Category: enlightenment values

When civilization goes wheels up

Richard William LawrenceLeave a comment

There seems to be no shortage of opinions regarding the US pullout from Afghanistan. The usual pundits are coming out with the usual screeds, the victims and heroes determined by which ideological camp the pundit in question has planted his or her flag. The syllogisms of blame are everywhere you care to look, yet the most important message seems to have escaped notice.

As soon as the Taliban started to consolidate their power and advance towards Kabul, the horror stories of beheadings, floggings, the kidnapping of women and placing them into varieties of sexual slavery, and, most distressing to the American public, the systematic revenge being taking on those Afghans who worked with the American forces. Images of Vietnamese people clinging to the last US helicopters leaving Vietnam were replayed in Kabul’s airport and desperate Afghans tried to cling to US military transport planes while they were taxiing and taking off. A few hundred people were taken inside the planes and transported to Qatar, where talks between US and Taliban diplomats are on-going when this article was penned. Soon enough, the last US plane will depart, the story will gradually fade from the news, and most Americans will forget about Afghanistan. Thousands, unfortunately, will not get out and that understanding is spreading amongst those who will not be treated well by the Taliban. Already, people are posting their goodbyes on freethought and atheist pages on social media. Rather than capitulate and hide who they are, they refuse. They have drank long and deep at the well of freedom and they understand what it means. My hope for them is that their inevitable suffering will be brief.

As egregious and disgusting the above examples are, there is one example which illustrates what happens when any society departs from civilization, a noun which requires no prefix, and becomes a theocracy. Nothing is more telling than examining the status of a woman who has been raped by five men. Civilization, however imperfectly the implementation, without exception views the woman as the victim and her attackers as the guilty parties who should be held accountable and punished according to the laws of the land if convicted in a court of law. The theocracy that now controls Afghanistan has a different take. The men are the victims and the woman is the guilty party. Her punishment? Death by stoning.

Pick a side.

The Israel-Hamas conflict – Choosing Sides

The goal of Hamas’s bombing efforts was to kill as many Jews as possible: Jews in hospitals, Jews in schools, Jews in old age homes, Jews sleeping in their beds, Jews wherever they may be.

Richard William LawrenceLeave a comment

The current conflict between Hamas and Israel has been seized upon by some to be a pivotal moment to re-evaluate the United States’ posture towards our ally in the Middle East. I specifically use the word ‘ally’ because on many different levels, that is what Israel is. Before we kick our ally to the curb and abandon the only Democracy in the Middle East to Hamas, whose charter specifically calls for Israel’s destruction, it would do us all well to throw the jingoisms from both the Right and the Left in the trash and look at the situation as it presents itself to those committed to the ideals of the Enlightenment wherever they may be found today.

Much is being made of Israel’s bombing of Gaza, specifically the targets chosen by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). As of this writing a cease-fire has been brokered, but over 1,000 buildings in Gaza have been destroyed, including 17 hospitals and the offices of the Associate Press. Hamas has a long and documented history of using schools, hospitals and other “soft targets”, as they are called, to hide weapons and fighters so absent a significant ground invasion of Gaza by IDF forces, the only alternative available to Israel was to return like fire. This brings up an important point which is noticeably lacking in most of the current discussions: what triggered this current conflict? Look no further than the 4,000 or so rockets that Hamas fired into Israel indiscriminately. The goal of Hamas’s bombing efforts was to kill as many Jews as possible: Jews in hospitals, Jews in schools, Jews in old age homes, Jews sleeping in their beds, Jews wherever they may be. This fact seems to be overlooked by many, especially from many pundits on the Left, who instead actually approve of Hamas’s actions. It is interesting to read some of the Left’s screeds justifying the indiscriminate killing of innocent civilians by Hamas. Internationally, over 70% of UN condemnations are directed at Israel while the systematic starvation of the Yemeni people by Saudi Arabia, the religious cleansing going on in Myanmar, China’s genocide of the Uighurs, and North Korea’s brutal treatment of its own people, to name but a few, are mostly ignored. I’d go so far to say, dear reader, that some of the above examples may have slipped your mind, all of which are far worse than anything done or alleged to have been done by the IDF. Yet, if one is to believe some of the op-eds, Israel has ignored Nietzsche’s warning about staring into the abyss and have become no different than Nazi’s.

