On Being Wrong

If you are reading this, then you must share with me a number of qualities such as humanity and literacy and such.  Another important quality that you and I share, kind reader, is fallibility.  Our humanity makes us subject to making mistakes; to be wrong about things from time to time is part of the mortal condition we all have in common.

As I consider debates in the public marketplace of ideas, over politics and religion and morality, I notice that many people, liberal and conservative, theist and atheist, invest far too much of their egos into the substance of their positions to a degree that they neglect the fundamental truth of my first paragraph.  People get swept up in the heat of an argument and refuse to consider that at least sometimes, they are wrong.

I am writing this blog as a reminder to myself, and as an admonishment to others, that it is okay, even desirable to admit when one is wrong.  There is no shame in making a mistake from time to time.

However, there is shame in refusing to admit errors.  There is even more shame in refusing to consider oneself capable of making errors.  The first case is lying (to oneself and others); the second case is hubris.

Let me take two examples from the heated realm of politics to illustrate my point.  Compare and contrast Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich.  Both were powerful political figures, and both indulged in adulterous sexual affairs.  (And as a nod to bipartisanship, they were in different political parties).

The moral failures of Bill Clinton were not limited to his adultery, but also included lying to cover up that notorious conduct.  This is the key point.  Had Clinton admitted his error in cheating on his wife, his consequences would have been limited to begging his wife for her forgiveness.  While this process might have been personally painful and humiliating, it pales in comparison to the consequences he incurred for trying to lie his way out.  In addition to incurring the wrath of his wife (with the imperative to beg forgiveness as mentioned before), he also became the second president to be impeached for lying under oath.  Instead of avoiding the humiliation of admitting his error, he compounded it and that nearly cost him his presidency.

With respect to Gingrich, his infidelity destroyed his first two marriages leaving two shattered families in the wake, and appears to be a major contributing factor in the frustration of his presidential ambitions (much like Clinton’s lying wrecked his presidency).  Gingrich (and many of his supporters) refuses to acknowledge the severity of his transgressions, instead preferring to make excuses (“I really loved my country, so this is why I cheated”) or by making spurious claims about being “forgiven.”  Gingrich should not be deluded by the notion that he is forgiven, because he is not.  In the first place, forgiveness can only come from the party who was offended.  If my neighbor cheats on his wife, am I the party who should take offense?  No, of course not; his infidelity is none of my concern.  He must seek forgiveness from his wife who is the aggrieved party.  Clearly Gingrich has not received forgiveness from either of his abandoned wives, so why would anyone else have reason to offer him forgiveness?

Furthermore, forgiveness can only come after experiencing remorse and giving some expression to it.  Gingrich is obviously not remorseful for his adultery because he has serialized it, cheating on one wife after another.  Most importantly, by offering up lame excuses for his errors, Gingrich has failed to give proper expression to his remorse.  He is not sorry because he hasn’t really said he was sorry.

Many times I read back over things I have written, opinions I have expressed, and I wince because I recognize that I have said something which I regret.  I recall an occasion participating in a heated chat room discussion during I sarcastically suggested that the other person I was addressing didn’t know what she was talking about regarding the social problems of crime.  She very curtly informed me that she was the mother of a murdered child.

I replied to her that I was wrong to have said what I did, and I apologized.

Which brings me back around to my original observation about heated debates in public places.  In the circumstances of my chat, it would have been easy for me to formulate some elaborate reply that either ignored the painful truth of my boorishness, or attempted to deny the relevance or validity of her grief.  Or, I could simply have slinked away, never to return to the conversation.  I chose instead to admit my error because I value the truth above all other things, and the power of truth only comes from having the courage to give it voice.

I regret that the poisonous atmosphere of public debate in today’s society has become so infused with pride that candor has become a victim.  While perhaps I cannot reverse that process entirely, I hope to influence it with these admissions and observations on my part.

I think the best way to get at the truth is to participate in an open discussion of ideas, exploring reason with the recognition that the integrity of the process and finding truth is far more important than vindicating one’s ego by ending an argument presuming victory.

Sometimes we are all wrong.  Have the wisdom to recognize it when it happens, and have the courage to admit it.

