Repent Ye, Syndicated Columnists!

Charles Krauthammer asks a number of questions in his column today about Obama's recent speech on race . We at the Fiery Sword have prepared an uncomfortable answer for him:

Because focusing the conversation on race is easier and more politically acceptable in the current climate than stating the obvious: Christian Preachers Say The Darnedest Things. These guys are dependent on demagogic incitement to keep their jobs, and they base most of their pull on the notion that the people they are talking to are fundamentally flawed and deserving of punishment, and only they possess the power to avert that punishment. The notion that 9/11 was punishment for transgressions (sins, if you will) flows naturally out of the modern Christian theology. Given that those who believe themselves to be special, to be saints in the land of the wicked, are more likely to cling to the church, declaring America to be the aforementioned wicked land is the best choice for a preacher who wants to retain his job for upwards of two decades.

But good luck dropping that little egg on a campaign trail where all the candidates are crassly scrambling for the mantle of "most devout." Pointing out the glaring incompatibility of pretty much ANY Christian sermon with the qualities necessary for competent governance is not the kind of thing that gets one elected to public office, and we can thank who for that? The liberal elites? Not so much, CK.

Hosannas In The Lowest

If I were the type to make sweeping pronouncements about cultural paradigms, I might be tempted to say that that kid in Omaha who carried out that suicide attack on a shopping mall was the final step in the ascendancy of the most truly American of cults, celebrity. The kid said he wanted to go out with a bang, and that he would be famous. Note that he didn't decide to get famous by shooting a celebrity, he decided to become a celebrity by shooting random people and then himself (which, by the way, is no easy feat with an SKS). Apparently that's an accepted method now.

I understand the draw of celebrity, or so I thought. There's money and power and ease of life, and all that. Being a celebrity could be pretty sweet, as a means to an end. But this guy, he has a more radical theology, i.e. that celebrity is the end in and of itself. And he was willing to both kill and die for it. A interesting idea, certainly.

Several folks interviewed expressed sorrow for this guy. I wonder if they express sorrow for suicide bombers who blow themselves up in markets in Israel or Baghdad? I'm not judging the response, I'm just suggesting that drawing a distinction between the two is a bit too picayune. Suicide/murder in hopes of posthumous reward, inability to grok the finality of death, it's the same rationale. If there's any reason why one is deserving of sympathy and the other is not, I don't know what it is.

Nicomachean Efforts

Michael "Axis of Evil" Gerson wrote an interesting editorial today that I believe bears addressing. He attempts to designate morality as a purely religious idea, one that exists outside the confines of religion (and let there be no doubt about which faith he assumes in his arguments) only as a fluke, a "cruel joke of nature -- imprinted by evolution, but destined for disappointment." He pretends to give ground by saying he can't prove the existence of God, but then asserts that atheists have no objective way to judge the goodness of other people. What? Yeah, seriously. He is actually saying that without religion, human beings would have no impetus to behave in an ethical manner. Let's examine this claim.

I wrote him a brief note informing him of the existence and writings of one Immanuel Kant, who similarly, if more effectively, pitted his own intellect against this very quandary. Kant, as I'm sure you (as a high school graduate) are aware, articulated a sort of Golden Rule that formed the basis of deontological ethics, known as the categorical imperative. It attempts to transcend situational or hypothetical ethics by stating: "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law." In practice, it encourages respect for the rights of others, equal treatment in matters of law, and a general acknowledgement of the dignity of man. Not bad, right?

Well, what if you don't believe in ethical behavior? What if you have no interest in morality, but are driven by and given over to personal lusts and covetings? Is there any external force that can compel you to observe and respect the rights of others? Not really. And this is the elephant in the room, because while Gerson says that a person who is religiously motivated to be a moral actor does so out of a desire for "love, harmony and sympathy because [he or she is] intended by a Creator to find them," note that he does not invoke the threat or fear of punishment. He indicates that love, harmony, and sympathy are not inherently good or pleasurable, but are designated as being good by God, and therefore the pleasure that one feels from those states is actually the joy of pleasing God. He is pasting the veneer of religion over love, harmony and sympathy, and then using that as a springboard to give religion credit for the pleasures that anyone else would recognize as inherent in those things. Clever. Because the alternative to declaring that goodness is the desire to please God (which is, in the mind, in no way different from the desire to please oneself) is to admit that religiously-motivated goodness is the desire to avoid God's wrath, which is NOT a moral code, but a response to the threat of reprisal, the old knee-jerk self-preservation impulse.

So let's parse this out. If one desires to be a moral person, and one chooses to base one's moral code on, for instance, a Christian sect, let's say evangelical protestantism, can one justify the repression of outward expressions of homosexuality in one's fellow man or woman, whether by law, violence, or any other means of compulsion, if those expressions cause no manifest harm to other people? What about under Kant's version of ethical behavior? I would contend that the answers to those two questions are different and contradictory, because one code is beholden to the subjective determinations of its inceptors, while the other one is self-contained.

How about a second example: does Christian morality prevent the seizing of occupied territory and the enslavement of the indigenous peoples? Not if that land is granted you by God. And what is the difference, to the conquered and enslaved people, between an aggressor who attacks for God and an aggressor who attacks for his own personal enrichment? Not a whole hell of a lot, right? And on the other hand, what is the difference to a poor and bedraggled beggar if he is given soup and a warm bed by a Christian or by a morally upright atheist? Not a whole hell of a lot, right? Because kindness is objectively good and cruelty objectively bad for the recipient, no matter the motivation.

So if you come across a moral actor and he tells you he has no religion, you can be sure that he is a moral person. But if you come across a moral actor and he tells you that he has a God who tells him to do right, you cannot be sure if he is a moral person or a profoundly immoral person who is deathly afraid of being burnt by the everlasting fires of Hell or smitten by the angry right hand of the Lord and cast into penury for twenty moons. Which means, of course, that religion is a crutch for the immoral. It is the goad that keeps those who are not inherently righteous on a socially acceptable path (or a reasonable facsimile). It promotes, to quote another of Mr. Gerson's speechwriting gems, "the soft bigotry of low expectations" insofar as it encourages immoral behavior by not holding human beings to the standard of ethically defensible behavior in the absence of the sword of Damocles.

Now factor in confession and absolution, and tell me which one you would rather hire as a babysitter. Right. Checkmate, Mike. Please stop assisting those who run religious sects in their quest to expand their power and influence via taking undeserved credit for the good and noble qualities of man. It's unseemly and it restrains the potential of the human race for the enrichment of an over-reaching few. Like, for instance, certain other employers of yours.