Outrageous solutions to Intractable problems: Part 1

By Gary Berg-Cross

We are gridlocked by what seems protracted, destructive problems that are deep rooted and elude solution. The problems escalate and become irreducible, high-stakes situation which have an I, win, you lose character.  Brad Spangler, drawing from bargaining situations discusses finding "zone of possible agreement" (ZOPA). Often one needs time to explore unpleasant alternatives to find this solution zone.  But of course if people don’t want compromise they make the problem dynamic and create barriers  or limit progress towards a solution zone. How can we find solutions when normal paths seem closed and routinized processes keep us out of the agreement area? 

Well perhaps we can take unusual paths and bypass some roadblocks.  Of course these may be unreasonable and outrageous, but perhaps they make a point. Let’s consider outrageous “solutions’ to 3 outsized, intractable problems starting with Climate Change.  This is part 1. Climate change.

What should we do about climate change?  In his book Climate Matters; Ethics in a warming world. John Broome (2012), discussed the seemingly intractable problem.  As you can tell from the book title it is a moral mess but it also comes with deep rooted eco-political problems. It is scientifically and psychologically challenged.  Many things are tangled up. Broome helps us think through the tangle but dynamic opposition with a  "I- win–you-lose psychology makes some thoughtful, theoretical-ethical approaches difficult. I’m going to suggest something simper.  Something with bottom line appeal.

The projected impacts of climate change are probabilistic.  Bad things may happen. It’s a gamble with people having implicit bets on either side.  OK, let’s go with that, but make it explicit. Let’s make it a bet or bets that matter.  Let get beyond the us-them argument and have a put up or shut up bet.

The idea is simple to start.  On the pro side scientists argue that damaging change is coming. The IPCC lays out some of this which Broome also covers:

hundreds of thousands of indigenous inhabitants of the Arctic are already finding their way of life threatened. Soon “innocent people all over the world” will be struggling (as Broome points out, in a cruel misalignment of responsibility and vulnerability the world’s poor – who have contributed far less to climate change are set to suffer much more harm than the rich). Hundreds of millions of people will be affected by floods and displacement, crop failures and famines, droughts and water scarcity, and mortality through heat waves and an increase in disease. (Review of Broome).

On the other side are more conservative, sci-skeptic voices funded by groups & one percenter-establishment-folks like the Kochs.  Their argument is that it is a waste of time and (their) money to do something about a natural process.  Or perhaps they are climate skeptics.

OK, if each side believes in its position let’s get together and make predictions of likely damage about the next 10 or 20 years. And then lets sets some bets.

 What phenomena to use? The situation is a bit like the Simon–Ehrlich population bomb wager decades earlier, but we can learn from those problems of having definable outcomes.

More ice melting on Greenland or the West Antarctic Ice sheet? Heading for a big freeze, number or record highs, water level, droughts? Higher ocean levels, more acidic oceans, die offs?  We'd need to agree on the measures and they have to be in time to help one side or the other.

How much to bet?  We need enough to make a difference.  Maybe a trillion or so.  Let’s start there and see who is interested. 

Who would get involved? The Koch brothers and their institutions. Bankers and conservative economists…The 1% might be well represented.  The 99% and people who may be damaged by floods along with climate scientists might be on the other side.  Sheer gamblers could take either side.  Las Vegas will be excited but the wager could be a form of climate insurance. The winning side, in say 10 years, gets some capital to work with.  Honestly I expect the climate side to win so we should spend some time thinking of which institutions will use the money to things like fund solar power.

Maybe the UN can hold the bets and use the interest to good effect.  We might even find that groups that talk the talk are not willing to put real money up against the issue. In that case we can get serious even before the bet comes due.

Scarred Anniversaries and Article 9

by Gary Berg-Cross

Hard on the heels of the 100^th anniversary of the start of WWI Japan marked the 69th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima this week. Quite an August for conflict in memory and in the flesh of 2014. This doesn't even include the anniversary of the Gulf of Tonkin, giving President Johnson war powersto use  against the North Vietnamese or Nixon's resignation which followed a decade later in 1974.

 In Hiroshima it is quite a big deal. People don’t want to forget.  They want to move on and solve the problem of nukes. You can proably throw in other means of mass killing such as we have going in a few spots around the world. Joan Rivers made an uncomfortable comparison to the deaths of innocents in Hiroshima and Gaza.

