A Chamber of Drunken First Impulse

The Canadian Senate wants to make it illegal to spank your children. By repealing section 43 of the Criminal Code, which expressly allows it, they would make spanking a matter of simple assault. That is, a felony.

All the relevant experts seem to agree:

The Canadian Paediatric Society: “The Psychosocial Paediatrics Committee of the Canadian Paediatric Society has carefully reviewed the available research in the controversial area of disciplinary spanking. …The research that is available supports the position that spanking and other forms of physical punishment are associated with negative child outcomes.”

American Academy of Paediatrics: “Corporal punishment is of limited effectiveness and has potentially deleterious side effects. … The more children are spanked, the more anger they report as adults, the more likely they are to spank their own children, the more likely they are to approve of hitting a spouse, and the more marital conflict they experience as adults. Spanking has been associated with higher rates of physical aggression, more substance abuse, and increased risk of crime and violence when used with older children and adolescents.”

England's Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health and Royal College of Psychiatrists: "We believe it is both wrong and impracticable to seek to define acceptable forms of corporal punishment of children. Such an exercise is unjust. Hitting children is a lesson in bad behaviour.”

UNESCO: “To discipline or punish through physical harm is clearly a violation of the most basic of human rights. Research on corporal punishment has found it to be counterproductive and relatively ineffective, as well as dangerous and harmful to physical, psychological and social well being.”

And yet—it is not really all the experts. On the other side, one could cite the Book of Proverbs:

“He who spares the rod hates his son,
but he who loves him is careful to discipline him.” (Proverbs 13:24)

“Folly is bound up in the heart of a child,
but the rod of discipline will drive it far from him.” (Proverbs 22:15)

“Punish him with the rod
and save his soul from death.” (Proverbs 23:14)

“The rod of correction imparts wisdom,
but a child left to himself disgraces his mother.” (Proverbs 29:15)

So we are really faced with a choice. For the religious, it is a choice between the authority of God, and that of man. For this reason alone, freedom of conscience requires that we not outlaw spanking. But even for those of us who are non-religious, it is a quandary. Who are you going to trust: the current experts, or the wisdom of the ages?

The answer to my mind is obvious: trust the wisdom of ages. Is it really likely, after all, that all of our ancestors up to a generation ago were idiots? No. Do we really have any better information, or a better way of knowing, than they did? No.

Those who worship at the altar of science, as opposed to scientists, may disagree. They may claim that empirical science is this better way of knowing.

And it is, for matters touching on the physical, that is, the sensory realm. But can it give us any greater insight into the hearts of men than our grandfathers had? No; by its nature, it cannot.

Upon the great and obvious fallacy that it can, much harm has been done: including the doctrines of Social Darwinism, Communism, Fascism, feminism, free love, and Freudian psychotherapy.

But don’t just take my word for it. Let’s examine the arguments against spanking in detail.

We cannot claim that it harms a child physically—if it did, it is already assault by the criminal code. Indeed, the blows are applied to the buttocks—the one part of the body best cushioned from blows. Spanking hardly even hurts—some, I hear, actually indulge in it for pleasure. We have gotten pretty sentimental if we find this level of “violence” intolerable.

The arguments are rather that it causes psychological or moral harm. This is interesting--because it is in direct contradiction to the wisdom of the ages, which holds that not spanking is the moral danger. And it is in exactly this sphere, the moral and spiritual, that science is least equipped to know.

The Canadian Paediatric Society’s explanation that it is “associated with negative child outcomes” is too vague to be useful—except that the notion that human behaviours can be classified simply into “positive” and “negative,” like electric charges, bodes very poorly for a true understanding of human nature. Is it possible for value-neutral science to determine what human values are “positive,” and which “negative”? It is not.

The American Paediatric Society is more specific: it claims, firstly, that spanking causes people to be angrier as adults.

This claim specifically goes against the wisdom of the ages. The I Ching, for example, observes that “through oppression, one learns to lessen rancour”—suffering, and even unjust suffering, reduces anger, rather than increasing it. The Beatitudes imply the same.
But note the phrasing: “the more anger they report as adults.” From this we can well imagine the sort of study that was done. Adults who showed or reported a good deal of anger were asked if they were spanked a lot as children. This was perhaps even contrasted to a control group that did not show or report much anger.

But what this is likely to measure is whether the adults were still angry at being spanked, still nursing the memories, not whether they were spanked more often. And those predisposed to anger will naturally be more likely to still be angry. Proving absolutely nothing.

The same objection applies to a study of adults who hit their spouse or have marital difficulties. And to those “more likely to spank their own children.” Moreover, this last objection is tautological—it assumes spanking is bad, in order to “prove” it is bad. I would imagine adults taught woodworking by their fathers are more likely to teach their children woodworking. Does this prove woodworking is wrong?

And there is another problem with the logic here. “Spanking has also been associated with higher rates of physical aggression, etc.” Post hoc, ergo proper hoc: it is surely at least as likely that such adolescents are spanked for their bad behaviour, as that their bad behaviour is because of the spanking. Otherwise, this becomes an argument against police, prisons, and even hospitals as well.

