He said that after decades of progress in which the percentage of people polled had somewhat steadily reported that they were more in favor of abortions, or as he styled it , were “pro-choice”, a recent poll indicates that the trend seems to be reversing. Apparently, the percentage of pro-choice people dropped by six points while the percentage of the so-call pro-life folks (actually, anti- abortion) increased by three points. I’m not sure where the other three points went to (presumably undecided). While this doesn’t really seem to be all that alarming, since the percentages are pretty close to acceptable standards of deviation and error, and the steady progress he assumed was really a haphazard up-and-down movement on the graph, Scarborough, in his usual inimitable fashion, felt like he had to expound on the answer to this reversal, as if it was really profound news. This is what morning talk show hosts do.

According to him, the technology and medicine surrounding the field of OB/GYN had increased tremendously since 1973, the year of Roe v. Wade, in numerous ways. Not only has the age of viability decreased a good bit, allowing babies to be born earlier, and survive their premature birth, but advances in imaging technology allow us now to peer into the womb in almost 3D Technicolor relief, giving us a much greater appreciation for the humanity within. He thinks that people who look at their children in such realistic detail are becoming more anti-abortion. While there may be something to that, it doesn’t do a lot to advance or set back the argument for or against abortion.

On the whole, with some exceptions,  babies who are aborted are unwanted, mistakes of the “heat of the moment”, and the pregnancies are terminated by women who truly feel,  after a lot of serious thought, that it is not in their best interests or that of the child’s to be brought into the world at that time. It is a choice they make, and one only they can make, or at least that’s how they feel. There is no alternative, other than having the child, which to them is not a viable alternative. Society really does very little for poor, single mothers, and if they also happen to be non-white, adoption is not really a widespread alternative either.  And don’t forget that republicans in Congress and state legislatures are attempting (and succeeding) to dismantle the very small safety nets in place.

There is no doubt in their mind, I’m sure, that the lump of cells in their womb is a potential child, but knowing that,  and seeing their options (or the dearth thereof) they still choose to terminate.

If they could see the child in all its full grown glory, it may be that some might have a different opinion. Hence all the current proposed legislation designed to force the women to look at trans-vaginal sonogram pictures, or wait for a proscribed period of time while reading literature with graphic pictures. Or being read statements of discouragement from doctors under penalty of law. All of this is designed to make them change their minds. Maybe it’s a good thing for some women, too. I can’t say with any certainty, sitting here at my keyboard, that any woman’s choice to terminate is made with all the possible amounts of knowledge that the best of society can muster to be at her disposal to help her make such a difficult decision.

But that’s the point of the pro-choice argument, isn’t it? No one can say that, except the woman at the helm of the decision-making process. Not some legislator in Richmond VA, or a pastor in  East Podhunk, NC. Not even the woman’s spouse, though I imagine any woman who’s married to a supporting husband will naturally seek the counsel of that spouse, since he has far more stake in the process than a legislator or pastor.

The pro-choice position says we can’t know what’s right for any individual woman, or for that matter, the potential child, but we do know that the person with the greatest stake in the matter is on top of it, is an adult (for the most part) and is presumed capable of making the right decision. A pro-life person, on the other hand, says that he/she DOES know what’s right for those women they’ve never even met, and will never meet, and not only that, what they believe is right should be forced on those women against their will.

If medical technology simply allows more people to think like that, then that’s a by-product of medical technology I can live with, because in the end, that same medical technology will save the lives of babies and mothers that would have died in 1973 – babies who ARE wanted, and mothers who have families and others who love them and want them to survive. Frankly, though, that has little effect on the decision making process, and I doubt it explains the supposed anomalies in Morning Joe’s statistics. I would tend to think that it’s merely a product of the recent attention women’s rights have been receiving in this political year. It’ll bounce back after the election.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not unsympathetic to what amounts to a visceral reaction to abortion. I saw a client’s 2 day old baby at a support hearing yesterday, and he was such a helpless, albeit cute, little creature, (my latent maternal feelings tended to flood my senses); to think that a child’s potentiality can be snuffed out at the whim of a single mother is hard to accept. If I was pregnant woman, I don’t know that I could make that decision.

But until we live in a society that values all life, including the life we have now, here, on this planet; until we stop executing human beings for crimes without absolute certainty of guilt (an impossibility, by the way), and in an unfair and racially discriminatory manner; until we stop killing our fellow humans in wars over natural resources, by leaders that think in terms of killing innocent bystanders as “collateral damage” (humans are our most precious natural resource); until we have in place social structures that can act as safety nets for single, pregnant women who know that don’t have the ability to raise a child for 18 years; until we create a more equitable culture that values life based on modern notions of humanity rather than those of a 3000 year old book written by ignorant goat-herders at the beginning of the iron age ; until, in short, abortion is the only issue involving questions of life and death we have that still perplexes us, then I have no problem with allowing women to make a choice that many find repugnant. If society broadcasts the message that life is not sacrosanct in so many other instances, then it’s hypocritical for society to condemn women to unwanted pregnancies; especially in a society that seems to encourage sexual relations in all it does, from fashion, to marketing, to advertising, to mass entertainment. Human reproduction is a fact of life, and the biological imperative of sexual relations will always be with us.