But in Hiroshima’s peace park doves fly in the rain as you can still see some atomic bomb-scars of  building shell mixed with pleas for rational solutions to conflict.  The historical reflection by Noam Chomsky on Hiroshima Day 2014 and things like the US 1960 strategic plan for the use of nukes , for example, are sobering.

Caroline Kennedy, the U.S. Ambassador to Japan, was on hand to hear entries to disarm.  It must have seemed a bit strange with prominent conflicts going on and prime minister Abe seeking to make Japan a more “normal country.”  How?  By allowing it to “defend foreign countries and play greater roles overseas.”   Seems like a slippery slope to war launched off of that slogan – a country has a right to defend itself.  Well actually, yes, but as people like Chomsky note, maybe not by violence and war and masses of civilian death.  

Abe is a moving away of Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution which outlaws war as a means to settle international disputes involving the Japanese state. It is worth considering the power of Article 9's 73 words tempered after the Hiroshima bomb to secure a lasting peace.

“Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes.

In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.”

One wishes these were written into more, not fewer, constitutions.

“You must not hate those who do wrong or harmful things; but with compassion, you must do what you can to stop them — for they are harming themselves, as well as those who suffer from their actions.”

– Dalai Lama XIV

Happy Birthday to Poet Wendell Berry

by Gary Berg-Cross

It’s Wendell Berry’s birthday.  He was born on August 5, 1934. WB is known as a prolific American novelist, essayist, poet, and environmental activist. Well he is also prominent as a cultural critic, and notable as a hybrid academic-urban-farmer with a poetic attitude towards nature. In 2012 he gave the 43^rd Jefferson Lecture (“IT ALL TURNS ON AFFECTION”) which is perhaps the highest award given in the humanities this side of the Noble Prize for Literature.

I will say, from my own belief and experience, that imagination thrives on contact, on tangible connection. For humans to have a responsible relationship to the world, they must imagine their places in it. To have a place, to live and belong in a place, to live from a place without destroying it, we must imagine it. By imagination we see it illuminated by its own unique character and by our love for it. By imagination we recognize with sympathy the fellow members, human and nonhuman, with whom we share our place. By that local experience we see the need to grant a sort of preemptive sympathy to all the fellow members, the neighbors, with whom we share the world. As imagination enables sympathy, sympathy enables affection. And it is in affection that we find the possibility of a neighborly, kind, and conserving economy.

                 From AWARDS & HONORS: 2012 JEFFERSON LECTURER

                 Wendell E. Berry Lecture   “IT ALL TURNS ON AFFECTION”

He’s a needed voice and we can celebrate with a poem that finds comfort in the natural world and not just its Wordswothian scenery.  Describing his poetry & essays in 1978 Robert Joseph Collins  wrote A Secular Pilgrimage: Nature, Place, and Moralilty in the Poetry of Wendell Berry.

Here is a poem that illustrates pretty much encompasses much of above and speaks a bit of despair & comfort in troubled times:

When despair grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting for their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

                From http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-peace-of-wild-things/

The Negative Consequences of Believing in Superstition - Part III

This is Part III of a three part series.  (Go read Part II if you've not seen it yet!)

Politics/Law

America is in the middle of a severely dysfunctional period of political and social change.

Over the last hundred years, technology has rocketed us from the horse and buggy days to jet aircraft and rockets to the moon.  From simple telephone tech to cell phones and computers in our pockets.

A hundred years ago, information was limited to those who could read, which for the population of the US as a whole was about 90%.  In 1979, that rate was 0.6%.  The ability of people to distribute information was limited.  For a regional audience, newspapers were the norm, and was limited to what the editors would print.  A wider audience could be reached in book publication, but that was limited to what the major publishing house editors thought would sell.

Accordingly, the public picture of what was normal was limited to what people could read, and that was tightly controlled, even with what was then a fairly free press.  The abnormal was easily ignored and any contradicting speech or dissension was often swept under the rug.

Until women got angry, and began working to change things.  By 1920, the 19th amendment allowed women the right to vote after a long and contentious public debate, including protests outside the White House, often resulting in arrests.

Today, information is everywhere.  The Internet allows instant connection to just about any repository of information that has an online presence.  Many traditional repositories of information, including the Library of Congress, are rapidly digitizing their collections.