Religious Democracy

Our old friend Thomas Paine was a passionate advocate for individual liberty; no doubt about it.  He spoke out against institutionalized oppression of individual liberties in all its forms, and while his political views were well received among his audiences in the United States and France, his stand against religious institutions proved his ultimate undoing.  His courageous publication of The Age of Reason rendered him a pariah wherever he went for the rest of his life (and colored his reputation post mortem as well).  Not much seems to have changed in the struggle for individual religious liberty in the face of religious institutions, with the recent debate over medical insurance for employees representing the most recent melee.

Some religious institutions are claiming that their liberties, as institutions, should allow them to decline to provide insurance coverage for contraception (this recalls recent claims that corporations are people too; we’ll leave that debate for another time).  To some degree, I would concur with the assertion of this claim.  Religious institutions can function as an extension of their congregants, and therefore one should pause and reflect before compelling an organized church to act, or to refrain from acting.

However this last point raises critical questions.  What if the institutionalized church doesn’t represent the views of its congregation?  What if instead the church hierarchy imposes its narrowly defined views on its laity, after specifically and systematically excluding them (or some of them) from any participation in the process of deciding what the church should stand for?  Can an organized church hierarchy still claim the religious liberties of the individual congregants when they systematically ignore the wants and needs of those congregants?

To paraphrase, why would oppression by an institutionalized church be any more tolerable than oppression by an overbearing government?

I have written earlier that since all religion is the product of the human imagination, all religion is humanist at its core.  A corollary to that view is that when individuals gather together to share their religious experiences, it is proper that the institutions they organize should represent their collective views.  It is not proper for the institutions created by congregants to dictate terms to the individual or to disenfranchised minorities.  This is the essence of religious democracy; the religious liberty of  people comes first and the liberties of the organization is a collective extension of that individually based liberty.

I am fully aware that these views are contradictory to the notion that scriptures are delivered from the supernatural divine; that there are universal moral truths.  I am comfortable specifically rejecting those views.  Scriptures are written by humans, and humans can change them or even ignore them when the occasion requires.  There is nothing supernatural about ancient texts.

With these principles in mind, let us return to the organized church and its assertion of collective religious liberty to decline paying for full healthcare coverage for women.

The organized church asserts that they should not be compelled to pay for healthcare coverage that is contrary to their religious doctrines.  And to the extent that those doctrines represent the views of their laity, I would concede that perhaps they have a point.  However, it is not at all clear that church doctrine matches the views of the individual members of their church.  A recent scholarly study entitled “Countering Conventional Wisdom: New Evidence on Religion and Contraception”  reveals fairly clearly that virtually all sexually active women use contraception from time to time, irrespective of their religious affiliation.  Furthermore, in at least some religious denominations, those who are most directly impacted by religious doctrine involving contraception, women are systematically excluded from any participation in the process of determining that doctrine.  Where a church hierarchy is dominated almost exclusively by men, and deliberately obstructs the input of women in the interpretation of scripture on the subject of contraception (and at least as far as the Bible is considered, there is no scripture mentioning contraception), it can hardly be said that the church represents the views of their congregants.  Instead, the institutionalized church is imposing its views on its members, and using the threat of excommunication and damnation as coercion to punctuate the point.

Perhaps this should be viewed as a strictly internal church matter, best resolved by the church hierarchy and its laity.  Since my views hold that spiritual matters are private in much the same way that sexual matters are private, in most cases I would heartily agree.  However, the issue at hand is absolutely not a strictly internal matter because one church in question is claiming exemption from paying for comprehensive health coverage relative to its employees who are not members of their laity.  In other words, an institutionalized church wants to impose its narrowly defined religious doctrine on non-members as a condition of employment.

If the employment in question were limited to church institutions per se (such as clergy, church administration or other employment normally limited to church members), there is a strong argument to be made that an exemption should be made from the requirement to pay for comprehensive healthcare coverage that runs counter to religious doctrine.  And such an exemption is indeed made.  However the scope of this exemption has failed to please an overreaching church hierarchy.  Some members of the clergy want also to assert a refusal to pay for comprehensive coverage for the employees of non-members in their secular lines of business such as hospitals and universities.  This takes the assertion of religious liberty that was already rather alarmingly extended over the brink to religious oppression.  To allow this claim for exemption would be to allow an institutionalized church to impose its religious views on citizens who are not members of their denomination.