Abortion is a necessary option when the religiously delusional among us refuse to acknowledge that sex and birth control go hand in hand while at the same time dictate that the results of sex are sacrosanct, then completely fail to provide for the products of birth to survive in this world.

Now consider the following:

• Texas is going to execute an clearly mentally ill inmate, but before doing so, they are going to force him to take his anti-psychotic medications so that he’s capable of appreciating the fact that the state is going to kill him. Texas, of course, leads the country in death penalty executions, executing more than half as many than all of the other states and the Federal Government combined, since 1976.
• Republicans in Congress, for the better part of the year 2011, did absolutely nothing constructive for which they were voted into office, instead opting to create legislative gridlock, at one point threatening to shut the government down, resulting in the first downgrade in America’s credit rating. They accomplished the latter by refusing to allow a perfunctory debt ceiling increase, something that was routinely done in the past, by more cooperative legislatures..
• Michelle Bachmann ran for President of the United States during a year in which the legitimacy of the sitting President was questioned, based on whether he was a proper citizen of the United States. Michelle Bachmann recently disclosed that she has been a dual citizen of the US and Switzerland since 1978, something she sorta forgot to tell us during the campaign.
• Rush Limbaugh has criticized Obama (along with just about every other rabid right wing commentator) for “waging a war” on marriage by endorsing equality in marriage for gays. His first, second, third and fourth wives could not be reached for comment. Nor were any of Newt Gingrich’s three wives available either.
• Instead of an independent Fourth Estate, a free press beholden to no-one, we now have a major news outlet, FOX, that is the de facto propaganda arm of the Republican Party, which itself is no longer a true political party, i.e. one that espouses a different, yet valid, mainstream political philosophy, but instead increasingly advocates only more and more extremely irrational capitalism and theocracy.
• A recent viable candidate for the Republican nomination was a pro-life ex-Senator who hypocritically favored a Constitutional Amendment to ban all abortions, including those that might save the life of the host-mother, while he made the decision to abort his own child to save the life of his wife.
• One of the most self-righteous arbiters of morality in the history of mankind, The Roman Catholic Church, is full of child-raping pedophiles, while the current head of that organization once lead the internal section that was charged with covering up the crimes of all the priests caught diddling their young, male flock.
• Republicans (yes, them again) continue to blame the sitting President for the economy, the recession, the lack of jobs, the continuing war in Afghanistan, the mortgage crisis, the war on Christmas, global warming cooling, high gas prices, too much spending, not enough spending, even their own obstructionism, and the clubbing of baby seals, though it was his predecessor who was responsible for all of them. Except the wittle baby seals. That was John Boehner.
• I paid an effective tax rate this past year of about 30%. Mitt Romney who made something like 500 times what I made, in one year, paid an effective tax rate of 14%.
• There seems to be an incredible increase in really pernicious legislation attempting to control the bodies of women, just in the past year, requiring constant monitoring and resistance from pro-choice groups. This appears to be pressed by Republicans at the state level, since the federal laws are beyond their reach in a divided legislature. From trans-vaginal sonograms (Virginia) to cutting funds to Planned Parenthood (Arizona), with scurrilous attacks on the sidelines by half-wit radio personalities, it seems like the tactic is to flood the country with obnoxious restrictions, thinning the resources of the pro-choice forces, and making it difficult to prevent some of the legislation from being enacted.
• The Tea Party… ‘Nuff said.

Did I say something about a false reality?

I’m hoping that on November 7 I’ll wake up and have a Dallas moment, where I turn on the TV, find that Obama is President and that the past year or so has just been a dream. Where:

• We celebrate, not vilify, Roe v. Wade as a turning point in our culture…
• Texas has done away with the death penalty, like Connecticut just did…
• Republicans openly seek compromise on their political differences with Democrats, and actually attain them…
• Obama invites Ted Nugent to perform at the White House, and Nugent accepts graciously, and shows up without his guns…
• Michelle Bachmann divorces her husband after finding out his gay conversion clinic was a sham and a fraud, and he’s been hiding money in a Swiss Bank account since 1979, AND he admits that he’s always been gay (not that that’s a bad thing)…
• News Corp and FOX files for Chapter 7 protection, and Rupert Murdoch is forced to liquidate all of his holdings after shutting down all his media outlets…
•  Pope Benedict admits in a civil lawsuit that he protected pedophile priests, resulting in a multi-trillion dollar civil judgement, collectable against all the Vatican assets…
• …and I’m one of the Plaintiff’s class action attorneys…

{sigh}. I guess that’s why they call it a dream.