The Internet has changed communication as well.  In the early 20th century, overseas telephone calls were expensive and rare, requiring coordination by letter so both parties were available at a coordinated time.  While this got easier with time, even as late as the 1960's, calling overseas often required advance reservations of a time slot, and were still not cheap.

By the 1970-'s, with modern satellite communications systems well under construction, such calls became both cheap and easy compared to just a decade earlier.

The Internet changed all that.  Today, there are multiple methods for connecting to people, even across the globe.  Email, texting, land line calls and even cell phones can be used to connect to people instantaneously.  While the online bulletin boards of the early 90's allowed communications by text, today, with such Internet giants as Facebook and Google, communication with huge numbers of people across wide swaths of the globe are as easy as sending an email, posting to a Facebook page or setting up a web site.  Skype and FaceTime allow instant face to face communication across the globe.

Any of this can be done on a cell phone.

This communication explosion has greatly changed the character of our political discourse.  While Americans slowly and quietly moved away from devout religious observance during the course of the late 20th century, the 21st, with the advent of instant internet communication, has resulted in an explosion of secular movements and groups.  The demographic of "None" as related to religious affiliation is the fastest growing category world-wide, not merely in the US.

Many in the movement attribute this to the Internet and the ability of people of a secular point of view to see - for the first time - that they are not alone and are part of a growing and dynamic community.

The growth of secularism, from the 60's on, resulted in a backlash of religiosity, starting with the Moral Majority, and Ronald Reagan's Presidency.  This backlash has grown in political influence, spurred on by the Republican Party allying itself with the religious right in a bid for increased political influence.  Successfully, I might add.

The Religious Right (RR) has gained influence on a regional and local basis through intense local organizing and political activism.  The resulting political power thus gained has allowed the Republicans control of a substantial majority of State Houses, allowing the RR to bend the political discourse far to the right of center.

A movement known as Dominionism (of which I've written here extensively) has orchestrated much of the successful passage of laws undermining education and science, causing much social controversy and political division, especially in the area of abortion and women's reproductive health.  In many States, there is a virtual dearth of any legal means of abortion, and now the fight is being directed towards a subject everybody thought was won decades ago - contraceptives.

So, today, after decades of successful advancement of women's rights, including the right to vote, the right to divorce, including no fault provisions, the right to contraceptives and abortion, and the right own property (largely won in the 19th century), women's groups are now having to gear up and spend vast amounts of money fighting for the continued existence of rights once thought secure.

Most of this is due to religion.  Patriarchy, biblical proscriptions against women (whether real or not) and a Dominionist movement intent on converting the US from a democracy to a theocracy have all brought the American political scene to a complete and utter standstill.

RR's efforts haven't stopped there.  There is a litany of things they are working on.

abstinence-only education - Instead of medically accurate information and thoughtful conversation about intimacy and childbearing, teens get promise rings and slut shame. 

Opposing protections and rights for children.  Thanks to the influence of biblical Christianity, the U.S. stands alone with Somalia in failing to ratify the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.  

Undermining science - The scientific method has also become an existential threat to Bible belief. We know now that the Genesis creation story is myth, neurotransmitters rather than demons cause mental illness, mandrake roots and dove blood don’t improve female fertility or cure skin diseases, and the cognitive structures of the human mind predispose us to certain kinds of religious belief.

Promoting war - George Bush didn’t need to seek input from his earthly father about the invasion, because he asked his Heavenly Father.  Besides, Jesus is coming soon and war in the Middle East is predicted in the Bible.  That makes it not only inevitable, but—in a manner of speaking—desirable.

Abuse of LGBT persons and refusal of equal rights - They've fought equal rights for these folks for decades, and still are, and it would be bad enough if we were simply talking about history. But homophobic American Christians, thwarted at home, have turned to inciting oppression in Uganda and Nigeria where their hatred still finds fertile ground.

Destroying Earth’s web of life and endangering future generations - Climate change denial and refusal of reasonable methods of keeping our air and water clean and unpolluted is based on biblical scripture giving man "Dominion" (there that word is again) over the earth and all its animals, as well as the believed inevitability of the Second Coming, where God will simply create a new and better Earth guarantees that the RR will refuse to assist in doing anything to protect the environment or protect future generations from the consequences of our irresponsibility today.  Add Republicans' devotion to Corporate welfare, and the die is cast.