Once again I ask, why would oppression by an institutionalized church be any more tolerable than oppression by an overbearing government?

Perhaps an organized church might argue that non-member employees are free to seek employment elsewhere if the terms are unacceptable.  That argument is just as spurious and destructive as arguing that if the church cannot provide comprehensive healthcare coverage, they shouldn’t feel obliged to remain in whatever secular line of business is proving inconvenient.  The “take it or leave it” argument is high-handed and unfair in either case, and moreover it is counter-productive as to solution that will set the issue to rest.  And I think everyone should agree that a solution is the community’s shared goal.

As cleaver as I might presume to appear, I confess that I don’t have an answer to this conundrum that entirely satisfies my own views, so I would not be so cheeky as to pronounce terms that are ultimately correct for our community at large.  By any fair evaluation, this is a thorny social issue.  Rather than dictate answers in this debate, I modestly hope to present some relevant questions that might give all parties some opportunity for reflection.

Marriage Equality

I recently watched a speech by presidential candidate Rick Santorum during which he spoke about marriage and family values.  There were two objects against which his remarks were directed; homosexuality and polygamy.  It came as no surprise that he equated the two practices to each other.  Those who do not have a substantive argument to make on the merits must necessarily resort to logical fallacies such as guilt by association.  That is okay by me, since Santorum’s deliberate obfuscation is easily enough refuted.

Santorum’s argument focuses on the issue of sexual behavior.  He asserts that both homosexuality and polygamy represent sexual deviance, and therefore it is reasonable to make an association between the two.  After making this association, it is easy to advance a “slippery slope” argument (no pun intended).  If society permits homosexual marriage (Santorum reasons), then there is no logical reason to refuse polygamists to formalize their marriages too.  Santorum and his fellow travelers are relying on the cynical notion that even those who might otherwise support or remain indifferent to same sex marriage would balk at polygamous marriage.

I think it is imperative in this debate to refuse Santorum and likeminded social conservatives the opportunity to dictate the terms of the conversation.  The best way to deal with folks such as this is redefine the terms of the debate.

In the first place, supporters of marriage equality should forcefully deny the suggestion made by Santorum that marriage is primarily about sex.  While sex is indeed an important element of marriage, they are not practical equivalents.  This is a critical point to make because many conservatives may well agree that marriage and sex are not equivalents.  Marriage is about much more than sex, and by securing agreement on this point, it is easier to disassemble Santorum’s logic.

To make this point clearer, it is important to point out that states today do not have laws regulating sexual behavior between heterosexuals (those few states that ever had such laws have generally repealed them).  Furthermore, the case of Lawrence v. Texas 539 U.S. 558 (2003)  struck down as unconstitutional the Texas statute against homosexual sodomy, and by proxy also struck down all other state laws against homosexual sodomy.  Thus, if someone wants to engage in homosexual relations, or heterosexual relations, they may already do so; states do not try to regulate these things anymore.  (This is also true of polygamous relations; if someone wants to have sex with multiple partners, they really can do so without state interference).

And this is how it should be.  Even conservatives agree that it is a fundamental human right for an individual to do whatever does not harm another.  Sexual behavior among consenting adults is private business and a government that intrudes into this business infringes individual liberty.

The next step is to recognize that every state and every territory in the Union allows legal formalization of monogamous relationships between heterosexuals.  The advantages of the legal form of marriage are clear; filing joint tax returns; forming family partnerships; exemptions from estate and gift taxes; priority in conservatorships; government benefits; spousal insurance; family leave benefits; retirement plan benefits; housing benefits; consumer benefits; legal standing for any number of circumstances.  In short, there is a decided advantage in our society to being married.  Furthermore, the array of advantages to marriage are structured about monogamous relationships, and make good sense in that context.

This is where Santorum’s attempt to link homosexuality to polygamy fails.  Since states do not regulate private sexual conduct, and since states do provide legal advantages to monogamous relationships, upon what basis would Santorum deny same-sex couples equal legal protection?  There is no slippery slope to legalizing polygamy because same-sex marriages would not need to change the law as it exists now.