In my last post, I hinted that Obama should do the right thing, and come out for marriage equality, but I allowed that since he was trying to get elected, I’d understand if he waited until the election is over.

Well, we didn’t have to wait.

“But I have to tell you that over the course of several years as I have talked to friends and family and neighbors, when I think about members of my own staff who are incredibly committed, monogamous, same sex relationships who are raising kids together, when I think about those soldiers or airmen or Marines or sailors who are out there fighting on my behalf and, yet, feel constrained now that Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is gone because they’re not able to commit themselves in a marriage. At a certain point I’ve just concluded that for me personally, it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think that same sex couples should be able to get married.”

It’s about time, and none too soon after the debacle in North Carolina yesterday. It looks like he sent Joe Biden out on Sunday to float a trial balloon, to see what the response was.

It must have been positive.

I could be a cynic and suppose that he also waited for polls to show that the majority of Americans favor gay marriage, which they seem to do by a narrow margin, or perhaps he waited to see how close the margins were in the North Carolina Amendment One vote (they were closer than they have been in the past, in other Bible Belt States – 61-39%). OK, even if the cynical take is true, it’s still about time. It’s about time that we apply some reason and humanity to this issue, and stop kow-towing to the loud and pernicious fundamentalist minority.

Get it behind us so we can actually deal with issues that affect the majority of this country, like jobs, and taxes, and stupid wars, and our crumbling infrastructure. Stop distracting us with silly cultural issues that have no place in Presidential elections or our legislatures.

Now, do you remember the Supreme Court of Iowa ruling in 2009 that a ban on marriage equality was unconstitutional in that state, which paved the way for the ultimate legality of gay marriage there? You probably knew that, oddly, Iowa (as opposed to the more obvious, non-Bible-Belt states on the east and west coasts) is one of the few states in the Union that allows gay marriage, but you might not remember that three of the Justices of that State Supreme Court were removed from office after a retention vote, in 2010, led by the anti-gay marriage forces, because of their vote in that case.

Well, those three Supreme Court ex-Justices were recently awarded the Profile in Courage Award.

Caroline Kennedy, second from right, applauds as the recipients of the 2012 John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Awards hold their lanterns at the JFK Library in Boston, Monday, May 7, 2012.

These justices were just doing their jobs. Their job description required them to interpret laws in light of the effect they have on the Constitution, both state and federal, and when they find a law that clearly violates rights enumerated in the Constitution, then they have to strike down that law. Unconstitutional laws always give way to the Constitution. They did their jobs, which they were elected to do.

Then along comes the bigots. Bigotry is the irrational suspicion or hatred of a particular group, race, or religion. In this case it is the irrational hatred of homosexuals by another group clearly defined by their religious beliefs. These bigots organized under, and were led by, the National Organization for Marriage, the American Family Association and the Family Research Council (no links provided), good “Christian” organizations that believe the Bible is the source of all morality. They pandered to the ignorance and fears of the Bible-Belt voters in Iowa, and succeeded in convincing them that despite the fact that these Justices did exactly what they were elected to do, they should be removed from office because they did not do what the bigots wanted them to do – uphold a hate law. Consequently, those three Justices lost their jobs in a retention vote.

That kind of successful bigotry has to send a chill through the backs of other judges, in other states. It has to have an effect on the outcomes of other cases, especially when it’s in the guise of religious morality. There is a case winding through the courts right now, on the way to the US  Supreme Court, (presently still before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals) dealing with the same issue – the rights of non-heterosexuals to marry – the Proposition 8 case. The right wing is pressuring hard to have the case decided by the Supreme Court, figuring that once they get before Scalia, Roberts, Thomas and Alito, they’ll have a great opportunity to impose their religious form of bigotry on, at least, the citizens of California.

This Profile in Courage Award, while having no force of law, recognizes that people who oppose bigotry and encourage equal rights for all will at least gain the recognition they deserve. It would be nice if Obama would try to be next year’s recipient. So far, he’s not doing so well in that regard. But it’s an election year, and he wants to keep his job, so maybe we should be patient one more year?

Ehrman’s book (which I have not read yet) apparently concludes that Jesus was not a myth, but actually existed. Carrier is a mythicist, concluding that there is little evidence for an historical Jesus. So it’s not surprising that he might disagree with Ehrman. His conclusion, though, is not very dispassionate. In fact it’s downright harsh, to say the least, at times devolving into the personal.

It is for all the reasons documented in this article (which are again just a sample of many other errors of like kind, from false claims, to illogical arguments, to self-contradictions, to misrepresentations of his opponents, to errors of omission), especially this book’s complete failure to interact with even a single complete theory of mythicism (which alone renders the book useless, even were it free of error), that I have no choice but to condemn this thing as being nothing more than a sad murder of electrons and trees.