(Thanks to Valerie Tarico at Salon.com for her ideas and some of her language.)

I guess the greatest harm in general that religion (right wing fundamentalism in particular) does to this country is through its insistence that we support Israel.  The most vile technique they use is to accuse detractors of being anti-Semitic.  Even people who have reasoned and logical arguments against that support are branded with that epithet.

I am not, in principle, opposed to Israel.  I am not even against some form of support for it.

But our foreign policy regarding Israel is held hostage by the RR for religious reasons (because of the Second Coming) and tolerates no deviation from complete and total support.  Regardless of whether American interests are harmed or even devastated by that support, they insist that we continue to support Israel, blindly and without digression.

This has resulted in anger towards the US and much hatred of us by the Muslim world, and has resulted directly in the attacks on the World Trade Center (both of them), and a continued campaign of terrorist activity against American interests.

Our responses to that have been goaded by the RR to the point that our constitutional rights are now under attack at home and US Intelligence has eroded America's reputation for even handedness and high standards of morality to the point of almost nonexistence.  The RR's toleration and indeed, insistence on, classifying water boarding and "advanced interrogation techniques" as acceptable has completely destroyed the ability of this country to hold other countries accountable for similar actions against our own citizens, resulting in the inability of the government to protect American Citizens overseas.

Even if the Progressive movement (such as it is) managed to gain political ascendancy in the next election by some miracle, it would take decades for us to regain our good reputation for being a humane and law abiding nation.  As it is, forget it.

Obviously, this examination of the negative affects of having the population of this country believe in superstitious Bronze Age beliefs is incomplete.  If I tried to classify it all, I'd have to write a series of books.  One wouldn't be enough.

But the short story is a beginning.  If the only negative affects of religious belief were what I have touched upon here, it would be bad enough to justify organizing the secularists of this country to incite political influence and action to combat it.

But it is far, far worse than this.  The struggle to overcome religiosity and its negative affects on this country will continue into the future, and may never be fully complete.  Christianity, Judaism and Islam have been here, collectively, for over three thousand or more years.  That kind of influence doesn't go away overnight; we've been fighting it since the beginning of the Renaissance in the 12th century.

Let's not allow it to make a comeback.

Robert W. Ahrens
The Cybernetic Atheist

Getting Sound Advice from MLK

By Gary Berg-Cross

Agonizing over the various conflicts around the globe I wondered what Martin Luther King might have said.  At the time he spoke up about the Vietnam war the main street press largely criticized him:

I am convinced that it is one of the most unjust wars that has ever been fought in the history of the world. Our involvement in the war in Vietnam has torn up the Geneva Accord. It has strengthened the military-industrial complex; it has strengthened the forces of reaction in our nation. It has put us against the self-determination of a vast majority of the Vietnamese people, and put us in the position

of protecting a corrupt regime that is stacked against the poor.

It has played havoc with our domestic destinies. This day we are spending five hundred thousand dollars to kill every Vietcong soldier. Every time we kill one we spend about five hundred thousand dollars while we spend only fifty-three dollars a year for every person characterized as poverty-stricken in the so-called poverty program, which is not even a good skirmish against poverty.

Not only that, it has put us in a position of appearing to the world as an arrogant nation. And here we are ten thousand miles away from home fighting for the so-called freedom of the Vietnamese people when we have not even put our own house in order. And we force young black men and young white men to fight and kill in brutal solidarity. Yet when they come back home that can’t hardly live on the same block together.

The judgment of God is upon us today. And we could go right down the line and see that something must be done—and something must be done quickly. We have alienated ourselves from other nations so we end up morally and politically isolated in the world. There is not a single major ally of the United States of America that would dare send a troop to Vietnam, and so the only friends that we have now are a few client-nations like Taiwan, Thailand, South Korea, and a few others.

This is where we are. "Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind," and the best way to start is to put an end to war in Vietnam.

Well we are long past Vietnam but justice and judgment are still issues. 

Pushed by Neocons and ill served by career politicians lobbyists and a careerist, collaborative press we stumbled into Iraq.  We still brandish weapons at Iran, support authoritarian regimes, military-security states, occupations and drone populations into enemies at will.  We are grid locked and unable to stop the various wars that threaten.

