piece in USA Today describes how the Trump rioters who broke into the Capitol used Christian rhetoric to justify their unjustifiable actions. Here's excerpts from "Christian nationalism is a threat, and not just from Capitol attackers invoking Jesus."

After a portion of the mob entered the Senate chamber on Jan. 6, a handful of men mounted the podium. One of them lifted his hands and cried out, “Jesus Christ, we invoke your name. Amen.” Then Jacob Chansley, sometimes called the "QAnon Shaman," took his bullhorn and announced gratitude to God for being able to “send a message to all the tyrants, the communists, and the globalists that this is our nation, not theirs.”

Bare-chested to expose his white supremacist tattoos, he had paused briefly to remove his Viking-inspired horned headdress and cap — presumably to assume a properly humble posture as he claimed the United States for himself and his fellow-believers.   

...It is easy to protest when white Christian nationalism turns violent. Within the chorus of critics, however, are a substantial number of Christians who plan to take the country for Jesus another way. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, a leader of the misinformation campaign that led people to believe (falsely) that the presidential election was stolen, is among them.

Speaking in his official capacity as attorney general of Missouri in 2017, he proclaimed at a “Pastors and Pews” meetingthat their charge is to “take the lordship of Christ, that message, into the public realm and to seek the obedience of the nations — of our nation… to influence our society, and even more than that, to transform our society to reflect the gospel truth and lordship of Jesus Christ.”

Hawley is aware that not everyone will become Christian, but believes we should all live by his interpretation of Christian values. The lieutenant governor of Texas, Dan Patrick, asserts that elected officials should look to Scripture when making policy, “because every problem we have in America has a solution in the Bible.”  

Look, there's nothing wrong with loving your country, just as there's nothing wrong with loving your religion. But this is akin to loving your spouse or children.

Love isn't a competition. I can love my wife and my child without thinking that they are the very best wife and child in the whole world. It would be crazy  for me to think that way.

Yet that's what religious nationalism does. It perverts the natural love of country and religion into an extreme view that elevates a particular country and a particular religion into an exalted position that is indefensible and dangerous. 

Cult of Trump shows how delusion is linked to blind devotion

Cults come in various forms. Sure, religious cults are what first come to mind, but any form of blind devotion to an authority figure can result in cultish behavior and attitudes.

On January 6 I wrote a post for my Salem Political Snark blog, "Insurrection at Capitol today caused by the Cult of Trump."

This is what happens when people fall under the spell of an authoritarian cult leader.

A woman died today in the Capitol building after a mob incited by Trump stormed the building in an insurrection aimed at stopping Biden from being declared president-elect by Congress.

...The only good news out of today's disaster is that maybe, just maybe, it will cause those who have joined the Cult of Trump to find the guts to abandon the worst president in our nation's history.

It's astounding that so many people in the United States can be devoted to such a horrible person after Trump's many failings have been on prominent display for well over four years.

Somehow they've been sucked in to the black hole of Trump's ego, narcissism, lying, and inability to come to grips with reality, either choosing to stay in that dark place willingly or not having the capacity to break free of all the nasty stuff that Trump stands for.

A New York Times story, "'Our President Wants Us Here': The Mob That Stormed the Capitol," has this subtitle -- They came from around the country with different affiliations — QAnon, Proud Boys, elected officials, everyday Americans — united by one allegiance. To Donald Trump.

They traveled from various corners of resentment in 21st-century America. Whether motivated by a sense of economic disenfranchisement or distrust of government, by bigotry, or conspiracy or a belief that Mr. Trump is God’s way of preparing for the Rapture, they shared a fealty to the president.

In the rally that preceded the march to the Capitol (photo above), Trump told the crowd that he would be marching with them. That was a lie. Trump went back to the White House and watched the mob break in to the Capitol on TV, coward that he is. 

Now many of the Cult of Trump members who did what their beloved leader asked them to do are facing criminal charges. Serves them right. This wasn't a joke. A woman was killed during the storming of the Capitol, along with a policeman who died after being struck in the head by a fire extinguisher. 

It appears that Trump will be impeached again for inciting this murderous riot. Nonetheless, most of Trump's devotees will stick with him, because they have lost the ability to see him as he is, only as they imagine him to be. 

Here's a tweet that shows the quasi-religious fervor of Trump supporters.

And here's another tweet that shows how delusional the Cult of Trump can be. This Republican official actually believes that Trump will be president for another four years, even though Biden's electoral college victory was affirmed by Congress on January 6. 

Again, political delusions and religious delusions differ only in their subject matter, not in the warped state of mind that produces them. Likely this same official also believes that Jesus rose from the dead and redeems the sins of those who believe in him. Hey, that beats Trump! 

Political and religious delusions have a lot in common

Reality only comes in one flavor: real. But humans aren't in direct touch with reality, so we have to struggle to make sense of the world, the universe, the cosmos.

Thus the flavor of reality for us Homo sapiens has many varieties. Really, as many as there are people in the world, since everybody looks upon life in a unique way.

Science is our most powerful means of coming to a consensus on the nature of reality. By and large, scientists the world over agree on core scientific tenets -- which is far different from the widely divergent ways politicians and religious leaders look upon things.

Still, whoever looks upon reality with a reasoned, open, unbiased mind likely will agree with others who have the same approach to knowledge.

This is borne out by the fascinating after-election goings-on here in the United States. It's been obvious since a week or so after the November 3 election that Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in the presidential race. And it's been equally obvious that Biden's win had nothing to do with fraud.

Recounts and experts in election security both point to this fact: fraud was virtually nonexistent. This was the most secure election in American history.

That's reality speaking. Unfortunately, there are other voices spouting off about how unfair and rigged the presidential election was. The loudest voice belongs to the Sore Loser-in-Chief, soon to be ex-president Trump. 

He's been complaining non-stop about fantasized fraud. There's zero evidence of this, but that doesn't stop millions of his supporters from believing Trump's lies. Which might be termed falsehoods, if Trump actually believed them.

However, news reports are saying that in private Trump knows he lost the election fairly, so this means he keeps pushing the election fraud delusion as a political ploy to discredit the validity of Biden's victory, and to establish a " I was victimized" theme for Trump's likely bid to run for president again in 2024.

Likewise, I've seen surveys of Christian ministers that reveal a surprising percentage don't really believe in God. They simply look upon being a minister as a job, and likely find other aspects of Christian life to be more appealing than theology.

To offer another example, a book I'm reading at the moment says that most Buddhists don't meditate, even though meditation is a central part of Buddhist teachings. Thus it is common for both politicians and religious people to outwardly profess one set of beliefs, while inwardly having other beliefs.

This is understandable, since we all put on one face in certain situations (like a meeting with our boss), and another face in other situations (like having a beer with friends after work). 

What's more difficult to understand is how otherwise intelligent people fall prey to obvious delusions.

There are many examples in the religious sphere, such as the existence of God, life after death, and other supernatural notions for which there is zero solid evidence. All I can figure is that when someone really wants to believe in something, their critical thinking faculty goes on vacation -- which I readily admit to doing during my 35 years as a religious believer.

I do, though, have more sympathy for those who believe in something important (like God) that's unseen, since there's a chance, albeit a slim one, that it exists even without demonstrable evidence.

Better observational methods can result in amazing discoveries. Other galaxies only were discovered in the twentieth century as telescopes became more powerful. Maybe some forms of human consciousness are capable of discerning God. Maybe.

What I have a lot more problem with is failing to recognize the existence of things that clearly do exist like evolution and human-caused global warming. It takes a really blind eye to not see that these things are part of the fabric of reality. This can be ascribed to ignorance, unless the facts are so well known to someone they are purposely deluding themselves.

Today I heard that a politician who is a fervent Trump supporter wants to know where the evidence is that election fraud doesn't exist. Wow, what a thinking error. That's similar to demanding proof that God doesn't exist. 

As I've noted many times before on this blog, it is up to those who claim something does exist to supply the proof. I can't prove that fairies aren't making the trees in our yard grow. There's just no evidence of fairies, nor is there evidence of election fraud.

It's solely in the minds of those who, for one reason or another, can't admit that Joe Biden won the presidency fairly. The evidence for a fair election is no  sign of fraud, which is clearly apparent to those with eyes willing to see.

 

Speak out! About politics, religion, everything.

Over on my Salem Political Snark blog, yesterday I wrote "Speak out about Trump's attempt to steal the election." 

Almost certainly Trump won't succeed in this. His defeat was so large, extending over five states that he won in 2016 and lost in 2020 (Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia), there's no way lawsuits and recounts are going to overturn Biden's win.

Still, it's important for everyone who cares about democracy to speak out against this attempt to thwart the will of voters, even if it has little chance of coming to pass. I shared some excerpts from a September 2020 piece by Marc Elias, "What Did You Do When Democracy Was at Stake?" 

This is what Elias had to say about speaking out.

To combat this threat to our democracy, it is not enough for us to file lawsuits. It is not enough for the media to report the news. And it is not enough for citizens to shake their heads at the damage he is doing.

We must display civic courage and speak out.

Justice Scalia wrote that “requiring people to stand up in public for their political acts fosters civic courage, without which democracy is doomed.”

We must all commit to civic courage where it is the least comfortable—in the town square, in front of our neighbors and families, in our workplaces and in our daily lives.  We must each, as individuals, stand up and speak out about the importance of our democratic institutions and fundamental rights.

Absolutely. 

If someone says, "The only reason Biden won was Democratic voter fraud," it's important to say to them, "You're wrong. No voter fraud has been found in any state. Biden won a free and fair election."

Probably you won't change their mind. But you might. 

What's certain is that you have stood up for the truth by speaking out about a falsehood. And this is as important to do in areas other than politics. If someone says, "Human-caused greenhouse gas emissions aren't causing global warming," the proper response is, "You're wrong. Global warming is happening because of carbon pollution by humanity."

There are many values worth honoring. Truth is one of the most important, because without truth, it is difficult to truly love, help others, be courageous, or do the other things that make life worth living. 

I started this blog in 2004 in large part because I wanted to speak out against religious untruths. I'd call them "lies," but since some people sincerely believe the falsehoods promulgated by religions, often it makes sense to say That isn't true rather than You're lying.

If someone says, "I know that God exists," ask "How can you be sure?" Press for details. See if they can point to demonstrable evidence that God is real. Don't be content with bland statements like "I feel Him with me." 

I'm not saying that you should go out of your way to puncture someone's religious belief bubble. People have all kinds of reasons for believing in God or some other supernatural entity. If they keep their faith private, no problem. Each to their own.

But when claims about the nature of reality are made, truth claims, then lovers of truth have to speak out in defense of their beloved. Untruths need to be called out. If a religious believer simply says, "I believe in God because this makes me feel good," great. There's nothing wrong and a lot that is right about feeling good. 

That's akin to a Trump supporter saying, "I don't want to accept that Biden won because this hurts." OK. That's honest. We all turn a blind eye to some things that are unwelcome or uncomfortable to us. And many aspects of life lie outside of the bounds of objective truth. 

