Amy Sullivan's bad advice

I was with you until you slandered the FSM.

I will only vote for candidates who appear with their families in devout pasta worship.

My favorite line:

"...bringing back Bible classeseven constitutional onesto public schools."

As though the best-case scenario were violation of the Constitution; but if push came to shove, mayyyyybe Sullivan would settle for just skirting this side of legality.

Truly a do-anything-to-win mentality. Doomed to failure of course, but sure to appeal to those losers who think Joe Lieberman's on to something with his Republican-lite "strategy" (if you can call craven, infinitely spineless bootlicking a strategy).

Even though it's a universal topic it's about US internal politics, so I should refrain... but I can't! I nearly dropped my coffee when I saw "preventing unwanted pregnancies. Full-throated support of this effort". What is "full-throathed support" that "prevents unwanted pregnancies"? Please don't tell me it's the dirty version that popped up in my likewise dirty mind...

To stay OT, are they going to ask humorists to stay away too, from fear of aggravating others? Perhaps they should also issue a gag order on Hollywood, while they are at it. Nothing is as good for a healthy discourse like shutting people up and pretend that the discourse is healthy...

Actually, Sullivan's latest iteration of her long argument for Democrats to make an overt appeal to religious sensibilities is remarkably better than similar efforts of hers have been in the past. If teaching comparative religion in high school can be done constitutionally (which I grant there are a lot of devilish details about), having some Democrats take the lead on it does help to neutralize the Republicans co-option of religion. I may be an atheist myself, but a class on the history of religion seems reasonable enough, especially if it drives the Republicans bonkers in the process.

I think it's a win-win situation for Democratic atheists such as myself, because any class dealing in religion will have to take a neutral POV to be constitutional, in order to avoid violating the establishment clause of the First Amendment. Which means that it will also have to discuss the skeptical POV of atheists such as myself. Would that the likes of August Berkshire get such a chance on a regular basis... :-)

PZ says "I've got another suggestion. How about if we reassure the evangelicals that they will always be free to worship as they please..." etc. and getting more strident as he goes.

Here's the thing folks. This is a pretty religious country. There are a sizeable minority who would be called "Fundamentalist", but above that you have a huge sector who feel a deep affinity with some kind of religious thought along an at least vaguely Christian line. There are only a handful of us (relatively) who are non-Christian in some way (atheist, Moslim, Hindu, Odinistas, FSMers, etc). No MAJOR political party is EVER going to buck that reality. If you want a real choice, that's different, you are probably going to have to go to a 3rd party. Otherwise, you are going to have to put up with a lot of people, even in the Democratic party, giving the devil his due - so to speak.

Just do your science, substantiate your points, make a good case for what the next line of action on any given matter should be. You'll win some, you'll lose some and hopefully you'll make your mark in creating a little better planet. But one thing that probably doesn't make this a better place EVER is being openly hostile to people just because everything they think and do is clouded by their religious perspective. Hostile is hostile, whichever side it comes from and it breeds - you guessed it - hostility.

Or, they could focus on pocketbook issues instead of a hodgepodge of dumb issues that the government has no business being involved in... all in a quixotic effort to get states like Alabama (for fuck's SAKE!) to like the national party. Oh.. wait a minute. She writes for a MAGAZINE. That's practically like running a bunch of successful political campaigns.

There's no point in debating the advice. Just ignore it.

You know, PZ, if there were an entry on Kevin Drum in the Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy, it would consist of two words:

Mostly useless.

He's such a waste of electrons, yet another milquetoast moderate in a long line of undistinguished pundits who say not much of anything at all.

"Your belief in Jesus...is not a qualification for service in government...."

And here I thought you were an empiricist! (Or did you mean "is" in the de jure rather than the de facto sense?)

"If teaching comparative religion in high school can be done constitutionally (which I grant there are a lot of devilish details about), having some Democrats take the lead on it does help to neutralize the Republicans co-option of religion."

Sure, comparative religion classes works in practise (except they don't cover atheists and agnostics well, at least here). But Sullivan seems to be talking exclusively fundamental christian "Bible" classes here: "the Bible in a historical and cultural context", "the Bible literacy bill". Not even christianity itself in a historical and cultural context, even less comparatively.

If teaching comparative religion in high school can be done constitutionally (which I grant there are a lot of devilish details about)...

I don't know that there's really a Constitutional issue there. I had a couple of English classes in my public high school where we read some portions of the Bible, the rationale being along the lines of if you're going to read and discuss Absalom, Absalom, it's probably a good idea to give the kids some background on where the title comes from and why Faulkner used it. So long as religious material is presented historically or culturally rather than theologically, I can't think of a legitimate objection - like it or not, the Bible is an integral part of the socio-cultural vocabulary of the Western tradition, and discussing that fact does not violate the Establishment Clause.

For another, it's delusional thinking to believe that the reason abortion is such a hot-button issue is because of some desire to help babies: it's mainly about controlling women and controlling sexuality.

Are you sure about that? Anyone I've ever known who is opposed to abortion, views it as equivalent to killing an already born baby, with all the moral repulsion that comes along with that. I think you're doing what the religious so often do - building a strawman to represent your opponents' views.

But Sullivan seems to be talking exclusively fundamental christian "Bible" classes here: "the Bible in a historical and cultural context", "the Bible literacy bill". Not even christianity itself in a historical and cultural context, even less comparatively.

If a fundamentalist Christian POV was adopted to the deliberate exclusion of other POVs on the Bible, I think it would run afoul of the First Amendment. I think you could have a class on the Bible as a historical document, but not a class that taught theology based upon it. Of course, once you pull the pin on Mr. Hand Grenade by bringing the Bible into public school, it might prove exceeding hard in practice to avoid teaching theology, especially if a teacher is of a mind to do so.

"where we read some portions of the Bible"

IIRC, that is not part of any comparative religion classes I've heard of. Tiny excerpts from major religions texts may have been used to illustrate central concepts, but in general the religions are described from an outsiders 'neutral' view. If you want to read the Bible as litterature, I'm sure it can be part of a litterature class. Religion as history or culture, it's not.

Too bad you don't get trackbacks from my office door... that's where this post is now.

What is strident about saying people can practice their religion freely, but that the government is and must stay secular?

I don't think the argument that anti-abortionists are all about controlling women is a strawman at all. While some are consistent in their respect for life (the ones who oppose abortion and the death penalty, and favor better support for the poor), they are a minority: if an anti-abortionist is also against contraception and sex education, forget it, they are in that anti-woman, anti-sex majority.

The interests of religious people and secularists often coincide. The same separation of church and state that keeps the believers from imposing their beliefs on nonbelievers protects believers in one religious system from the believers in other religious systems. The faithful should be reminded that they have more to fear from each other than from us.

IMO, what the Democrats need to do is less about racing to the religious right, but about selling progressive ideas to religious people. Americans are religious (not as much as they'd like to believe, but religious nontheless), and we cannot avoid that reality. Instead, we should be selling our ideas for that reality. How well could the morality of single-payer healthcare go over? How about education? Or minimum wage? These are progressive issues that could easily be translated into the langauge of religion.

Instead of being Republican-lite or dark, Democrats should work on showing how our policies serve a moral good and fit in line with what Christians are hoping to see. Don't change the policies, change how you approach your audience; the atheists will understand that these are just good public policy without someone having to explain how this fits into their worldview of morality. So just explain slowly in small words to the rest of America.

What is strident about saying people can practice their religion freely, but that the government is and must stay secular?

Nothing. It's those who mistakenly think that state silence on religion equates to atheism who get upset about the separation of church and state.

Whether or not you can teach a public school class on the history of the Bible is another matter. I think it can be done, but I'd be interested in hearing what August Berkshire might have to say about the subject.

You can't get around the fact that an intellectually respectable course on the Bible would come across as hostile to traditional religion for the uncomplicated reason that so many religious beliefs are simply false. For this reason, politically feasible religion classes in American high schools would surely be utterly mealymouthed in the blue states and a cover for the imposition of generic evangelical Christianity in the red states.

Are you sure about that? Anyone I've ever known who is opposed to abortion, views it as equivalent to killing an already born baby, with all the moral repulsion that comes along with that. I think you're doing what the religious so often do - building a strawman to represent your opponents' views.

Besides what PZ said, another point is their actions "after". Once born it wouldn't matter if the child had millions of dollars of medical problems and four arms or got dumped into a shipping crate to go to a third world country for training to work in a sweat shop. As far as *most* of the anti-abortion people are concerned their involvement and interest ends once they prevent the abortion. Some are even sick enough to claim that any and all problems arising from keeping the child(ren) or the less than optimal life they often have through adoption agencies and foster homes are merely God's will. Like that somehow explains away probably billions spent trying to keep track of all the abandonded ones, help those whose parents hurt them because they are not wanted, etc., or the thousands spent (and often bankrupting) some parents talked into keeping them, do to medical bills from congenital problems, genetic diseases and so on. Maybe one tenth of 1% of those protesting against it would donate a dime to offset the cost of taking care of any of them.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science/03/05/bonobo.disappearing.ap/index…

Why did God make bonobo meat so tasty if he didn't want us to eat them?

Thus spake Casey Luskin.

I had a couple of English classes in my public high school where we read some portions of the Bible, the rationale being along the lines of if you're going to read and discuss Absalom, Absalom, it's probably a good idea to give the kids some background on where the title comes from and why Faulkner used it.