The neocon voices are heard loudly in the land so perhaps a quick visit to the MLK memorial and some quotes brought up to date from him can put us in a better peace perspective.  What would MLK say?  And what goes through people's mind as they face the challenge of a moral life?

"I oppose the war in Vietnam (add your favorite here – Gaza, Ukraine, Iran etc.) because I love America. I speak out against it not in anger but with anxiety and sorrow in my heart, and above all with a passionate desire to see our beloved country stand as a moral example of the world."
Anti-War Conference, Los Angeles, California, February 26, 1967.

"Injustice anywhere (again add your favorite here – Gaza, Ukraine, Iran, Lybia, Syria etc.) is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly."
Letter from Birmingham, Alabama jail, April 16, 1963.

"I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality, and freedom for their spirits." (Only we aren't going to pay for any of it.)
Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, Oslo, Norway, 1964

"It is not enough to say 'We must not wage war.' It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it. We must concentrate not merely on the negative expulsion of war, but the positive affirmation of peace." (I hear in Congress that we must restore full funding to DoD.)
Anti-War Conference, Los Angeles, California, February 25, 1967.

"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of convenience and comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy." (OK, I think we have the challenge and controversy, who’s standing where?)
Strength to Love, 1963.

"Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies."
New York City, April 4, 1967. (Oh that UN thing again.  What about American/Israeli/Russian etc. exceptionalism?)

"If we are to have peace on earth, our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Our loyalties must transcend our race, our tribe, our class, and our nation; and this means we must develop a world perspective."
Christmas sermon, Atlanta, Georgia, 1967. (See above….our loyalties are too important to give to the world for free it seems.)

"I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant."
Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, Oslo, Norway, 1964. (OK, this temporary has gone on long enough.)

"Make a career of humanity. Commit yourself to the noble struggle for equal rights. You will make a better person of yourself, a greater nation of your country, and a finer world to live in."
March for Integrated Schools, April 18, 1959. (I might make this a career, after all jobs are hard to come by  What does it pay?)

Contemplate these and see where you stand on events. Comments appreciated. 

The Negative Consequences of Believing in Superstition - Part II

This is Part II of a three part series.  (Go read Part I if you've not seen it yet!)

Sex

The subject of sex in the US is so screwed up, and it is mainly because of religion.  The system of patriarchy discussed above forces men and women into gender based roles.  While the social aspects of patriarchy are bad enough, the affects on sex and human sexuality are even worse.

As noted above, men are forced into a false and totally artificial image of "manhood", that is as false and artificial as the image of "womanhood" the ladies are forced into.  This produces mental and psychological stress and often damage that hurts the individuals, their families and their friends - often their employers as well.

Why?  Why is it damaging?

Several reasons.  (Stick with me - I'll get to LGBT issues in a bit.)

I think the most obvious is in personal confidence.  Body image, and how a person portrays him or herself sexually is extremely important in this country.  Heck, for that matter, in much of the world.  It affects our social standing, our family and how it is viewed by the larger society, and eventually, how and whether we are accepted as marriage potential.

Accordingly, we are obsessed by sex, we are obsessed with youth and the sexual aspects of it.  The secular commercial realm tells us that sex is good, it is natural and wholesome and, well, whoopee!

But...

In American society, sexual beauty and attractiveness is so skewed from the norm that millions of Americans, both men and women, suffer from severe lack of self confidence because they perceive themselves as unattractive, through failing to live up to an artificial and false vision of beauty.  No, this isn't because of religion, it is because of rampant and unregulated capitalism.

Religion, or the so-called "Judeo-Christian" or "Abrahamic" religions, especially in this country, as mentioned above, enforce a patriarchy.  A large part of that system is the second class status of women, and therefore, control over their public behavior.

Christianity especially, enforces a view of sex that restricts sex to the role of procreation within a family context.  This comes, probably, from the role of the family, or the clan, as the center of Roman life.  The individual wasn't important, the family or family group, was.  Loyalty to that group was paramount, and for women, that meant only having sex with their husband, to preserve the purity of the bloodline.  Hence the religious obsession with sex as procreation, looking down on both abortion and contraception.  One because it is an "illegal" rejection of the man's seed, and the other as rejection of a man's control over his woman.

So, religion forces us into this weird, twisted image of sex - the patriarchal picture of gender roles, mixed with the god-smacked rejection of women as full humans, subservient to men, and under their full control.