The one argument I have not addressed yet is perhaps the most spurious of all; that state recognition of same-sex marriage would somehow harm the interests of married heterosexuals.  It might be tempting to dismiss such assertions with a contemptuous snort, considering that one couple enjoying their rights in private manifestly has zero impact on another couple enjoying theirs.  But perhaps we can do one better than mere derision of the suggestion.

A tactic I often use in prevailing in debates of this type is to co-opt the logic of my opponent and by taking it to its logical conclusion, turn it against that opponent.  If the private behavior of homosexual couples has an adverse impact on the interests of heterosexual couples, then it must stand to reason that the private conduct of heterosexual couples may likewise have an adverse impact on the interest of whomever might choose to assert that interest.  So when a presidential candidate commits adultery and abandons a spouse (or two), or if a televangelist proposes abandoning a spouse do to a terminal illness, those people should be held accountable (and do not speak to me about how such people have been “forgiven”; forgiveness must come from the party offended, and as a married person whose relationship interest has been harmed by this conduct, I choose not to forgive them).

And since the choice of homosexual lifestyle apparently offends the interest of married people to such degree that it must cost the offenders some legal rights, it only stands to reason that the presidential candidate and the televangelist should likewise suffer some legal sanction.  I ask my readers to comment on what they think this legal sanction should be.

Rick Santorum would back-peddle from these logical consequences of this stand on principle, such as it is, if he had any common sense and common decency.  But anyone who would sign a public statement claiming a child born to slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by two parents than a child born today obviously has neither.

To Abstain From Abstinence

Continuing on a theme from the earlier blog, Teaching the Controversy I think it is instructive to look at the commitment socialist conservatives and political evangelicals make to the issue of choice.  Clearly as it refers to choices presented in public school biology curricula, to chose between creationism and evolutionary biology, they embrace choice passionately.  However, there is reason to suspect that this commitment is entirely illusory, and that socialist conservatives will quickly abandon their principled stance for choice once it no longer offers them an advantage in the public market place of ideas.

To test the commitment of political evangelicals to freedom of choice, seek out your favorite social conservative and ask about choices in biology curricula (inevitably they will support choice).  Next, follow that by asking whether they support instruction in contraception and family planning as an alternative choice to abstinence in a public school sex education curriculum.

Wait for the crickets to sing.

When confronted with choices of this kind, social conservatives will inevitably adopt a variety of evasive maneuvers to avoid a direct answer to the question.  I think it is perhaps a bit unfair of me to anticipate or speculate on what the reply to this line of inquiry might be, because that would be much like constructing a straw man argument and I have little regard for such tactics.  However, I can report that I have on occasion had this conversation in real life, and I can reconstruct the line of discussion for my readers’ edification.

“No! we shouldn’t teach about contraception in public school sex education classes because abstinence is the best choice to avoid getting pregnant.  It is one-hundred percent effective.”  (I could have pointed out at this juncture that evolution by means of natural selection is likewise the “best choice” as far as biology is concerned, but I let it pass.  I had better arguments to make).

The person with whom I was debating the issue was of course an adult, married much like myself, so I asked her, “If abstinence is the best method of avoiding pregnancy, I suppose then that you are abstinent yourself…”

“Of course not, I’m married!”  She replied.

Herein lies the rub you see.  If abstinence was the best method to avoid a pregnancy, then why is it that social conservatives advocating “abstinence only” don’t choose to be abstinent themselves?

The obvious answer is that they are married, and married people are generally not abstinent.  But this raises a host of issues.  Part of the social conservative social model is that they want their children to get married.  And as a matter of fact, the overwhelming majority of people, socially conservative and otherwise, do get married within a relatively short time after high school graduation (or within that age range if they do not complete their high school education)  So it is unreasonable, unfair, and even deceptive to tell a public school student that abstinence is the preferred method to avoid a pregnancy when we know full well that not only will it become irrelevant to them very quickly as they get married, but also when we know that marriage is preferred almost universally in society.  We are giving those young adults a solution that we know won’t work for them once they get married as we want and expect them to do.