As I said earlier, Israel is the only Democracy in the Middle East and that fact alone should have every single thinking person supporting Israel against the current aggression by Hamas. This does not mean supporting the Netanyahu government’s egregious actions towards the Palestinian people but it does mean that the criticism currently being directed at Israel as a whole is misplaced. It is not the Israeli people, who are also burying their loved ones because of this horrific state of affairs, but the actions of their current government that should be the target of criticism.

The solution is to root out and destroy Hamas where ever its supporters rear their ugly head. If the IDF forces had enough intelligence to target locations where Hamas stored and launched weapons and where they gathered then a ground offensive by the IDF to root them out was and continues to be the proper response. The collateral damage, specifically the killing of Palestinian non-combatants, would be reduced significantly. This alone makes the argument for boots on the ground extremely persuasive. Those actions and policies of the Netanyahu government which cross the line of international law should be condemned by the United States quickly and forcefully. In much the same way that the rest of the world made a clear distinction between the Trump administration and the American people, the same distinction should be made between Israel’s current government and the Israeli people and the State of Israel. The current rhetoric comingles the two and smacks of anti-Semitism which is on the rise here in the US as a result of the conflict.

Finally, I’ll leave you, dear reader, with a question. If a hostile foreign power started lobbing a few hundred missiles a day into your hometown while chanting, “Death to the American pigs!”, and it turns out that some of your loved ones were killed when the Middle School was turned into a smoking crater, what do you think you would want your government to do? I doubt very much you would shrug your shoulders and justify their actions in the same way Hamas’s actions are being justified in some of the US press.

The Only Freedom That Matters

Critical thinking is the alphabet and grammar of science.

Richard William Lawrence1 Comment

This is a submission for the upcoming issue of Secular World.

“I am convinced that the act of thinking logically cannot possibly be natural to the human mind. If it were, then mathematics would be everybody’s easiest course at school and our species would not have taken several millennia to figure out the scientific method.”
― Neil deGrasse Tyson, The Sky Is Not the Limit: Adventures of an Urban Astrophysicist

‘Freedom’ is a word that is on everyone’s lips these days or so it seems. From the stomach-turning image of the Q-Anon Shaman yelling “Freedom!” into his microphone as seditious group of terrorists stormed the US Capitol to right-wing pundits on TV screaming about how being asked to perform basic hygienic rituals to stem the spread of a deadly pathogen is a full-frontal assault on our freedoms, it seems that everywhere we turn we are told that our freedoms are being taken from us. This, coupled with the ever-present admonition that things have never been worse and are on the verge of chaos, makes it seem that violent action is what is needed and, indeed, we have seen these calls translate into action. We have seen the scourge of fascism march openly in the streets of the United States, chanting “blood and soil” and “Jews will not replace us” ending with a madman driving his car into pedestrians, ostensibly to “own the libs” and killing one of them while others, using metal pipes, beat a black man senseless in a parking garage. To any thinking person watching these events it would seem that a wave of madness has swept over society and, it could be persuasively argued, they would not be wrong in concluding this.

The freedom that is at stake, however, is not the freedom to believe that the Earth is flat or that vaccines cause autism, rather, it is the freedom to know both ourselves and the universe in which we find ourselves, rather it is the freedom that most do not realize they have yet swim in every day of their lives. It is the freedom to know ourselves and the world in which we live and that freedom comes directly from the inquiries of science. Science is under attack, ironically, by those whose lives are completely beholden to science in the very areas they attack. Take, for instance, the vaccine deniers: They pontificate about the dangers of vaccines while blissfully immune from the deadly diseases that have plagued mankind because they are fully vaccinated. A list of vaccines and the diseases which they prevent can be found here. I would extort the reader to pull up this list and be amazed at the amount of human suffering that has been eliminated by the science on that chart. To be free of those scourges hints at the freedom that is taken for granted. What is that freedom?

