Reason vs. Religion

The Recent Nightclub Bombings in Bali Illustrate Just What the "War on Terror" Is Really About

On the night of Saturday, October 12--the second anniversary of the suicide bombing of the USS Cole, a year, month, and day after the destruction of the World Trade Center, and mere days after terrorist attacks in Yemen, Kuwait, and the Philippines--two car bombs detonated outside neighboring nightclubs on the island of Bali, triggering a third explosive planted inside, and killing nearly 200 people (the majority of whom were Australian tourists), injuring several others, and redirecting the focus of the war against terror to Indonesia.

Also on the night of Saturday, October 12, the following bands and DJs were playing and spinning at several of Seattle's rock and dance clubs from Re-bar to Rock Bottom: FCS North, Sing-Sing, DJ Greasy, Michiko, Super Furry Animals, Bill Frisell Quintet, the Vells, the Capillaries, the Swains, DJ Che, Redneck Girlfriend, Grunge, Violent Femmes, the Bangs, Better Than Ezra, the Briefs, Tami Hart, the Spitfires, Tullycraft, B-Mello, Cobra High, Randy Schlager, Bobby O, Venus Hum, MC Queen Lucky, Evan Blackstone, and the RC5, among many, many others.

This short list, taken semi-randomly from the pages of The Stranger's music calendar, is designed to illustrate a point that is both facile and essential to reckoning the effects of the Bali bombings. Many of you were at these shows, dancing, smoking, drinking, talking, flirting, kissing, groping, and presumably enjoying yourselves, much like the 180-plus tourists and revelers killed at the Sari Club and Paddy's Irish Pub in Bali. Though no group has come forward to claim responsibility for the bombings, they were almost certainly the work of Muslim radicals launching the latest volley in the war against apostasy.

Whether the attacks turn out to have been the work of al Qaeda or one of the like-purposed, loosely connected, multicellular organizations that function in the region--groups like the Jemaah Islamiyah (an umbrella network that seeks a single Islamic state comprising Malaysia, Indonesia, and Singapore), the Indonesian Mujahedeen Council (led by the nefarious Abu Bakar Bashir), Laskar Jihad (which waged holy war on Christians in the Spice Islands before mysteriously disbanding two weeks ago), or the Islam Defenders Front (which makes frequent "sweeps" of bars and nightclubs, attacking non-Muslims, and violently guarding against "prostitution and other bad things")--will ultimately prove to be of little consequence. What matters is that the forces of Islamic fascism have struck again, in a characteristically cowardly, murderous, and yes, blasphemous fashion that must register as an affront to every living human with even a passing interest in freedom.

The facile part: It could have happened here, at any club in Seattle. It's a ludicrous thought, of course--at least as ludicrous as the thought of shutting the Space Needle down on New Year's Eve because some crazy terrorist was arrested at the Canadian border--but that doesn't make it any less true. That doesn't mean we should be looking over our shoulders and under our chairs every time we go to a show. It simply means that it could happen anywhere, because anywhere is exactly where rabid Islamists can find evidence of blasphemy against their precious, imaginary god.

Which brings us to the essential part: The Bali bombings were not an attack against Bali; they were an attack against humankind. In all the jawflap about the whys and wherefores of the multiple conflicts currently dotting our collective radar screen--the war against terror, the war on Iraq, the coming holy war, et al.--it seems worth restating (at the risk of sounding pious) that the war against basic human liberty, waged not by us but on us, is at the heart of the matter. Discourse has justifiably, necessarily turned to complexities of strategy, diplomacy, and consequences. The moral truth, however, remains agonizingly basic. We are still dealing with a small but indefatigable contingent of radicalized, militant absolutists who believe that every living being is accountable to the stricture of Shari'a, under penalty of death. As Salman Rushdie wrote, in an oft-cited Washington Post editorial, the fundamentalist faction is against, "to offer a brief list, freedom of speech, a multi-party political system, universal adult suffrage, accountable government, Jews, homosexuals, women's rights, pluralism, secularism, short skirts, dancing, beardlessness, evolution theory, sex." If these were fictional villains, you'd call them hyperbolic, not believable. But they aren't fictional. Their code would be laughable if it weren't so aggressively despicable.