This is Number One in today's list of Stupid Ass Arguments.

So why do you need to read (or gob forbid -- touch) a freaking Bible if you want to know where Faulkner got the title?

You're a teacher. Simply tell the kids that there's this story in the Bible (a book of religious myths held in high esteem by Christians) and it goes like this blah blah blah and that's where Faulkner got the title.

That saves you time. You can spend the time you saved discussing Faulkner's incredible book ... what was it called again?

Yaaaaawwwwn.

Curtis

Anyone I've ever known who is opposed to abortion, views it as equivalent to killing an already born baby, with all the moral repulsion that comes along with that. I think you're doing what the religious so often do - building a strawman to represent your opponents' views.

Try travelling outside of Joplin, MO every once in a while, Curtis.

john

But one thing that probably doesn't make this a better place EVER is being openly hostile to people just because everything they think and do is clouded by their religious perspective.

How bout this? If the fundies stop being hostile to everyone else, I'll stop being hostile towards them.

If teaching comparative religion in high school can be done constitutionally (which I grant there are a lot of devilish details about), having some Democrats take the lead on it does help to neutralize the Republicans co-option of religion.

I don't think it's what the fundamentalist voters want. They don't want neutrality, except when it's contrasted with a reality that they oppose (i.e. evolution). They have railed in the past against teachers who taught the Bible as literature and applied modern methods of literary criticism to it, for example; now they rail against teachers who don't teach the Bible at all.

The only way to defeat a totalitarian movement as every brand of religious fundamentalism is is to pull the carpet from under its feet, i.e. address the social causes that brought it into existence (thence my preferred approach to European Islamism, incidentally). American Dominionism is particularly hard to deal with, because it's a movement based ultimately on a privileged rather than oppressed class; radical movements based on oppressed classes tend to dissipate when the oppression ends, unless they have been around long enough to create a clear group identity, in which case they breed counteroppression (e.g. Eastern Europe's independence movements around and right after World War One).

However, part of the drive behind the Dominionist movement is a campaign of diversion from class issues. Indeed, so far the most effective response to it seems to be the Dean/Feingold response: change the subject to "What have they done for you?". For all my criticism of Dean, I think his line, "I am tired of being divided by X," where he then substitutes "race," "gender," "income," "sexual orientation," and "religion" for X in various permutations, is the right way to handle the situation.

When you come down to it, you don't need to convince the hardcore fundamentalists. These are part of the Republican base; they'll go for the Democrats on the same day NOW and the ACLU will endorse Republicans. You need moderates, and the above Dean/Feingold strategy gets you moderates: moral values or no moral values, Feingold won Wisconsin with 59% of the vote compared with 52% for Kerry.

In principle, I'd like the Bible studied in terms of literature and history, in a completely secular way. That would be a great thing in public schools.

The two big problems with that are that

(1) the main things people would learn would directly contradict the popular views of the Bible, and

(2) there would be an undending culture war about what to teach about the Bible, and overwhelming political pressure to dumb it down and make it more palatable to Christians

For example, if considering the Bible as either literature or a historical artifact, it's important to know who wrote it, and why. Except for religous loonies, scholars know that the Bible was written by many people with contradictory views and axes to grind. It's largely a bunch of myths and screeds, edited and amended by many hands.

Moses clearly did not write the "The Five Books of Moses," for example; they were written by at least five different people or groups of people---at different times, in different dialects, and with different cultural assumptions--- and none of them were Moses. Mosaic authorship is a completely untenable theory by any reasonable secular standard.

And the Gospels were not written by the apostles whose names were attached to them later. They're just a bunch of accreted, legendized, and contradictorily axe-grinding stuff that a committee selected when editing the Bible together.

If you teach that fundamental historical and literary fact in public schools, the fundies will go ballistic. They will accuse you---rightly---of teaching their kids that their religion is largely wrong. And that's true---it is demonstrably largely wrong.

The only thing the fundies would consider fair and balanced would be to avoid teaching anything that contradicts their views---and that means not teaching the most basic facts about the subject: that the Bible is inconsistent, ahistorical in many ways, factually incorrect in many other ways, and nothing remotely like inerrant on any level.

It's very, very errant---factually, historically, and morally. And it's just execrable literature if you try to interpret it as unified whole. It's got some good bits in it, and a lot of crap, and as a whole it makes no literary sense. It is incomprehensible without understanding the various authors' and editors' and anthologizers' clearly conflicting agendas.

There's no way on God's green Earth that we are going to teach about the Bible objectively; it will not be allowed. If we try, we will be pereceived the bad guys, corrupting the nation's children with liberal, atheistic, anti-Christian propaganda. It will be an unending field day for the right-wing pundits and incensed parents.

It's hard to think of anything that would galvanize the religious right more than that.

So what would happen in practice is that we'd dumb down the study of the Bible to a point where the right-wing rage was just a dull roar. And to do that, we'd effectively end up lying to children---as we'd have to to teach ID without pointing out that it's a bad theory with no support.

And that would be handing the Religious Right a victory; we'd more or less confirm typical Christian kids' view that there's nothing wrong with the Bible, by telling them that it's interesting and literary and important and that we don't know that it's wrong.

The devil is very much in the "details" on this one---only they're not details. The most important and basic facts we know about the Bible are exactly the ones we could never get away with saying. It'd be like trying to teach Mein Kampf without offending either liberals' or neo-Nazis' sensibilities; it cannot be done.

You know, even if I were to ignore all of my morals, and I were to look at the world through the "winning is all that matters" glass... I'd still say that this is a terrible idea. I can imagine legions of Democrats lecturing from the podium with a lot of riffs that go to the tune of "My faith is very important to me, but [insert issue here]". Basically, I'm envisioning the entire Democratic party floundering around like John Kerry did in the third of the debates when it came time to watch the candidates try to out-God each other. Does anyone here think that insincerity is going to resonante with any voters? And does anyone honestly think that parroting Republican strategies is going to help, either? We tried that in 2004, and saw how well that worked.

If we must try to model ourselves in a more religious fashion, then my advice is this: The Democratic party needs an excommunication clause in its platform. Anyone who listens to Amy Sullivan and her simple-ass "strategy" gets excommunicated.

"teaching comparative religion in high school can be done constitutionally" What a waste of a student's time, teaching comparative garbage.

Jesus H. God. Kevin Drum really is stupid beyond endurance. It amazes me that anyone still takes him seriously.

Great line about the prissy prudes with withered fingers, by the way.

The faithful should be reminded that they have more to fear from each other than from us.

That's the genius of Dominionism: it brings together fundamentalist movements that in the past were at one another's throats.

How well could the morality of single-payer healthcare go over? How about education? Or minimum wage? These are progressive issues that could easily be translated into the langauge of religion.

On the contrary: so far attempts to sell progressive economics using moral language have failed. It'll be far better to use economic, practical language: single-payer healthcare is better because it's so much more efficient than private insurance that instituting it will be equivalent to a 7% tax cut without increasing the deficit or reducing government spending; the minimum wage doesn't increase unemployment; more spending on education does in fact increase the level of education. The "reality-based" frame is an immensely powerful when accompanied by pragmatist rhetoric.

Here's a rather hateful snippet of the pro-life movement for ya:

(From here http://greenvilleonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060306/OPINION… )

Medicare in South Carolina pays for over 70,000 pregnant women (girls) and their infants. Why? It was their choice to have unprotected sex and bring a child into the world for taxpayers to take care of. If she doesn't have insurance, does she have a husband to help with other expenses? If not, then the good old taxpayers will take care of her.

It should be illegal for a woman to become pregnant and expect taxpayers to take care of her and her baby.

Yup, I think PZ's got 'em pegged. It's all about controlling sex, and to heck with the baby.

GWW - I think the better, less tribal response is that we're not being hostile to religious people, but to religious thought. You know, "hate the sin, love the sinner".

John, why do you think criticism of religion equates to hostility toward people? And what does "strident" really mean? In this case it sounds like a compliment..

Roger's right. And you know what? This whole "we should teach comparative religion" slag is exactly what the outcome will be if the Democrats try to get all uppity about religion. Every time I've heard someone praising the notion of a course in comparative religion which will cover the Bible, it's to placate the evangelicals and their insistence that the Bible be a part of our public schools.

I'm not very happy with the direction that science education and the scientific proficiency of the general population are heading, and I doubt many people are. So what sense does it make to waste even more time fooling around with this "comparative religion" nonsense for the sole purpose of making it look like we're not a bunch of anti-Christian heathen? (I mean, especially since that won't work). It's a waste of time and money.

And Alon is absolutely right. It is boneheaded beyond comparison to try to sell our economic policies using morality. All that gets are a bunch of one-liners about "bleeding heart liberals". I have never used anything of the kind. I sell my economics using pragmatic justification and statistics. I have never once been called a "bleeding heart", and I've even managed to win some people over to the side of sensibility.

I don't think the Democrats are anti-Evangelical, much less anti-Christian; Sullivan is right to observe that Democratic values are often more in-sync with what these people believe than what the Republicans offer. We're never going to get the Judge Moore theocrats, and we shouldn't even try, but

Where Sullivan misses the train -- and attempts to throw the party under it -- is when she proposes that the Democrats will get anywhere by attempting to pander to these folks. Republicans have spent the last twenty years with these folks framing the issues to make each Democratic position look as extreme as possible for them. Until Democrats succeed in discrediting the Republicans and the influence they've bought over the churches and ministry, they're only shadow-boxing no matter what position they take. What Sullivan proposes is not only a colossal waste of energy for Democrats, but it lets the Republicans continue to frame the issues and portray the Democrats as divided and lacking moral foundation.