Such is the simple-minded folly of the social sciences—the thing being observed is not passive and objective, but quite aware of being observed, and much smarter than any experiment.

The American Psychological Association argues that spanking is liable to lower self-esteem. And this is surely true. This seems to be its main point—it doesn’t hurt much, but is ignominious. The problem is, the APA thinks this is a bad thing. All religions point out that self-esteem is a bad thing. Hitler had lots of it. Bullies have it in truckloads.

The Royal College of Paediatrics gets credit at least for plain speech. They make no attempt to justify their stand in pseudo-scientific terms, but just call it “bad behaviour.” Again, assuming what they claim to prove.

UNESCO does not appeal only to pseudo-science, but also to the philosophical doctrine of human rights. If all humans are equal, it is surely just as wrong to force a child to do anything against his will as to force an adult.

But wait a minute. We do force adults. We actually do have a police system and a prison system for them. It follows that it is perfectly proper to discipline children as well.

Moreover, there are serious practical problems with any human rights-based objection to using force against a child. For, logically, that would mean any and all other alternate forms of discipline are also violations of his or her human rights. So would forcing him or her to wear a seatbelt, or to get an immunization, or to eat his broccoli.

UNESCO does bring up one new argument: that spanking is “counter-productive and relatively ineffective.” Of course, the statement is nonsense: if a thing is counter-productive, it is completely, not relatively, ineffective. We are not dealing with sharp minds here. But it is possible to tease out an argument: that other forms of discipline might work better than spanking.

First, if so, so what? This does not argue for an elimination of spanking. It might still be most useful in a specific situation.

Second, it is unlikely that UNESCO actually has access to any studies of scientific value that demonstrate this. This is because there are no studies of any scientific value that demonstrate this. The CPS is honest about it: “The existing research is not in the form of double-blind, randomized controlled trials, as such studies would be impossible to conduct. Moreover, no modern ethics committee is likely to approve research that involves violence against children.”

In other words, the scientific community assumes prior to all evidence that spanking is wrong. And it has produced no evidence that it is.

But third, and perhaps most importantly, let’s consider UNESCO’s assumption that it knows what it means for spanking “to work.” What is spanking supposed to do?

With its blinkered, simple-minded view, psychology seems to think it is just about controlling behaviour. If so, then, arguably, other techniques, like reasoning to a child, could work better.

But this is not what the wisdom of ages claimed. The effect of spanking was not about curbing one specific behaviour, but was to “teach a lesson.” To teach wisdom, the opposite of folly. And, indeed, to “save his soul from death.”

These are no trivial benefits.

Parents also used to deliberately scare their children. They used to warn them of the bogeyman. This, like spanking, seems to be present in all cultures, though the bogeyman’s identity tends to shift. In Korea, a tiger was supposed to come and eat the noisy child. In the Philippines, the Moors will kidnap him.

And, interestingly, kids seem to be fascinated by this idea. It is the same fascination that attaches to dinosaurs, or dragons, or the fierce animals at the zoo. To a definite point, kids love being scared.

What they are getting from this, perhaps, is an emotional education. They are learning, harmlessly, how to deal with fear. The whole point of spanking, accordingly, may be that it is frightening in prospect, but turns out not to hurt much at all. By going through this lesson, children may learn to grapple with their imaginations, face their fears, deal with physical pain, and, if warranted, persist in spite of it.

What are we doing if we refuse them this education?

It doesn’t bear thinking about.

The Most Unkindest Cut of All

This scientific study shows pretty clearly that, whatever else it might accomplish, male circumcision achieves precisely the effect commonly charged against female circumcision—or, as the politically correct insist it be called, “female genital mutilation.” It reduces one’s sensitivity during the sex act. As far as we can tell, the parallel is exact.

And this illustrates the extreme sexism of our society. For female “genital mutilation” is extremely rare, and considered a violation of human rights so basic that no concept of cultural differences can allow it. Male “circumcision,” by contrast, is extremely common—more than 60% of all North American males have been circumcised. It is not considered a violation of anyone’s rights; it is not considered morally wrong.

The very same act that is intolerable when done to a woman is perfectly okay when done to a man. How could discrimination become more extreme?

The Lesbian Holocaust

The falsification of history proceeds apace. As George Orwell explained ruefully, “He who controls the present, controls the past.” Germany is planning a monument in Berlin to all the homosexuals persecuted by the Nazis. The original plan was to show an eternal film loop of two men kissing. Lesbians, however, objected to their exclusion, so now a film of two men kissing will alternate with one of two women kissing.

Were homosexuals persecuted under the Nazis? Arguably, but probably only in the same sense they were persecuted at the same time in Britain, France, or the US. Homosexuality was illegal in Germany, as it was in most other nations of the world. The Nazis did not introduce this law; they inherited it. Moreover, a high proportion of the Nazi upper ranks were themselves apparently homosexual.

Were lesbians persecuted under the Nazis? Not at all. Lesbianism was never illegal in Nazi Germany.