As headlines about Bali cross-fade into news of North Korean nukes, and there are further debates about the finer points of Iraqi de- and restabilization, it's crucial to remember that there is, in fact, a very real enemy, with a very real will, and the very real power of delusional self-righteousness. How to remember? Consider the scene of the attacks (as reported by various Australian and European news sources):

It's a typical hot, sweaty, drunken, lascivious Saturday night. People, primarily young Aussie tourists from Melbourne, Geelong, Perth, and Adelaide, are crammed into the clubs, mixing it up, spilling out into the street. Rock band noises mix with techno music and innumerable voices as latecomers clamor to squeeze inside. Just after 11:00 p.m., a car bomb explodes outside of Paddy's, followed a few seconds later by a second blast that smashes the façade of the Sari Club and leaves a hole in the street a meter deep and 10 meters across. The second bomb is strong enough to damage buildings miles away. All at once, everything's on fire. People are incinerated. Cars go up in flames. Televisions explode. Ceilings collapse, trapping those still inside. Screams. Blistered, charred flesh. Disembodied limbs. Mangled bodies. Victims covered in blood. Inferno.

Now transpose this horrible, fiery mass murder from the seedy, alien lushness of Bali to, say, Pioneer Square, where clubs and bars are lined up in the same teeming proximity as the Sari and Paddy's in the "raunchy" Jalan Legian district, the busiest strip of nightlife in Kuta Beach. Imagine a car blowing up outside the Central Saloon and another, across the street at the New Orleans. Again, it seems too simple an equation, but the fact remains that the victims were not targeted at random, or for merely political purposes. They were doing exactly what any of us might be doing on any night of the week: exercising a liberty so deeply offensive to religious believers as to constitute blasphemy. And the punishment for blasphemy is death.

There is an ongoing lie in the official governmental position on the war against terror, which bends over backwards to assure us that, in the words of our president, "we don't view this as a war of religion in any way, shape, or form." Clearly, in every sense, this is a war of religion, whether it's declared as such or not. And if it isn't, then it certainly should be. Not a war of one religion against another, but of reason against religion--against any belief system that takes its mandate from an invisible spiritual entity and endows its followers with the right to murder or subjugate anyone who fails to come to the same conclusion. This is the war our enemies are fighting. To pretend we're fighting any other--or worse, that this war is somehow not worth fighting, on all fronts--is to dishonor the innocent dead.

Over on this end, this is your most fascinating response yet. Being a musician, I would rather think that my responses have been "ornate", as opposed to "bombastic", but at the same time I realize that's probably not the intent of your useage. Nevertheless;

Me: Your analogy is distinguishable in several ways from the case at hand, not the least of which is that the planets in their orbits obey the laws of physics. You want to have morality as nothing but physics, yet we know that you can disobey the moral law. You want to have your cake and eat it too.

You: Other than that we have the math worked out better, there is little ontological difference between an attempt to achieve orbit using Newton's laws, and an attempt to make the universe a better place for humans using moral laws.

Again, what are you comparing the universe WITH when you want to make it a "better" place? For the comparison to even be coherent you MUST be referring to a standard that is not part of the universe. The evolutionary myth does not logically allow this incoherent comparison.

Me: You want to say that at that the same time you can both obey and disobey the laws of physics.

You: To the best of my understanding, this doesn't follow at all, whether I am right about moral laws or not, from what I have said. However, amusingly enough, let me point out that at the present moment, reputable physicists are entertaining the notion that we haven't got the law of gravity quite right, because it fails to explain the outer orbits of stars around galaxies, by a very substantial margin. Just as the laws of classical physics failed to predict the perihilion of mercury, to usher in the era of einsteinian physics. There isn't an underwriter's lab guantee on physics, it is just a human idea, and it is just as subject to question and recall as notions of morality.

My point was that the orbits of the planets are the result of physical, material causes. Our description of those physical causes may not be entirely accurate, but that is besides the point. I am not talking about predictability in a merely descriptive sense.

me: The key question is, why SHOULD I be moral tomorrow?

You: As an entirely logical question, you shouldn't. You should persuade everyone else to be moral, while you remain a deceptive sociopath.