Others have weighed in. PZ Myers claims that Carrier “cold-cocked’ Ehrmans’ thesis. Jerry Coyne has posted on it. R. Joseph Hoffman, a professor of Classical Studies (I think) at the New England Conservatory in Boston has too, promising that he and two other scholars will issue substantive scholarly responses, chastising the criticism over at the “Freethought Blog Ghetto”. There are others.

And Bart Ehrman himself has issued one comment about one aspect of the Carrier review, and promises another, more detailed one on the public portion of his blog (he has a members only, subscription-only-for-charity section of his blog). It might be up by the time I post this. [EDIT: Here it is.].

I must admit that I’m a great admirer of Bart Ehrman. I’ve read a number of his books, all both scholarly and entertaining, and reviewed a few of them here. I was looking forward to Did Jesus Exist?, and was hoping he’d conclude that he didn’t, but if he in fact did, that’s OK too. I will read the book with highly piqued interest, after reading all of this commentary, and will look forward to some of the promised responses, so that I can arrive at my own conclusion.

Now, I’ve read Carriers critiques, and Hoffman’s call to arms, but I have not read the book in question. However, when I read Carrier’s review, I could see an argument shaping up in the first bit of contention that Carrier raised, about the cock-nosed statute in the Vatican. Ehrman says

“there is no penis-nosed statue of Peter the cock in the Vatican or anywhere else except in books like this, which love to make things up” (p. 24).

Carrier says there is, and there are pictures of it.

At the very least I would expect Ehrman to have called the Vatican museum about this, and to have checked the literature on it, before arrogantly declaring no such object existed and implying Murdock made this up. I do not assume Murdock’s interpretation of the object is correct (there is no clear evidence it has anything to do with Christianity, much less Peter). But its existence appears to be beyond dispute.

When I read that, I though, “well, all Ehrman has to do to refute this is claim that there might be a cock-nosed statue in the Vatican, but it’s not a “penis-nosed statue of Peter the cock”, i.e. it does not relate to Peter at all. In fact, that’s exactly what Ehrman claims, and I think validly so. In other words, Carrier seems to make much ado about nothing. He’s criticizing him for making a “massive error” by failing to acknowledge that there is a statue in the Vatican that has nothing to do with Peter. If the statue has nothing to do with Peter, then Ehrman is correct. There is no penis-nosed statue of Peter the cock there. So the answer does not, as Carrier seems to imply, revolve around the existence of the statue itself, but whether it is a representation of Peter. I figured that out from reading Carrier’s review alone, so why couldn’t Carrier?

I don’t know what the final conclusion of this small portion of the argument will be, but if does sound like it will be fascinating to watch. I’m getting the popcorn out.

Of course, in the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t really make a difference whether Jesus the person actually existed, though it might tend to help the atheist side of the debate (on the larger issue of God’s existence) if he didn’t. The real question that needs to be argued is whether, if he did exist, whether he was divine.

Clearly, if there is no God, there cannot be a Son of God.

But for sheer and utter, almost jaw dropping hypocrisy, you usually can’t beat the right. Or the religious. Or both in tandem, which they often tend to be. You know, those people who love to wrap themselves in the flag and carry a cross. The most recent instance where I found my chin scraping the pavement was recently when Ted Nugent (anyone here remember the Amboy Dukes, BTW?) proclaimed at an NRA event

“It isn’t the enemy that ruined America. It’s good people who bent over and let the enemy in. If the coyote’s in your living room pissing on your couch, it’s not the coyote’s fault. It’s your fault for not shooting him.” …“If Barack Obama becomes the president in November, I will either be dead or in jail by this time next year.”

He went on to say that the voters ought to chop the administration’s heads off in November.

Now, I didn’t abrade my chin skin at what Nugent said. I’m not one who actually thought he was making a direct threat on the President’s life, even though he was talking to a bunch of gun-toting, weapons-loving aficionados who might have interpreted it that way. It did sound like he was predicting that he would do SOMETHING stupid if Obama was elected, that would be criminal in nature, and/or result in him being killed in the course of some overt violence directed towards someone he was pissed off at come November 6. And it certainly sounds like that person is President Obama. But he didn’t actually say it was the President, so I’ll give him a pass for mere vitriolic rhetoric given the audience he was addressing.

And I’m a firm adherent to the1st Amendment. I have absolutely no problem with him saying the most vile things about his President. I really don’t care. His opinions have already been shown to be based on vacuous, paranoiac, swinging dick syndrome, so they bounce off the wall and fall to a heap, easily ignored and swept into the garbage with other moronic opinions.