Art, music, philosophy, friendship, charity, the list goes on and on.

The way I see it, this makes defending truth, where it exists, even more important -- since the comparative rarity of objective truth points to its preciousness. Biden has defeated Trump. That's the truth. Trump doesn't want to admit this. 

Yet almost all leading Republicans are afraid to speak the truth to Trump. They fear his tweetful wrath. They fear for their own re-election if they go against Trump's fantasies. So they stay silent, or tell reporters, "I acknowledge that Biden won, but I can't say this openly on the record."

That's cowardice. Truth is more important than any person. Sure, we have to use common sense. To cite a common example, if you were hiding Jews in your house in Nazi Germany, speaking the truth if the Gestapo knock on your door isn't the thing to do.

But usually, speaking out about the truth is the thing to do. The sooner Trump comes to grips with the fact that he has lost, the better our country will be. Every Republican who stays silent about the election outcome is hurting our democracy.

Fact-denying Republicans are like fact-denying religious people

Like lots of other Americans, I'm really happy about Joe Biden defeating Donald Trump in our presidential election. To learn how happy, check out three posts I've written on my other blogs -- here, here, and here.

It's virtually 100% certain that Biden won a free and fair election and will be sworn in as president next January.

He's on track to win 306 electoral votes, the same number Trump won in 2016, which Trump has never stopped bragging about. The popular vote is hugely in Biden's favor, with additional tallies in New York and California adding to that impressive total. 

Three mid-West battleground states were won by Biden that Clinton narrowly lost in 2016. I came across this information in a tweet today.

Late-innings scorecard: President Trump won Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania by less than 80,000 votes in 2016. Today, Joe Biden is ahead in those states by more than 210,000 votes.

So the presidential election isn't close. In 2000 George W. Bush defeated Al Gore by virtue of a highly controversial Supreme Court decision that awarded Bush Florida by a razor-thin margin of less than 600 votes. 

Now Biden is ahead by many tens of thousands of votes in a variety of states. There's no evidence of any substantial voter fraud, just unproven allegations of a few problems that have no bearing on the election outcome in states where they supposedly occurred.

Yet only a few Republican leaders have acknowledged that Biden won the election. Trump himself is refusing to concede. The Trump administration is putting up roadblocks to Biden beginning the important process of transitioning the federal government to a new president. 

In short, Republicans are denying reality. The election facts are clear, yet they refuse to embrace them. They have a fantasy that somehow Trump will be able to steal the election from Biden.

Thus they're acting very much like religious people.

Republicans have blind faith in Trump. Religious people have blind faith in God. Republicans ignore the lack of demonstrable evidence that fraud took place in the election. Religious people ignore the lack of demonstrable evidence that a supernatural being exists. Republicans believe that evil Democrats somehow manipulated election results in favor of Biden. Religious people believe that an evil Devil or some other negative power somehow leads humans away from God.

The common denominator between Republicans and religious people is their rigid dogmatism.

Rather than learning what reality has to teach them, they deny reality. They elevate their subjective personal beliefs over objective truth. If facts don't fit with their world view, they ignore the facts instead of changing their viewpoint.

In the post I wrote yesterday, I included a tweet from election law expert Marc Elias.

What Elias is getting at is that Republican lawyers are starting with what they want to have happen -- the results of the election being overturned so Trump ends up the winner. They they try to conjure up some reasons why this should occur. This is akin to religious people starting with a belief in God, then making up reasons why God exists.

Which is backwards. Election law requires that evidence of fraud come first, with a lawsuit following based on that evidence. Likewise, a belief in God should come after evidence for God, not before.

It doesn't bother me that so many Americans believe strongly in Trump. That's their right. But it's deeply concerning that these Trump fans are willing to ignore the results of the election and trash our democracy in an effort to keep Trump in office. This also is my problem with religion. A private belief in God is fine. It's when religious people try to force their personal beliefs onto others that my atheist anger fires up.

As the saying goes, everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts. (The original had "his," which I've changed to "their.")

Am I happy about Trump's defeat? Hell, yes!

Tonight I wrote another post on my Salem Political Snark blog about Donald Trump's ever-so-pleasing defeat to Joe Biden, the next President of the United States. 

I called it, "Trump may never concede, but Biden has whipped his ass." Here's what I said, along with the tweets that I included in the post.

Last Tuesday was tough for progressives like me.

Sure, I knew that mail-in ballots, largely from Democrats, were going to take a while to count, and in-person voting on election day would be dominated by Republicans. But knowing is one thing. Emotions are a whole other thing. 

I worried that somehow Trump would pull out another close victory like he did in 2016. Wednesday I felt better as Trump's lead in battleground states began to shrink. Thursday, even better. 

And today, Friday, I'm feeling damn fine! 

Now starts the fun part -- basking in the warm glow of Biden's almost certain victory, while shivering with delight at Trump becoming increasingly frantic to deny the truth of his loss.

It looks like Biden will get 306 electoral votes, the same number Trump got in 2016 that he's been bragging about as a massive victory ever since. Probably Biden won't rub that fact in Trump's face, but I sure will.

You're a big fat loser, Donald. You've gotten your sorry ass kicked. You'll go down in history as a one-term president who was impeached, had very low approval ratings, and will be known as the worst president in modern times. Maybe in all times.

It's going to be ever so satisfying to watch Trump flail around in the coming days and weeks, desperately trying to con his way into a victory that was denied him by rough, tough, kick-ass Joe Biden. Trump is acting like the cowardly wimp that he is.

His insults, lying, and bravado thinly disguise his deep insecurity and lack of confidence. Trump has surrounded himself with fawning admirers who don't question his incompetence, lack of morality, and inability to act like a normal human being.

Trump always has been able to cheat, lie, or buy his way out of problems. It's hugely delicious to now see him confronted by the undeniable reality of a massive election defeat. Votes can't be bull-shitted away.

They are what they are, the expression of how badly Americans wanted to see Trump drummed out of the White House.

Trump is going to lose two red states, Arizona and Georgia, that helped propel him to victory in 2016. And the Blue Wall of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania is back up again, much stronger and more impressive than Trump's mythical "Mexico is going to pay for it" wall.

It's fitting that Trump began his failed presidency with a bizarre conspiracy theory -- that Barack Obama was born in Kenya -- and he's ending his failed presidency with an equally bizarre conspiracy theory -- that the election was stolen from him. 

I'm so looking forward to watching Trump's fragile ego disintegrate as day by day, week by week, the reality that he has lost the election big-time sinks into his feeble brain.

Fortunately, there's plenty of space in his mostly empty cranium for other facts to sink in: he faces serious legal problems without the protection of the presidency; his hotels and resorts are going to suffer under the weight of his unpopularity; nobody but his most rabid supporters is going to care about what he says or tweets about once Biden is inaugurated.

Here's some tweets I came across today that appealed to me.

I'm inspired by speaking truth to power. Here's an example from Salem.

I've never been much of an organization man. Which, I suppose, now needs to be phrased as "organization person." Regardless, I can recall numerous instances when I haven't been shy about rocking an organizational boat when I felt that was deserved.

So I get inspired by people who do this in their own way. Probably most of us do. There's something about an individual, or a small group, standing up for values they believe in against a more powerful entity that resonates in most hearts and minds. 

We admire underdogs of the canine variety who aren't afraid to bare their teeth and snarl at the big German Shepherd. We love movies about a solitary crusader who takes on a malevolent corporation. We applaud musicians who share songs of protest with us.

And because this is a Church of the Churchless blog, I never tire of hearing about members of a religion who risk ostracism, or worse, by speaking out about bad things happening in their faith.

Thus it isn't surprising that I was energized last night by watching on You Tube a meeting of the Salem-Keizer school board here in Oregon that I thought would be considerably less interesting than it turned out to be.

Students in the school district, which is the second largest in the state, have been engaged in Black Lives Matter protests for several weeks or more. They've been calling for the removal of school resource police officers for reasons that make a lot of sense.

Last night the school board, which currently is dominated by conservatives, met to approve a $1.5 billion budget that includes money for the school resource officers. I decided to watch the meeting online because I'd written on my Salem Political Snark blog about the Salem City Council addressing this issue, since the Police Department supplies some of the officers for that program.

But the school board meeting turned out to be gripping, filled with drama. I wrote about it today in "Superintendent calls out Salem-Keizer school board for not being anti-racist."

Along with the students who called, with good reason, for the resignation of two school board members, the heroine of the evening was Superintendent Christy Perry.

She stood up against the school board in a marvelous message that she read near the beginning of the meeting. This was a surprising moment, as I noted in my blog post about the meeting.

The good news is that after the low point of Heyen's self-absorbed opening remarks, I was mesmerized by a powerful statement from Salem-Keizer Superintendent Christy Perry. 

It was amazing.

I've included the entire statement at the end of this post, boldfacing parts that stuck out for me. Perry courageously criticized the school board for their weak-kneed responses to student demands in the wake of weeks of Black Lives Matter protests here in Salem.

Here's a few excerpts to whet your appetite for reading the whole statement.

We have provided opportunities to help understand our own biases. Our board members barely engage in the training. We have instances of social media display of white supremacy, a black face mask and mockery over that mask. All actions I can’t defend.

... I will advocate for Director Blasi as your next board chair because she is one of the few leaders who have at least the embers of trust from our communities of color.

... I am so committed to this, that I will only continue to do this work if I can have will and the strength to do this even if it means calling you out.

... I commit to the vision for creating the conditions for safe and welcoming schools, especially for our students of color, which includes an antiracist agenda and truly listening to our communities of color. I urge you to reaffirm your commitment to my contract as well knowing full well my support for anti-racist learning.

Really gutsy of Perry.

The school board hires and fires superintendents. Yet she was willing to publicly call them out for failing to do their duty to protect and serve students of color and other disadvantaged students. I liked her statement that she wants the board to reaffirm their commitment to her contract.

Sure, it's fair to say that Perry, being the Superintendent, is a powerful person who was speaking truth to other powerful people on the school board. But that doesn't take away from her inspiring message. 

Most people reading this post will have no interest in the Salem-Keizer School District. However, I urge you to read Perry's message by clicking on the continuation to this post if you have any interest in those who stand up for their values even when this is risky for them. Again, I've boldfaced parts that I found particularly moving.

Inside the cult of Trump, his rallies are church and he is the Gospel

I blame MSNBC's Chris Hayes. Every weekday I record his hour-long program, then watch it while doing my at-home exercising. 

Today a guest of his was Jeff Sharlet, who talked about a piece he wrote for Vanity Fair about the religious nature of Trump devotees. 

Being anti-Trump and anti-religion, naturally I couldn't wait to read what Sharlet had written. But I didn't anticipate how scary it would be.

Tomorrow Trump holds his first rally since the COVID-19 crisis hit.

Since Trump likes to do the stupidest, most anti-scientific thing possible, the rally is going to be at an indoor arena that holds 19,000 people, where Trump supporters will be packed shoulder to shoulder, masks optional, screaming in adoration as they behold their Savior. 