For the longest time, our species fought and struggled to stay alive. If you were lucky to survive childbirth and youth, you became a hunter or a gatherer depending on the gametes your DNA bestowed you with. At the mercy of disease, predators, weather, we spent our 30-40 years in pain, fear and suffering, helpless against the assault of the world around us. Fast-forward to the current day where we are flying drones on Mars, using mRNA technology to fight new diseases having already eradicated some and able to prevent many more, having all the libraries of the world and all their knowledge at our fingertips, the list goes on and on. What gave us this ability to first insulate ourselves and then to explore the world? Science did and by giving us all these technologies freed us from the life of a hunter gatherer and allowed us the freedom to choose. Freedom to choose how we spend our lives, how best to care for each other, who we are and how we got here, and the understanding that all we see was not made for us six thousand years ago by some vindictive and cruel god to who we are beholden in our every thought, word and deed. It is the freedom to live the life we choose, without the fears that had been constant companions to our species. This is what science gives us.

Today, we have a concerted effort to attack both science as a discipline and the people who practice it. There is a remedy for this and that is for our educational institutions to institute a K- 12 Critical Thinking curriculum in all public schools in the United States. This will have an immediate effect. High School seniors, even with just one year of Critical Thinking training, will have the essential skills to begin to parse what they hear and what they read. Imagine an electorate which asks “How do you know this to be true?” This is precisely the fruit that a Critical Thinking curriculum will give forth. As each successive class graduates, each will contain more sound thinkers more and more immunized to shoddy thinking and more and more comfortable with thinking in a scientific manner.

“Critical thinking is the alphabet and grammar of science.“

In a policy piece for Scientific American, Jim Daley wrote, “Since taking office on January 20, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have signaled a clear commitment to science and pledged sweeping initiatives to reestablish and elevate its role in the federal government.” The full article can be found here. All the proposals thus far by the Biden administration to get us back on track with science should evoke a sign of relief from any thinking person. More is needed, however, and the curriculum in our schools should also reflect this commitment to science by investing in both the methodologies (science classes) and the foundation of rationality and the scientific method, Critical Thinking.

Unity – a.k.a singing Kumbaya with the insane.

Richard William Lawrence1 Comment

It seems that the airwaves are bursting with calls for unity after the horrific events of January 6th. This rhetoric is coming from both sides of the aisle; both Democrats and Republicans are pleading for unity, for a spirit of forgiving and healing to spread over our land, and a firm commitment to let bygones be bygones as we fasten our eyes on the future and move forward. It sounds wonderful, doesn’t it? It tugs at your heartstrings in much the same way as do high pressure sales pitches for timeshares, Multi-level Marketing ‘success plans’, and, of course, your good old fashioned Ponzi scheme with its can’t miss guarantee of making you a millionaire in a few weeks for a small upfront investment.

Here’s the thing. If someone is of the mind that “Jews will not replace them!” I have a hard time find any sort of common ground upon which unity might be built. I happen to think that if someone’s anti-Semitism is so consuming that it makes them get out and march and chant such nonsense, they are, in a very real way, insane. When someone claims to have gone to heaven and had a talk with Jesus about, as it happens, Donald Trump and Jesus opined that Donald Trump would be re-elected, my first reaction is to make sure my grandchildren stand behind me. This is nonsense, every bit of it, and of the sort of hallucinations that could very well get one committed. In fact, my personal thought is that someone who claims this is, in a very real way, insane. It is certainly not the sort of thinking that I would expect to hear from members of Congress and yet, if the news is to be believed, there we have it. If you want to know what God thinks, you’ll have to come to them and they’ll tell you, for a fee, of course. Sinister doesn’t begin to describe someone who claims to have this sort of knowledge. I see no common ground with someone who thinks like this and wants this narrative guiding the politics of the United States. I do not want them in the halls of power; they should be standing on a street corner handing out menus.

What I see are a group of theocrats and fascists who tried to take over the government of the United States but failed and now want everyone to simply move on.

No.

Today starts the Senate trial of Trump’s second impeachment. If unity is what is wanted, then nothing less that a guilty vote with a lifetime ban from holding political office is acceptable. This is firmly on the shoulders of the Republicans, many of whom spread Trump’s lie that the election was stolen. These Senators were complicit in the events of January 6th and now they have their moment on the stage of history to repudiate their actions. We shall see if their actions square up with their pleas for unity.