""teaching comparative religion in high school can be done constitutionally" What a waste of a student's time, teaching comparative garbage."

Um, yes, I forgot to tell you what students here thinks about those classes. That's on the money. Of course, it's a country with about half seculars (mostly just uninterested) and the remaining mostly private religious. Church on Sunday? Where was the church situated now again?? Do we have to go up so early??? Naa, don't think so!

So why do you need to read (or gob forbid -- touch) a freaking Bible if you want to know where Faulkner got the title?

You're a teacher. Simply tell the kids that there's this story in the Bible (a book of religious myths held in high esteem by Christians) and it goes like this blah blah blah and that's where Faulkner got the title.

Excellent idea. I recant my earlier support for trying to educate students about some of the foundational texts of the Western Canon. However, may I suggest that you don't go far enough? Rather than having the students read Absalom, Absalom, the teacher can simply say that there's this book by a guy named William Faulkner (a Southern author held in high esteem by certain literary critics) and it's about this family blah blah blah and Sutpen's story is an allegory for the nineteenth century South. Your approach to literature (and how I wish my teachers in high school and college had only had the wisdom to adopt it!) is much faster than the way I was taught.

The "religious right" would be outraged at a comparative religions approach, a Bible as literature approach, or a religion in cultural/historic perspective. These do not pay sufficient respect to or display reverence for the Holy Word of God. Amy and company are deluding themselves if they think otherwise.

America is not a land of faithholders and those who claim loudly to be so are most often fanatics (see Gordon Dickson's Dorsai novels, especially the Final Encyclopedia for details). The best that can be said is that the plurality of Americans are cultural Christians and many of those are simply superstitious within a Christian format. Religiousity is an expression of the human tendency to let beuarocracies substitute for beliefs and policies based on either faith or reason. There are rules to be followed to keep order, and divine imprimature makes keeping people in line easier. A tidy little path to order without thought.

moonbat

We have nothing to fear but fear itself. --- FDR

Be afraid. Be very afraid. --- BushCo

But you have to agree that this: "preventing unwanted pregnancies" is the right way to tackle the abortion issue.

Face it -- we do need to convert some swing voters here or we are fucked. We can be holier-than-thou and have zero power or we can start presenting our agenda in a way that convinces the non-partisan to vote with us. Fact of life, folks.

Uh, the only real instance of Democrats out-Godding Republicans that I can think of, is the case of Southern Democrats ("Dixiecrats") of the 1940's and on.

Case, hopefully, closed.

Curtis says: "Anyone I've ever known who is opposed to abortion, views it as equivalent to killing an already born baby, with all the moral repulsion that comes along with that".

Uhm, Curtis, if that's true, then why are so many fundamentalist Christian right-wing nut-jobs so pro-death penalty and pro-military? Seems to me that grown-ups are just "already born babies" plus a few years (we're all SOMEONE'S baby, afterall). I don't recall ever hearing about any anti-abortion group bombing a military base where soldiers are being trained to kill, or a prison which carries out executions, or the homes of Christian Scientists when they refuse to treat a critically ill child.

Are you sure about that? Anyone I've ever known who is opposed to abortion, views it as equivalent to killing an already born baby, with all the moral repulsion that comes along with that.

Abortion opponents typically try to leave out exceptions for the mother's life or health, eg, the Intact D&C ban (no health exception) and the recent South Dakota law (no exception for either health or life). Their intent is preservation of the fetus above and beyond preservation of the woman. If a woman wants to risk her health and life in pregnancy and childbirth, well, it's her body and her right. If she chooses not to risk her health and life, it's still her body and her right. Anti abortion laws tend to ignore that little detail.

"Face it -- we do need to convert some swing voters here or we are fucked."

Then we're fucked, and for all eternity. Swing voters are a hopeless, witless cause. Their defining characteristic is not some kind of self-conscious moderation or a set of conflicting policy agendas. It's outright ignorance. Back in late '04, an article made the rounds about one of them who decided the vote had to go to Bush because he would support wide-open stem cell research and Kerry never would.

Uhm, Curtis, if that's true, then why are so many fundamentalist Christian right-wing nut-jobs so pro-death penalty and pro-military?

Because the death penalty kills criminals and the military is necessary to defend the country (their arguments, not mine).

Yeah, just what you need, more religious baboons in the office.

Excellent idea. I recant my earlier support for trying to educate students about some of the foundational texts of the Western Canon.

Thanks.

My guess is that even in the Bible Belt, a lot--maybe most--folks are profoundly sick of these elected and/or ordained nosy Parkers presuming to micro-manage everyone's sex lives. Why don't we try appealing to them?

Obvious Point: You really don't want these Jesus-hates-sex-and-so-do-I types to make public policy. If they were mere hypocrites, it wouldn't be so bad, but a lot of them are the kind of True Believer who figures he'll, say, end up frying in an eternal lake of fire if he should ever get a BJ from the missus. It's this sort of mental and emotional context in which abstinence ed makes sense.

The real problem is that is there are only two political parties in the US. Up north we have about six or seven depending on what's happening that year. So if one of the parties wants to wrap it's lips firmly around the Xian cult peckers, let them. They just end up getting the tar kicked out of them really fast in an election. Or in the most recent case, they end up with a miniority government that is watched like a hawk by center and center left political parties.

It's too bad that the american system can't be more democratically diverse in the party selection. From outside of the states they just seem to be the exact same party with different coloured coats.

My guess is that even in the Bible Belt, a lot--maybe most--folks are profoundly sick of these elected and/or ordained nosy Parkers presuming to micro-manage everyone's sex lives. Why don't we try appealing to them?

Because Americans tend to be Puritans who love nothing more than to dictate their personal morals to others. The only way to make the average American support more sexual liberalism is to paint it as a moderate position contrasted with a more radical position, such as social acceptance of BDSM. One of my favorite talking points is that apparently the gay marriage debate has caused a sharp increase in Americans' acceptance of civil unions and letting gays openly serve in the military, even as it mobilized religious homophobes.

I have a few more ideas on this topic, by the way.

I don't care who believes in God and under what name (Christ, Allah, Vishnu, Odin, Og, Invisible Pink Unicorn), but to the extent that the Democratic Party is actively hostile towards Christianity, it can forget about winning elections for a good, long time.

Most Democratic voters, right now, are Christians. You not only want to pick up a few more Christian votes, but you don't want to chase away the ones you've got with this sort of rhetoric.

I'm used to seeing plenty of leftwing ire at the fundies, and that's fine - I've already been fighting that battle for a generation. But increasingly I've been feeling that the leftwing antireligious ire isn't just aimed at the fundies, but at me too.

I don't know how many lefty, pro-union, anti-fundie Christians there are in America, but if we start feeling unwelcome in the Democratic Party, you don't have a prayer, because every Christian to the right of us will have already jumped ship.

Uhm, Curtis, if that's true, then why are so many fundamentalist Christian right-wing nut-jobs so pro-death penalty and pro-military?

Because the death penalty kills criminals and the military is necessary to defend the country (their arguments, not mine).

The right wing is largely about what George Lakoff calls "Strict Father" morality. That basically means that they generally want to draw hard and righteous lines and defend them tooth and nail.

They see this as "tough love"---it's for people's own good to punish them early and often for crossing the lines, and when it's not for their own good, it's for the greater good---to discourage freeloading that's bad for everybody, etc.

Bible-based Christianity has never been pacifistic. "Thou Shalt Not Kill" never meant that all killing is justified. It comes from the Hebrew Bible, and it's dead obvious from the context that it did not ever mean that killing is always wrong. It meant that murder---i.e., unjustified killing---is wrong.

This in no way contradicts killing people in a "just war," such as Joshua's utterly genocidal conquest of the holy land, or to enforce the moral rules about murder or sex. State-sanctioned killing is not murder.

The liberal Christians who are anti-death penalty have a very, very weak position, if they base their position on scripture. It's obvious that at least the Old Testament is not anti-killing, if the killing is "justified." And the New Testament kisses the Old Testament's ass so much that the Strict Father types have a very good case. For the most part, Jesus emphasizes love and forgiveness, but he doesn't repudiate things like the death penalty or slavery.

(And in Luke, I believe, he talks about himself by analogy to a King who says to bring his enemies "and slay them before me." Jesus sounds vaguelly like a Nurturing Parent pacifist in places, but in other places he's clearly not, so there's no good argument that Old Testament morality doesn't still apply in any particular cases.)

The problem here is that there are two conflicting moral principles---both of which are quasi-rational and make sense in light of evolution and game theory---and both are clearly in the the Bible in different places. (Both are in both testaments, in fact.)

The harsh mostly-OT rules are designed to preclude freeloading and sliding down slippery slopes. (Spare the rod and spoil the child, an eye for an eye, etc.) That has a certain logic to it; a society cannot be infinitely forgiving of corruptors, cheaters, and freeloaders. Parasites and predators are a problem, and any functioning society must limit the damage they do. The more forgiving mostly-NT rules have a different logic to them---avoiding the escalation of violence (feuds, etc.) by being more tolerant.