In short, COVID-19's dream, a marvelous way to spread itself.

I've always thought that the people who attend Trump rallies were crazed, but until I read "He's the Chosen One to Run America," I pictured those people as being more politically crazed than religiously crazed.

It turns out that they're both -- a really dangerous combination. The only good news is that Trump's approval ratings have been sliding the past few months. According to the highly-respected FiveThirtyEight web site, polls show Joe Biden with a nine-point national lead over Trump at the moment.

So most Americans aren't buying what Trump is selling, namely himself. Still, the fanaticism of his most ardent supporters is deeply worrisome. Hopefully they won't go berserk when, as I sure hope, Trump loses his re-election bid this November.

Here's some excerpts from "Inside the Cult of Trump, His Rallies are Church and He Is the Gospel."

In 2016, I attended Trump rallies around the country to witness the role played by religion. I found it in the fervor for oft-traded stories of the candidate’s riches, his private plane, “Trump Force One” and its golden interior, and in the promises of D-list preachers who opened his rallies with sermons ranging from the staples of abortion and decadence to the miraculous wealth with which God had anointed Trump.

Back then, the candidate was taken as living proof of what’s known as the Prosperity Gospel, a kind of country cousin to establishment Christian conservatism, not so much about saving society as it is about getting right with God by getting rich. Show your faith in his blessings, as revealed in the opulent lives of his anointed preachers, and good fortune will trickle down.

Like Trump, the Prosperity Gospel is transactional—a ready-made religion for a man who came by it, like so little else in his life, honestly. In the books he claims to have written, Trump invokes a personal trinity: his father, Fred, who taught him strength; his mentor, the red-hunting mafia lawyer Roy Cohn, who taught him cunning; and his childhood pastor, bestselling Christian self-help author Norman Vincent Peale, who taught him The Power of Positive Thinking.

Believe in it, preached Peale, and it can be yours. Quid pro quo, a deal with God: affluence (or the dream of it to come) in return for unquestioning loyalty. Trump’s campaign channeled a convergence of conservatisms: Fred Trump’s brutality, Cohn’s corruption, and the cross wrapped in a flag preached by Peale.

As Trump knows, the best kind of deal—the kind that pays—is not only transactional, it’s transformative. With some minor exceptions, the establishment Christian right has embraced the gospel of Trump, and it has prospered: Trump’s administration stocked top to bottom with its apostles, the movement mightier now than it was under George W. Bush or Ronald Reagan.

Trump, meanwhile, has fused his penchant for self-pity with the paranoia that runs like a third rail through Christian conservatism, the thrilling promise of “spiritual war” with dark and hidden powers.

In 2016, the Trump faith was name it and claim it, Make America Great Again, the prospect of the restoration of a mythic (read: white) past. Now, though, the kingdom has come. Trump is no longer storming the gates; he holds the power.

The faith for 2020, I learned at his rallies, is a secret one, its password a wink that’s really a warning, its enemy invisible and everywhere: the deep state, the pedos and the FBI, Democrat-ruled sanctuary cities and the “illegals” they send forth to pillage the heartland. MAGA has become KAG, Keep America Great—which requires not a new prosperity but the eradication of America’s enemies within. “If you do not bring forth what is within you,” as the gospel of Thomas puts it, “what you do not bring forth will destroy you.”

...Four years ago, the mood at Trump’s rallies was electric but heavy, a mix of anger and the possibility of “winning”—winning so much, Trump promised, that we’d get tired of winning. Since then he has won; and won and won and won. The energy now is victorious—and even darker.

If the arena is a safe space for Trumpers, a church where the like-minded can join together in a sea of red hats, the world outside is scarier than ever. “Secret murders everywhere,” says Pastor Sean, his voice low and growly. “Pedophiles and evil.” That’s why he loves Trump: because he believes God has chosen Trump for this hour. That which Trump’s critics see as crude and divisive, Pastor Sean takes as proof of his anointing. He is God’s champion, a fighter, a “counterpuncher.”

...Look upon me, you who reflect upon me,” declares the divine voice of perhaps the most famous gnostic text, a poem called “The Thunder, Perfect Mind.” So it is in the arenas of Trump, thousands of red hats just like his, the hats that at each rally he throws to the crowd, giving of himself. Such are the miracles of Trump, adored for his golden tower, his golden faucets, his generosity. He who has taken the most also gives the most.

...“He wants to discipline us,” Dave says. He, in this instance, means not Trump but his father: God. Like Trump, COVID-19 is an instrument of his will, and he has allowed the virus as a punishment for our “corporate” sin, our failure as a nation to fully embrace him and his messenger, Trump, a view not so distant from that of many Christian right leaders, including Franklin Graham, Fox News preacher Robert Jeffress, and Ralph Drollinger, who leads a White House Bible study.

...Only the truly initiated—Dave, Diane, QAnon—know the name of “The Storm” that’s coming, but nearly all of Trump’s devotees can read the signs, red flares over blue seas: A CNN crew arrested on camera, live, in Minneapolis; in New York, a viral video of a riot cop flashing the O.K. symbol; and in Washington, following a gas processional, the president of the United States marching through the sterile aftermath to hold aloft a Bible, upside down—a sign? A signal?—its red ribbon dangling along his wrist like a snake’s tongue.

What does it mean?

“Pray over it,” says Dave, of that which is given for our witness. “Let it settle.”

American's support for Black Lives Matter has risen sharply

With the coronavirus crisis still going strong, and Donald Trump still acting as badly as ever, it's great to have some good news to celebrate. Behold...

This graphic comes from a story in today's New York Times. Net support is the difference between the percent of people supporting a policy minus the percent of people opposing the policy. Here's how the story starts out.

American public opinion can sometimes seem stubborn. Voters haven’t really changed their views on abortion in 50 years. Donald J. Trump’s approval rating among registered voters has fallen within a five-point range for just about every day of his presidency.

But the Black Lives Matter movement has been an exception from the start.

Public opinion on race and criminal justice issues has been steadily moving left since the first protests ignited over the fatal shootings of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown. And since the death of George Floyd in police custody on May 25, public opinion on race, criminal justice and the Black Lives Matter movement has leaped leftward.

Over the last two weeks, support for Black Lives Matter increased by nearly as much as it had over the previous two years, according to data from Civiqs, an online survey research firm. By a 28-point margin, Civiqs finds that a majority of American voters support the movement, up from a 17-point margin before the most recent wave of protests began.

And this trend is evident from more than the Civiqs surveys.

The survey is not the only one to suggest that recent protests enjoy broad public support. Weekly polling for the Democracy Fund’s U.C.L.A./Nationscape survey shows a significant increase in unfavorable views of the police, and an increase in the belief that African-Americans face a lot of discrimination.

Perhaps most significant, the Civiqs data is not alone in suggesting that an outright majority of Americans agree with the central arguments of Black Lives Matter.

A Monmouth University poll found that 76 percent of Americans consider racism and discrimination a “big problem,” up 26 points from 2015. The poll found that 57 percent of voters thought the anger behind the demonstrations was fully justified, while a further 21 percent called it somewhat justified.

Polls show that a majority of Americans believe that the police are more likely to use deadly force against African-Americans, and that there’s a lot of discrimination against black Americans in society. Back in 2013, when Black Lives Matter began, a majority of voters disagreed with all of these statements.

What this shows is that public opinion on a moral issue can be slow to change, but when it does, the change can be rapid.

Being 71, I remember when homosexuality was considered abhorrent, and same-sex marriage being legal didn't enter peoples' minds. But now Americans are generally accepting of LGBTQ people, with same-sex marriage being taken for granted. The New York Times story notes that inequality pushes a moral button in most people.

And whether on gay marriage or civil rights, American public opinion tends to drift toward the side advocating equal treatment. Public opinion doesn’t have nearly as clear a record of drifting toward the left on issues that don’t hinge on equal treatment under the law, like gun control and abortion.

Obviously, then, morality is a social construct, not a God-given commandment. And there's plenty of evidence that animals other than us have similar reactions to inequality. 

But sadly, all too often us humans, who like to believe we possess an elevated sense of justice, don't act as morally as monkeys. To give a current example, President Trump is refusing to rename military bases that carry the names of Confederate generals, even though the Army Secretary and Defense Secretary were open to this. 

So the president of the United States is fine with honoring generals who fought against the United States in an effort to keep slavery alive and well in the southern states. 

It's understandable that Trump wasn't aware that these bases were named after Confederate generals. I sure wasn't. However, now that it is been pointed out to him, it definitely is a moral injustice which needs to be rectified. When Joe Biden becomes president, it will be.

The Army bases in question, all in Southern states, are Fort Bragg, N.C.; Forts Benning and Gordon in Georgia; Forts Pickett, A.P. Hill and Lee in Virginia; Fort Polk and Camp Beauregard in Louisiana; Fort Hood, Texas; and Fort Rucker, Ala.

George Floyd protest brought my community together

There are lots of ways to feel a sense of community with our fellow humans.

Going to a religious gathering is one way, but definitely isn't the best way, because religions are divisive -- if you aren't a member of a particular faith, likely attending a "service" there is going to feel out of place.

Yesterday I took part in a protest here in Salem, Oregon against the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis policeman. I was deeply moved by thousands of people coming out to protest the needless killings of so many black Americans at the hands of police officers.

What connected us was a commitment to justice for all.

It is deeply wrong to treat people of color differently from white people. But my country's racist past -- slavery -- is still being manifested today. This has to stop. Hopefully the massive protests around the United States will help bring about positive changes in not only policing, but other areas such as education and health care where blacks still are not treated equally.

Have a look at the photos I took at the protest, plus a video of part of the march that followed a rally. I used an Adobe Spark web page to share the images.

Two examples of how religion is screwing up George Floyd protests

Here in the United States it's been great to see so many people protesting the murder of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer who kneeled on Floyd's neck for about nine minutes while he was saying, "I can't breathe."

Of course, this is just the latest person of color who has been killed by police for no good reason. Black Lives Matter protests have been going on years, but I'm hopeful our country finally is sending a clear message to police that the unjust killings have to stop. 

Many people of faith have been taking part in the protests, so I readily admit that religious groups can play a strong role in social justice movements. 

But then there's Donald Trump, who has an unerring ability to say the wrong thing at the wrong time.

A New York Times story explains how Trump screwed up an opportunity today to bring our country together. Here's excerpts from "Trump Says Jobs Report Made It a 'Great Day' for George Floyd, Stepping on Message."

WASHINGTON — President Trump drew immediate criticism from Democrats on Friday for declaring that new unemployment numbers made it “a great day” for George Floyd, the black man whose death in the custody of white police officers has touched off protests and rioting across the country.

“Hopefully, George is looking down right now and saying this is a great thing that’s happening for our country,” Mr. Trump said. “This is a great day for him, it’s a great day for everybody. This is a great day for everybody. This is a great, great day in terms of equality.”

After a week of unrest in the capital, Mr. Trump had gone to the Rose Garden to declare victory over a coronavirus pandemic that ravaged the economy, promoting the new numbers and planning to carry that message with him on a trip to Maine later in the day. But his jarring reference to Mr. Floyd overshadowed it.

Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, was among those who immediately criticized the president’s remarks.

“George Floyd’s last words — ‘I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe’ — have echoed all across this nation and, quite frankly, around the world,” Mr. Biden said. “For the president to try to put any other words in the mouth of George Floyd I, frankly, think is despicable.”

Mr. Biden pointed out that the economic news that Mr. Trump was so intent on celebrating did not extend to black Americans, whose unemployment rate had actually risen to 16.8 percent from 16.7 percent.

“The fact that he did so on a day when black unemployment rose,” Mr. Biden added, “tells you everything you need to know about this man.”

Trump isn't religious. He just uses religion for his own political purposes now and then.

Still, how could any sensible person (which doesn't describe Trump) believe that someone who recently died in a horrible fashion, tearing him away from loved ones, would be "looking down" from heaven, or wherever, saying that a jobs report was a great day for himself?

Aside from being an incredibly stupid thing to say, it was horribly insensitive to George Floyd's family and friends. This just shows how narcissistic Trump is, being incapable of empathy and compassion for others.

Then there's a small story close to home, right here in Salem, Oregon, that has a more tenuous connection with religion -- but a connection nonetheless. Below is how I described it on Facebook posts today. This is a quote from the no such thing as secular story mentioned in the post which, naturally, I heartily disagree with:

“Said another way,” Vande Griend continues, “this class is about learning to practice in our real lives what Abraham Kuyper declared when he said, ‘There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!’”

SALEM MAN CALLS POLICE FOR WRITING BLACK LIVES MATTER MESSAGES IN CHALK ON PUBLIC SIDEWALKS. Only in Salem... hopefully. Amazing display of concern by Doug Vande Griend, who spelled out his name during the phone call to police that was captured on video.

Naturally I Googled this name. Unless there are two men with the same name in Salem, Vande Griend appears to be an attorney who writes about deep Christian notions such as "there is no such thing as secular." (subject of his third-year thesis in law school)

Interesting. I definitely consider there is such a thing as secular, being decidedly non-religious myself. But, hey, each to his own. Along that line, a Doug Vande Griend wrote a piece, "The Role of the Church in Society," that concluded with the passage below the line.

It seems to me that Vande Griend certainly was trying to "lord it over others" when he objected to peaceful writing of timely messages on a sidewalk. Likely the coming rain will wash the chalk away, so an "appropriate sense of humility" would have been to smile and applaud this display of civic activism.
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"People instinctively want their perspectives, whatever the topic, to prevail over those of others. But that want can be sinful. An appropriate sense of humility should restrain us from trying to 'lord it over others (Church Order, Art. 85). May we pray for that sense of humility."

Christianity Today editorial about Trump also applies to religious leaders

During the fifteen years I've been blogging away here at the Church of the Churchless, I've mentioned the evangelical magazine Christianity Today twice in my posts -- here and here. 

Not surprisingly, in both cases I disagreed with what Christianity Today had to say. 

But yesterday Christianity Today published an opinion piece whose conclusions I heartily agree with. Namely, that President Donald Trump deserves to be impeached and removed from office for his immoral behavior.

Way to go! It's great to see an evangelical standing up for what most Christians supposedly believe in: honesty, respect, truthfulness, selfless service, dedication to a cause greater than oneself. 

Trump, of course, embraces none of those qualities. For him it's all about me, me, me. 

Unfortunately, quite a few religious leaders also fail to live up to the standards of their chosen religion. Yet when their misdeeds come to light, often there are attempts to either cover up their bad behavior or excuse it through some shaky rationale.

I've boldfaced parts of the opinion piece that appealed to me the most and reflected larger themes about how members of a religion should view those who fail to live up to the moral code of their faith.

Trump Should Be Removed from Office

It’s time to say what we said 20 years ago when a president’s character was revealed for what it was.

Mark Galli  December 19, 2019

In our founding documents, Billy Graham explains that Christianity Today will help evangelical Christians interpret the news in a manner that reflects their faith. The impeachment of Donald Trump is a significant event in the story of our republic. It requires comment.

The typical CT approach is to stay above the fray and allow Christians with different political convictions to make their arguments in the public square, to encourage all to pursue justice according to their convictions and treat their political opposition as charitably as possible. We want CT to be a place that welcomes Christians from across the political spectrum, and reminds everyone that politics is not the end and purpose of our being. We take pride in the fact, for instance, that politics does not dominate our homepage.

That said, we do feel it necessary from time to time to make our own opinions on political matters clear—always, as Graham encouraged us, doing so with both conviction and love. We love and pray for our president, as we love and pray for leaders (as well as ordinary citizens) on both sides of the political aisle.

Let’s grant this to the president: The Democrats have had it out for him from day one, and therefore nearly everything they do is under a cloud of partisan suspicion. This has led many to suspect not only motives but facts in these recent impeachment hearings. And, no, Mr. Trump did not have a serious opportunity to offer his side of the story in the House hearings on impeachment.

But the facts in this instance are unambiguous: The president of the United States attempted to use his political power to coerce a foreign leader to harass and discredit one of the president’s political opponents. That is not only a violation of the Constitution; more importantly, it is profoundly immoral.

The reason many are not shocked about this is that this president has dumbed down the idea of morality in his administration. He has hired and fired a number of people who are now convicted criminals. He himself has admitted to immoral actions in business and his relationship with women, about which he remains proud. His Twitter feed alone—with its habitual string of mischaracterizations, lies, and slanders—is a near perfect example of a human being who is morally lost and confused.

Trump’s evangelical supporters have pointed to his Supreme Court nominees, his defense of religious liberty, and his stewardship of the economy, among other things, as achievements that justify their support of the president.

We believe the impeachment hearings have made it absolutely clear, in a way the Mueller investigation did not, that President Trump has abused his authority for personal gain and betrayed his constitutional oath. The impeachment hearings have illuminated the president’s moral deficiencies for all to see. This damages the institution of the presidency, damages the reputation of our country, and damages both the spirit and the future of our people. None of the president’s positives can balance the moral and political danger we face under a leader of such grossly immoral character.

This concern for the character of our national leader is not new in CT. In 1998, we wrote this:

The President's failure to tell the truth—even when cornered—rips at the fabric of the nation. This is not a private affair. For above all, social intercourse is built on a presumption of trust: trust that the milk your grocer sells you is wholesome and pure; trust that the money you put in your bank can be taken out of the bank; trust that your babysitter, firefighters, clergy, and ambulance drivers will all do their best. And while politicians are notorious for breaking campaign promises, while in office they have a fundamental obligation to uphold our trust in them and to live by the law.

And this:

Unsavory dealings and immoral acts by the President and those close to him have rendered this administration morally unable to lead.

Unfortunately, the words that we applied to Mr. Clinton 20 years ago apply almost perfectly to our current president. Whether Mr. Trump should be removed from office by the Senate or by popular vote next election—that is a matter of prudential judgment. That he should be removed, we believe, is not a matter of partisan loyalties but loyalty to the Creator of the Ten Commandments.

To the many evangelicals who continue to support Mr. Trump in spite of his blackened moral record, we might say this: Remember who you are and whom you serve. Consider how your justification of Mr. Trump influences your witness to your Lord and Savior. Consider what an unbelieving world will say if you continue to brush off Mr. Trump’s immoral words and behavior in the cause of political expediency.

If we don’t reverse course now, will anyone take anything we say about justice and righteousness with any seriousness for decades to come? Can we say with a straight face that abortion is a great evil that cannot be tolerated and, with the same straight face, say that the bent and broken character of our nation’s leader doesn’t really matter in the end?

We have reserved judgment on Mr. Trump for years now. Some have criticized us for our reserve. But when it comes to condemning the behavior of another, patient charity must come first. So we have done our best to give evangelical Trump supporters their due, to try to understand their point of view, to see the prudential nature of so many political decisions they have made regarding Mr. Trump.

To use an old cliché, it’s time to call a spade a spade, to say that no matter how many hands we win in this political poker game, we are playing with a stacked deck of gross immorality and ethical incompetence. And just when we think it’s time to push all our chips to the center of the table, that’s when the whole game will come crashing down. It will crash down on the reputation of evangelical religion and on the world’s understanding of the gospel. And it will come crashing down on a nation of men and women whose welfare is also our concern.

Mark Galli is editor in chief of Christianity Today

Nationalism is bad. Religious nationalism is worse.

I live in the United States. Misguided religious people call it a Christian nation. They're wrong. Likewise, misguided religious people in India call it a Hindu nation. They're also wrong.

I got to thinking about religious nationalism after reading the first part of Arjun Sethi's testimony regarding Jammu, Kashmir, and minority rights in India. Maybe Sethi is exaggerating how bad things are getting in India, but even if what he says is only partly true, that's still really disturbing.

Here's an excerpt from what Sethi wrote.

In 1947, India created a constitutional republic based on the principles of secularism and pluralism. The founders hoped this framework would hold the nation’s rich diversity together and ensure that India would never inflict on others the brutality inflicted on them.

Yet today, Hindu nationalist mobs roam India, targeting Muslims, Dalits and Christians, sometimes forcing them to recite Hindu slogans. Security forces have forced Kashmiris to lick dirt off the road for refusing to utter national mottos.

Hindu nationalism isn’t new to India, but it is on the rise. It’s rooted in the belief that India is a Hindu nation, and that Hindus, who make up 80% of the population, should enjoy a privileged status and exercise majoritarian rule. This ideology is amplified by the RSS, a male only, volunteer, paramilitary organization. Its earliest leaders referred to Christians and Muslims as “internal threats” and compared India’s Muslims to “Jews in Germany.”

The BJP is the political wing of the RSS, and Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister of India, its national leader. Modi trained with the RSS at the age of eight, and recently told a crowd of RSS supporters that he was proud to be a member. Amit Shah, Modi’s second in command, has called undocumented Muslim immigrants “termites” and vowed to “throw them in the Bay of Bengal.”

Modi is forging a new India, where non-Hindus are second class subjects with limited rights. India is often called the world’s largest democracy, but democracies only work if people can speak, associate, and protest freely. Democracies only thrive if they safeguard civil liberties and minority rights. Today, India more closely resembles an authoritarian regime than a pluralistic republic.

Nationalism itself is a very limited point of view. In a recent issue of New Scientist, there was an interview with British astronaut Helen Sharman. She said:

When you look down on the Earth, you can't see the political boundaries. Politics means absolutely nothing because you're seeing the natural world. When you're zipping around in low Earth orbit, in 92 minutes you've gone completely around the Earth.

So instead of it being this huge place that you can apparently do anything to that's really robust, it's actually a very tiny place where everything is affecting everything else.

We're all part of the Earth and the Earth is as much part of us as we are of it. I am angered by the fact that we are apparently destroying the very thing that's given us life, as opposed to what we could be doing, which is living symbiotically.