Apostasy – The Triumph of a Free Mind

Richard William Lawrence1 Comment

“The most tyrannical of governments are those which make crimes of opinions, for everyone has an inalienable right to his thoughts.”— Baruch Spinoza

“People who change their religion should face the death penalty.”
― Zakir Naik

Apostasy seems a strange word to someone raised in the United States. As we go through our lives both we and some of the people we know question the religious beliefs they were brought up in. As our friends and neighbors progress through their education and lives, it is not unusual to hear of some abandoning their religion of birth and becoming members of some other religion: Catholics become Protestants and vice versa, some may even leave the Abrahamic religions and search out New Age or Eastern Religions. Some even abandon their religious beliefs entirely becoming, as survey results are calling them these days, ‘nones’. This searching and experimenting with different belief systems strikes the rest of us as nothing out of the ordinary; no different than choosing a different sports team to root for or even rooting for a different sport entirely. The freedom to pursue whatever avenue the mind wishes to go down is one of the privileges of living in a society that holds to Enlightenment values, specifically the ideas that traditional authority is not always correct and humans can and should improve themselves through reason. When the claims of religion contradict reason and by extension science, the child of reason, we should be and are, in fact, free to reject those claims.

Every reader knows that this freedom is not a given in other places of the world. Depending on the religious fervor of the country in question, leaving the “official religion” (another strange concept to those of us raised with Enlightenment values) may and, unfortunately does, come at the cost of one’s life. Many religions contain commandments that demand apostates should be killed. The Old Testament and the Koran both contain verses instructing the faithful to do just that. Leaving the religious plantation (apostasy) is as illegal and life threatening in some countries today as it was for slaves attempting to leave the Southern plantations during the time of slavery here in the United States. This egregious behavior is not limited to theism; political religions such as Communism engage in this behavior. Having lived in the shadow of the Berlin Wall I know this all too well. Many paid the ultimate price at the foot of that filthy wall, their flight to freedom ending in a hail of bullets or an explosion from stepping on a mine. These days Saudi Arabia and Russia, both noxious and festering cauldrons of theocratic and political fascism, respectively, are shining examples of this barbaric behavior. Jamal Khashoggi’s murder at the direction of Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, and Putin’s attempted murder of Alexei Navalny, both for political reasons are clear indications that coming to the wrong conclusions about a political regime and voicing them will ensure a secular fatwa will be issued against you demanding your death.

“The totalitarian, to me, is the enemy – the one that’s absolute, the one that wants control over the inside of your head, not just your actions and your taxes.” – Christopher Hitchens

Those who would charge others with apostasy (religious or political) and demand the required punishment of death all seem to claim a certain right over others. This right they claim, whether explicitly or implicitly, is the right of ownership. The purpose of your existence is to advance the goals of whatever system, political or religious, claims ownership of you. If you fulfill your duties, you will be allowed to live; assert or act in manner which repudiates that claim of ownership and you will either be imprisoned or killed, oftentimes both. This is, at its core, what apostasy really is: the assertion of self-ownership and the repudiation of fascist claims to the contrary. Each and every man and woman is free to think and question everything they have been taught to determine the direction of their lives. Against that are those who assert you are their possession, like some farm animal, and, like some farm animal, when you are rebellious, they will snuff out your life. Questioning their right of ownership over you is an immoral act of the highest order and deserves a like punishment. Every thinking person finds that claim of ownership and the people who make it and punish those who dare disagree with them disgusting.

“Freedom is self-determination.” — Baruch Spinoza

Secular individuals who can speak freely and inquire as their minds see fit owe this freedom to the Enlightenment values that created our modern society. It is the rediscovery of these values and the dedication to them, both as individuals and society, that will allow us to confront apostasy and the idea which underlies it, the claim to own people as chattel.

We must rededicate ourselves to the values of the Enlightenment and advocate them in the face who dare claim the right to own others. While no human endeavor is perfect, we can point to the new Vice President of the United States, Kamala Harris, to show the power of these values and what they can accomplish. Amanda Gorman, the inaugural poet at the inauguration of President Biden and Vice President Harris, pointed out that we are in, “...a country and a time where a skinny black girl descended from slaves and raised by a single mother can dream of becoming president, only to find herself reciting for one.” Every lover of freedom and self-determination should have stood up and cheered at that utterance. Though the light has dimmed and ebbed, it is still burning. It is up to us, if we truly want to purge our world of apostasy, to advance that light forward in whatever way we can. The simple enumeration of the values of the Enlightenment will start a fire in all those yearning to be free and will crush the forces opposing freedom no matter where they are or how entrenched they may appear to be.