How much further can one go than this, when it comes to the falsification of the historical record? How must real surviving victims of the Holocaust feel?

Pave It to Save it

A major culprit in global warming has now been isolated: composting. Worms apparently fart gases 290 times more potent than carbon dioxide.

It's all the environmentalists' fault.

Get Ready for It...

I want to say this quickly, so you can still say you heard it here first: in the near future, everyone will be a cartoon.

Tony Blair to Convert

A measure of the prejudice there still is against Catholics in English-speaking culture. (Indeed, the anti-Catholic prejudice is growing). There is apparently no bar to a foreign citizen acting as a representative of the US government—Tony Blair is being considered for such a role. It is, on the other hand, still illegal for a Catholic to be the Prime Minister of Britain.

“Tony Blair to become Catholic after stepping down”

Bloomberg's Run

The impending presidential candidacy of Michael Bloomberg at first seems odd. Consider the frontrunners of either established party: Hillary Clinton, a moderate New York senator; Rudy Giuliani, a moderate former New York mayor. Is there really room or need for another moderate New York mayor? How does it improve the voters’ choice, either ideologically or geographically?

And yet… it seems more and more likely, as I have long thought, that Hillary Clinton is not going to win her party’s nomination. In the very long presidential race, she has already grown stale. Democrats get bored quickly, and almost always kill off the front runner. I thought originally that John Edwards would be the beneficiary of this, but I was not reckoning on the shortened primary season. We now have something like a national primary. This will favour established names and candidates with charisma on camera. Edwards’great strength in the past has been retail politics—the same speech before many small audiences. This tilts the game to Obama.

On the Republican side, the long season may hurt Giuliani, and help Fred Thompson. Thompson will be strong, with his media savvy, in a big nationwide primary. The Republicans rarely coalesce around a moderate; they usually nominate someone running toward the right in his own party. I’d give either of them even money at this point.

So perhaps the likelier matchup is Fred Thompson, Barack Obama, and Michael Bloomberg.

And this lineup does give Bloomberg some scope.

Virginia is for Lovers, but Denmark is for Pigs

My eyes idly fell of late on a page of the DK World Almanac.

Denmark, apparently, is the world's leading exporter of pork.

But isn't that interesting? Little Denmark, small and highly urbanized, manages not only to feed its own dense population, but to export more excess than anyone, even much larger nations.

It follows that the rest of us have huge untapped agricultural capacity. The world, in food terms, is relatively empty of humans—we could feed lots more. Depending on crop choice, we could feed everyone alive adequately from Indiana alone. Indeed, there seems no connection at all between national wealth and the amount of arable cropland per capita: the bottom ten nations in the world in this regard include Japan, Switzerland, Kuwait, Singapore, the Netherlands, and Iceland. Nor should there be—the world long ago industrialized, and human intelligence and labour long ago replaced land as the basis of wealth. Denmark's huge hog supply probably has most to do with their dense population of skilled and able farmers.

Unluckily for Canada, along with most of the developed world: we have stopped making people.

William James Sidis

Have you ever heard of William James Sidis? Probably not, although once he was rather famous. A child prodigy, he is believed to have had the highest IQ ever known. He is as well known, though, for being a failure—an example of the notion that promise in youth does not always mean success in age. After graduating from Harvard at age 16, in the early years of the 20th century, he left a professorship at Rice University to take low-level clerical jobs. He never showed up in the news again, but for one arrest at a political rally, and a lawsuit against a magazine that carried a story on him.

He notably rates a mention by the psychiatrist character in the movie Good Will Hunting, as an example of what can happen to an especially bright kid who is not taken well in hand by a knowledgeable psychologist. He is, in sum, Exhibit A for the enduring conviction among the merely average in intelligent that the very intelligent need help from normal folks to find their way.

The idea, of course, is absurd on the face of it. I suspect it is something the rest of us have a psychic need to believe, for the sake of our own self esteem. It protects us from the unpleasant admission that we are not, in the end, ourselves the most intelligent being in the universe.

It may also involve a certain element of revenge: we want the chance to control those more intelligent than ourselves, so we can protect ourselves from their competition, and perhaps indeed do them some harm.

This myth is extremely damaging to the highly intelligent; it is also extremely damaging to the rest of us, in the end, as it limits what the extremely intelligent can do in terms, for example, of making a better world.

In fact, Sidis set out very consciously and explicitly to create for himself “the perfect life.” Being very intelligent, he had a much better idea of what this might entail than most of the rest of us. He realized, from early experience, that being famous was a great burden, and so he went out of his way, having become inadvertently famous, to court obscurity. For example, he sued magazines or newspapers that published stories on him, for invasion of privacy. Other very intelligent people, especially those who have found fame young, have learned the same lesson and attempted similar things: J.D. Salinger comes to mind.

In order to do this, of course, he had to stop doing anything particularly remarkable. At least under his own name. Hence his “failure” –what looks like failure to the less intelligent was, for him, his greatest success.