What's crazy is that I'm pretty sure people in every country on Earth consider that their small part of our tiny planet is the very best part. The same holds true for the 50 states in the United States. I've rarely, if ever, seen residents of one state saying "Where I live is horrible."

(I say this as a resident of Oregon -- which obviously is the very best state. Yet somehow people manage to live in North Dakota and like it there, which baffles me.)

Don't get me wrong. I love the United States.

But in no way do I consider it to be the greatest country on Earth, nor do I consider myself to be a nationalist in any sense. The United States has strengths, and it has weaknesses. This country has accomplished some marvelous things. It also has done some horrible things.

The same is true of every other country, including India.

So I don't understand the appeal of nationalism, since it defies logic, facts, and common sense. Nationalism is akin to the extreme fanaticism of fans who consider that their favorite sports team can do no wrong, so if it loses a game the referees must have made bad calls or the other team cheated.

That said, at least nationalists identify with an entire nation. When a modifier is put before "nationalists," as in "religious nationalists"  or "white nationalists," something bad becomes even worse, since now one's loyalty isn't to their country, but to just a portion of it.

Recently I had a great conversation with someone who, like me, had come to doubt the religious faith that they'd embraced for many years.

Along with their marriage partner, they're raising their children in a religiously open-minded fashion, trusting that the children will be able to choose which religion, if any, makes sense to them -- as opposed to indoctrinating them into believing that a certain religion is the Only True Way.

I told this person that to me, forcing a child to believe in a certain religion is as bad as forcing a child to accept a certain form of politics.

Wouldn't it seem decidedly weird if a parent read bedtime stories to a seven-year-old about how being a member of a particular political party is the only way to participate in politics? And once a week, that child had to attend meetings where the views of that political party were discussed?

Yet all over the world, people brainwash children into believing that a particular religion is the Only True Way, which is even crazier than brainwashing children into believing that a particular political party is the Only True Way, since there obviously is solid evidence that political parties exist, while there is zero demonstrable evidence that God or anything else supernatural exists.

Hopefully India will evolve from its attraction to Hindu nationalism and realize that it makes no sense in a pluralistic society for a government, or a political party, to embrace a certain religion to the exclusion of others, including, of course, the religious non-belief of atheists.

Trump is guarded by angels. His re-election is assured. Supposedly.

Wow, if true this tweet by Lana Puckett would be depressing news for progressives like me who detest Donald Trump. I emailed the tweet to myself after I saw mention of it in a separate tweet by George Conway, a fierce critic of Trump despite his wife being a senior advisor to Trump.

This is what Conway said about Puckett's tweet: "um, remind me who the patron saint of porn-star payoffs is again"

It looks like Conway got the last word, because Puckett's tweet has been deleted and her Twitter account suspended. She used the Twitter name of @Mariamedia7777.

So while she believes a host of angels is heavily guarding Trump, it looks like God's protection didn't extend to her. At least, not when it comes to Twitter.

The replies to Puckett's tweet are still live, though. Here's a few of them.

Maybe it isn't eternity we long for, but quality time in this life

Is eternity really so great? I've always thought so. Well, not really for "always," since that would be the same as eternity, and I'm definitely not eternal. 

Rather, I meant for as long as I've been pondering death and the likely end of this one-and-only life we're all enjoying. 

After reading a review by James Wood in The New Yorker of a book by Martin Hägglund, "This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom," I ordered it from Amazon. 

Given that the book consists of 464 pages of quite intense philosophizing, I may not be writing blog posts about it for a while. So here's some excerpts from the provocative review. 

I've wondered about what kind of society would make the most sense in a world that had given up belief in an afterlife.

After all, if this life were considered the only life anyone would ever have, it sure seems like we humans would value the quality of this life considerably more highly than we do now.

Here's some glimpses of how Hägglund views this question. 

Once we seriously consider the consequences of life without end, the prospect is not only horrifying but meaningless (as the philosopher Bernard Williams argued years ago). An eternity based on what Louise Glick called "absence of change" would be not a rescue from anything  but an end of everything meaningful.

Hägglund puts forth his eloquent case: "Rather than making our dreams come true, it would obliterate who we are. To be invulnerable to grief is not to be consummated; it is to be deprived of the capacity to care. And to rest in peace is not to be fulfilled: It is to be dead."

...A liberal rabbi or pastor might object that Haaglund is unhelpfully hung up on eternity. Eternity is not at the heart of what people care about; they hardly ever spend time envisaging it. But Hägglund's central claim is that a good deal of what passes for religious aspiration is secular aspiration that doesn't know itself as such.

He wants to out religionists as closet secularists. When we ardently hope that the lives of people we love will go on and on, we don't really want them to be eternal. We simply want those lives to last "for a longer time." 

So his reply would probably be: Just admit that your real concerns and values are secular ones, grounded in the frailty, the finitude, and the rescue of this life. He makes a similar point in relation to Buddhism.

He is happy to welcome, as essentially secular, those popular forms of meditation and mindfulness which insist on our being "present in the moment"; but he chides as religious and deluded those doctrinal aspects of Buddhism which insist on detachment, release from anxiety, and an overcoming of worldly desire.

...But if we are to cherish this life, we have to treat what we do as an end in itself. "The real measure of value," Hägglund says, "is not how much work we have done or have to do (quantity of labor time), but how much disposable time we have to pursue and explore what matters to us (quality of free time)."

...And yet Hägglund's very vulnerability increases my regard for his project. I admire his boldness, perhaps even his recklessness. And his fundamental secularity seems right: since time is all we have, we must measure its preciousness in units of freedom. Nothing else will do. Once this glorious idea has taken hold, it is very hard to dislodge.

Hägglund offers a fulfillment of what Marx meant by "irreligious criticism," a criticism aimed at both religion and capitalism,  because both forms of life obscure what is really going on: that, as Hägglund puts it, "our own lives -- our only lives -- are  taken away from us when our time is taken from us."

We are familiar with the secular charge that religion is "life-denying." Hägglund wants to arraign capitalism for a similar asceticism. Religion, you might say enforces asceticism in the name of the spiritual; capitalism enforces asceticism in the name of the material.

Rabbi Goldstein is wrong. A moment of silence in schools is useless.

Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein, who lost a finger in the attack on the Chabad of Poway synagogue where one person was shot to death yesterday, has a perfect right to be deeply upset by what happened to his congregation.

But today I heard Goldstein speak about what he thinks the proper response should be to the attack, and I heartily disagree with him. 

Goldstein said that prayer used to be allowed in public schools. Now, it isn't. Instead, the Rabbi wants every school day to begin with a moment of silence. We should know that God created us, he said.

There's a big problem with this -- the separation of church and state. Children shouldn't be subjected to a religiously-motivated moment of silence, which really would be the only reason for such a practice.

The remarks I heard from Rabbi Goldstein made it clear that he wants God to be reintroduced into public schools. He didn't say why he thinks this would prevent mass shootings, probably because there is no reason to think that it would make any difference  in United States gun violence.

Here's part of a transcription on San Diego Jewish World of remarks made by Rabbi Goldstein. These are close to what I heard on my car radio today, but lack the mentions of God and prayer.

Rabbi Goldstein

And I want to take note for other victims who suffered yesterday, physically, emotionally, spiritually. The best we can do to combat is to grow, build, and be stronger, stronger and stronger.  And yes, every single one of us can do that. I look around at the myriad of cameras that are here.

The message needs to be brought out to the public ‘How does a 19-year-old, a teenager, have the audacity, the sickness, the hatred to publicize such anti-Semitism in [h]is manifesto?  How does he come here to a house of worship to do what he did?’ 

Perhaps we have to go back a little earlier and think about what are we teaching our children?  What are we educating our children?  We need to perhaps consider re-introducing in our public-school system a moment of silence when children can start the day with pausing and thinking, ‘Why am I created?  Why am I here? And what am I going to do?’

After listening to Goldstein speak, I heard a MSNBC panel of experts discuss the synagogue attack. They had a very different take on the cause of anti-Semitism. It was pointed out that anti-Semitic attacks rose by 57% in 2017, the year after Trump was elected. Trump's implicit and explicit endorsement of white nationalism is a likely reason.

A panel member also said that the Department of Homeland Security has eliminated a branch that was focused on combatting domestic terrorism. So the truth, this person said, is that the Trump administration isn't doing everything it should to reduce the threat from people who espouse white supremacy and white nationalism. 

A moment of silence in schools seems wholly inadequate to counteract a president who said, after white nationalist marchers in Charlottesville clashed with protesters, "You also had some very fine people on both sides." Here's what the white nationalist "good people" were chanting in August 2017.

They immediately went after the Jews. At their Friday night rally at the University of Virginia, the white nationalists brandished torches and chanted anti-Semitic and Nazi slogans, including “blood and soil” (an English rendering of the Nazi “blut und boden”) and “Jews will not replace us” — all crafted to cast Jews as foreign interlopers who need to be expunged. The attendees proudly displayed giant swastikas and wore shirts emblazoned with quotes from Adolf Hitler. One banner read, “Jews are Satan’s children.”

Yet I heard Rabbi Goldstein speak approvingly of his 15-minute phone conversation with Trump, who reportedly likes the Rabbi's idea for a (useless) moment of silence in public schools.

Our gun culture is the main reason this country has so many gun deaths. 

I've written about this in quite a few blog posts, such as "U.S.A. has more gun deaths because it has more guns." And Rabbi Goldstein should realize that Israel tightly regulates who can own a gun, as I noted in "Australia and Israel tightly regulate guns. Why can't the United States?"

After every mass shooting there's a call for thoughts and prayers. Which, obviously, do exactly nothing to prevent the next mass shooting. 

Rabbi Goldstein would be better off giving up his nonsensical moment of silence idea, and instead study the chart below from a CNN story, "How U.S. gun culture compares with the world in five charts." The United States is one of the most religious of advanced nations, yet we have by far the most gun-related deaths per 1 million people. 

Hmmmm. Could the reason be that we have almost half of all of the guns in the world, but only 4% of the world's population? Answer: YES.

Praying shouldn't be part of government meetings

My wife, Laurel, is an avid atheist -- even more so in some respects than I am. She started a MeetUp group here in Salem, Oregon: Freethinking Atheists of Salem. Here's the description of the group.

Are you too logical/rational to believe in religions, conspiracy theories, and beliefs not supported by modern science, yet miss the fellowship church-goers enjoy? Let's meet up monthly for coffee to converse with like-minded people who also share minority status as "nonbelievers" in a predominantly religious believing world.

Let's share what we learn about science, the challenges of being atheists, and support each other in what we know to be supported by reality. We ask for about a one dollar donation to cover the MeetUp cost, and that you support the IKE Box's hospitality by purchasing a drink or snack.

Last night Laurel used the public comment period at a Salem City Council meeting to talk about her concern that a minister called for prayer prior to Mayor Chuck Bennett giving the annual "State of the City" address. 

(You can see the invocation at about the 1:30 mark in this video.)

Yes, the Mayor's talk wasn't held in a government building, but it was part of his official mayoral duties. As Laurel says in the video below, church and state are supposed to be separated in the United States. Having a Christian minister issue a call for prayer elevates one religion above others.