Both of these principles make sense in many real situations. The big problem is that there is no clear underlying basis for them in the Bible (except "God Says So") and no clear way of deciding which principle is more important in which cases---e.g., when to enforce the rules harshly and when to turn the other cheek.

That's why the Bible can be used to justify just about anything. It doesn't have a particular moral code in it, just simplistic maxims that embody certain basic moral (or game-theoretic) principles, and it's a free-for-all how to apply them in specific cases. And there really are moral conundrums where both principles apply.

And in my view, that's one of the reasons for the tremendous success of Christianity. It's got a system of rules that must be selectively applied to generate an practical moral code, and no clear rules for arbitrating, so it's essentially a recombinant religion generator. Christianity can evolve to be whatever it needs to be, by selective application of conflicting principles. The internal contradictions in Christianity are what make it work.

In the specific case of abortion, I think the main intuition is that aborting a fetus is a refusal to take responsibility for one's actions. Some right-wing and more orthodox Christians think that a fetus is literally a person, and abortion is literally murder. Many don't, and many more theologically liberal people don't, but still think it's wrong to a lesser extent---a fetus is sort of like a person, with something like rights or at least interests, which deserve some significant weight and therefore some protection.

This makes abortion on demand morally repugnant to many people. Even if a fetus is only sorta-kinda-like a person, it's something with moral weight. On this view---which I do not agree with, by the way---people do not have the right to have casual and careless sex, and create a fetus, and then proceed to ignore the fetus's interests. If they take a risk and get pregnant, it's their responsibility if the risk doesn't pay off.

Many "moderates" on this subject do recognize that many women take reasonable precautions and get unlucky. They do realize that it's not fair to force these women to bear children that they took responsible steps not to conceive.

Unfortunately, there's no good way of enforcing a rule that says that "responsible" but unlucky people can get abortions and "irresponsible" ones can't. (E.g., those who use reasonably effective birth control vs. the few who "use abortion as birth control" or who use bad birth control, or use it carelessly, with abortion as a backup.) Keeping tabs on who's being "sufficiently responsible" about sex would be even more intrusive than laws restricting abortion.

(And naturally, once you start talking about "reasonable risks" for which you shouldn't be held accountable if you're unlucky, it matters what you're taking a risk for. People who are pro-sex will naturally think that the acceptable risk level is higher, and people who are anti-sex will set it much, much lower. It matters whether you are taking the risk just so that you can have sex, and especially whether that's sex you "shouldn't be having anyway"---is it justified risk-taking, or obviously unjustified risk-taking?)

On this view, people are gambling by having sex, and if they lose, they're asking "somebody else" to take the hit. It's like driving and running over a pedestrian. (Or at least a dog, if you don't think that a fetus is a full-blown person with full blown rights or something.) The more careless you are, the more you are at fault, and you "have to draw a line somewhere" to avoid a slippery slope where irresponsibility is simply accepted as okay. Or so the argument goes.

At any rate, the underlying issue is that the right-wingers are all about "personal responsibility" and whether people are justified in expecting others to bear their costs or accept their risk-taking. This is more consistent and rational than it often seems to liberals.

(E.g., their seemingly inconsistent stance about abortion vs. the death penalty really isn't inconsistent, or not in the obvious way. They view the former as a case of imposing death on a completely innocent party, and endorsing irresponsibility. They view the latter as imposing death on a guilty party, and enforcing responsibility. If we miss that utterly obvious distinction, we sound stupid to them.)

By the way, in case it's not obvious, I am not anti-abortion. I'm pro-abortion. But it's not because I don't understand the conservative argument against abortion; I do. I disagree with its basic premises---e.g., that a fetus is a person, or that non-procreative sex is something that's not worth taking any risks for.

it's delusional thinking to believe that the reason abortion is such a hot-button issue is because of some desire to help babies: it's mainly about controlling women and controlling sexuality.

Word.

If the wingnuts are *really* so prissy, what's the deal with that Blogad (and I know you've ALL seen it) featuring the busty young lass clad in the anti-Hillary t-shirt & not much else? Just remember, young missy, all your uterus are belong to us!

Your belief in Jesus or Odin or the FSM is not a qualification for service in government (nor is it an obstacle), and isn't even a testimonial to the quality of your character.

Of course it's an obstacle, and it's a powerful testimonial to the quality (or lack thereof) of your thinking processes.

What do you consider to be an obstacle, Dr. Myers? Holocaust denial? Belief that you've been given a mission by Greys and that UFOs regularly visit us from the Hollow Earth? Certainty that Elvis walks among us? Faith in the Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy, or Santa Claus?

Just how outrageously stupid do a person's beliefs need to be before they're disqualified for public office? Or, here's a better question: how unpopular and uncommon to a person's beliefs need to be?

I dunno.

If we righteously embrace Jeebus, don't we get to stuff ballot boxes- er, I mean, adjust electoral software results, too?

RT,

Stop listening to the Republican talking points on what Democrats are supposed to believe, and start listening to actual Democrats. That's all I ask. You've been fed a bill of goods, mostly by a media which is addicted to the "controversies" political operatives are only too happy to feed them.

Great White Wonder:

You're welcome. Thanks to you, the scales have fallen from my eyes and I look forward to the day when your blinkered, philistinic view of the humanities finds its natural ally in the creationists' blinkered, philistinic view of the sciences. We shall finally be free from the burden of examining things!

The liberal christians who are anti-death penalty have an extremely weak position? That's some good made-up bullshit. The liberal christians that hold that position are Christians, not right-wing control freaks. And what is the measure of Christianity's "success"? That its followers have made a prize of ignorance, superstition and intolerance? The Christians that are not anti-death penalty and anti-war are fake christians, and nothing more, unless hypocrisy is included.

As a born-again evangelical atheist, I was heartened by an old Albanian Communist's observation that about the only thing the Communists did right was to "outlaw religion." Amen to that, brother. My time in Skoder was worth the agony just for this (Albania is not a tourist Mecca. I was there at the behest of the UN at a time when Serbians and Kosovars were killing each other over, you guessed it, religion}. And the greatest Commandment is that you love one another. Ha! Fat chance of that. Maybe in a Christian country, like maybe in Ireland?

The liberal Christians who are anti-death penalty have an extremely weak position? That's some good made-up bullshit.

Given the inconsistencies in the Bible, I think anybody who bases stuff on the Bible has a weak position. People who overlook a lot of stuff the Bible actually says clearly, or rationalize it away, have an extremely weak position.

So, for example, when the liberal Christians rail against the death penalty, they're going against scripture. They may come up with some scriptures whose general message seems to imply an anti-death-penalty stance, but there are many scriptures that reveal that God clearly demanded the death penalty not just for individuals but for large groups of mostly innocent bystanders, e.g., the Canaanites.

When God called Joshua on the carpet for failing to kill absolutely all of the Canaanites---e.g., letting harmless old men go---he was demonstrating that he was not anti-death penalty in a general or absolute way. Even the "justified" slaughter of innocent human beings who happen to live in the wrong place, i.e., religiously justified ethnic cleansing or outright genocide, is not murder. And given the various commandments to stone people to death for various transgressons---e.g., for gay sex or just being a disobedient teenager---it's quite apparent that the OT God was either plum crazy and hopelessly madly inconsistent, or not anti-death-penalty in general. He was clearly pro-death penalty, even if he was against murder.

This poses a problem for liberal Christians, because the NT god does not repudiate the OT god. They're supposed to be the same guy, and not to be a stupid evil schmuck who "got better" and became a nice guy. Even Mr. Nice Guy Jesus says he's come to fulfill the Law, not abolish it, that he "comes with a sword," and that his followers should be like those of a king who demands that his enemies be brought before him and slain.

This is some crazy shit, and it gives the fundies and Strict Father types plenty of ammunition to shoot down simplistic pacifist Christians who won't admit that the scriptures are extremely fallible on very basic issues.

The liberal christians that hold that position are Christians, not right-wing control freaks.

I smell a No True Scotsman fallacy here. What special defensible claim do liberal Christians have such that you can make that distinction?

And what is the measure of Christianity's "success"? That its followers have made a prize of ignorance, superstition and intolerance?

Yeah, pretty much. I don't like Christianity, but it's clearly one of the 10 most successful memeplexes ever---it's been around for a couple of thousand years, over a billion people "believe it" in some sense, etc. I'm not praising Christianity by saying that; far from it. It's successful like chickenpox is successful.

The Christians that are not anti-death penalty and anti-war are fake christians, and nothing more, unless hypocrisy is included.

Of course hypocrisy is included. Christianity is based in the Bible, and the Bible is radically inconsistent and profoundly error-ridden. The only way to accept the Bible as anything like a guide to anything important is to either be a serious hypocrite or to engage in some spectacularly acrobatic and irrational explainings-away.

And without the Bible, there's no reason to be a Christian. Outside of the Bible, there's no real evidence that Jesus even existed, much less that he was a God worth of worship or even a particularly worthwhile person to listen to.

I think an important quote from the Washington Post article is:
With abstinence-only education, "the problem is not the 'abstinence', the problem is the 'only,' " said Dr. John Santelli

I don't think people supporting abstinence only programs realize that abstinence is very much a part of the more inclusive programs on sexual health. Or perhaps they believe that sex ed drives teens have premarital sex.

Even Mr. Nice Guy Jesus says he's come to fulfill the Law, not abolish it, that he "comes with a sword," and that his followers should be like those of a king who demands that his enemies be brought before him and slain.