He realized that being rich was a useless distraction—a simple truth demonstrated often in studies--and so why would he seek wealth?

He realized too that jobs in academics are not very comfortable for the very intelligent—something Einstein too pointed out. Someone very intelligent, with original ideas, is necessarily threatening to other academics. He is in the lions’ den, with the very type of people, jealous of their own claims to intellect, who would most want to control and harm him. And so he left his professorship, and academics, altogether.

Far better to find a job involving simple math, where by natural intelligence you can complete your daily tasks to your employer's satisfaction, yet leave most of your time to think freely. It is a trick picked up by most bright kids at school: you spend most of your time waiting for the other kids to catch up to you on the assigned task, so you daydream on your own projects. What Einstein more politely called “thought experiments.”

So Sidis, the great “failure,” laboured in obscurity. We now know that, all the time, he was writing, and even publishing, but not under his own name. He left a trunkful of manuscripts.

Albert Einstein was not quite as bright. Nevertheless, by his own admission, he did his best work in the Swiss patent office—he was able to polish off the days official business within a couple of hours, and have the rest of his time free for his thought experiments. When he took an academic position—perhaps for the sake of his family obligations--his productive life was more or less over.

The life Sidis chose is very like the life of a monk. In the West, we think of this partly as a sacrifice. Buddhists are perhaps more frank. They claim it is simply the best available life in this world—the most serene, the most joyful. The perfect life.

The moral of the story is simply this: the rest of us must leave the very intelligent alone to live their own lives as they see fit. They know infinitely better than we what they want and need.

Indeed, if we have any common sense at all, we should be seeking to imitate them.

All of this is inspired by the tentative diagnosis of my son with ADHD—giftedness reinvented as an incurable disease.

My Six-Year-Old Lunatic

Ah, the joys of parenting. Last week, one week short of his sixth birthday, my son's kindergarten teachers called us in. They suspect he has ADHD—Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.

Welcome to the wacky, upside down world of psychology. Being a concerned parent, I looked it up on the Web.

It runs out that that ADHD is “not what people think it is.” Just like all other known mental illnesses. Which is to say, it is not what the experts thought it was five years ago. Five years from now, it will be something quite different again.

You probably thought ADHD was a childhood concern. Nope. It is now also an adult complaint. I know. I took the tests online. I have it too.

You probably thought ADHD was an inability to pay attention to what one is doing. Nope. One of its characteristics is now “hyperattention”--the ability to pay much closer attention to a chosen subject than is normal, to the exclusion of all others. No attention deficit involved.

You probably thought it involved hyperactivity? No; not necessarily. Sufferers can appear “phlegmatic.”

So what is this thing? At least, it's a disorder, right?

Maybe. But if so, it’s a strange one. When I chatted with co-workers at this high-tech college about the diagnosis, two of the brightest fellow faculty I know revealed they and other members of their families have the same diagnosis: ADHD. Digging on the net, I learn that Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill, Richard Branston, Leonardo Da Vinci, Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Ludwig von Beethoven, Jim Carrey, Lewis Carroll, Walt Disney, Henry Ford, Benjamin Franklin, Galileo, Georg Handel, Ernest Hemingway, Dustin Hoffman, John and Robert Kennedy, John Lennon, Abraham Lincoln, Wolfgang Mozart, Napoleon Bonaparte, Sir Isaac Newton, Louis Pasteur, Pablo Picasso, John D. Rockefeller, August Rodin, Babe Ruth, George Bernard Shaw, Steven Spielberg, Leo Tolstoy, Vincent van Gogh, Jules Verne, Woodrow Wilson, Orville and Wilbur Wright, W.B. Yeats, et al, all also had the distinct symptoms of ADHD. I also learned that, on average, those diagnosed with ADHD have IQs 20 points higher than the general population. That is precisely the difference between average and superior intelligence.

Yes, ADHD is a real thing, and it makes life difficult in many ways. I was struck, reading through the literature, at accurately on some measures it described not just my son, but me. Things I had been trying to convince people of my entire life: like that I cannot safely drive a car. That I must carry a bag wherever I go, or I will forget things. Why my desk and room are always a mess, and I am hopeless at doing things around the house. Why I find it exhausting or even unbearable to be in a large group of people for long. My son and I do indeed have great problems staying alert to what is going on around us in such circumstances.

But this is not because we lack the ability to pay attention; nor is it because we are too lazy to. It is because we are paying close attention to something else, that those around us seem essentially unaware of.

It is the world of ideas.

And these other things, like persistent mosquitoes, keep interrupting our thoughts.

Psychology as we know it is built on a foundation of fallacies. The most pertinent one here is the delusion that the average is the ideal; that anything “abnormal” is inferior. This is obviously wrong. Among other things, it enforces conformity, mediocrity, and discrimination against minorities.

Unfortunately, when someone has an IQ more than 15 points higher than our own, we lose the ability to recognize their intelligence. It is enough ahead of ours that we can no longer follow their reasoning. We are as likely to think they act as they do because they are stupid, or insane.