The rebuttal my social conservative friend made that abstinence was for those who had not yet gotten married, and that it was fine to be sexually active after marriage.  This raises even more issues.  Society at large has been remiss by allowing social conservatives dominate this public conversation characterizing the social malady in terms of “unwed pregnancy.”  I assert that the more compelling and overriding social concern is that of unplanned pregnancy.  If a pregnancy is unplanned, it is detrimental to the woman, the family, and society at large irrespective of whether the parents are married or not.

Compare two couples.  The first couple are unmarried teenagers, just out of high school, and have sex without contraception resulting in an unplanned pregnancy.  The parents do not have a college education; do not have jobs to support a family financially; do not have the means to obtain economically viable employment; do not have the emotional preparedness or parenting skills to support their child well; do not have the means of acquiring adequate healthcare for the expecting mother or the child once it is born.  This scenario is a tragedy.

Now compare another couple of teenagers, fresh out of high school, who made virginity pledges to each other and kept them until their wedding night in June after graduation.  This couple like the first have sex without contraception and the bride is pregnant (unplanned) before August.  Ask yourself how are their circumstances different from the first couple?  They have no education; no career prospects; no health insurance; no parenting skills.  The fact that they are married does nothing to improve their circumstances.

Fundamentalists are wrong to treat marriage as a license to have sex.  They are wrong to treat abstinence as a method of birth control.

Furthermore, the scenario above with both couples is entirely avoidable with comprehensive sex education in public schools that features instruction in contraception, family planning and parenting skills.  Embracing this solution enjoys a number of virtues, perhaps the foremost of which is that it leaves personal decisions about sex to the choice of the individual (remember, a question about choice is how this conversation began).

Moreover, providing comprehensive sex education is a far more efficient use of taxpayer dollars than any other alternative.  Suppose we as a society rely exclusively on abstinence only sex education through high school graduation fully aware that the vast majority of those students, if not already sexually active, will be so within a few short years of graduation as they fulfill society’s expectations and get married.  There inevitably will come a time in these young adult’s lives when the need for information about contraception and family planning will become an imperative.  Since the focus on abstinence in high school caused society to miss the opportunity to provide the necessary facts during a class that the taxpayer was already paying for, now the question becomes, who will pay for public sex education after high school graduation?  Should the taxpayer be expected to pay for yet another sex education class designed for couples getting married?  Should the newlyweds be forced to include the cost of such instruction among the already considerable costs of getting married?  How can we as a society justify to those young adults that we refused to provide them with the information they need about family planning when they were already in class learning about sex?

On the other hand, it is conceivable (no pun intended) that social conservatives may well respond by insisting that abstinence is indeed the best means of avoiding pregnancy, even for married couples.  Simply put, if you don’t want to get pregnant, don’t have sex; at all.  This solution only further erodes the question of individual choice.  It makes the assumption that sex is for procreation only, and serves no valid purpose as an expression of affection between committed individuals.

Moreover, as the abstinence argument is taken to its logical conclusions, it becomes increasingly clear that this viewpoint is not about good public policy but rather it is about imposing a rather narrow interpretation of religious morality upon society at large.  Thus, abstinence only sex education policy is not only an infringement on personal choice from the standpoint of sexuality, it is likewise and infringement of religious liberty as well.

Evangelicals should be advised that someone’s choice to reject their views is indeed entirely valid.

Teaching the Controversy

Let us be clear; creationism and intelligent design are not science.  I am appalled and annoyed each time I hear someone suggest otherwise.  Most commonly this notion is proposed by some political evangelical or social conservative who seeks to convert the public school system into their own recruiting ground by insinuating their religious beliefs into the science curriculum.  The method employed in most cases is to make an appeal to reason which appears to be entirely fair minded at face value.

“All we ask is that they teach the controversy; let the students have a choice between alternatives and decide for themselves which is right.”

On its face this seems fair enough.  What could be more democratic than a free choice between alternatives?  However upon reflection it becomes clear that those social conservatives who advocate this choice are being deceptive on many levels.  This is not a stand on principle but rather a rhetorical device.

In the first place, there is no controversy regarding the scientific bona fides of creationism or intelligent design.  One does not need to have any special scientific expertise or training to understand this truth; it is easily demonstrable with a few common observations.

