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The Voice of Sanity THE NEWSLETTER OF THE UPSTATE S.C. SECULAR HUMANISTS Visit our web-site for current and back-issues at: www.uscsh.org e-mail: secularhmnst@aol.com

GOD DEBATE: SAM HARRIS vs. RICK WARREN

IN NEWWEEK

The April 9^th issue of Newsweek has an extensive debate between Pastor Rick Warren and Sam Harris on the subject: Is God Real? Jon Meacham, Editor of Newsweek, moderated the debate. Rick Warren is the Pastor of Saddleback Church and the best selling author of “The Purpose Driven Life”. Sam Harris is a well-known atheist and author. The debate was also published on the Newsweek sections of MSNBC on the Internet.

While I found the debate interesting, I was disappointed that Harris did not take several opportunities to challenge certain rhetorical techniques, statements and claims by Warren. As one glaring example, Meacham asked Warren “, “What is the evidence of the existence of the God of Abraham?”

Warren answers that he sees “the fingerprints of God everywhere. I see them in culture. I see them in law. I see them in literature. I see them in my own life.” He does not answer the question. He does not present any evidence or proof; he simply provides opinion, belief and platitudes. He has an absolute right to believe anything he wishes too, as does every person, but this is an excellent example of how many people, not only on religious issues, misuse words to distort and deflect the discussion, trying to convert beliefs and opinions into facts.

The very title of the debate, “Is God Real?” is another good example of this process. If God is “real”, then God would have “actual, rather than spiritual or imaginary, existence.” We could perceive God with all our six physical senses, sight, touch, hearing, smell and taste, not just with our spiritual “sense”. Perhaps a better title for the debate would have been “Does God Exist?”

All religions attempt to use the weight of their numbers to convert belief in to fact while denying the same claim to others. Ninety percent of Americans believe in God, ergo, God is real. After all, can 1 billion plus Christians be wrong? The answer is yes, they can be wrong if they deny the legitimacy of the same type of claim, based on the same type of belief, of the 1.2 billion Muslims in the world who state that Muhammad was the last Prophet of Allah and that Jesus was a Prophet but not the Messiah. Harris does make a good point that Warren cannot deny several times: we are all atheists with respect to Zeus and the thousands of other gods whom nobody worships now.

Warren claims that God talks to him daily, and he returns the favor. Warren relates the story of a member of his church, a Canadian, who comes to him with an immigration problem. Warren prays for a solution and during his evening walk meets a woman who turns out to be an immigration attorney who takes the Canadian’s case. He claims that this has happened “tens of thousands of times”, and that this is the “evidence” of God answering prayers. If this is true, Warren’s church members, who number 25,000, must be the healthiest and most financially secure congregation in the nation. Again, Harris failed to mount a strong challenge to these assertions.

Warren tries again to link the millions of deaths in the twentieth century to the atheists Stalin, Pol Pot and Mao, while limiting the responsibility of Christians to “thousands” who died at the hands of the Inquisition. He, and other believers, choose to ignore the millions of deaths caused by the slave trade, an abomination that was supported by all branches of the Christian church and Islam. Prior to the twentieth century, history records millions of deaths as the result of the centuries of oppression and attempted genocide of the Jews by European Christians of all persuasions, the religious wars of the Reformation and ruthless murder and exploitation of whole cultures as part of the age of exploration and colonization by the Christian European powers.

The issue of the role of Christianity in slavery in the US and the slave trade globally still has not been addressed in an open and forthright manner by the American Christian community and the nation in general. The cultural blindness that we criticize in the Germans, Japanese and other societies that have histories of discrimination and violence toward minorities is also present in our nation.

Warren does admit that when, where and to whom you are born too are major determinants of religious beliefs. All religions, with the exception of the Shakers, a now defunct sect, depend on the process of reproduction and indoctrination to expand their faiths. It is clear that a newborn from any location in the world could be adopted by a family in any other part of the world and would probably grow up a faithful member of the adoptive families religion. Now that international adoption is becoming more common, we can see families in wealthier nations adopting children from poorer countries and no one questions their right to imprint their own religious, or non-religious views and social values on their new child. In many ways, we treat children as property when it comes to instilling beliefs and values. The variety of human experience has proven the flexibility of children when it comes to absorbing cultural values, positive and negative, of the societies and families they are born into.

Warren states that regardless of the religion you profess you can see the beauty and diversity in the world that God created. When Harris counters with the point that God also created AIDS and smallpox, Warren again evades the question by saying humans have a responsibility to do something about AIDS and smallpox. I once watched in amazement as a Southern Baptist minister from Ohio appearing on the Montel show claimed that God had nothing to do with AIDS since AIDS was part of what he called “the natural world”. He evidently believes that God had nothing to do with the creation of the “natural world”.