Beyond the fairly trivial, the problems caused by ADHD are almost entirely problems in communicating with whose who do not have ADHD. And a “solution” that involves shutting down one's brain with Ritalin or some other chemical does not seem entirely satisfactory. It loses more than it could possibly gain.

It looks like I have some hard slogging years of child advocacy ahead of me.

Shot Clergyman in the Back in Bed--But It Was His Fault

Here's a good indication of the relative value of men and women in our society.

1 male lifetime = 60 days of a woman's precious time.

Men living in North America or Britain had better keep that in mind if they ever run afoul of a woman.

They Call This a Consensus?

Interesting piece on global warming from the National Post.

Also interesting: Christopher Hitchen's brother rebuts him on atheism. Surprisingly, the brother seems to write as well as Christopher himself does.

Human Wrongs

Two items in the “Americas” section of the local paper remind me of how mad things have become in North America. One reports a class action suit launched by a female GE executive against that company, claiming “gender discrimination” against women in pay and promotion. The other reports a class action suit launched by a lesbian against the online dating service eHarmony for not offering their services to gays.

The two may very well win their suits; their lawyers are obviously betting they will. Yet their claims are obviously without merit. Quite simply, in a free market, without government interference, discrimination is not possible. If one company underpays a certain class of worker, the next company immediately gains a competitive advantage by not doing so—and so hiring and retaining better workers. For the individual worker, if GE is underpaying, the solution is simple: get another job. Similarly, if a company chooses not to serve a given market, and it is an economically viable one, quite simply, another company will emerge to do so. If not, a sane person does not sue; he seizes the business opportunity for himself, and makes pots of money.

Unless, of course, there is a better business opportunity in a lawsuit.

A discrimination lawsuit is only viable, in other words, if there is no real discrimination present. The lawsuit is the discrimination.

The only way discrimination can happen is if government intervenes on behalf of one group or another, preventing competition. This is exactly what these lawsuits do: they enforce discrimination in favour of women and homosexuals, and against men and heterosexuals. Indeed, this is so even if these particular suits fail, because the potential need to fight them, at considerable expense, itself distorts business decisions.

Compounding the insanity is the fact that these lawsuits are supposedly being fought on grounds of “human rights,” while in fact violating human rights. Not just by promoting discrimination; but by preventing individuals and corporations from exercising free choice in whom they hire and whom they serve and how they run their business. This is a violation of property rights, in the first instance. In the case of the gay dating service, there is a direct threat to freedom of religion and freedom of conscience as well: many, including all but one of the great world religions, believe homosexual sex is immoral. Nevertheless, the lawsuit obliges a business’s owners (and their employees) to aid and abet it, despite their personal beliefs.

This is just what human rights codes are supposed to prevent. They have been perverted into their opposite.

Another Child is Born

In Prince Albert last week, a woman walked into a Wal-Mart, gave birth in a washroom, and left the baby face down at the bottom of the toilet. The store manager discovered and resuscitated the child.

The police asked that the perpetrator come forward “to ensure that she is OK.” The Saskatchewan Attorney-General announced that any woman doing something similar “won’t be prosecuted.” The Saskatoon Star-Phoenix reported “an unprecedented amount of public support for the mother and baby channeled through the store.”

A few days later, the woman did indeed come forward, and was given counseling. No charges were laid, although police say they are reserving that option. She spent no time in police custody. Her identity has been protected by authorities.

Now imagine the same situation, with only the sex of the perpetrator changed. A young man slips into Wal-Mart and leaves a baby face down in a toilet. The mother knows nothing about it.

Would he not be charged? Would his identity be protected? Would he be sent for counseling at government expense?

I doubt it. What do you think?

As the public outpourings illustrate, it is almost instinctive among us to want to exempt women from the entire criminal justice system. Laws, and discipline, apply only to men; women are free to do as they choose. In some cultures, this is a matter of law—in pre-modern Korea, for example, women could not be prosecuted for any crime short of treason. In our system, the pro-female bias is less overt, but just as real. I feel the same way myself—instinctively. It is, perhaps, man’s instinctive love for women. Even though, if this sort of preference were given to one class or race of men, over another, the injustice would be obvious.

But there is a serious disconnect here in our thinking. If women are not to be held responsible for their actions, they also cannot safely be given responsible positions. Notably, if they are not responsible for their actions towards children, they must not be given custody of children.

And yet, at that opposite end of the equation, we insist on equality, in the workforce, and absolute preference, in the case of child custody.

We cannot have it both ways. Though there are indeed two different ways in which equality of the sexes can be honoured.

The first way is the traditional one, in more or less all cultures: women are not held responsible for their actions, but are accordingly not given responsibilities, without some male supervision. Rights and responsibilities then balance out overall.

The second is to treat men and women in the same way. But this means, if we are going to insist on “affirmative action” quotas in the workplace and in promotions, we must also and equally insist on quotas in the prisons and in child custody. With equal rights to sue for compensation.

To have one without the other is the one really clear case of discrimination.