There is no consensus among the scientific community that either creationism or ID has any scientific merit.  Quite the contrary, among hundreds of thousands of scientists of various disciplines and specialties of study around the world, one might find a dozen or so who advocate ID.  And even among those few who do advocate ID, not a one of them will go so far as to assert that creationism or ID meets the current definition of science, but rather they advocate changing the definition of science to accommodate their so-called “theory.”  Microbiologist Michael Behe is an excellent example.  In his testimony in the case Kitzmiller v. Dover School Board Behe acknowledged that in his writings on intelligent design, he relied on his own definition of what constitutes theory, a definition that would allow for supernatural causation, and he admitted that applying his broader definition one could also justify teaching astrology as part of a science curriculum.  This method of broadening the definition of science is a tactic taken directly from the play book of an advocacy group called Discovery Institute, which I will return to discuss again later.

Another important fact is that there is no peer reviewed literature on the subjects of creationism or intelligent design.  The entire body of content that has ever been published on these subjects was either entirely commercial or never reviewed by scientific colleagues, or alternatively submitted to a limited group of like-minded advocates at Discovery Institute for a kangaroo review of sorts.  This process is designed with a specific purpose, and that purpose is not to advance the cause of science.  On the contrary, the purpose is to affect a deceptive understanding in the public mind about the scientific merits of intelligent design, and thereby to advance the social agenda of religious and social conservatives. Again, there are more comments about Discovery Institute below.

A legitimate scientific theory must lend itself to research and a process of experimentation.  Neither creationism nor intelligent design accomplishes this purpose.  Where theories such as evolution by means of natural selection have been dynamic and undergoing constant development since their inception, creationism and intelligent design are entirely static.  The reason for this is clear.  What experiment might one undertake that would test the process of supernatural design?  Clearly the answer would be that this is manifestly impossible from a conceptual standpoint, and this is precisely why those few advocates of intelligent design write exclusively on what they perceive as faults in evolutionary biology rather than present an affirmative case for the merits of their own ideas.

Thus it is clear, there is no basis upon which to argue that creationism and intelligent design are science; no scientific consensus; no peer reviewed supporting literature; no experimentation and research.  What then might one ask is the controversy that social conservatives want to teach in science class?  The controversy to which they refer is entirely contrived, or perhaps more accurately stated, imaginary.

Why might one ask do social conservatives and political evangelicals go to such lengths to attempt to influence public school science curricula?  There are several answers to this question, some more insidious than others.  First, religious conservatives of all varieties, (but especially fundamentalists) recognize that competition from reasoned based science in the grand market place of ideas is the most serious threat to their perpetuating their own superstitious notions of the universe.  An essential element of fundamentalism is that scripture must be accepted as literal and absolute.  Having read the Bible myself I can attest that there is no meaningful way to reconcile the stated time line from Genesis to scientific theories that hold the Earth and the universe are billions of years old.  In the context of scientific understanding, one must accept the biblical scripture as metaphorical and allegorical in nature, or reject its validity entirely.  This reality is an obvious threat to fundamentalist thinking.

But the fundamentalist set is not merely concerned about threats to their strict absolutist interpretation of the Bible.  Their concern is far more profound.  There is an insidious element to their motivation which is found clearly stated in a document entitled The Wedge Strategy published by the Discovery Institute (you see, I told you I would return to them).  The Wedge Strategy is a white paper that begins with the lament that scientific materialism developed in the age of Darwin and Marx changed the moral perceptions of humans from divine creatures to mere naturalistic animals.  They propose to reverse scientific materialism and restore their preferred cultural norms; and to accomplish this goal, they advocate the restructuring of science to include a theistic understanding of nature.

In other words, they want to redefine science to make it supernatural.

I have already hinted at this purpose earlier when I noted that even the advocates of intelligent design do not claim ID meets the current definition of what constitutes science.  While the suggestion that the definition of science should change to accommodate the “theory” rather than the theory conforming to the definition of science might seem absurd to rational thinkers, make no mistake it is absurdity with a method.

You should not take my word for these claims; do your own internet search with the terms “wedge strategy document” and read it for yourself.

Why would such an issue be so important to Humanists and free-thinkers?  The answer is quite simple; because “teaching the controversy” is a lie, a flat out brazen lie.  Social conservatives claim to make a stand on principle, advocating academic freedom of choice, but this is a deception.  Intelligent design is manifestly not science, so it is not an appropriate choice for a science curriculum.  And more importantly, a quick read of The Wedge Strategy makes clear that none of this exercise is about a sincere intent to improve scientific knowledge, but rather to return to a moral code dominated by superstitious thinking.