If I take your statement here literally, according to the evolutionary premise, you're right, except that in the evolutionary myth, there isn't even any "should" in the first place.

You: As an amusing example of how well your reasoning approach works, lets consider the case of fidelity in marriage by well off western men. Approximately 40%, with or without a religious commitment, according to latest surveys, of them take wedding vows, and within a few years begin committing marital infidelity.

Now why is this? I suggest it is because we depend on rational arguments to dissuade a natural urge that has always produced extreme luck in the DNA raffle toward hypocrisy on this subject. A human male who wants his genes spread best should pretend to a high-investment-in-offspring deal he's made with his wife and community, and trash the deal in private when no one is looking, so as to get both the high-investment high-commitment strategy, and the low investment, low commitment strategy. Note what a spectacular failure the transcendental moral argument has been in this case.

"Sucess" and "failure" are telological by definition, which evolution is not. I find myself wondering what is amusing about your example. I am easily amused, but your statement here actually illustrates my point by the fact that you have merely provided a description of certain human behavior. Yet there is nothing in your description of adulterous behavior by men that indicates any approval or disapproval of such behavior, or any principle on which to base praise or blame of such behavior. It is just a description of a (purported) fact. Moreover, since the suggestion is that such physical events are caused by the also physically caused dependence on "rational arguments to dissuade a natural urge", I have to ask how that alleged rationality is also not just as much a part of the "natural urge" as the adulterous behavior itself. Furthermore, one could make the evolutionary case from your description of adulterous behavior by a percentage of men that adulterous behavior by men is actually ADVANTAGES to survival, and therefore "good". I would think that the evolutionary premise only allows a logical conclusion that ANY such behavior is Amoral; that is, neither moral or immoral.

me: Morality has nothing to do with predicting physical behavior in a merely descriptive sense.

You: So sez you. I think I've just provided use-examples. Obviously, I fundamentally disagree, and invite you do prove it.

It is self-evident that your aforesaid example of adultery is merely descriptive in nature, which is exactly what I predicted.

me: It has to do with what we ought or ought not do, in a prescriptive way. All evolutionary theory can do is attempt to explain how we got to where we are, not how we ought to act in the future. The problem is, for the umpteenth time, that if the moral obligation precedes the physical behavior, then it cannot at the same time BE the physical behavior. Your astronomy analogy actually illustrates the dilemma, as opposed to answering it.

You: And, for the umpteenth time, you cannot make this so with fireworks and oratory. I see physical descriptions of astronomical events--I use them to try to achieve orbit for good human ends.

In strict evolutionary terms, what are "good human ends"?

You: I see how humans behave without morals and I see that humans have a natural predilection for tribal morals--I try to harness this natural tendency toward morals for good human ends.

In light of your illustration of adulterous behavior by some men, I would be curious to know what you mean by a "natural" predilection for tribal morals? What in the in the evolutionary myth would the converse, "unnatural" mean to you?

You: If you want to claim morals spring unbidden from Athena's brow, prove with something other than flashy card tricks. I have a perfectly sensible explanation, based, on available evidence, so I don't have to pull rabbits out of a hat to support it.

So far I have yet to see any coherent accounting for any physicalist, evolutionary source of morality, for the following reasons:

I do not believe morality springs unbidden from Athena's brow. The question is, why morality? Where does it come from? I can think of only three logical options. One: morality is simply an illusion or a useful fiction to help us live in harmony. Two: moral rules exist but are mere accidents, the product of chance. They are just part of the furniture of the universe, so to speak. They have no explanation, nor do we need one. Three; moral rules are not accidents but are the product of intelligence.

The first option leads logically and inexorably to relativism. The second option has the serious flaw that moral rules without grounds or justification need not be obeyed. For example, if you are driving on the highway and you see a pile of rocks that fell in an avalanche, and in part of that pile the letters and words "You shall not commit adultery" randomly appear, do you regard that as a command that ought to be obeyed? Of course not. It's just a pile of rocks. Chance might conceivably create the appearance of a moral rule, but there is no command if no one is speaking. Therefore I choose the third option.