But this is not just a question of equality. It is a question of public safety as well. There is great danger in elevating to power and responsibility people who will not be held responsible for their actions, do not expect to be held responsible, and who have not had the prior experience of being held responsible for their actions. Individuals can rise above this, but statistically, it is hardly a prescription for peace, order, and good government.

We have our choice: two forms of equality. But, even for the sake of our future as a society, the current situation cannot be permitted to continue: one in which women have all the rights, while men have all the responsibilities.

Religion and Morality

On May 18, writing in the National Post in defense of atheism, John Moore dismisses the moral argument in favour of religion. “This might be a compelling reason, were atheists any more prone to immoral or criminal behaviour than the general population,” he notes, “but that is not the case.”

But it is. It is very much the case, and so we indeed have a compelling reason, in his own terms, for religion. The evidence is strong that atheist and anti-clerical governments, at least, behave a lot less morally than those claiming some affinity with the universalist religions.

Similarly, the observantly religious fairly statistically have a higher level of personal morality than the general population. Many studies show this: one national US study found that frequent worship attendance corresponded closely with lower scores on a dishonesty scale that assessed, for example, self-serving lies, tax cheating, and failing to report damaging a parked car. A metastudy at the University of Pennsylvania suggested--duh!--that juvenile delinquent behaviour corresponded with low levels of religious commitment. And does anyone really think that, if you went into the prisons and asked inmates about their religious commitments before incarceration, you’d find a pack of Quakers?

Charities know better. Americans who never attend church give about 1.1% of their income to charity. Those who are weekly church-goers give 2.7%, and account for almost half (48%) of all charitable contributions.

This being so, the religious deserve some respect, if not support, from the rest of the population. Indeed, everyone else, regardless of their own beliefs, has a direct personal interest in encouraging others to be religious.

This being so, it counts heavily as well against Moore’s second point. Moore rejects the observation—made here recently—that atheists seem too angry, too actively hostile toward religion, not to suspect some ulterior motive beyond the mere quest for truth. “The larger issue,” Moore counters, “seems to be that many believers perceive the mere questioning of faith as inherently hostile.” But this is a man of straw, and an obvious one. Writers like Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins are not merely questioning religious faith. They are calling it a “delusion,” and saying it “poisons everything,” in the biggest print available.

This would be considered beyond the pale if one religious group suggested it in print of another. Atheists ought to be held to the same standards.

And it really does suggest that Dawkins and Hitchens are not content to merely explain their own position. They would rather like everyone else to believe likewise. As this is against the best interests not only of society as a whole, but even of themselves, we have a right to wonder why.

After all, if God does not exist, as Pascal pointed out, the consequences of believing or not believing are trivial. It is not as if anyone’s immortal soul were at stake.

No; their real point seems not to be that God does not exist, and he is a very bad fellow. Perhaps he is bad for allowing evil into the world. Perhaps. As often, he is a very bad fellow for expecting them to do things they do not really want to do. I cannot avoid the obvious observation that the current general ill-repute of religion follows in lockstep with the current general decline in personal sexual morality. The problem with God, really, is that he insists we cannot have sex with whomever we want, and then, if worst comes to worst, simply abort the child.

Which is to say, for expecting us to act morally at all times.

Aye, there’s the rub. Better to stick our fingers in our ears and loudly hum our little atheist songs.



Moore also rejects the argument that the lives of atheists are empty: “Of course this is untrue. You don’t need God to revel in Mozart, the company of family and friends, the enormity of the universe or the Earth around us.”

Of course? I am reminded of a short story by H.G. Wells, “In the Country of the Blind.” A mountaineer falls into a hidden valley in which all the inhabitants are stark stone blind. Remembering the proverb, “in the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king,” he expects to be greeted as a king, even a god, for sharing with them his amazing knowledge.

Instead, they declare him insane.

So might it be for atheists trying to understand the religious.

Interestingly, those who find faith use just such terms: “I once was blind, but now I see.” “I saw the light.” “Enlightenment.” “Emerging from the cave.” “No longer through a glass, darkly.” And so on. Of course, atheists who were previously at least nominally religious can and do make the same claim at times. But at best, Moore cannot tell who has it right.

Even when I did not believe, I could see plainly something special in the faces of many who did: a certain radiance. I’m afraid I’ve never seen the same in the face of an atheist. It was obvious enough for me to wish I could myself believe, even when I did not. I find it hard to believe that Moore has never seen this himself.

But that, I suppose, is between John Moore and his non-existent maker.

"Hitchens is Not Great"--God

I wish I had more time to follow and comment on the continuing controversies in the National Post regarding atheism and religion. Work is too pressing—and too much fun. Not to mention a new addition to the family.

Christopher Hitchens’ new book, God is Not Great, was excerpted in serial two weeks ago, and it was an enjoyable read. Hitchens writes well. But his points seemed mostly predictable, familiar to anyone deeply interested in religions. Village atheist stuff, their thinness covered often by bombast. Or does he, methinks, like so many atheists, protest too much?

But in any case, it is the duty of this column to make some comment. So the editorially plural we will.