As if it was necessary to show any more contradictions, Paul in the epistle to the Romans claims that Jesus came to release the followers from observance to the Mosaic Law. Of course, Paul then goes on in other epistles to condemn many of the things that were originally condemned in Exod. through Deut. Then, to make it more confusing, the later translations into English may have mistaken "I (Paul) find these things personally distasteful" to "I condemn these things".

These conflicts between epistles and gospels make me wonder if some follow Christianity and others follow Paulianity.

Why do they keep saying 'religion' when they mean 'Protestant Christianity'?

Surely this push doesn't include Muslims, Jews, Sikhs, Hindus, etc?

I agree that "The small-minded bigots who would like to see the non-religious effectively disenfranchised are not the solution to the Democratic party's problems: they are the problem." Unfortunately, they are also the majority. Maybe not literally disenfranchised but the vast majority of Americans (80% in one poll) frankly say they would not vote for an atheist. Somehow, they don't see this as similar to saying they wouldn't vote for a Jew (or a woman or an African American). I think the idea is that atheism is our own fault while people are born Jewish, female and/or Black (hey any American managed the trifecta yet ?).

I think Drum is doing something useful. He says he's not religious (bit shy about the word atheist) and that it is no big deal and he is still a moderate etc. I think this is helpful. Guys like us who are inclined to refute the claims of religion correspond more nearly to the popular image of atheists.

One problem is that Drum shares his blog with Sullivan (I don't know if this is his decision or an editorial fiat). Her problem (aside from the fact that she is dishonest and delusional) is that her asignment is to find reasonable things Democrats can honestly say which would please Christians. She must therefore pretend that the Democratic party has not always done this. She even seems to be willing to pretend that most Democrats are not Christians. This is nonsense, but since her access to a high traffic blog is based on the fact that she is a Democrat and a Christian, you can see how she might prefer promoting nonsense to getting an audience of her own.

Sean

Thanks to you, the scales have fallen from my eyes and I look forward to the day when your blinkered, philistinic view of the humanities finds its natural ally in the creationists' blinkered, philistinic view of the sciences. We shall finally be free from the burden of examining things!

Aww, don't get sore, Sean.

I just think Faulkner sucks ass.

What she's on about is not more religion from the Democrats--or does she think every Democratic Presidential nominee has been an atheist? What she's urging is more religosity, a wholly different thing, which should be enough to disqualify her as an expert on either politics and religion.

See Matthew 6:5-6 for what Jesus thought of public displays of piety.

I've always tried to be sympathetic to Sullivan, because I agree with her that if the Democratic Party were to characterize itself as the Atheist Party, it would lose everything. But the Democratic Party doesn't actually do that, so maybe it's not a point to belabor.

But that remark about "abstinence education" really made most of my sympathy for her arguments evaporate. As I recently read someone say (Scott Lemieux?), this is fairly disingenuous; the argument isn't over telling kids that abstaining from sex will prevent STDs and pregnancy (any good sex education course will say that, because it's true), it's over the desirability of not telling them anything else.

Ah, it was Atrios.

For all of you evangelical atheists out there - don't despair! According to the ARIS Survey, the percentage of people identifying themselves as nonreligious jumped from 8.2% of the US population in 1990 to 14.2% in 2000. That's a huge jump - much bigger by numbers and percentage than the increases among Mormons and Scientologists. And the number of Christians fell by percentage of the population - 86.4% to 76.7%.

In light of this discussion, it makes me wonder if the Republicans are getting on the wrong boat. Of course, in having the Christians, they also have a bigger percentage of people trained to believe ridiculous things from father figures, so that's obviously been an advantage for them.

I've always tried to be sympathetic to Sullivan, because I agree with her that if the Democratic Party were to characterize itself as the Atheist Party, it would lose everything. But the Democratic Party doesn't actually do that, so maybe it's not a point to belabor.

You know, I was just sitting here thinking that Ms. Sullivan really gets her jollies out of crafting imaginary threats to attack. Jimmy Carter's a more sincere Christian -- in the "let's go out and help the poor and homeless" sense -- than any Republican I know, who for the most part are into a) smiting and vanquishing (or pretending to do so), and/or b) throwing some pittance at a poor person, but only when the cameras are pointed their way.

But then it occurred to me that when Republicans and self-hating Democrats like Sullivan worry out loud about Democrats being considered "the Atheist Party", are they really using "atheist" as a code word for "Jew"? (We already know that they use the words "Hollywood elite" as a way to say "Jew" without letting the J-word pass their lips.)

Consider that while Republicans could count on Jewish support of around 35 to 40 percent during the presidential campaigns of the 1970s, that support has markedly dropped off to just 22 percent in 2004, though you wouldn't realize it to hear the PNAC Platoon's yammerings.

Which means that Joe Lieberman is on a fool's errand.

I really have to wonder if PZ (or anyone else who seems to have jumped all over Curtis) has actually known anyone opposed to abortion. Really, there's no need to assume bizarre conspiracy theories about "controlling sexuality and women" -- the anti-abortion people really believe that a clump of cells has an immortal soul and is equivalent to an actual baby. Granted, this is an absurd belief in my (and nearly everyone else reading this blog) opinion, but this is what they believe. And in my experience, a lot of them are women. Having a whole Roman Catholic branch of my family, I've met quite a few of them.

PZ said, "What is strident about saying people can practice their religion freely, but that the government is and must stay secular"?

Nothing. That's a convenient and inaccurate summing up of what you had to say though. Any person of moderate religious affect would see it as hostile towards them. This won't accomplish the goal. I understand your way of doing things, but you preach to the choir (sorry about THAT analogy) and have never changed a mind.

Great White Wonder said, "How bout this? If the fundies stop being hostile to everyone else, I'll stop being hostile towards them".

I don't live my life according to what others do. I have a personal set of guidelines which I attempt to adhere to regardless of what "they" do. It's not for everyone, but I think anger for anger is the easy way and not the best way.

Pete says, "John, why do you think criticism of religion equates to hostility toward people? And what does "strident" really mean? In this case it sounds like a compliment.."

To part one I answer, nothing. But I didn't say or imply that and you aren't invalidating the thought by reframing my arguement. To your second question and comment:

Main Entry: stri?dent
Pronunciation: 'strI-d&nt
Function: adjective
Etymology: Latin strident-, stridens, present participle of stridere, stridEre to make a harsh noise
: characterized by harsh, insistent, and discordant sound ; also : commanding attention by a loud or obtrusive quality
synonym see LOUD, VOCIFEROUS

And you may be right on your final comment. In PZ's case, he might take it as such.

Of course I'm hostile towards religion, but that was an accurate summary of my point. People are free to believe whatever they want in the privacy of their homes, but religious beliefs are not appropriate in the context of a secular government...and if they think government must kowtow to their particular religion, then yes, they are small-minded bigots.

I have talked to pro-lifers, Jonathan. Their beliefs are not at all rational; every one of them that I've met shuts their brain down when discussing the issue. And every one of them pretty much stops caring after the kid is born -- they worship an abstraction, but avoid the reality. While some might be consist in respecting the sanctity of life throughout, I haven't really met any.

The right wing is largely about what George Lakoff calls "Strict Father" morality. That basically means that they generally want to draw hard and righteous lines and defend them tooth and nail.

Lakoff has no idea what he's talking about. His theory is mostly wrong; his political advice to the Democrats is catastrophic.

But then it occurred to me that when Republicans and self-hating Democrats like Sullivan worry out loud about Democrats being considered "the Atheist Party", are they really using "atheist" as a code word for "Jew"? (We already know that they use the words "Hollywood elite" as a way to say "Jew" without letting the J-word pass their lips.)

If it's code, then it's been codified for so long that no conservative even remembers the original reason behind it. To put it more concretely, even if attacks on the media were once an instrument of anti-Semitism, they're not anymore; they're instruments of political propaganda and distraction, the idea being to make the center look liberal, and conservatism look centrist.

In fact, Dominionists tend to be rabidly pro-Zionist and pro-Jewish: they are careful to talk of Judeo-Christian values rather than merely Christian values, they are more fervently pro-Israeli than AIPAC, and they try to coalesce with Jews just like they did with Catholics.

Paul W., can you recommend a good (not too long) book/pamphlet explaining the origins of various parts of the bible and the circumstances surrounding its canonization in a way that echos the viewpoints you've expressed in the comments of this thread? I'd like to start passing copies around to my religious friends.

PZ replies, "Of course I'm hostile towards religion, but..."

(sigh)... PZ, you can't out-atheist ME. Honestly. I'm 52 and been on both sides of the fence but have been firmly convinced for the past 34 years of my life that there is no existence, anywhere, for us other than that which we have right here, right now. I look out into the universe and see... a universe. I look into the eyes of my born-again neighbors and see... friends. Or not. But there is nothing fundamentally good or noble about showing them my backside because I believe they practice folly. I've actually managed to sway a few people; or, better, to at least get them engaged in a thoughtful discussion. I know I wouldn't have done that by 'preaching' my superior ideas. I like you PZ. I like your blog. You are intelligent and funny and I actually wouldn't want you to change. I'm just making my point - trying to reduce the acrimony a tad.

But then, what does 'acrimony' mean, really? In this case, it almost sounds like a compliment.

Jonathon, there is no need to assume when they state it outright.