This results in our social culture allowing this culture of rape.  Men are supposed to be virile, strong and manly, which is supposed to drive women into raptures of sexual frenzy.  Women are supposed to belong to men, which means they owe us sex, and they owe us their love and devotion.  Women who reject this and refuse to go along are subjected to campaigns of hate and vitriol, threats of rape and violence.

If a guy doesn't fit that manly, virile picture, he is a failure, and is ridiculed as such.

So.

For women, you have to fit this image of womanhood that reflects the stay at home mother, homemaker, sexy wife and willing brood cow, while the larger social milieu tells you that you've got to be beautiful, sexy, and available to any guy that pinches your ass.  If you don't, you're a prude, and you'll never find a husband, especially if you are ugly.

In the meantime, religion tells you that if you DO, you are a slut, a sinner and you'll go to hell.

Guys, largely, get a pass on the religion thing because, you know, patriarchy.  Unless, of course, they aren't manly, so they're failures.  Or if they allow their wives to "hen-peck" them, they aren't following the bible, so they'll go to hell then, too.

Double-failures.

Especially if they are rejected by the ladies.  Since this isn't anticipated by the traditional patriarchal framework, guys that see themselves as manly and virile who get rejected by the ladies anyway can't comprehend that rejection.  They get mad and blame their failure on the ladies, who, of course, OWE them sex.  Severe mental pain and emotional confusion are common resulting from this condition, and has been known to generate violent reactions.

Is it any wonder that Americans are so screwed up about sex?  The true wonder is how any of us manage to grow up with normal pictures of reasonable and responsible relationships in time to have families.

But wait, I'm not finished.  Not everybody is a cis-gendered, heterosexual human being.  Some folks are homosexual.  Some folks are trans-gendered, and some are bi-sexual.  There are other categories, but I don't feel qualified to talk about them.

These traditional roles I spoke of above, as screwed up as they are, aren't the whole picture, especially since they ignore our LGBT friends.  That alone is responsible for untold misery,  family fights and estrangements.  Since these folks don't fit the "normal" categories, they have traditionally been either ignored or forced into playing roles they were not comfortable with, and often beaten or killed for refusing.  All of them are condemned by religion, and totally ignored by the patriarchal system unless they rock the boat.

The 21st century's success in this country in advancing marriage equality for homosexual couples is a remarkable story of the LGBT movement's ability to go mainstream, but is still being fought tooth and nail by the religious right.

Demographics tells us that the religious will lose this fight.

But wait!  That's not all, folks!

Let's examine some other issues, like clergy abuse of both children and adults, sexually.

Everybody knows, by now, of the Roman Catholic child abuse scandal.  The RCC has spent millions of dollars in the US alone just to make this go away.  Not much to actually stop the abuse, but surely to make it go away.

One wonders, as one examines the issue and how the RCC hierarchy responded to the scandal at first.   How prevalent IS the abuse of kids by Catholic clergy?  And how long has it been going on?

There are some clues.

First, in Ireland, we've all heard of the "laundry scandal", where unwed mothers and their children were warehoused by the Church (with complicit authority from the Irish government of the day) in homes, and were made literal slaves in big laundries.  Scorned by the Church for their sexual sins, their children were as badly treated as they were.

This broke even bigger a couple of years ago and again recently when news broke (over here) of the discovery of almost 800 graves in a hidden graveyard, with an unknown number of bodies even hidden in an old unused septic tank.  Graves going back over a hundred years.

Also in Ireland, the scandal of a few years ago of stories of child abuse and murder in Irish Catholic monasteries. possibly going back hundreds of years.  Horrific stories of terrible abuse, both corporal and sexual, often combined.

In Europe a number of decades ago, there were archeological discoveries of monasteries and cloisters, built fairly close by one another, with hidden tunnels linking the two.  The most horrific part of the discovery were chambers off that tunnel containing the graves of infants and fetuses, most of whom were probably buried hours after or before birth.

All of this is evidence of a terrible epidemic of sexual malfunction in a religious hierarchy, over a thousand years old, denied sexual release and access due to official greed, excused and justified by religious scripture.

(For those who don't know, the RCC finally outlawed marriage not for religious reasons, but to end the bleeding of "church" property through inheritance to families of clergy, especially to noble families with large estates.  With no marriage allowed, thus no heirs, their property was "inherited" by the Church.)