In sum, in your most recent reply you could not answer the question, "Why ought I be moral?" in any affirmative, logical sense, as per your own statement. So, as Thomas Merton put it; "In the name of whom or what do you ask me to behave? Why should I go to the inconvenience of denying myself the satisfactions I desire in the name of some standard that exists only in your imagination? Why should I worship the fictions that you have imposed on me in the name of nothing?"

Cordially,

Do I have to take everything literally?

Well I don’t, LogicWings. (But then maybe I’m just a “poet” at heart.) The important thing about the story of Noah (IMO) is its message that God chose to preserve his creation, even though He had determined to “wipe out evil-doers” -- not whether Noah “really” was able to load the males and females of 1.7 million species aboard a boat.

In a certain sense, a myth is a kind of shorthand -- a very compressed, compact form of symbolic language designed to make an appeal, not only to minds, but to hearts and souls. The Noah question isn’t at all in the same class as the question whether a Great Wall was built in China. That we can see with our physical eyes, if we care to go take a look. Noah is an appeal to spiritual vision. This is a case of God speaking directly to man, in an imaginative language that most men find intelligible in some way. Or so it seems to me.

Neither do I believe that the universe was created in literally six 24-hour days. Just because we experience “day” as 24 hours long, that doesn’t mean that God does. I don’t know what a “day” looks like from God’s point of view. Certainly I don’t wish to “burden” God’s action with purely human categories or conventions. That would be silly.

Truly I loved this comment, LW: You said that Plato “was part of the endless groping to understand what it means to be human. I stand on their shoulders, just as you do, just as we all do. Civilization moved just that much higher for what they contributed. That is the lot of being human.”

But I hope you can clarify this next observation for me, for I don’t understand your meaning: “The existential truth, one way or another, is useless.”

You wrote: “I don’t see anything that happens here as part of my ‘intimate’ choices since this is a public forum, so I don’t know how this relates. We are mixing a whole bunch of meanings here, and it is far too muddy to mean anything.”

Perhaps “intimate” was an unfortunate choice of word here. Substitute “private” – in the sense of a free personal act -- and maybe that would be better.

As a writer, there is a truism. The burden is always upon the writer to make the reader understand, not for the reader to ‘have to’ understand the writer. That’s why my posts are so long, I’m so incredibly verbose. I’m trying to make sure I’ve made the point as clear as possible so the reader cannot possibly misunderstand. Then again, people still do.

Tell me about it! It’s a struggle that I well know. In fact, the most considerable amount of frustration I experience in life doesn’t result from people “who do not agree with me.” It stems from the recognition that I haven’t made myself understood -- though I try so very, very hard; and still manage to come up so very, very short. But if you really do understand what I said, and still come up with a different explanation, that’s really O.K. with me. Believe it or not.

All I meant to suggest is that, even in little, seemingly inconsequential things, the choices we make affect other people whether we intend them to or not. It’s the “butterfly effect” – a butterfly fluttering her wings off Hong Kong, ever so subtly changing the dynamics of the local atmospheric conditions, which changes propagate and get magnified as the effects spread out, so that what you end up with is the “Perfect Storm” off the coast of Newfoundland in due course….

“No man is an island” is the gist of what I was trying to get at.

I loved this: “We are back to basics again. First of all, materialism as opposed to what? This term has no meaning anymore, doesn’t anyone get it ??? E = mc2..... There is no ‘material.’ It is ALL energy. It is all just different forms of energy. Can we call it energyism? What happens if we call it ‘energyism?’ What happens to this idea when the paradigm changes?”

To your “Q,” here’s a suggested “A”: The “doctrinaire” types with heavy investment in “materialism” go hoopy. Then get really rigid, and quite possibly nasty….

Atheism is a logical fallacy. (Bet you never thought you’d see me write that! Now, after all I’ve written, can you tell me why I would say that, considering all I have written?)

Truly LogicWings, I would prefer to hear this from you, in your own words.

And this ‘saved or corrupt’ business – I may be flirting with disaster here; but IMHO, after the sacrifice of Christ, “corruption” is something you either have to actively opt for, or sink into by virtue of sheer sloth. All Evil is, finally, is the absence of the Good. It is a deprivation of God that a man must choose for himself. And I think it’s also true that God will judge each of us according to the way we judge our neighbor. (Back to the “butterfly effect” here – working out in an altogether different dimension …. :^) )

I’m all hopped up to digress at this point, in regard to this “sloth” business. Please do extend a courtesy to the ventings of my fevered little brain….