A real-life [scenario in which an exception may be invoked] description to me would be a rape victim, brutally raped, savaged. The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married. She was brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it, and is impregnated. I mean, that girl could be so messed up, physically and psychologically, that carrying that child could very well threaten her life.

Bill Napoli, SD state senator

Message, in case you can't read between the lines: mandatory pregnancy for those who don't live up to his virginal standards.

Whoops, messed up the link. Try this.

Alon writes:

Lakoff has no idea what he's talking about. His theory is mostly wrong; his political advice to the Democrats is catastrophic.

Could you be more specific? I don't mean to endorse Lakoff's theories wholesale, much less his advice. Still, I tend to think there's something right about what I take to be his most basic claims; I'm open to disagreement about that, and whether that justifies his particular advice is very a different matter. I'm not sure what, if anything, we're actually disagreeing about.

Where Sullivan misses the train -- and attempts to throw the party under it -- is when she proposes that the Democrats will get anywhere by attempting to pander to these folks.

The caboose of that train contains the dynamite of a simple fact: Fundies are beginning to feel MORE lonely. The repubs encourage them to hold their breath and stamp their feet to stave off the future and its scary divergence, but it's finally becoming clear that professional Rs are quite happy to charge forward into the unknown cuz that's where the bucks are.

Doesn't all this rending and gnashing of teeth over moral issues and the "good old days" have all the qualities of a market bubble before the crash--each made messier and noisier by the dopiest the closer it gets to popping? Let's politely but firmly stay the course and understand this is a blip in the historical march onward. Brinson and his fellow travelers have been enabled into an untenable position with few ultimate allies, and any eventual compromises will have to come from their own acceptance of temporal reality and its pace of change. That's not news, just a truth they've been cruelly encouraged to avoid reconciling by political "friends," friends now AWOL.

SoDak and Missouri and the coming siege on Roe v Wade will crank up the volume a bit more but, and I'm sure PZ can set me straight on this, I hear that a previous group of dinosaurs made lots of squawk and mess in their last throes also.

Fouro: I agree with the thrust of your post, but I have to take issue with "Let's politely but firmly stay the course and understand this is a blip in the historical march onward".

Death throes can be messy and violent, and there are a lot of women who will have deal with that personally.

I doubt there will be many unwillingly pregnant women in fundie-run states who will be saying 'Thank goodness, the awfulness of this is only historical blip.'

Paul W: Your comments show exactly why no thinking person should ever treat the bible as anything more than a fascinating historical text.

Living your life by Christian principles is fine; the Anglican values I was raised in are not bad as a framework. Just think of the moral beauty of the 'Beatitudes'.

We were taught at school that the New Testament superseded the Old, and that the Epistles are just commentary, not holy writ. It wasn't exactly a sceptical approach, but at we were taught to look at the texts and think critically about them. Blind biblical adherence was not required.

As a result I now consider myself an atheist, no empiricist could be anything else - but I probably still do keep those Anglican, 'Beatitude'- based principles unconsciously in mind. Habits die hard.

The bible is an historical artifact whose content has been scientifically proven to be a hodegepodge of opinion and hearsay and not the direct word of a hypothetical supernatural sky-being.

Anyone who truly believes that it is the direct word of said hypothetical supernatural sky-being, in the teeth of the evidence, is not a rational thinking being and I don't feel obliged to think they'd be rational in any other sphere either.

It's too bad that the american system can't be more democratically diverse in the party selection. From outside of the states they just seem to be the exact same party with different coloured coats.

Not quite. From here the Americans appear to have a Conservative party - the Democrats. They also appear to have a party of reactionaries and the loony right - the Republicans.

As for the abortion issue, a number of people I know oppose abortion - mostly from a left wing perspective (protection for the really weak). On the other hand, AFAIK the only one who wants it to be illegal (as opposed to simply minimised by methods including easy access to contraception and increased support for parenting - the position I take) is a devout Catholic.

Their beliefs are not at all rational; every one of them that I've met shuts their brain down when discussing the issue.And every one of them pretty much stops caring after the kid is born -- they worship an abstraction, but avoid the reality. While some might be consist in respecting the sanctity of life throughout, I haven't really met any.

Oh, I fully agree that, like almost all religious issues, anti-abortionism is an emotional rather than rational issue. There is nothing rational about assuming souls in anything, let alone clumps of cells.

But religious leaders opposed to abortion (particularly Roman Catholic ones) *have* spoken against the death penalty, the war in Iraq, and are big supporters of charity for the poor. So this image you have of a anti-abortion foe who loves the military and death penalty and hates the poor really looks like a straw-man created from confusion of many different "right-wing" movements. It's not too dissimilar to the right-wing characterizing us on the left as a bunch of gay Marxist Islamophiles in ivory towers.

That's a demand for Christian Supremacy: for Christianity to be a privileged ideology which maintains social, cultural, and political power in part because it is kept immune from criticism or challenge. So long as people are prevented from talking about how the emperor has no clothes, the emperor retains power and authority over the sheep who meekly submit. The truth is that we need people who are willing to speak out of turn, willing to be impolite, and willing to rudely challenge those in power. Full Post...

Paul W: I have been told by readers of Hebrew that your interpretation of what is normally translated "thou shalt not kill" is, indeed, "do not murder", which of course is useless as a commandment.

Alon Levy: Of course, the fundy attitude towards Jews is complicated. They do do what you describe, but also insist that the Jews will die or convert en masse at the Second Coming. Not exactly pleasant.

natural cynic: The inconsistencies between the Jesuses and the Pauline letters is part of the support for the mythicist hypothesis about the origins of Christianity, incidentally.

Sorry: To Paul W - that should be: "your interpretation is correct", etc.

I regret to report that one of the initial premises of your quote seems to be in error. From observation, I can offer that in the State of Alabama there is no difference between Democrats and Republicans, nor between the two parties in the state. The entire competition is largely sham.
It has been advanced by those who play the political game in Alabama that upon coming of age, a sort of political Bar Mitzvah occurs where the newly adult apprentice politician draws from an urn of colored stones or tiles to determine whether he (or she) is a Democrat or a Republican.
The only distinction arises when the national scene impinges and that is largely inconsequential so long as the federal pork, especially military bases, is maintained by whichever party holds national control.

Could you be more specific? I don't mean to endorse Lakoff's theories wholesale, much less his advice. Still, I tend to think there's something right about what I take to be his most basic claims; I'm open to disagreement about that, and whether that justifies his particular advice is very a different matter. I'm not sure what, if anything, we're actually disagreeing about.

Basically, Lakoff's problem is that like many linguists, he relies more on introspection rather than empiricism. When you study a language you speak, introspection means that you think which sentences are correct and which are not, and then infer things about the language's structure; when you don't speak the language, you simply ask a native speaker or two to tell you what's acceptable and what's not. Lakoff applies it by saying what liberals and conservatives must base their thoughts on, based on some of their positions.

In contrast, the empirical method will aim to ask a lot of people whether something is grammatical or not; equivalently, it means asking many liberals and conservatives what they think and how they justify it. When analyzing why conservatives and libertarians believe what they believe, he didn't ask the American Enterprise Institute or the Cato Institute for information, which they would have gladly given. The blogospheric vernacular for what he did is "pulling stuff out of one's ass."

Because of his lack of empiricism, he reached several very wrong conclusions about conservatives and liberals. The most glaring one is that they are about upbringing and family; every serious theory of bias includes an aspect of a Kuhnian surprise, in which faced with overwhelming evidence, people can change biases. Lakoff doesn't have a similar mechanism, to his theory's detriment.

There are many more theoretical problems with his theory, which are addressed in other blogs; unfortunately I don't remember any link, except Effect Measure (which talks about problems with Lakoff's practical suggestions, and if I recall correctly links to more comprehensive critiques).

Alon Levy: Of course, the fundy attitude towards Jews is complicated. They do do what you describe, but also insist that the Jews will die or convert en masse at the Second Coming. Not exactly pleasant.

I know that. But I'm talking more about practical attitudes. I don't consider pro-Semitism that stems from an originally anti-Semitic view to be anti-Semitism; for an example of such a view, part of the reason Britain was fervently Zionist until the 1930s was a belief that Jews were immensely powerful and that giving them a state in the Middle East would do tremendous good to British interests (though I think an even more important reason was the view that Jews were whites who would civilize the native Arab population).

Republic of Palau: I pondered the brutal implication of the "historical blip" as I wrote it, but I still think it's the only way that things will play out. We can argue about the unfairness of that--pretend it doesn't work that way in our present selfish society--regerettable as it may be. But then we succumb to the same artificial reality-building and denial that fundies want to make official. Sure these people are playing with the lives and futures of other people, women mostly. But their funadmental attribution error won't be made real to them until they've, pardon the term, shot their wad, and those folks they've disenfranchised begin to shoot back out of frustration and not with "wads."

I used markets and death throes as examples earlier, but here's one more. Cultures -- from nation to neighborhood -- struggle, evolve, find advantage, then try to freeze that advantage pretending that only their most noble myths contributed to that eventual advantage. They try to still things in amber. All those people screaming for Dick & Jane America? They screwed and aborted and infidelitied and boozed their way to where they are today. And they lied to the cop who pulled them over for speeding on the way here.

They know this intrinsically. And they want a do-over. And since they can't have it, they'll settle for foisting their delusions and disappointments on others. Most others don't appreciate unasked for "prescriptives" once the pain gets too large. So give the fundies their rope. Darwin demands it.