And also, of course, above the 30% or so of people in Oregon who don't embrace any religion, or God. Yet the minister ends his invocation/prayer with "In Jesus' name." 

There's absolutely no reason why people who choose to attend a secular event should have to listen to religious talk.

I'm glad my wife made this point to the Mayor and City Council. Hopefully next year there won't be any religious invocation. Or if there is, that it feature a representative of a different faith than Christianity. 

 

Salem Women's March 2019 had some crazy religious counter-protestors

Last Saturday there was another Women's March here in Salem, Oregon. As I did with the 2017 and 2018 marches, I took a bunch of photos, then shared them in an Adobe Spark web page that you can peruse by clicking on the image below. 

There were some Christian fundamentalist counter-protestors at the event on the Capitol Mall.

I'll share a photo of their signs, along with my commentary on one of the signs below the Adobe Spark link. Or you can view the photo and my comment on it by clicking on the Women's March Salem 2019 link.

Caution: if you're an avid fan of President Trump, be prepared to see many photos of signs that vilify him. 

The "cover girl" (or cover woman) on the web page is my wife, Laurel. She's also an avid atheist who has organized a MeetUp group that convenes every Sunday to support people in the irreligiosity. 

Here's the photo of the fundamentalist Christians, along with my commentary. 

Here's a closeup of the Christian fundamentalist hate signs. Pleasingly, I'm guilty of all of the "sins" in the sign on the left: I accept abortion, multiple religions, marijuana, porn, alcohol, and same sex relationships. Also, how could these guys be against fornicators? Do they think they're the product of a virgin birth? Me, I'm fine with hell fire, since I'm a proud evolutionist.

Hobby Lobby ad in Oregonian calls for a Christian theocracy

I'm not a fan of Hobby L0bby, to put it mildly.

When they opened a store here in Salem, Oregon, I did some research on the company and wrote a blog post that listed five good reasons not to shop at the store. Here, in headline form, is what I said shoppers at Hobby Lobby  were supporting:

(1) Denying contraception coverage to women employed by corporations owned by religious zealots.
(2) Teaching the Bible in public schools as "true" and "good." 
(3) Smuggling artifacts from Iraq, an act that supports terrorism.
(4) Supporting the election of Trump.
(5) Helping fund a $500 million Museum of the Bible.

Here's another reason not to shop at Hobby Lobby -- the company buys a full page ad in newspapers around the country close to July 4 that in very clear terms calls for the United States to be a Christian theocracy. 

This is a photo of the ad that ran in yesterday's Portland Oregonian. 


If you want to read it, here's a link to the ad on the Hobby Lobby web site. But wait... there's a better way to read Hobby Lobby's paean to theocracy.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation has put together a way-cool annotated version. You click on a quote in the Hobby Lobby ad, then you can read the quotation in its original form and context.

Often it turns out that Hobby Lobby has purposely mangled the quotation to make it better fit their Christian theocratic world view.  Many of the quotes are deliberately misleading, which shows how little respect Hobby Lobby has for truth-telling. 

A letter to the editor in the Eugene Register Guard does a good job of critiquing the Hobby Lobby ad.

The Register-Guard’s full page “paid advertisement” from Hobby Lobby on July 1 offends me on several grounds. One, it’s right-wing evangelism masquerading as a 4th of July ad. Two, it says “A good America is a Christian America.” Three, it uses misleading, out-of-context quotes as evidence.

I have nothing against Christianity or Jesus. I love them both. But mixing Jesus with government is dangerous and misguided. God and Christianity trump the Constitution. This ad offers random quotes — endorsements — for God-and-Christianity by a few Founding Fathers and 18th and 19th century judges. What’s not there: The founders and Supreme Court vehemently disapprove of mixing church and state.

Alas, somehow Hobby Lobby fell in love with theocracy. Hobby Lobby owners should watch “The Handmaid’s Tale.” It’s a feel-good series for everyone, and exactly what America needs.

 And here’s a tip for the R-G. Maybe try harder to discriminate between paid advertising and religious right recruitment? There’s even a clue in the bottom banner of the ad itself: “If you would like to know Jesus as Lord and Savior, visit Need Him Ministry ...” and “download a free Bible for your phone.”
     -- Michael Janover, Eugene

Janover is correct about the founders of our country being opposed to the United States becoming a Christian nation. I've written numerous blog posts on this subject. Check out my post, "More quotations from 'Nature's God,' a marvelously insightful book," for links to several of them. 

Here's some quotes from that book that I shared in the post:

The opposite of the Empire of Reason is in reality the Empire of Faith. Hobbes calls it "the Kingdom of the Fairies"; in more modern terms, we could say that the opposite of democracy is theocracy.

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Thus, superstition permits individuals suffering from one set of passions to feed off individuals suffering from another according to a logic that neither side understands, and in this manner society lacerates itself in a fury of thoughtless self-destruction. 

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No proposition could have elicited more support from the radical precursors to the American Revolution than that the priests are the chief instrument of tyrants.

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Human beings achieved self-government only after they learned how to discard the politically dangerous delusions that arise from the common religious consciousness. At least, that is more or less how America's founders saw the matter.

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The equality that Jefferson announced and that Lincoln partially advanced is at bottom the demand that all power must explain itself. In reality, the revolutionary force in the Declaration of Independence is the guiding principle of philosophy.

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Every thing in the universe strives to persist in being, say the radical philosophers, and the power of nature through which the human mind strives to persist is the power of the understanding.

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From the radical position that Locke and Spinoza share, it follows that religion is not a fundamental category of human experience for legal or political purposes in either its public or its private aspects.

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The separation of church and state that emerges from the early modern revolutions in philosophy and politics does not in fact imply that the modern secular state is or ought to be neutral with respect to religion in every sense of that term. Rather, this separation at least implicitly involves the creation of a certain kind of public religion.

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This new public religion is indeed tolerant of every religious belief -- but only insofar as that belief is understood to be intrinsically private. It does not and ought not tolerate any form of religion that attempts to hold the power of the sovereign answerable to its private religious belief. It also does not and ought not tolerate any attempt to shield the doctrines and practices of any religion from critical scrutiny.

Prayers are useless. Murdered victims were in a church.

Wil Wheaton, an actor, is getting criticism for this Twitter tweet that was in response to a call for prayers by House Speaker Paul Ryan following the murder of 26 people in a Texas church. 

Wheaton apologized to offended religious believers, but the points he was making really don't deserve an apology.

 

First, it is absolutely true that prayers are useless.

There's no evidence that praying changes anything in the absence of some physical action. The most scientifically rigorous study of prayer showed no effect on the recovery of people who had heart surgery (prayed-for people actually had more complications, not less).

As Wheaton said, the 26 people who were killed by Devin Patrick Kelley were sitting in a church. If they weren't praying at the exact moment Kelley began shooting, almost certainly they had been praying beforehand.

Yet politicians love to call for "thoughts and prayers" after every mass shooting. So do the anchors on cable news shows. It's a ritual that does more harm than good, as an atheist, Hemant Mehta, cogently argued in Prayer is Useless and Has a Downside.

While the main purpose of prayer may be to help others, it never demonstrably does that. Prayers benefit only those believers who say or hear them. Prayer gives them comfort. It lets them think they have some control over a situation that may be out of their hands. It’s the last resort of people who have run out of ideas, and the first resort of people who never bothered to think about how they could actually fix the problem at hand.

This is not harmless. There’s a very real downside to praying.

It lulls believers into a false sense of accomplishment. We cannot solve our problems – much less the world’s – through prayer. We often see people with good intentions praying for victims in the wake of a tragedy, but prayer is useless without action, and those actions make the prayers irrelevant. To paraphrase the great Robert Green Ingersoll, hands that help are far better than lips that pray.

I have no problem with “prayer” as an act of meditation. In fact, many atheists can tell you the benefit of silent self-reflection. The delusion occurs when you think someone else is hearing your thoughts and acting on them.

When it comes down to it, prayer is illogical, even in religious terms. If God has a plan, why try to thwart it? If God can be swayed by prayers, what kind of God would allow the horrors we see in the world? And if two devout believers pray for different things, how does God choose the winner? (I'm sure the San Antonio Spurs would love to know the answer to that.)

Prayer is nothing but a powerful placebo. We’d all be better off accepting that.

So Wheaton was completely justified in taking Paul Ryan to task for calling for prayers rather than some sort of action that would actually do something to stop more mass shootings. Here's some of what we know about the killer.

The US Air Force has said it is investigating its apparent failure to enter information about Texas shooter Devin Patrick Kelley's criminal history into the national database.

Ex-airman Kelly was court-martialled for domestic violence in 2012, and was barred from owning or buying guns.

But last year he was able to purchase a rifle he used in Sunday's attack on a small church outside San Antonio.

He killed 26 people and fled the scene. He was later found dead in his car.

The killer was able to buy an AR-15 assault rifle and other guns. He took 15 30-round magazines into the church and fired all of that ammunition at the people sitting in pews, along with the assistant pastor giving the sermon. 

I don't believe in God.

Those who do have to come to grips with the fact that being in a house of worship and offering up prayers didn't prevent 26 people from being killed. Given that fact, how could anyone conclude that more praying is going to do anything to help those at risk of a future mass shooting?

Wil Wheaton's tweet may have been politically incorrect, but it also was politically right-on as regards the reality of gun violence in this country. The reason we have more gun deaths than other advanced countries is because we have more guns and we fail to regulate them properly. 

Columnist Eugene Robinson spoke truly in "The blood of innocents is on our hands."

“Thoughts and prayers” are fine. Locking arms “through the tears and the sadness,” as President Trump prescribed, is all well and good. But none of this does a damn thing to stop, or even slow, the carnage.

...Why did he do it? We may never be certain; the assailant, 26-year-old Devin Patrick Kelley, is dead. But we can say with certainty how he did such an unspeakable thing: with a gun designed for warfare, a weapon that has no business in civilian hands.

...The United States is alone among advanced countries in having gun policies that facilitate, rather than obstruct, deadly rampages such as Kelley’s. The Supreme Court has made clear in its rulings that the Second Amendment permits reasonable gun-control measures. This crisis is political, not constitutional.

You and I have the power to elect leaders who will reduce gun violence. The blood of innocents is on our hands.

Trump administration's push for religious liberty rooted in "Fantasyland"

The United States is a Fantasyland. And not just any old Fantasyland -- people in this country probably have the most fantastical beliefs of any country in the world. 

This is the core message of Kurt Andersen's marvelous book, "Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire, a 500-Year History." It's more that 400 pages, but if you want a short overview, check out an Atlantic piece, "How America Lost Its Mind."

I've only read the first part of the book. But already it's offered up fresh insights into a familiar topic on this blog, the ridiculousness of giving subjective religious beliefs way more credibility than they deserve by politicians.

For some of my posts on this subject, see here, here, here, and here.

A few days ago right-wing wacko Attorney General Jeff Sessions instructed federal agencies to give more credence to religious beliefs that conflict with established law. This is a totally amazing quote from his memo.