Let’s take “Abusing God’s Children” (National Post, 12 May, 2007)—Hitchens’ most direct attack, and grand finale. Hitchens begins by citing a Hasidic practice of sucking off a baby’s foreskin. He claims this has led in the case of one mohel to the spread of herpes and even to the deaths of two babies. He intones that “no New Yorker would permit atrocities against infants if not for … the foul practice being holy and sanctified.”

But in fact, fairly obviously, they would. There is an exact parallel here: the vaccinating of babies. This too has, in a similar small minority of cases, caused the spread of disease and even the death of some children. Yet this practice does not attract Hitchen’s censure.

Why? Because Hitchens believes in medical science; he does not believe in Hasidism. The risk, for him, is far outweighed by the potential gains, as understood by modern medicine.

Yet the Hasidic parents could and would say exactly the same thing. They believe in Hasidism, and the potential gains of undergoing this particular procedure—heaven itself—far outweigh the risks.

Hitchens’s point holds, in other words, only if you assume Hasidism is false. His reasoning is tautological.

In seeking to prohibit the one practice, however—circumcision for religious reasons--and not the other—vaccination; or, indeed, circumcision for medical reasons--Hitchens is showing religious intolerance—showing the sort of fanaticism in favour of one’s own world view for which he unfairly blames religions.

Hitchens goes on, even less logically, to blame religion for female genital circumcision. Here he misses the most vital point: female circumcision is not mandated by any major religion. It is a social custom, or indeed a local medical practice. This makes doubly ironic his claim that “No society would tolerate such an insult to its womanhood… if the practice were not holy and sanctified.” The same is true of Hitchens’ condemnation of “Hindu” child brides. Hitchens seizes on the fact that they are Hindu for a post hoc, ergo propter hoc argument: they must then be child brides because they are Hindus.

Leaving aside the question whether marrying young is objectively immoral, or merely a question of cultural prejudice on Hitchens’ part, does being Hindu and marrying young automatically mean Hinduism is the reason one is marrying young? Of course it does not. The practice is not called for by the Hindu religion. It is a matter of custom, economics, and practicality.

Going even further astray from the logically defensible, he then finishes by accuses the Catholic Church of child molestation. This is an even further stretch: the Catholic Church is vocally opposed to child molestation, and always has been. If a Catholic, or even a Catholic priest, is nevertheless guilty of the sin, does that make Catholicism responsible? By the same logic, if an American commits a crime, America and the American government is responsible. This is the sort of corporate guilt that other religious fanatics once used against the Jews.

Hitchens’ other excerpts are even weaker. On May 11, the featured chapter was “Joseph Smith’s Long Con,” in which Hitchens repeats the familiar claims of fraud against the founder of the Mormons.

There is no news here; all the information Hitchens presents was well known in the 1940s. He is wasting our time. Let’s assume, in order to cut to the chase, that all Hitchens says against Joseph Smith is true. That makes Smith rather precisely the religious counterpart to the nineteenth century’s many traveling snake-oil salesmen and medicinal mountebanks. All that distinguishes him, indeed, is his appeal to religious, rather than scientific, authority.

But if one patent medicine does not do what it claimed to do, and was marketed dishonestly, does that prove that medical science is a fraud? Of course not. And it is a double standard to judge religion differently. Hitchens merely believes, a priori, in science, and disbelieves, a priori, in religion.

On May 10, Hitchens argued that the prohibition against eating pork in Judaism and Islam is due to an attempt to prevent cannibalism rather than, as is commonly suggested in scientistic (not scientific) circles, to prevent trichinosis. This at least is a relatively novel theory; I think so too, and have advanced this possibility myself in the past.

But, in terms of Hitchens’ main point, so what? What bearing does it have on whether the practice is or is not divinely sanctioned? God is actually quite likely to be opposed to cannibalism, after all.

In the attempt, however, Hitchens reveals again his general ignorance of his subject. He is unaware, in the first place, that the cannibalism theory is not original with him, as he claims. He seems unaware that the Talmud does not prohibit the eating of pigs per se—a point he surely needs to address. It bans instead the eating of a very broad range of animals, which, apparently arbitrarily, includes pigs—along with most other animals. If the issue were pigs, per se, then why the broader restriction? Hitchens also tosses out as comparison “the now-lapsed Catholic injunction to eat fish on Fridays.” Again, Hitchens does not seem to have done the necessary research. There is no Catholic injunction to eat fish, and never was. The injunction is not to eat meat.

And it has not lapsed.

Hitchens also oddly supposes that a prohibition against eating them shows a hatred of pigs, while freely devouring them slathered with mustard expresses affection.

He must be fun on a date.

Hitchens ends with three conclusions: “religion and the churches are manufactured; ethics and morality are quite independent of faith, and cannot be derived from it; …[and] religion is—because it claims a special divine exemption for its practices and beliefs—not just amoral but immoral.”

Conclusion one he is not entitled to; he can have no idea in principle, for it requires proving a negative. But indeed, even if he could, so what? Some religions, like Buddhism, are quite happy to assert that they are man-made. Others are quite happy to assert that most or all others, saving themselves, are man-made. Hitchens seems simply or willfully unaware of this.