Foro: We are violently agreeing on the larger historical movement of events.

I'm making the assumption you are male (Sorry if it's not so).

It's been my experience that men are much more more likely to dismiss individual suffering in the light of grand historical trends than women, specially if it's not men that are doing the suffering.

Well Amy Sullivan lacks but one thing to enter the kingdom of heaven:

"Sell all that you have and serve the poor."

There, it was good enough for the rich young ruler, it's good enough for Amy!

Oh, and "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's" sounds like a call to restor the taxation levels.

Nicodemus was a Liberal who asked of CHrist's policies what others thought. "What do you think of me" was more important a discussion. Clearly you are to take the belief to your self, and save what others think about him for them to deal with personally.

There, we've settled that.
Meanwhile, it take gasoline longer to develop than the earth is old at ten thousand years. When does Amy SUllivan want to abolish the use of gasoline since it is against inteeligent design's claim of a ten thousand year old planet?
Her acts constitute violations of faith, faith in the story is more important than any measured scientific data.

Unless her faith can work wonders at landfills and apply pressure and temperature to solid masds waste and create usable energy from it. Keep talking hot air, and sit on it!

Finally there is a new cold war. We no longer fight the faithless Soviet who lost because Raygun believed in God while they believed in engagement and discussion.

The new cold war against religious extremism must be fought at home to win the battles abroad. We must not let them cull and develop the discrimination and hatred of materialistic abrahmic faiths!

There is a discrimination gap that exists with women in America! If we don't stop women voting rights then the violent extremists will certainly take over the world!

To counter this manly threat we must force women to cover their faces in public, limit the the jobs they can perform, stop them from going anywhere in public without accompanied male relatives or face the threat of gang rape or public stoning.

The woman victimization gap is bveoing lost. If we don't put women in their place as allah wanted for all of abraham's underaged wifeys that he traded goats and sheep for with poor stone grinding ethnics, then what are we really at war for?

It isn't about the oil! It's about the struggle against violent religiofascists! Perhaps if James Dobson or Ralph Reed could get these arabs to set up nonprofit tax shelters that front as charities to set up shell corporations and tax write offs, we can convert the enemy!

Oh, he's already done that, and Abramoff/DeLay took money from these groups, who fund terrorists committted to keeping the woman victimhood gap in their favor!

See we're losing the war against religious extremeists. Unless we place our own religios extremists in power we are through!

But, but,. I've got a different god. He's the god of flat tax. And I don't have to pay any money in. He says they have enough tax money. Now who wants to oppose my religious rights? I demand freedom of religion!

A friend is so mistaken. He worships the god of no pants. Though women adore his blogging style, he awaitsd a purgatory of perdition, with a pair of giant pants, as punishemnt for his discretion!

Since Hillary wears pants, does that make her a man, or is she subject to female victimization through religious extremism?

If Amy Sullivan wears pants, she needs to do penance. Nobodoy expects the Spanish Inquisition! They had the right idea! Let's bring back God's blessed inquisition, and make Charles Graner the patron saint of rendering!

He could harass Amy Sullivan into the right mindset. She'll have a resume to become a prison guard after that!
She'll be a true believer then!

But let's not talk about such items, let's just talk abaout Jaysus and sing kumbayaa. That is what would fix the deficit, education, health care, election theft, wars for lies, the effects of depelted uranium and PTSD on troops coming home, and of course the need to make tax cuts permanent at a time of war!

The enumur elish predates the bible, was the law of Babylon, and contains six of the first ten commandements words for word and the same creation myths for the first seven days. In fact there's no record of the afterlife(a common item in the language of Babylon and Egypt) until after Jewish captivities there.

If we don't fight the enumur elish over there and close the gap on myths as reality over there, we'll have to do that over here!

No prophetic writings exist until after the babylonian captivity! Without closing the gap of religious extremists and fulfilling referenced contexts we will deny the armageddon effect! We must close the gap between peace and war and continue to incite armageddon scenarios!

If we don't do it over there, how can we do it here?

Thanks Amy Sullivan, for reminding all of us the importance of religion in America. Are you a witch? Let's put her underwater and see if she comes up for air. If she does she's a witch!

Like the proud stern fathers of Salem, and church ministers and deacons examining teen and preteen girls and rendering them to holy locations, we need to bring back family val-yoos to America!

If god was really holy would he even let that happen? Would he forgive the men who did that? Why of course, because they say so.

The bible is a series of parables and it teaches you that this life is all there is.

How so?
Death makes all equal, slave and master, rich and poor. The only way to say they're equal is that they're the same, and that would mean no heaven or hell. Just an end.Deism or atheism.

What is the use of law in the bible, you can do anything you want and create your own reality there Christ, who strengthens you(tm). Situational ethics.

In the meantime, virtue is its own reward, so is abstinence.

Amy Sullivan has rendered quaint any notion of seperation.

No praise the lawd and pass the ammo.

I'vs heard screeds against racemixing in church.

Should we have a candidate who opposes all forms of racemixing, including idea mixing, like Catholic-Protestant marriages, multiple divorces, etc?

Amy Sullvian can be the poster child for this cause. Please Amy, take forward the torch and truth and do the good lawd's work!

Alon,

OK, I read Revere's series on Effect Measure, and some of the linked-to stuff by Coturnix and Majikthise.

Near as I can tell, none of those people thinks "Lakoff has no idea what he's talking about." Like me, they seem to think there's something interesting and roughly right in Lakoff's core theory, even if the devil is in the details.

Most of the people saying Lakoff is simply full of shit don't seem to understand the theory, and/or focus on particular advice---which I agree may be mistaken---rather than the basic theory itself.

Near as I can tell, none of those people thinks "Lakoff has no idea what he's talking about." Like me, they seem to think there's something interesting and roughly right in Lakoff's core theory, even if the devil is in the details.

Okay, these are not the people I'm talking about. The critique I have in mind is here (the right-hand bar contains links to all other parts of the critique). Although its conclusion is, "good theory, bad practice," in fact it attacks not just Lakoff's strategic suggestions, which many bloggers (e.g. Revere, Ezra Klein, Jesse Taylor) do, but also the idea that conservatives operate under a strict-father model and liberals under a nurturant-parent one.

pdf23ds:

Paul W., can you recommend a good (not too long) book/pamphlet explaining the origins of various parts of the bible and the circumstances surrounding its canonization in a way that echos the viewpoints you've expressed in the comments of this thread? I'd like to start passing copies around to my religious friends.

The first few chapters of Richard Elliot Friedman's book Who Wrote the Bible? are very good and readable. (The rest is good, too, but it's the first few chapters that get across the basic picture, and the later parts are largely about Friedmans' take on narrower questions. If you care about that part, you want to get the revised edition of the book; he realized that one of his pet theories was wrong, and amended it.)

That book only discusses the Hebrew Bible or "Old Testament" and focuses on the Pentateuch. But that's the most important part of the Bible for the kind of points he gets across---if those aren't reliable history, the rest is even less reliable.

Unfortunately, I don't know what to recommend about the New Testament. I've read a half-dozen books and they all kind of blur together. If I recall correctly, Burton Mack's "Who Wrote the New Testament?" is fairly good, but not as good or fun to read as Friedman. Robert Price's book Deconstructing Jesus is valuable, but it's even heavier and not a smooth read. It's valuable for perspective, because it shows the various biases of various Historical Jesus scholars, who tend to fit Jesus into their preferred mold. (E.g., how much was he a wonder-worker, how much was he a social revolutionary etc.) Unfortunately, there's not a lot of evidence for those interpretations, even if there is a fair bit of scholarly consensus about the "genealogy" of the gospels.

One of Price's points is that the evidence is fairly thin that Jesus even existed as an actual major person, as opposed to being mostly a minor figure around whom various stories congealed, like William Tell, and possibly just mythic.

Price's newer book, The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man: How Reliable is the Gospel Tradition? may be more accessible and readable, but I haven't read it. From what I've read, it sounds like it may be more suitable for your purposes.

Thanks, Paul W. I'll look into those.

Chris at Mixing Memory has a series of articles discussing Lakoff. He takes a very critical stance to Lakoff himself, as well as his presentation.

"Basically, Lakoff's problem is that like many linguists, he relies more on introspection rather than empiricism."

"The blogospheric vernacular for what he did is "pulling stuff out of one's ass.""

Hah! I remember I got into a discussion here because I thought he was a postmodernist. I found a text there he used binary opposition a lot and was vague. The commenter, who rightly identified him as a linguist and postmodernism as a terribly vague concept, explained him as a relativist (which indeed has a postmodern variant) and his discussion in that text as about scientific linguistics.

I wish I had the above view at the time, it explains a lot.

I'm also helped by Keith here. I'm currently reading a text from him on neuroscience and his minimalist philosophy. He seems to pretty much agree with Alon on the problems with introspection.

So scientific linguistics may be an oxymoron, if it relies too much on introspection? OTOH, it can tell us a bible has several authors, so it isn't totally "postmodern" ranting antirationality. ;-)

"Chris at Mixing Memory has a series of articles discussing Lakoff. He takes a very critical stance to Lakoff himself, as well as his presentation."

Small world! It was Chris who I discussed with. He took a very critical stance to me and my presentation, too. :-)

R.o.P.: Yes, male. And not, I hope, one without heart. Hey, I'd donate monthly if someone wants to create a modern-day underground railroad or a roving fleet of United Nations-sovereign Winnebago Women's Health clinics (now there's an interesting constitutional challenge) while this gets ironed out.