No, what caused my irony meter to break with a loud bang was the lack of reaction from the right. Many on the left felt he should have been arrested for threatening the President. He even received a visit from the Secret Service (just back from Columbia) to see if it was something they should sit on him for. Apparently it wasn’t. But from the right? Crickets chirping. Given the conservative penchant for adulation and worship of all things authoritative, one would expect them to be a tad more respectful to the office of the President. History would tend to support this.

 Right. Does anyone remember back in 2003 when the Dixie Chicks said during a concert in Great Britian, about then President Bush,

“Just so you know, we’re on the good side with y’all. We do not want this war, this violence, and we’re ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas.”

The right wing began to froth at the mouth. Boycotts were called, records were defaced or burned, and they were chastised in the press. They were called all types of names, many of which found their way onto their nude bodies in their photo shoot for Entertainment Magazine. Even though they had the free speech right to criticize the president, the country music crowd (which is for the most part conservative, Christian and Republican) took extreme umbrage that they would be so disrespectful of a sitting President. How dare they say such things when we were at war, and while in a foreign country no less?

Now my question is, where are those people when Ted Nugent says that the President’s administration is “wiping it’s ass on the Constitution”? You didn’t see that NRA crowd in the video of his comments booing him for his disrespect of the President, our Commander-in-Chief. They clapped and cheered. The same people who wanted to burn the Dixie Chicks in effigy. (and I’m not even going to analyze the difference female artists are accorded by these right wing elements. That’s a whole ‘nother topic for discussion). Why aren’t they all up in arms (literally) when Nugent says such things as

• Hillary Clinton Is A “Toxic Cunt” And “Two-Bit Whore For Fidel Castro
• Obama Is “A Piece Of Shit” Who Should “Suck On My Machine Gun.”
• Compares Obama to a coyote in your living room, pissing on your couch
• calls Nancy Pelosi a “sub-human scoundrel” and referrs to liberals as cockroaches to “stomp” in November.

among others. Why aren’t his concerts being boycotted? Why aren’t they being cancelled?

Oh, wait. They are.

Maybe what goes around finally comes around? The sad thing is that it’s council members in Bangor Maine, and the Army officials at Fort Knox that is canceling Nugent. The right wing, gun-toting authoritative conservatives in the country feel that what’s good for the geese when they criticize the white man in the White House is not necessarily what’s good for the gander, when the gander is criticizing the black man in the White House.

Nugent should stick to black bears.

The ropes we had used to lash down presidential war-making capacity, bindings that by design made it hard for an American president to use military force without the nation’s full and considered buy-in, have been hacked at with very little appreciation about why they were put there in the first place.

That’s the point of this book. Maddow methodically takes us through a few periods of our history (Vietnam, post-Vietnam, Grenada, Iran-Contra, 1st Iraq War, second, Afghanistan)  to show us that in matters of war, while the Constitution clearly places war making decisions in the hands of the legislature, that legislature has slowly allowed the Executive branch to circumvent that requirement, ceding responsibility to the President to make decisions about using our armed forces in a manner that the Founding Fathers would spin in their graves over.

Starting with the Vietnam war, and following the decisions of Presidents Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Shrub and Obama, this country now habitually and without much legislative oversight, conducts war exclusively by direction of the President. The chapter on Reagan was particularly eye-opening. He was incredibly disdainful towards Congress, and its Constitutional obligation to approve of war. He lied to them, he broke laws, and he should have gone to jail, yet there are people who want to place his face on Mt. Rushmore. Reading this, in my opinion, the slide from greatness to second or third world status, should it occur, will have originated with Reagan.

And not only that.

War is now conducted significantly, and in some cases predominantly, by non military personnel – contractors – hired by the government to do jobs that would otherwise have to be authorized by Congress. Bush, during the conduct of the Iraq war, systematically kept the reality of war from the public. Remember his decision to bar photos of the flag-draped caskets returning to Dover Air Base? Or his refusal to attend the funerals of dead marines? Less than one percent of the population has been directly affected by recent wars, leaving the rest of us somewhat oblivious to the realities of war. This was never the case in our history, until recently. Think war bonds, and rationing, and black-out curtains. Think of FDR going before Congress asking for a formal declaration of war. Think of our significant civilian casualties and those of our allies (we never seem to cry over our enemies’ deaths).

All of this makes it easier for the President to send troops overseas to die, without affecting our lifestyle (except for that of the military families involved) or our standard of living. Half of all Americans polled claim that they have not been affected by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Try asking your parents if that was true in 1945. The reason why our Founders thought that Congressional approval was important was because they wanted to make it difficult to go to war, or as Maddow says “to disincline us towards war as a general matter”. Now, during budget cutbacks and spending fights in Congress, the cost to conduct war is not even negotiable, despite the size of the Defense budget. We now spend more money on our defense budget than all of the defense budgets of every other country in the world – combined!