Don't think that only the RCC is involved, preachers of almost every Protestant denomination regularly are arrested and either fired or also charged for either child abuse or sexually predatory abuse of adults.

It's all over the place.

Not to be outdone, Islam isn't far behind, as you may have noticed in the recent re-emergence of the quote of Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini.

He says: ‘A man can have sexual pleasure from a child as young as a baby. However, he should not penetrate vaginally, but sodomising the child is acceptable. If a man does penetrate and damage the child then, he should be responsible for her subsistence all her life. This girl will not count as one of his four permanent wives and the man will not be eligible to marry the girl’s sister… It is better for a girl to marry at such a time when she would begin menstruation at her husband’s house, rather than her father’s home. Any father marrying his daughter so young will have a permanent place in heaven.’ 

Read more.

Not only is this considered child abuse, but Islam has doubled down on it and authorized it because Mohammed did it.

At least, the Muslims are honest - they'll tell you God wants this to happen.

Talking about child abuse, let's talk about masturbation, something Christianity in most of its forms doesn't like to do.  In many denominations, it is banned and called out for being sinful and of the devil.

But now, scientifically, we know that it is not only a natural urge (even infants play with themselves) but it is known to be actually good for you!  It releases hormones and endorphins that make you healthier and live longer.

Heck, we know, both from scientific study and from statistics that people who have a long term sexual relationship that is happy for both parties not only stay together longer, but also live longer.  Regardless of whether they have kids or not.

So, in summary, religion in this country (and throughout the world) twists sex and sexuality in humans to the point that millions of people are, at best, dysfunctional and at worst, mentally ill and twisted towards pedophilia and sexual predatory practices, even the clergy.

It taints our marriages, our dating practices, and inculcates a culture of rape that regularly threatens the lives and well being of over a half of all women in the United States and probably causes a significant percentage of our divorces.

It directly harms our LGBT friends through violence and intimidation, forcing them into hidden lives and damaging stress by denying them a happy and healthy lifestyle.

And because sex keeps us healthy and can help us live longer, by discouraging sex in most forms and twisting our sexual practices so badly, religion is also killing us.

Are you mad yet?

(Come back tomorrow for Part III)

Robert W. Ahrens
The Cybernetic Atheist

5 Plays with Humanist Issues

by Gary Berg-Cross

It’s mid-summer and like classical Greek days some of the best takes on humanist issues are on display in plays. I’m thinking in particular about Contemporary American Theatre Festival’s (CATF) summer season that runs till August 3 in Shepherdstown, WV.  As in prior years 5 new plays are offered:

1.     North of Boulevard (Vanishing middle class and ethics)

2.     One Night by Charles Fuller (a play about two Iraqi War veterans, drifters, both PTSD victims)

3.     Uncanny Valley by Thomas Gibbons (Conversing with a robot)

4.     Dead and Breathing by Chisa Hutchinson  (Can Carolyn, a wealthy black widow dying by inches of cancer, persuade Veronika, her at-home hospice nurse, to kill her?  How does Veronika's  religion influence her decision?)

The blurb for this play described it this way:

"Full of surprises, this hilarious exploration into mortality and morality tests the boundaries of faith and forgiveness, prejudice and pridefulness, when the stakes are nothing short of life… and death."

5.     The Ashes Under Gait City (World premier) by Christina Anderson (prejudice in an Oregon town –see review)

As you can see each of them has an interesting topic. People seemed to like One Night despite the obviously dark topic.  I would have liked to see Uncanny Valley a futurist AI story about robot consciousness and it consequences. But, I was able to see my 2^nd choice -playwright Bruce Graham’s “North Of The Boulevard" (CATF founder Ed Herendeen directs). 

It’s a morality play in an auto-repair garage (with 1 auto that never does get repaired) on the wrong side of the tracks.  Well the Boulevard in this version features blue collar Americans in a town with decaying businesses. Think of Richmond on a smaller scale.  It captures the idea that much of middle class America seems on the wrong side of top 3% America. The season is Christmas and there is some plastic tree decorating to do with whatever kindness is left. From the dialog we are scrapping off kindness from the bottom of the garage barrel.  Three childhood friends - Trip the garage owner, Bear a security guard & dim witted Zee kick around failed dreams amidst memories of high school athletic fame. Zee’s irreverent & crusty father provides some of the family drama. He’s been hardened up by life and has escaped into the garage and his last place of refuge counting on Trip’s kindness.