Overall, the debate is worth reading although I doubt it going to change any minds on either side of the question. Religion is not going away. The reproduction and indoctrination process is and has been going on in every human society throughout history. Our goal should be to reduce and eliminate the connection between religion and government to protect the rights of every person to freedom of thought and ensure equal and just treatment of believers and non-believers alike. Governmental policy and laws should be based on a rational decision making process that reflects the principles in the Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

THE DON IMUS FLAP

CBS and MSNBC has severed all connections with Don Imus after the major controversy about his racist and sexist remarks directed at the Rutgers women’s basketball team. The popular radio and TV host has a long history of racist, sexist and demeaning remarks about a wide variety of people, but he claims that the remarks are consistent with his shows humorous theme that has no sacred cows or protected persons or groups. He also makes the point that musical genres such as rap and hip-hop make much more demeaning and insulting comments about women in general and African-American women in particular. Critics like the Rev. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson agree, but believe that this does not give Imus permission to do the same. They have mounted a campaign to change the approach of the offending musical artists and to try to clean up the music business.

Make no mistake; much of the uproar over this subject is based on money. CBS and MSNBC took action promptly when major advertisers began to cancel their ads on the Imus show. Imus made a major mistake in addressing his racial insults to the Rutgers women, who turned out to be intelligent, poised scholar/athletes. They are not the political or public figures that are the usual targets of satire and parody from Imus, Jon Stewart or other media comedians. They are innocent targets and that explains why Imus stands accused on crossing the line between acceptable and unacceptable behaviors.

Do not expect the campaign to clean up the rap and hip-hop to succeed to any major degree. There is simply too much money to be made by producing the music that Sharpton, Jackson and many others find offensive. And then there is the First Amendment issue of artistic expression. American society has become much more open to what was previously unacceptable expressions in print, movies, TV and music, and the chances that there will be any major changes are very slim.

At the bottom of this controversy is the old American legacy of slavery, segregation and discrimination. Eight of the ten members of the Rutgers team are black, Imus is white. Imus claims that the black community invented the offensive terms he used and that they use them to describe women on a regular basis. Even if he is right in his claims, and I think he has a point, American Caucasians need to understand our history of slavery, segregation and discrimination from the African-American perspective and consciously change the way we think, feel and behave toward them. You do not refer to an African-American adult male as “boy”, or any other term, that recreates the oppression and discrimination that they or their ancestors had to tolerate. There is a double standard in this area, but America created a whole series of double standards toward African-Americans, and that didn’t seem to bother us at the time.

Don Imus has made a lot of money, and his loyal audience will follow wherever he ends up, probably on satellite radio, so we should not worry about his long-term career possibilities. Imus has done a great deal of fund raising for children’s charities and personally has established a ranch where ill and abused kids are helped, so his claim that he is a good person who made a poor choice may be correct, but it certainly calls his judgment into question.

A BIOLOGICAL BASIS FOR HOMOSEXUALITY?

Rev. R. Albert Mohler, Jr., President of the Southern Baptist seminary has concluded that, based on scientific research, homosexuality may have, to some degree, a biological basis. Up to this point the conservative Christian position has been that homosexuality is a personal choice, so this Mohler’s new position represents a major change that has upset and dismayed some of his fellow Christians. A link to the full article is posted below.

If it is determined that sexual orientation has a genetic or biological basis, however, he, and some other Christians, believe that it would be perfectly moral and logical to use prenatal hormonal treatments to create a heterosexual orientation in the fetus. The position of the Catholic Church on the subject is outlined in the quote below.

“Mohler's argument was endorsed by a prominent Roman Catholic thinker, the Rev. Joseph Fessio, provost of Ave Maria University in Naples, Fla., and editor of Ignatius Press, Pope Benedict XVI's U.S. publisher.

"Same-sex activity is considered disordered," Fessio said. "If there are ways of detecting diseases or disorders of children in the womb, and a way of treating them that respected the dignity of the child and mother, it would be a wonderful advancement of science."

The medical and psychiatric community warned that any attempted medical or hormonal treatments might result in serious damage to the child since there are probably many different genes involved in the determination of sexual orientation. Gay organizations condemned the suggestion that homosexual orientation is in effect a “birth defect” that could be treated parentally.

Although it is unlikely that we will ever be able to accurately determine the sexual orientation of an unborn child, this new viewpoint indicates that some Christians are at least open to the possibility that homosexuality is not a choice. The real issue is that this new Christian viewpoint on homosexuality tries to equate a possible future prenatal genetic test for homosexuality with a prenatal test that shows a potentially fatal birth defect. Even if you accept their assertion that it is just another “birth defect”, it is not fatal. There is also the issue of false positives. What if the future prenatal test for homosexuality produces an indication of homosexuality, a treatment is applied and when the baby is born we discover serious medical issues as the result of the false positive error in the testing process?

It is interesting to note that there is a movement to allow health care professionals to refuse to serve or treat patients because on their personal values and beliefs, based on the “do no harm concept”, but they would be quite willing to expose an unborn child to potentially damaging hormonal or other type of medical interventions to “save” them from a non-life threatening condition that may or may not occur years in the future.

It might be a bit simpler to just grant homosexuals their full human rights and let them worry about their own spiritual health.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17615602/?GT1=9145

MEETING SCHEDULE

April Monthly Meeting: Our monthly meeting will be held at 5:00PM on April 22^nd at the home of Lee Deitz, 21Walnut Street, Greenville. Lee will furnish the main course. Please call Lee at (864) 233-0905 or email him at leeingvl@aol.com to coordinate your contribution.

The date and location for the May Brunch and monthly meeting will be announced at the April 22^nd meeting.