The really scary chapter in the book is the last one, where she describes in detail the aging of our nuclear weapons stockpiles. Were you aware that we’ve lost 11 nuclear weapons since the 1960s, when we started MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction) as a policy to prevent nuclear war with the Soviet Union?  Some of them blew up (not in a nuclear way, but still, effectively as dirty bombs). Two of them exploded in Spain, and for 40 years we’ve been paying reparations, and the cost to keep hauling “hot” soil from Spain to the US, for disposal. There is one buried about 20 feet deep in a North Carolina field, apparently unrecoverable, that the country now has a easement to prevent digging into. Another was lost off the coast of Greenland, waiting for the ice to melt from global climate change to recover.

We’ve also had to upgrade the weapons themselves, but in the process we have forgotten how to do so. The original engineers have died or retired, and no one thought to write down the specs to redo the important safety features. Seriously! We really have no idea whether these weapons will work properly if they are ever used. And I suppose that the same goes for those pointed at us. We certainly don’t seem to have the same handle on them we had during the Cold War.

We have drifted from a sensible nation to an insensible nation when it comes to war. The money powers have taken over. It’s been a slow, evolving process, but it’s not irreversible. Maddow suggests some sensible measures to put us back on track, from making sure we have to raise the money to pay for it, rather than simply mortgaging our kids future, to getting rid of contractors to handle the dirty work.

This should be required reading for Obama, his cabinet, his Secretary of Defense, and all 535 members of Congress. Then we should hold them to it.

You can read it at the link above, but essentially it is a long apology by a writer, who is in the process of writing a book about Dylan for a Jewish scholarly series, who felt he hurt the feeling of an elderly rabbinical scholar who attended a lecture he gave that ended up chastising the Jews for continuing to believe, after the Holocaust, in a Jewish God who looks out for and protects the Jews. Somehow he used something written by Dylan as a jumping off point for his lecture, but ultimately, that’s all it was – a spark for his answer to the ultimate question of theodicy. He was completely blown away by a two line, eight word section of Dylan’s strange 60s novel Tarantula, to wit:

hitler did not change history.
hitler WAS history … “

You’ll need to read the piece, because I’m not going to explain here how that affected his thinking, or ultimately his lecture, or why he felt he needed to apologize to the old Jew. I want to talk about two other things – Bob Dylan and Theodicy.

First, Dylan. Dylan is a genius, but not someone who I would go to for theological or historical advice. He is an artistic genius, having a command of the English language, and an ability to put concepts and emotions and feelings into words that rival, in my humble opinion, that of Shakespeare. He’s called the Bard of Our Times for a reason. And to boot, he’s able to put those words to music. Memorable, sing-along, music that gets better with repeated listening, not boring or outdated. Of course, like all art, that’s a subjective opinion, but it’s one held by many. And I, for one, would much rather hear him sing his own songs than anyone else. Your mileage may vary.

But I don’t admire him for his theological or historical acumen. This is a man who, like his song, has traveled personal theological paths seemingly blown by the wind. Raised a Jew, (real name, Robert Zimmerman) he didn’t emphasize his spiritual beliefs until the late 70s when he became (to my horror) an evangelical “born again” Christian. He’s since given that up, returning to his Jewish roots, especially in family matters, but outwardly is areligious. Music is his religion.

The problem with putting stock in Dylan’s words is not so much that they seem enlightened, but that he has such a large body of work that, like Christians’ reliance on the Bible, one can find support for almost anything one wants to believe somewhere in something he wrote over the past 50 years. He has always disclaimed any notion of being a prophet or a “spokesman for his generation”, and for good reasons. I think he has no problem allowing people to read his work and use them to come to their own conclusions, as any artist would, but to impose on him some intent that those words are the gospel truth, he would dismiss as total and absolute nonsense.

Rosenbaum, in his essay, says:

Whoa. Those eight words: “… hitler did not change history. hitler WAS history”! Where did that come from? In the 10 years I spent writing a 500-page book called Explaining Hitler (Random House, 1998), not one of the historians, philosophers, artists, or other sages I spoke to or read ever made as white-hot an indictment of humanity as that. An indictment, implicitly, of God as well.

That seems a bit hyperbolic to me. When I read those words, I thought “well, d’uh”. Of course, no one changes history.  That would assume that history has already occurred and one could go back in time and change it, a temporal impossibility. Every person of historical prominence is only a part of history. They create history, but once created, history just is what it is, immutable and unchangeable (except to the extent that historians interpret and reinterpret it, so that we have a fluid understanding of it).  Give Dylan credit for stating the obvious, not for any earth shaking insight.

Now, the second topic – theodicy. Rosenbaum defines it, but I’ll repeat it for the reader.

…it is rather a subdiscipline of theology that deals exclusively with the question of evil and God: How can a God who is worshiped as an all-powerful, all-knowing, and loving deity who is able to intervene in history be reconciled with the vast amounts of murderous suffering and evil that God permits to prevail on this earth?