The Roman Catholic Church has a teaching about the Seven Deadly Sins. Everytime I have seen a treatment of this subject, the seven are laid out in a particular order of gravity, from most severe to least severe. However, it is still the case that all are “deadly,” mortal sins regardless of their position on the list.

Here’s the list, in order: Pride. Envy. Anger. Sloth. Greed. Gluttony. Lust.

Notice Sloth is right in the middle of the list – well ahead of Lust (perhaps surprisingly). Sloth is a failure to perform an act one is capable of performing, and ought to perform, but which one does not perform for whatever reason. It stands for the idea of a “dereliction of duty,” so to speak.

Looking more closely, one might notice that each of these sins is represented to us not just as offenses against God; they are also precisely the very sorts of sin that disorder and disrupt the human community….

[Thanks for letting me “vent.”]

You wrote: “…by the same token you cannot say, ‘There is no such spatially located site!’ No one can assert a negative. I am being totally consistent here. Anybody can hypothesize a negative anything and nobody can prove it wrong. That doesn’t prove anything, doesn’t demonstrate anything, doesn’t verify anything. And, (oh, i don’t want to even have to say this) it begs the question that there are ‘divine things.’

So if it helps at all, don’t call them “divine things.” Come up with a better term. But that “better term” IMHO, must comprehend the following: Those things that were “here” before we got here, and will last after we’re gone; that specify the form and function of the universe and its beyond (if there is one – Christianity teaches that the world “has no end,” even though it had a beginning – in Time); that love and goodness and truth and justice and beauty are the hallmarks of the right order of Life, and ultimately the basis of its constitution.

You called me an “optimist.” Well, if any optimism remains to me at all under the current seemingly catastrophic conditions of our world right now, it is precisely these premises that constitute the basis of my hope – of my “optimism.”

I really warmed to this: “…Kant was wrong because space and time were not simply constructs of the ‘a priori’ mind but turned out to properties that actually existed and could be proven so, therefore they were valid ‘a posteriori’ concepts. But none of this disproves the existence of something that exists in all space times equally. What is the implication of something that exists in all ‘here and nows?’ Do we even have a definition for this?

Yep. Well, I do anyhoot. I just call it “God.” Which admittedly is a Name, not a definition.

The second part of your question concerns something that has no location in space or time. Since you are bound to space time, how could you ever know? It would never exist in your space time, so how would you ever to know? By definition, since you are in space time, you would never occupy the same space time. Your paths would never cross.

Truly, if God were bound by “human rules,” this sort of thing could never happen.

Don’t assume you know the source, go with known data. It isn’t coming from some source ‘outside’ space time but is part of all space time, it IS all space time. You aren’t the whole universe, but the Whole Universe is part of You. It is part of me. It is here, now. Forever and Always.

I am still “digesting” an absolutely marvelous book that I read over the summer – Stephen Wolfram’s A New Kind of Science. Among other things, in its pages he muses over the “space” problem.

Wolfram – who is apparently most comfortable with Buddhist and Zen metaphysical concepts – has written a book for scientists, especially physical scientists. Though he makes it clear that what he is doing in this book can be useful to biological scientists, and even mathematicians and philosophers.

Speaking as an amateur philosopher, all I can say to that is: Amen, Stephen Wolfram!!!! It’s about time for philosophy to get out of the “doctrine” business, and into the “truth” business…. I hope and pray that the “school philosophers” give way to philosophers who are more interested in the proper formulation of questions than they are in the production of “universal” answers….

IMO, given the very nature of his work, Wolfram is a master of description – not of “explanation.” He puts the questions “out there”; then says “help me find the answers.” He apparently has upset certain large segments of the scientific community, for calling into question such reigning orthodoxies as the Law of Entropy Increase, and Natural Selection….

Among other things, he has a rather unusual proposition in regard to the “constitution” of space, under the aspect of time. He muses that space is a “nodal network.”

That is, the character of space is that of discrete nodes; all nodes occupy a “position” in a network. All discrete nodes –though they are discrete and quite possibly unique in themselves – are tied into every other node and may freely communicate with any and every other mode by virtue of their participation in the network.