Conclusion two, any good Catholic would happily agree with. Hitchens again does not seem to be aware of this: religion holds that morality is objective, binding on all, and can be demonstrated by reason. It is, surely, the atheists and relativists who sometimes assert otherwise.

However, I am not clear what Hitchens means by saying morality “cannot be derived from” faith. This seems self-evidently false: it need not, but surely it can be, and demonstrably often is. Acknowledging we are all children of the one God goes a long way towards promoting an appreciation for the golden rule, to treat all other people as equal in worth to ourselves. Hitchens again seems to be drawing unwarranted conclusions, missing the distinct difference in meaning between “must” and “can.”

Leaving conclusion three: is demanding a divine exemption for one’s own practices and beliefs immoral? I think not. In social terms, this is merely the doctrine of human rights: the right to choose for oneself what to believe and the right to act on one’s conscience. And in individual terms, it is morality itself: standing on one’s beliefs and the practices they require.

No, it is refusing to do this, and refusing others the right to do this, that is immoral.

This is what Hitchens, ultimately, seems to want. He is, in the end, a fanatic.

There always seem to be proportionately far more fanatics among atheists than among the religious.

A Child is Born

 

Maryanne Clare Roney. 10:34 AM, May 14, 2007.

Angels at our Table

"Be not forgetful to entertain strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares." (Hebrews 13:2).

A prominent US Cardinal, Mahony of Los Angeles, apparently agrees with my sentiments on immigration, but for strictly moral reasons. Perhaps the moral argument should therefore be added as one more reason to open the doors to immigration.

Cardinal Mahony points out that the Hebrews of the Bible, the chosen people of God, were at their origin in Exodus, and have always been, a nation of immigrants. Surely there is a lesson in that: we are to welcome the stranger. This is also the teaching of the parable of the Good Samaritan, isn’t it? The wounded man was a traveler, and his helper a foreigner. All of the apostles, too, were immigrants, as they spread out to deliver the Gospel: Peter in Rome, Thomas in India, and so forth.

It is therefore ultimately our Christian obligation to accept immigrants. And, moreover, not just to accept immigrants, but to accept poor immigrants as a priority, not the wealthy and educated.

It seems to me that opening the doors on a first-come, first-served basis is indeed most likely to produce immigrants meeting the description given in the Beatitudes of God’s own people: the poor, the oppressed, the discontent, those who seek peace, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. In a real sense, the best people. We really would be getting the cream, and it would, quite frankly, be to our own benefit, in this world as well as the next.

"Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35For …I was a stranger and you invited me in.” (Matthew 25:34-35).

Fairly clear, isn’t it?

Disturbing News for Conspiracy Theorists

It's enough to make you paranoid:

http://people.csail.mit.edu/rahimi/helmet/

Memo Re: Writing Memos

Have you ever stopped to notice how beautiful some of the words used in everyday work can be? There is a kind of folk art there.

I had reason recently to look at some of the terminology used around an oil rig. Fine strong words like swamper, monkeyboard, mud, doghouse, block and tackle, sour gas, wildcat, cathead, pits, kelly spinner, mousehole, rathole, slips. It almost forms itself into poetry. You can almost feel the Alberta breeze in your face.

It is not just the oil industry; every workplace seems to have its own fine terms. The language of the sea is especially well-known. But I do not think this kind of folk poetry is even limited to outdoor jobs; I once put together a poem largely for the sake of playing with common office words which seem to me to have a lovely rhythm to them. Here it is, as originally published years ago in Riverrun:

Memo Re: Writing Memos


Demands on my time are monied and various;
Budgets are burgeoning, time lines are tight;
We shall see, we shall see, we shall see, we shall see;
Why can I no longer sleep in the night?

Tossing in bed with the clock ticking noisily
Tied up in spreadsheets I stare 'till first light
Asking for answers of some absent analyst--
Why can I no longer sleep in the night?

Now and again in accounts of the company,
Figures will jig and will not tally right,
The horror of ink fixing dry yet not balancing;
Why can I no longer sleep in the night?

I hear it at times in the din of the stock exchange;
Some lonely warrior, hoarse from the fight,
Hoping and fearing that someone will hear him cry
Why can I no longer sleep in the night?

God only knows what's the final Gantt diagram;
Critical paths always fade out to white;
Building our high-rise investments in Babylon;
Sleeping through days, and waking through nights.

They lied when they said they were schooling for leadership;
Lied when they said we could win in the fight;
Lied when they promised the whole world would satisfy;
I hope to Jehovah they don't sleep at night.

The one place where you do not get this sort of beauty, it seems to me, is wherever the actual words matter: in sales, in media, in advertising, in government, in law. There, the words instead tend to be irritating: I hate the singular “pant,” the verb “to sauce,” and other such marketing terms. Quite the reverse of usual work vocabulary, which is playful and gratuitously creative, these words are calculating and put on airs. They are pharisaic.