It’s the Question of Evil, and why it exists in a world created and governed by an omnipotent, beneficent god. As Epicurus stated centuries ago:

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?

Rosenbaum looks at theodicy, and frankly questions the existence of god himself, (god is a “a nebbish”—a hapless and useless fiction) because the Holocaust seems to represent the epitome of the Epicurean paradox. And any Jewish scholar who continues to believe that the Jewish God continues to protect the Jews as the chosen people after Hitler, is simply rationalizing their beliefs because they

… wanted [their] God, [they] wanted the consolation of a God, [they] needed to pray to him, and I had said doing so was robbing the graves of the dead.

So Rosenbaum apologizes because it hurts the old man’s feelings? What blatherskite! He alludes to various apologetics that lets God off the hook, from “the Holocaust was designed to hasten the formation of the State of Israel” to “God was in every death camp, in ‘every act of goodness and self-sacrifice the camp inmates showed one another’”, thereby removing the humanity in those acts of goodness, replacing them with god and, metaphorically “robbing the graves of the dead” of their acts of humanity.

Why not simply apply Occam’s Razor to the issue of theodicy? Why not pick the simplest, most parsimonious explanation that relies on the least complex set of facts? And what is that explanation for why the Holocaust happened and God ignored his chosen people? Why, in fact, did God allow six million of them to die, while even more died in the war surrounding the Holocaust?

It’s quite simple. There was no god to ignore them. Isn’t that the answer to the Holocaust, and the best choice of the Epicurean Paradox? Doesn’t that make the simplest, cleanest sense of a horrible occurrence? It doesn’t explain Hitler, it doesn’t explain any particular individual act of evil, but it does explain why God stood by and did nothing – because God. Doesn’t. Exist. At least not the god that the major Abrahamic religions subscribe to.

Rosenbaum feels bad suggesting that this might be true.

Hitler is dead, and I had nonetheless hurt the feelings of an undoubtedly good man to make a point about Hitler, God, and Bob Dylan.

Well, too bad. We should allow people to cling to delusions because it allows them to feel better? Rosenbaum was entitled to come to his own conclusions on his own observation of the same set of facts available to the old Jewish rabbi. He was asked to share them. If he upsets people, well, is what he said more upsetting than what the families of the Holocaust victims, or the victims themselves, experienced with their deaths, deaths which were engendered in part in the same religious milieu that the rabbi sought for spiritual comfort? And don’t forget that Hitler was a Catholic, and believed in the same god that the victims of his anti-Semitic, genocidal actions believed in.

No, he should not apologize for speaking what he believes is the truth. Feelings can be mended. Lives can not be brought back from death. Belief in foolish religious nonsense has almost always resulted in more of the latter than the former. His instincts were correct.

Call foolishness where you see it and let the chips fall where they may.

———-

We sit here stranded, though we’re all doin’ our best to deny it

Visions of Johanna – Bob Dylan

Did you ever have a dream from which you awoke that you felt was full of some monumental wisdom, something you never would have thought of in any of your waking moments,  and you felt that you ought to get right up and put the dream to paper, knowing full well if you rolled over and went back to sleep, you’d completely forget it in the morning? And once you do, and you’ve had your second cup of coffee, and you analyze it, you realize it’s not only NOT a very monumental bit of thinking, it’s not even rational, and what made you even think it was so profound?

Well, I had a dream the other night, and though I’ve concluded that it’s not quite that monumental, it does hold the distinction of actually being coherent in the real world, unlike most of my dreams which are more like psychedelic, random, fleeting images and conversations and characters that hold no connection with each other, and have no real significance beyond allowing my brain to release these things from my subconscious, probably something brains are supposed to do when one sleeps. You know; to ease stress, unblock blocked-up synapses, make some sense of the constant input of stimuli, in the process getting rid of the crap, cleaning out the neural pathways.

Anyway, in this dream, I was on a panel on a radio or TV talk show, where there was a Christian and an atheist debating each other, and for some reason I was tasked with coming up with a pertinent question for the theist, something that would make him stop and re-think his theism in light of my question (as if). I was sweating it, because in these type of give-and-takes, all the relevant, thoughtful questions had been asked, so I was wracking my brain to come up with something novel.

Just before it was my turn to ask a question, this one popped into my head:

Why do theists get so upset at the very thought of atheists even existing? Why don’t theists have the same attitude towards atheists as, say, brunettes have towards redheads? You don’t see brunettes threatened by the fact that about 10 percent of the population has ginger hair.  They just accept that there are people with different colored hair, and they live their lives totally unaffected by their existence. Why can’t theists be the same way?”