 All four lives bounce off crumbling walls in the fading light of day.
Little corruptions seem a routine part of their lives, but what if there is a way for the 3 buddies to share in a big, but unethical and illegal, win in casino America?  As individuals and a group can they convince themselves to take the gamble in order to achieve a new life for themselves and their families?  Or shall they walk away from the temptation?
It feels a bit like a 21st century "Death of a Salesman" and one is reminded of some thoughts from that great work as failure, hope and opportunity collide in fading American dreams: 

      “Sometimes...it's better for a man just to walk away.
      But if you can't walk away?
     I guess that's when it's tough.” 

     “The jungle is dark but full of diamonds, Willy.” 
― Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman

It’s not a philosophy course in ethics, but it could serve to kick off some of the classroom discussion.

You might give it or one of the other plays a try.

CATF puts on a full range of festivals within the festival.  They have art exhibits on display at the Shepherd University campus, but also a "Humanities at the Festival"  that features a series of free lectures, stage readings, post-show discussions, thematic classes, and what they call “late-night salons.” The Saturday lectures are free and Sunday shows after 6 are about half price.

Frank Center Stage, 260 University Drive, Shepherdstown, WV 25443. Tickets $30-$59, www.catf.org/boxoffice, 304-876-5443 (credit cards) or 304-876-3473

Study: Impact of religion on childrens ability to recognize fiction

By Mathew Goldstein

Are children innately inclined to believe that fantastical stories are true?  Or is the widespread tendency of children to believe that fantastical stories are true a result of their being taught by adults to so believe?  Kathleen H. Corriveau from the School of Education, Boston University, Eva E. Chen from the Division of Social Science, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and Paul L. Harris from the Graduate School of Education, Harvard University, carried out an experiment to answer these questions and the results have been published under the title Judgments About Fact and Fiction by Children From Religious and Nonreligious Backgrounds in Cognitive Science journal.

They divided 5-6 year old children into four groups based on whether they attended religious or secular school and whether they went to church or not.  They worded the same stories three different ways: Realistic, religious miracle, non-religious magical.  Some stories featured a well known fictional or historical character (e.g. Goldilocks or Thomas Edison), other stories featured a stranger.  They asked the children to evaluate if the story was real or pretend and asked them why they reached their conclusion.  They subsequential further varied the fantastical stories four ways according to whether the event was biblical or not and was described with the word "magic" or not.

When introduced to a character via a realistic story (none of the story events violated everyday causal constraints), all four groups of children categorized the character as real. Moreover, when justifying their categorization, they appealed to the reality-bound nature of the story events. All four groups of children were less inclined to categorize the protagonist as real when the story included an explicit reference to magic.  This indicates that young children realize that stories involving real people typically include events that could actually happen.

Very few of the no religion children (secular school and no religious worship) categorized the characters embedded in the religious stories as real. Among those that did, none justified that conclusion with a reference to God.  Indeed, whenever these no religion children did refer to religion—which they sometimes did in the context of the religious stories—it was to justify a decision that the character was pretend. By contrast, the other three groups of children frequently judged the characters in the religious stories to be real. Moreover, the three groups of religious children often made an appeal to religion to defend their conclusion that the story was true.

The no religion children also categorized the characters embedded in magical stories as pretend, and most of their justifications referred to the impossibility of a central event in the story. Religious children were less likely to judge the characters in the magical stories as pretend (about 50%) and in line with this equivocation, they made more appeals to reality and fewer appeals to impossibility than did secular children.

These results suggest that children are not born believers with a belief instinct.  Young children raised without religion have little difficulty recognizing that fantastical stories are fairy tales.  Yet all young children, with their limited amount of first hand experience and knowledge, are inclined to value and accept what their parents and other adults tell them.  Exposure to religious teaching convinces young children that some agents have special power to override the causal regularities of everyday experience.  These children will then readily accept that such extraordinary powers are also wielded by agents presented to them in narratives.

Religion thus undermines the natural ability of children to distinguish fanciful fiction from constrained reality.  Unfortunately, it appears that some of this negative impact persists through adulthood and thus a cycle of religious belief and indoctrination repeats itself across generations. This dependency on childhood indoctrination also implies the perpetuation of religion is fragile and can be broken.