But isn't the suffering past, present and upcoming just the result of the timid legislative hash that elected progressives have enabled? How is a slow motion car wreck, long and drawn out, inconclusive in its inert frame by frame display of pain going make you any less wrecked or dead at the end? Leaving aside women's reproductive rights, this folly is everywhere today. We can't "cut and run" until we actually cut and run. Deficits don't really matter until they do really matter. We shouldn't say about Bush in public what everyone says about him in private. Now THAT is P.C. destructiveness.

It's not a principle until it costs you something. Up to this point, the bluffs have all been falling to the fundies and, I'd maintain, that's mostly out of progressive timidity rather than a conservative full house. Lysistrata was right. And a draw slowly sliding into the lose column rather than calling that bluff, will add far more damaged womens lives to the tally.

The problem with your view, fouro, is that you're assuming that we have to reach the bottom before things can improve any. And while it's a defensible position, it needs some more defense. Because it's also very plausible that reaching the bottom isn't inevitable, and two or three more charismatic leaders in the pro-choice movement could allow us to avoid tens of thousands of forced pregnancies.

Well, I didn't mean to imply a rock bottom with forced nunneries and scarlet letters, if that's what you're saying. In fact I meant just the opposite with the empty bluff example. The point is that many view the abortion question in the abstract and nothing currently compels them to have to pull their thumbs out of their butts and make a *real* choice on the issue. An excellent example was just diaried over at Kos that S.D. is tagging a doctor-assisted abortion as a Class 5 felony. Well, is it "Murder!! Murderer!!"? Or is it equivalent to getting pinched for unlicensed Gaming as the comparable penalty suggests?

That's not principle at work, it's a la carte moralism. That is the slow slide that will allow millions more women to fall under their thumb without them having to stand by their so-called courage of their convictions. We should call them out and call them what they are, cowards and fabulists. But we won't, because we're caught in the same incrementalist trap as they, except ours is bounded by a desire to persuade using something they don't much care for or respect: the factual human record.

That cowardice and pollyana outlook hasn't well prepared them for the bootstrap idyll they think they want and the defections from their side resulting from a real, unequivocal stand on R.v.W. will number in the millions, much the same as if the Pope went rogue and actually put some teeth behind enforcing various backward encyclicals. So we're stuck, until we unstick ourselves, primarily by letting them sit on a spike conjured out of their own wishful thinking. Until then, they can play armchair cultural quarterback and pine for imaginary good old days that most have absolutely no clue of as regards the oppressive, numb and narrow environment it was. That's brainlock, irretrievable by patience or logic, and sometimes the only answer is to tilt the damn machine.

As for 2 or 3 more charismatic leaders in the pro-choice movement, well, I'm still waiting for a first. But surely that suggests the force of will of a transient, albeit persuasive, personality or two. Once those happy people accidents are gone, the system is still broke for reasons still unresolved. And with a few bad draft picks or foibles, we're back to square one, or less. I don't thnk that's what you want either.

fouro

Why do I have the feeling that if Amy's last name were Shapiro instead of Sullivan she'd be more concerned about the separation of church and state.

Christian ? Southern Evangelical.

The reason this is sometimes confusing is that this is how they describe themselves. And this is how they demand they be described. And they have done this for more than 25 years, they've just gotten better at it.

There's some confusion above about whether the pro-life movement is anti-sex and anti-woman. it is. Don't confuse the ideological core of the movement with the squishy adherents who think abortion should be illegal because the Pope says it's bad or because it's killing babies and stuff. Most of the people who call themselves pro-life, for example, haven't thought through what ought to be the penalty for a woman having an illegal abortion. Like so many things in modern politics, the pro-life movement is a bunch of confused, unsophisticated emotional people being led around by totalitarian neanderthals (who, in this case, hate women).

Most people who refuse to believe in evolution haven't ever thought about or weighed evidence. They believe what they believe because their pastor said so, and they trust his sage judgment. Or they think it terrifying that something other than an all powerful, all controlling God made everything happen. This shouldn't be news to anybody, but people are fearful, and willing to give up autonomy and critical thought to any powerful force that claims to speak for them.

As for the Amy Sullivan, it's clear that the Democratic party already kowtows to religious people. It just doesn't do it well. Hire better speechwriters, and draft more compelling people into politics. This is an arena that has already become spectacularized, Democrats just need to do it better. And win.

Chris at Mixing Memory has a series of articles discussing Lakoff. He takes a very critical stance to Lakoff himself, as well as his presentation.

Thanks; that's the other critique I had read and was looking for.

So scientific linguistics may be an oxymoron, if it relies too much on introspection? OTOH, it can tell us a bible has several authors, so it isn't totally "postmodern" ranting antirationality. ;-)

Scientific linguistics doesn't rely on introspection. William Labov doesn't say how New Yorkers must speak based on his recollection of growing up near New York; he conducts massive telephonic surveys and computer-assisted phonetic analyses to find that out. In fact, scientific linguistics has been around a lot longer than theoretical linguistics: the comparative method predates the transformational grammar by almost 150 years.

Why do I have the feeling that if Amy's last name were Shapiro instead of Sullivan she'd be more concerned about the separation of church and state.

Maybe she would, though you should keep in mind that in the US, nonreligious people outnumber Jews by about 10 to 1.

"In fact, scientific linguistics has been around a lot longer than theoretical linguistics: the comparative method predates the transformational grammar by almost 150 years."

Thanks, Alon! I see Chris may have made me conflate two separate fields. In a very short space you managed to be more informative than Chris other a long, heated argument. (He provided the heat, to this naive and uninformed commenter. :-(

I guess that will make me trust your linguistic skills better. ;-)

"other a long" - over a long. Gee, I guess the first rule of linguistics must be to not confuse words ...

Alon, pdf23ds,

OK, I read Chris's series on Lakoff at Mixing Memory, and I still don't know what Alon and I are disagreeing about.

Chris does not say that Lakoff has no idea what he's talking about, as Alon does.

Depending on what level of theory you're interested in, it seems to me that you could say that Chris largely agrees with Lakoff, as I do, but the devil is definitely in the details.

So, for example, I think Chris and I would both agree with Lakoff about some basic schema theory and its importance for framing; to most people, those are the Big New Ideas, even if some of them are old hat in cognitive science by now.

I share a lot of Chris's reservations about the particular schemas Lakoff has identified, and the particular stories he tells about exactly how they come into play. (Reading his article reminded me of a lot of my own reactions sitting in on Lakoff's Moral Politics seminar at Berkeley.)

Certain aspects of Lakoff's take on political rhetoric strike me as vague or a bit cartoonish, but substantially right nonetheless.

For example, whether or not there's one big Strict Father moral scheme, or a set of interrelated schemas with more subtle patterns of activation of various related schemas, there's at least something right in what Lakoff is saying.

My point above (way earlier in this thread) was that conservatives tend to cast things in terms of personal responsibility, failures to take responsibility, and the importance of not letting people get away with that. It is very easy to activate their Failure To Take Personal Responsibility schema, even if that doesn't activate a full-blown Strict Father schema.

I think that's important in understanding conservatives' attitudes toward abortion, and especially in understanding conservative's understanding of liberal positions on abortion. To conservatives, it sounds like liberals are coddling people who have irresponsible sex, in a completely weaselly way.

For example, as soon as the issue of conflicting rights comes up at all, they're typically looking for somebody who is failing to take responsibility for their actions. And in the context of the abortion debate, it's "obvious" to them who that is---a woman who risks pregnancy but isn't willing to accept the cost if she loses the gamble she took.

These people are not impressed by a woman's "right to choose" abortion. To them it's obvious she's already made her choice---gambling that she can have sex without getting pregnant. If she's the one taking the gamble, she's the one who should pay the price, not the "unborn baby." (Of course, the father should pay, too, to the extent that's feasible... but when it comes down to mother-vs-baby, the "baby" is obviously not responsible for the situation, the mother obviously is in typical cases, and she should Take Personal Responsibility.)

As I said before, I don't buy this argument, because I don't buy its presuppositions, but I do understand it; my point is that if we seem to fail to understand the argument, we sound stupid---and if we willfully ignore it, focusing on the woman's rights to the exclusion of the interests of the "baby," we sound dishonest or evil.

That, of course, comes back to the issue of framing and Lakoff's advice.

Lakoff often advises avoiding deep issues, and pumping the moral intuitions that support your point, while avoiding activating the intuitions that support your opponent's.

Often, I think that's impossible. For many people, no amount of trumpeting a risk-taking woman's right to privacy is going to trump an innocent child's right to live; the abortion issue hinges on whether a fetus is a person. And the intuition that a fetus is a person is not going to go away so long as people accept simplistic and false ideas like souls being imparted at the moment of conception.

"Lakoff often advises avoiding deep issues, and pumping the moral intuitions that support your point, while avoiding activating the intuitions that support your opponent's.

Often, I think that's impossible."

And if you are already activating opponent's intuitions, can't you also make the opponent's suspicious about them?

If its' a bad thing to make a Failure To Take Personal Responsibility, they shouldn't frown on contraceptives that are made to help take responsibility.

And once you have contraceptives that makes both pregnancies and transmitted infections rather unlikely, and we have, they shouldn't call it irresponsible sex if those are used, ie outright on all sexual activities.