Like I said, I’m still digesting this monumental work. As you can imagine, I am interested in this “node” business, as a possible analog to the “soul” business, in its relations to the eternal community of Being.

I bet you’d like this book, LogicWings. Though in all probability you’ll have a different “take-away” than I got from it, it is an eminently useful exercise for a serious thinker looking for a serious challenge.

Thanks for writing. If you feel like doing it again anytime soon, that would be most pleasing to me. God bless!

...noone yet has been able to use reason (you use "human" reason as if there are different brands) to conclusively demonstrate the necessity of their particular religious beliefs.

But no one has ever been able to prove anything (except tautological statements) by the use of reason alone! You define religious belief as a formal system demanding formal, irrefutable proofs, then complain the religion ain't 'scienfitic'!!! This strikes me as curious indeed, and a clever ruse your very human rational mind employs in its attempt to discredit religious notions before they are even tested. What I am saying is, apply scienfitic standards of verifiability to religious notions -- with this difference -- you won't be able to absolutely verify the existence of God using external senses, as scientific research does. Instead, you have to look within and employ your innate spiritual faculties and intuition. Yes, they DO exist, though I understand your skepticism about so-called 'mystical' experiences. I did not fully believe in my own inner ability to contact God until I had a certain revelatory experience that changed my life. So I am not condemning you for believing what you have not experienced. Unlike some other defenders of faith and religion, I actually approve of your skeptical attitude, as long as skepticism means keeping an open mind one way or the other about God. Of course, it is apparent to me that what you deem 'skepticism' is really a dogmatic attitude that won't allow God to be considered as a working hypothesis that may possibly be verified by experience. But that fact that you, or some people have not experienced God in no way invalidates my own experience. If someone doesn't happen to have access to a telescope, is that any reason for me to doubt the existence of far-off galaxies, quasars, etc? Or lacking a microscope, to doubt the existence of microbes which live all around and within us?

Funny how those of a scientific mind will take the word of reputable researchers (as well they should) concerning things they have personally not verified, yet have nothing but doubt and sarcasm to throw at they reported experiences (and there are countless examples) of ordinary people and saints, who have seen visions of God and angels, the afterlife, the future, and so on. The Bible was not written out of someone's theorizing about God, but out of direct experience of God and His miracles. At least keep an open mind about the possibility that it is not all fanciful imaginings! And have a good day, beavus, whether you take my words seriously or not. I don't want to sermonize, I want to lift your hopes and keep you open to spiritual possibilities. Many doubters have come to a new, profound understanding of the universe and their place in it through Divine workings. I know -- I was one of them.

Funny how those of a scientific mind will take the word of reputable researchers

Those of a scientific mind always consider the definite possibility, and common result, that those researchers are wrong. Furthermore, those with a scientific mind who wish to experience what the REPUTABLE researcher experienced, are able to by following the published methods of the researcher.

Now, you give me an experiment where I and others can repeatedly experience these things you talk about, and the argument is over about your use of reason rather than faith. If all you give me is a discription of your own euphoria, then my own experience with the human mind may lead me to a more down-to-earth explanation.

But no one has ever been able to prove anything (except tautological statements) by the use of reason alone! You define religious belief as a formal system demanding formal, irrefutable proofs, then complain the religion ain't 'scienfitic'!!!

I didn't "define" religious beliefs at all and furthermore, I described them quite differently that this. It is you, not me, who insists on the compatibility of reason and faith. I'm merely describing what your particular belief must lead to.

It is not surprising that you once again simultaneously limit the use of reason to defend your religious beliefs while arguing that a dichotomy is not necessary.

Reason goes beyond simply employing the laws of identity and noncontradiction. It also is used to determine how to test and interpret our observations not only to minimize the chance of being wrong, but also to ensure that they teach us something.

your very human rational mind employs in its attempt to discredit religious notions before they are even tested

I haven't attempted to discredit anything except the statement that reason and faith are a false dichotomy. Your immense presumptuousness is reflected in the length of your composition--attempts to address statements that were never made.

you deem 'skepticism' is really a dogmatic attitude that won't allow God to be considered as a working hypothesis

There you go again.

Many doubters

And again.

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