“Except in the narrowest circumstances, no one should be forced to choose between living out his or her faith and complying with the law,” Sessions wrote. “Therefore, to the greatest extent practicable and permitted by law, religious observance and practice should be accommodated in all government activity, including employment, contracting, and programming.”

WTF?! 

It's totally absurd for the Attorney General to say that "no one should be forced to choose between living out his or her faith and complying with the law."

As I've noted before, why should only religious faith get a free pass from United States laws?

Frequently people who drink a lot have faith that they can drive just fine. Shouldn't they be absolved from a ticket or jail time if they're caught driving drunk? What difference is there between a Holy Church of Drink All You Want Because God Loves This and another church that believes it is OK to discriminate against gays?

The above-linked article says:

“This guidance is designed to do one thing—create a license to discriminate against the LGBTQ community and others, sanctioned by the federal government and paid for by taxpayers,” Vanita Gupta, who led the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division during the Obama administration, said in a statement. Chad Griffin, the president of the Human Rights Campaign, accused Trump of furthering a “cynical and hateful agenda” and said the memo “will enable systematic, government-wide discrimination that will have a devastating impact on LGBTQ people and their families.”

Here's some quotes from Kurt Andersen's Fantasyland that shed light on how the United States became such a wacked-out country, a nation that elevates unfounded personal beliefs above reasoned, factual, evidence-based conclusions. 

It's really sad that we've come to the place where our Attorney General says it is absolutely fine to discriminate against someone if you have a religious belief that is OK to do this. Again, why is religious belief elevated above other sorts of beliefs? As Andersen notes below, the root of our current Fantasyland lies in Protestant beliefs from the 1500s.

But many branches have grown from this root. Like the Attorney General's memo. Andersen writes:

Why are we like this?

That's what this book will explore. The short answer is because we're Americans, because being American means we can believe any damn thing we want, that our beliefs are equal or superior to anyone else's, experts be damned. Once people commit to that approach, the world turns inside out, and no cause and effect connection is fixed. The credible becomes incredible and the incredible credible.

...In other words: mix epic individualism with extreme religion; mix show business with everything else; let all that steep and simmer for a few centuries; run it through the anything-goes 1960s and the Internet age; the result is the America we inhabit today, where reality and fantasy are weirdly and dangerously blurred and commingled.

...Out of the new Protestant religion, a new photo-American attitude emerged during the 1500s. Millions of ordinary people decided that they, each of them, had the right to decide what was true or untrue, regardless of what fancy experts said. And furthermore, they believed, passionate fantastical belief was the key to everything. The footings for Fantasyland had been cast.

...As we let a hundred dogmatic iterations of reality bloom, the eventual result was an anything-goes relativism that extends beyond religion to almost every kind of passionate belief: if I think it's true, no matter why or how I think it's true, then it's true, and nobody can tell me otherwise. 

That's the real life reductio ad absurdum of American individualism. And it would become a credo of Fantasyland. 

How this atheist feels about prayers after another mass shooting

Another day in America, another mass shooting. A lone gunman shot Rep. Steve Scalise and four other people at a park where Scalise was practicing for a benefit Congressional baseball game. 

This is a tragedy. So are the tens of thousands of other gun deaths that happen every year in this country. 

But after dramatic shootings like this one, there's a familiar ritual: "thoughts and prayers" are directed to the victims and their families. 

I wrote about this in 2015 after the San Bernardino shootings. Here's an excerpt from "Another mass shooting. No more 'thoughts and prayers.' Gun control ACTION!"

Another week, another mass shooting in America. At least 14 dead, another 14 wounded. And what are we going to do it about it?

Mostly offer our "thoughts and prayers" to the victims. And their families And the first responders. 

Which, obviously, does precisely zero, nada, zilch to stop the next mass shooting. And it will come soon. Because the next one always does.

Only in America do we have this much gun violence. Why? Because we have way more guns per capita than any other nation. So we have way more gun deaths. 

Responsible gun control is the answer. 

Thoughts and prayers are useless. They accomplish nothing (if a person directly affected by a shooting is told you are personally thinking of them, then they might feel a little bit better, but this rarely happens).

So, please Americans, stop with the thoughts and prayers.

All these rote expressions of sympathy accomplish is relieve your guilt that you're not doing anything to stop the needless gun violence.

Instead, ACT!

Look, I understand the urge to pray after something horrible happens. I used to be a religious believer. I've done a lot of praying myself. 

Now, though, I realize that (1) almost certainly God doesn't exist, so there is nobody to pray to, and (2) even if God somehow does exist, this is the same God who oversees the cosmos where the bad thing that stimulated the praying happened, so the God being prayed to is the God who allowed the horrific act to occur.

So when I see photos like this one of Democratic House members (also part of a baseball team) praying for their Republican colleagues, I think: I don't blame them for praying to their imaginary God, because they don't know any better; but if they think their praying is accomplishing anything, they're dangerously deluded.  

Why do I say "dangerously deluded" rather than just "deluded"? 

Because these people, being part of Congress, have a special ability to actually do something to prevent future mass shootings. In my 2015 post I laid out part of what I think needs to happens -- stronger gun control laws.

However, I realize that opinions differ about how to deal with the fact that the United States has way more gun deaths than any other advanced country (we also have way more guns). So I'm fine with lawmakers doing something other than what I want them to do.

I just want them to do something. 

Unfortunately, it's a good bet that after a few days, or maybe a week, of "thoughts and prayers," this mass shooting will fade out of peoples' memory. Then another one will happen, and the thoughts and prayers will start up again, with no actual action having been taken in the interim. 

This is the danger of believing in thoughts and prayers. Religiously-minded people feel that they've done something by thinking and praying, while in reality they have done nothing. 

Sure, most Americans believe in prayer. This doesn't mean prayer accomplishes anything. No study has ever demonstrated the efficacy of prayer. Which isn't surprising, given that there is no demonstrable evidence for a God who responds to prayers.

So as an atheist, I look upon displays of prayer in this country much as someone would look upon a "primitive" hunter-gatherer tribe dancing around a fire, singing and chanting appeals to their nature spirits to bring rain. These are supernatural myths that are an integral part of most cultures. 

Problem is, insofar as "thought and prayers" draw energy and attention away from viable actions to deal with a problem, these delusions are harmful to a society -- even though they may bring some peace of mind to individuals. 

I wrote "Why I don't like 'Our thoughts and prayers are with you'" after the Boston Marathon bombing.

Obviously my blogging power doesn't extend very far, because thoughts and prayers are still as prevalent now as they were in 2013. But at least I don't believe that simply thinking or praying accomplishes anything. 

Writing a blog post is taking some concrete action. Here's part of what I said in that post:

After the bombing I came across a Twitter Tweet by someone I follow, "scriptdave" here in Salem. He's a screenwriter with a great sense of humor. Also, some wise observations. He tweeted:

I respect the need people have to pray. But that prayer is meaningless unless you get off your knees and do something.

To which I Twitter-replied, "Amen." Later someone else commented on scriptdave's tweet. He told them:

I hear you. People need to reflect, meditate, process tragedy. But prayer being the end all is ludicrous. Do something real.

A double Amen to that. 

Trump is trying to turn United States into a theocracy. Resist!

There are lots of reasons to dislike what President Trump (I hate writing those two words) is doing to our country. He's out to wreck the environment, trash human rights, destroy our relations with international allies, further enrich the already wealthy, and make women into second-class citizens. 

But now there's another big reason to Resist The Idiot: news that Trump is out to make our constitutional democracy into a Christian theocracy. 

When I woke up this morning the first outrage to appear on my laptop was "Trump Vows to 'Destroy' Law Banning Political Activity by Churches."

President Trump vowed Thursday to overturn a law restricting political speech by tax-exempt churches, a potentially huge victory for the religious right and a gesture to his political base.

Mr. Trump said his administration would “totally destroy” the Johnson Amendment, which prohibits churches from engaging in political activity at the risk of losing their tax-exempt status.

Repealing the law would require approval by Congress. Certain tax-exempt organizations — in this case, churches — are not allowed to openly endorse or campaign for political candidates. If they do, under existing law, they risk losing the benefits of their tax-exempt status.

So basically Trump wants to turn churches into PACs, Political Action Committees. People still would be able to claim donations they put in a collection plate as a charitable contribution, but then a church could use that money to try to get certain political candidates elected.

It's bad enough that the IRS hasn't been enforcing the ban on political speech from the pulpit. Now Trump wants churches to be able to spend money on political campaigns, which is totally against the intent and purpose of why certain organizations get designated as non-profit.

Currently tax-exempt non-profit organizations like churches can't engage in political activity.  

To be tax-exempt under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, an organization must be organized and operated exclusively for exempt purposes set forth in section 501(c)(3), and none of its earnings may inure to any private shareholder or individual. In addition, it may not be an action organization, i.e., it may not attempt to influence legislation as a substantial part of its activities and it may not participate in any campaign activity for or against political candidates.

Look, I'm all for free speech.

But if churches and other religious groups want to speak freely about political issues, and financially support political candidates, then they need to give up their tax-exempt non-profit status. It's wrong for them to get the IRS benefits given to groups that serve a broad community purpose, and then use money donated to them for narrow political ends. 

I came across outrage #2 later today: "Leaked Draft of Trump's Religious Freedom Order Reveals Sweeping Plans to Legalize Discrimination."

The draft order seeks to create wholesale exemptions for people and organizations who claim religious or moral objections to same-sex marriage, premarital sex, abortion, and trans identity, and it seeks to curtail women’s access to contraception and abortion through the Affordable Care Act.

... The breadth of the draft order, which legal experts described as “sweeping” and “staggering,” may exceed the authority of the executive branch if enacted. It also, by extending some of its protections to one particular set of religious beliefs, would risk violating the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution.

“This executive order would appear to require agencies to provide extensive exemptions from a staggering number of federal laws—without regard to whether such laws substantially burden religious exercise,” said Marty Lederman, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center and an expert on church-state separation and religious freedom.

Well, as I've blogged about many times, it's crazy to allow anyone to be exempt from federal laws just because they have a religious belief that is at odds with a law. (See here, here, here, and here.)

A belief is a belief. It shouldn't matter whether someone's subjective belief rests on a religious foundation, or on some other foundation. Either beliefs are irrelevant to whether a law needs to be obeyed, or beliefs allow us to claim an "opt-out" from any law we choose -- in which case laws are pretty much ineffectual. 

Let's say that someone has a firmly held belief that getting drunk and driving at high speeds is a deep religious experience that demonstrates their faith in God's ability to protect the faithful, sort of like when true believers handle poisonous snakes, or forego medical treatment.

Should this person be able to tell a police officer, "You can't arrest me because I was acting in accord with my religious belief." This would be absurd, right? 

So how is any less absurd that someone should be able to fire an employee who is gay, transgender, or found out to have had an abortion? Is it OK for a business to be able to discriminate against people because the owner has some weird religious belief? How is this different from an individual discriminating simply because they hate gays, blacks, jews, or whoever?