OK, admittedly, this is not a very profound question, and one that is (I think) quite obvious. It can be extrapolated to other areas of human social culture, such as race relations, gay rights, sexual orientation, etc. It boils down to the human phenomena that we have evolved to be distrustful of “others”; those not like us, and the process of civilization has been partly the history of humanity attempting to overcome this outdated, unneeded response to people who are not like us. No, what I was amazed at was that the premise of the dream actually held true, and made sense once I awoke, and continues to do so. My subconscious was actually processing rational thought, rather than simply shedding itself of unneeded data and stimuli. I wonder if it was the vodka?

So it was a perfectly valid point I made to that fanciful theist in my dream. Why do they get so upset by atheism? I’m sure that some theist will say I’ve simply posited a straw man, that there are many theists, comfortable in their beliefs, that could care less that we exist. But poll after poll (not to mention a shit load of anecdotes) consistently show a significant majority of Americans who find atheists distasteful – they wouldn’t want their daughter to marry one, nor would they ever vote for one. The same can not be said about brunettes. It’s doubtful that any brunette would object to the marriage of a child to a redhead, and if we ever have another redhead running for President, it would only be noted that Thomas Jefferson was a red head, and that would end any latent ginger bigotry.

I think this dream pulled together thoughts motivated by the recent rejection by COLTS (County of Lackawanna Transit System) of a very simple ad on the side of their buses with one word – ATHEISTS – as too “controversial”. (I still marvel at how something innocuous in my life shows up in my dreams.) Some theists can’t stomach the idea that atheists even exist. And this honestly perplexes me. I understand the existence of theism. I know why it exists, and I know that at the present time, most people in America subscribe to some version or another of a theist belief system. While I’m sure it’s an unsubstantiated belief system that does more harm than good, it exists, and I know also that most people who subscribe to it are, at a base level, honestly good and well-intentioned people. So why can’t theists treat me like I treat them?

One theory, my favorite at the moment, is that deep down theists know (without admitting to themselves – hence the self-delusional aspect of all religion) that there is something wrong with their beliefs. They know that they rest on shaky ground (one book – that’s it), and if they analyzed their beliefs in a rational way they just might find out that those beliefs are nothing but vapor, dust, fog, a shroud over reality. And that bothers them. It bothers them because in other areas of their life, they use reason and logic, and those disciplines work for them on a regular basis. They learn math and science in school, and know that all of the conveniences of life are not based on faith. They don’t have faith that their car will start when they turn the key, they know it will start because of experience, science, technology, and that the basic know-how of the American automotive industry for the last 100 years gives them that knowledge. They don’t pray before they turn the key, knowing the car will only start if they do so. (This of course assumes a well maintained car, but that goes without saying. The unreliable clunker probably gets more curses directed at it that prayers.)

Likewise in all other aspects of life. A faith-based view of reality is not what they subscribe to to get through the day – except one day (Sunday) and only part of that day in any event. So deep down they know that if they applied that kind of rigorous knowledge to their faith, their beliefs would not hold up to even minimal scrutiny. They really, really want those faith based beliefs to be true, because the promise of religion is eternal life, happiness after a short, somewhat miserable, stint on this earth, and the ability to rejoin all the people they loved and who died before them. This is heartfelt, but ultimately delusional, and the rest of their lives are constant reminders that it may not be true.

I get a very strong sense that theists are insecure in their beliefs. This may be why they need to have them constantly affirmed, not just by attending mass re-education classes on Sundays, but by forcing their beliefs on others, via legislation along with insertion into public policy. It’s a memetic means of self-preservation.

So, add atheists to the known reality of daily life. Atheists are in-your-face, not-too-subtle, but constant reminders that their faith may rest on a proverbial house of cards, and nothing more.  We are a direct refutation of what they want to be true, and we just may be right. We tickle that bone of doubt. So what is the best way to avoid having to confront this internal dialogue they should be having but are avoiding with a vengeance? Pretend that atheists don’t exist, and if that doesn’t work, convince themselves that we are evil, not worthy of a hearing. Don’t vote for us, don’t let us into your life, pretend we don’t exist, and, maybe if you are lucky, we just might go away.

Naw, that’s not going to happen.

This analogy works with other examples. Right-handers are dominant, yet we have no problem with southpaws. People with glasses are very common, yet we tolerate those with 20/20 vision (perhaps that one should be reversed.) The point is that there are lots of people out there who are different than others, and they don’t get the derision, the avoidance, the bigotry that atheists get. Blacks, gays, women have all had to assert themselves before that were treated as equals, so the fact that atheists are putting up billboards, is not proof that atheist want to get rid of religion, but merely that they want to be accepted as equals. Theists need to accept that we exist, and stop trying to legislate us away.

This rant got a little longer than I anticipated, but that’s good. Maybe I’ll jump up in the middle of the night and write down those dreams more often.

———

Note to Gideon: I am still not going to allow your comments. They are still juvenile, puerile, and simplistically offensive, not to mention stupid. Let me know when you grow up.