In my view and experience, the best way to deal with a liar is to call them out and expose their lies; and this is what I propose to do with this post.

Manifesto

Welcome to a New Age of Reason.  I am Morgan Alexander and this is my blog.

I chose the title New Age of Reason as a tribute to the 18th century revolutionary thinker and propagandist Thomas Paine, who published the original Age of Reason as he hastily left France where he had by that time outworn his welcome because of his deist views.  Paine was a man of vision as well as tremendous courage.  Perhaps among his foremost talents was his ability to grasp ideas that had been bantered about by the intellectual elite for generations in cloistered silence, and translate those ideas into the language of the common man, calling him to action.  I can only hope that in some small way I might replicate his success.

The critical question is at hand.  What is it that I have to say?  And why would I presume that my words have relevance in today’s world?  What calls to action beg to be made?

We live in troubled times.  The human population worldwide threatens to over pour the rim on the cup of Mother Earth, consuming resources voraciously like a plague of locusts.  Human immoderation in consumption and capacity to make devastating war for more opportunity to consume threatens the survival of our species in the generations to come.  Intolerance for dissention and for any discussion of viable solutions that might avert these disasters renders hope for humanity increasingly obsolete.  We are poisoning our water, our air, the very ground upon which we walk and from which we take our food.  Superstitious hostility to science and an open marketplace of discussion by traditionalists and fundamentalist intent on preserving their cultural hegemony creates serious challenges to addressing these crises at their most basic levels.  If humanity refuses to change its course, the legacy for our posterity appears bleak.

I am glad to proclaim that I am a Secular Humanist.  As a Humanist I believe that moral values are the product of the human mind.  Sound moral values are based on the ability to reason, and predicated on the belief that all men and women are happiest when they live good lives, and want their neighbors to share the same.  Morality can only serve the purposes of improving the lives of the human community if it is free to develop and grow in an environment of free exchanges of ideas and tolerant yet vigorous debate.  These are the qualities which can rescue our species from its current plight; not the mysterious and stagnant dictates of a supernatural Big Brother.

As a secularist, I am convinced that not only should government refrain from interference with individual religious liberty, but also that organized religion has no business interfering with good governance.  There should indeed be a wall of separation that is high enough and broad enough so that the institutions of organized religion and the organs of state should never meet.

This is not to say that religion, even organized religion, should be abolished or diminished.  On the contrary, since all religious thinking that ever existed anywhere in any time was the product of a human imagination, I assert that all religion is essentially humanist on a basic level.  And as I want to be free to explore my own personal sense of morality and self-actualization, I could hardly deny the same for my brothers and sisters.

But religion is properly the source of comfort and inspiration to the individual in much the same way that sexuality offers personal comfort and inspiration (among other things).  Organizing a religious doctrine across an extended group and then using those institutions to impose those individual values on a society that does not share them, where individuals only ask for the same opportunity to discover their own sense of comfort and inspiration, is as absurd as organizing and institutionalizing sex.  Religion is sovereign over the consenting individual, but not the community at large.  Religion makes perfect sense for the mournful widow grieving over a grave, or the joyful adventurer attaining a mountain summit at dawn, but it does not make sense as a source of mundane public policy.  Political business cheapens all religions of all kinds, and secularists respectfully request religious institutions and religious fundamentalists to withdraw their prejudices from this business.

In the course of this blog I hope to explore a variety of ideas limited only by my imagination and the imagination of those who might read my modest lines and share the gift of their own views.  Given the preamble already outlined above, it will be natural that among my topics of interest will be science, ethics, economics, society and politics.  But I expect, and I hope, that these things will be merely the surface of a much broader intellectual adventure.  I welcome comments, even those (especially those) that are contrary or even contradictory to my own.  All I ask is that my community of readers recall that among the highest of human values is common courtesy, and debates should be spiced with passion for what is right and just, and not with personal invective and venom.

I will close by thanking you, a fellow human busy with the chores of your day, who has taken the time to read these lines and give them your thoughtful consideration.