It seems clear that Trump and his wacko band of supporters are determined to make the United States into a right-wing theocracy, like a Christian Taliban.

The Constitution should make this impossible, but given Republican control of the presidency and both houses of Congress, Trump has the ability to go a long way toward fulfilling his theocratic fantasy through Supreme Court appointments, rewriting of laws, and so on.

So we must resist. With all our strength. Because the United States is too wonderful a country to lose to a bigoted, hate-filled idiot.

Viewing life as a Plinko board: probabilistic, chaotic, uncertain

It's easy to see what happens in life. It's much more difficult to comprehend why something happens.

For example, we know that Donald Trump has been elected president of the United States. But why this occurred -- beyond the obvious "Trump got more electoral votes than Hillary Clinton" -- is a question that can't be definitively answered.

This doesn't stop people from theorizing, though. 

At one extreme, a religious believer might say It was God's will. Or phrased more generally, This was fated to be. At another extreme, a nihilistically-minded person could opine, Shit just happens; end of story.

A book I've been reading, "The Simplest Case Scenario: How the Universe May Be Very Different from What We Think It Is," contains a metaphor that strikes me as an appealing middle ground between extreme determinism and extreme randomness.

Karl Coryat, the author, argues persuasively that the universe is composed of information rather than matter/energy. I'll write about his intriguing interpretation of modern science after I've finished his book, which should be in a few days. I'm looking forward to posting a highly positive Amazon review.

Coryat uses a Plinko Board analogy to convey how the universe, or by implication any part of it, could take many potential pathways -- but ends up taking only one. 

The Price is Right game show uses a Plinko Board. Here's a video showing it in action. (I've made the video start at the point a contestant does the Plinko thing.)

Coryat explains how a Plinko board, or box, works.

If you drop a chip into a Plinko box, the chip may take any of a number of paths to the bottom. Whenever the chip falls between two pegs, it hits a peg underneath and must "decide" whether to go left or right. In this manner, each row of pegs that the chip encounters is like a coin toss, where we would expect the chip to go to the left or right with equal probability. Stated another way, it's as if the chip is presented with a series of yes-or-no questions, and the chip chooses an answer every time, effectively at random.

So this makes it sound like life is a crap game. You throw your dice and random luck makes things happen. However, in a footnote Coryat deepens our understanding of what is going on when a chip is dropped into a Plinko board.

Technically, the falling chip is exhibiting chaotic behavior. Rather than its path being determined strictly by the laws of probability, the path depends upon the precise way it was dropped, as well as minute factors such as air currents, dust, the exact shape of the chip, unevenness of the pegs, etc. 

Still, the path is sufficiently unpredictable and unreproducible, and the outcome closely enough simulates probability laws, that we can think of the chip's path as being determined by probability. (The same is true of a well-performed coin flip or dice-roll.)

Chaotic behavior is deterministic. But the factors causing the behavior are so complicated, or so subtle, or so difficult to discern, for all practical purposes the ultimate reasons why something happens remain hidden in a chaotic shroud. 

Often this is called The Butterfly Effect. Wikipedia says:

The butterfly effect is the concept that small causes can have large effects. Initially, it was used with weather prediction but later the term became a metaphor used in and out of science. In chaos theory, the butterfly effect is the sensitive dependence on initial conditions in which a small change in one state of a deterministic nonlinear system can result in large differences in a later state.

The name, coined by Edward Lorenz for the effect which had been known long before, is derived from the metaphorical example of the details of a hurricane (exact time of formation, exact path taken) being influenced by minor perturbations such as the flapping of the wings of a distant butterfly several weeks earlier.

Lorenz discovered the effect when he observed that runs of his weather model with initial condition data that was rounded in a seemingly inconsequential manner would fail to reproduce the results of runs with the unrounded initial condition data. A very small change in initial conditions had created a significantly different outcome.

I find a lot of comfort in these notions: Plinko box, chaos theory, butterfly effect.

Now, I admit that in my true-believing days I also found comfort in a belief that karma determined what happened in life, and that it was possible to escape karma's clutches by raising one's consciousness to a higher supernatural level through meditation and the grace of a guru.

(Yeah, I know that sounds weird, but so is every false religious belief. In addition, much of modern science sounds decidedly weird, even though it is true. So weirdness is found almost everywhere one looks.)

Thus in my previous state of mind, I would have thought, "Donald Trump won the presidency because this was meant to be."

Not believing this anymore, yet not being willing to accept that randomness rules the universe, I'm attracted to the logical, scientific, reasonable notion that determinism controls what happens in life -- yet usually not in obvious ways. 

Mostly we like to look for Big Reasons that explain Big Events. Like, the winning of a presidential election. Or more personally, why we ended up married to a certain person, living in a certain place, having a certain career, and such.

So political commentators obsess over election results, exit polls, demographics, campaign strategies, etc., etc. There's nothing wrong with this. However, there's good reason to suppose that a presidential election is more akin to a Plinko box than we might like to think.

What if a staffer had said something at a certain time that made Clinton decide to not set up a personal email server for her Secretary of State work? What if Attorney General Lynch had the thought, "I shouldn't let Bill Clinton onto my plane," which would have made it much more possible for her to overrule FBI Director Comey's decision to publicly reveal a further investigation into Clinton's emails just before the election?

Many what if's of this sort can be visualized. A few tiny influences could have had a giant impact on the election, per the butterfly effect. In fact, almost certainly they did. It's just impossible to figure out what they were.

The course of real life events can't be observed like the falling chip in a Plinko box. All we know is the final outcome, not the convoluted chain of often-chaotic causes and effects that led to this rather than that happening. 

Like I said, I find this comforting.

I don't enjoy the thought that Trump's victory was destined. Nor do I embrace the notion that it is possible to know why he won, and Clinton lost, because this would mean that if the Clinton campaign had been smarter, they would have come out on top on election day. Which leads to a sense of blame. And neither do I believe that there is no reason Trump won.

But in between It was meant to be and Shit happens is Sometimes life takes strange turns. Why? Impossible to say. Just like it is impossible to say why a single chip falling in a Plinko box ends up where it does. 

Post-election anxiety? Breathe... cool down... let go of fear

Along with my progressive, liberal, Clinton-voting friends and acquaintances, I've been struggling to come to grips with the bizarre reality of a President Trump. 

(Yikes, just writing those last two words brought about a feeling of impending doom.)

Today I came across a Vox post, "An ancient Buddhist strategy for overcoming paralyzing fear," that contains some good advice. Here's some passages from the short piece that I particularly resonated with.

In the days since November 9, an oppressive cloak of fear and dread has descended upon a great many Americans.

...This fear is not trivial and it may not be easily subdued. Fear is a biological response we’ve evolved to protect ourselves from threat, and it originates in the limbic system of the brain, the primitive reptile inside us.

Neuroscience tells us that uncertainty inflates our estimates of threat. So it’s not surprising that the uncertainty of what will come to pass in a Trump administration is leading many people to flirt with all-consuming, paralyzing panic.

...We’ve got 62 days until Trump takes office, so it seems like a good time to seek out the world’s oldest psychological teachings on transforming oppressive fear into something more productive.

...One of the most fundamental Buddhist teachings is mindfulness — the act of bringing awareness to the present moment. I spoke to Brother Phap Dung, a senior monk and teacher at Plum Village, the Buddhist community founded by the Zen master and author Thich Nhat Hanh, about bringing mindfulness to bear on fear.

“We see the mind like a house, so if your house is on fire, you need to take care of the fire, not to go look for the person that made the fire,” Dung says. “Take care of those emotions first, because anything that comes from a place of fear and anxiety and anger will only make the fire worse. Come back and find a place of calm and peace to cool the flame of emotion down.”

The simplest way to calm the mind is with the basic meditation practice of sitting quietly, focusing on the breath.

...“Unskillful fear … has got such a good argument: which is, anything can happen in the next moment.” A President Trump raises a multitude of deeply troubling possibilities of harm in the future, and while “that seems like a really convincing argument to keep on worrying and being afraid,” it’s actually not a good reason to remain gripped by fear in the present. We can’t know the future, and so allowing fear to hold us prisoner in the present is ultimately unskillful.

Skillful fear is watching it, getting really close to it, and uncovering the purer feelings, like love, underneath it. We can use fear skillfully by redirecting its energy and our attention toward more wholesome virtues, like courage and kindness, Lesage explains. “We must build dikes of courage to hold back the floods of fear,” Martin Luther King Jr. said.

On a more practical level, Brother Phap Dung recommends that people stop reading the news if it feeds fear. “Go take refuge in nature, and find a cause where your heart doesn’t feel inactive and in despair,” he says. “This is the medicine.”

As wise as this advice is, everybody will have a different way of dealing with negative emotions stirred up by the presidential election.

Personally, I find a lot of comfort in reminding myself that "I" don't really exist -- at least, not in the way most of us feel ourselves to be. Namely, an independent free-willing self who continually faces choices about what to do, and is responsible for the actions that we either decide to undertake or forego.

This feeling places a huge unnecessary burden on us. Unnecessary, because both ancient Buddhism/Taoism and modern neuroscience say that the self is an illusion. 

Five days before the November 8 election, I pointed to this understanding in "A Taoist approach to coping with the presidential election (and everything)."

Most people believe in free will, even though 21st century neuroscience strongly argues against its existence. We feel like there is a "me," a "self,"  that floats around independently inside our head, somehow disconnected from the goings-on of the physical brain and able to make decisions unaffected by prior experiences or external influences.

...People today still struggle with the same question: if I'm part of the world, why does the world so often seem to be at odds with me?

...Something is making everything be what is is, and do what it does. That something can't be separate from nature, unless we embrace some sort of nonsensical dualism. So why not call it the Way?

...The human mind can experience the world more clearly, or less clearly. We all know this to be true. Some days our mind seems to be in such frantic motion that it can't discern what is happening in the ever-moving outside world. Becoming calmer, more centered, helps us gain a clearer perspective. If I read or watch too much political news, I get information overload. Relaxing, I realize that there isn't any sort of objective presidential election reality. How things appear in our pre-election day perspective depends on what enters our minds, and how we look upon it.

...When I'm impelled to be politically active, to care about the presidential election, to help a chosen candidate, I need to realize that it is the World, the Way, that's bringing this about. Sure, I may feel like I'm making choices to donate money, vote a certain way, and such, but this is illusion. I, along with everybody else, am just a small cog in the Great Machinery of the Cosmos. My doing ultimately doesn't come from me, it comes from everything. 

...Almost certainly, either Trump or Clinton is going to be elected president in a few days, an Electoral College tie being very unlikely. To deny the November 9 result is to deny reality. To believe "this wasn't supposed to happen" is to embrace an utterly crazy worldview, one which posits a schism between the what should be mind of the believer and the what is of existence.  

I, like you, am part of the Way, the Tao, that also can be called Nature or the Laws of Nature. There isn't us and the world, or us and the presidential election. We're all in this together. We're all producing this together. We're all responsible for what happens together.