Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues his game-playing on the Palestinian question by trying to have his cake and eat it too. It is patently obvious that Israel, under its present government anyway, has no intention of seriously negotiating any of the outstanding issues that stand in the way of peace including the Jerusalem question.

Last month the Obama Administration attempted to jump start peace negotiations by obtaining a concession from Israel that might get the Palestinians back to the negotiating table, and with that in mind, Vice President Biden went to Israel to meet with Mr. Netanyahu over the settlements issue in East Jerusalem. While Mr. Biden was in Israel the Israeli government gave him the finger by announcing additional settlements in East Jerusalem. Mr. Netanyahu has repeatedly stated in the style of Ariel Sharon before him that he has no intention of giving up any part of Jerusalem and continues to insist that all of Jerusalem is now and shall remain Israel’s undivided capital city. That is one of the issues in contention that is to be the subject of negotiations between the parties, so the announcement by Israel of continuing the controversial settlements policy had to have been calculated to upset the Palestinians and discourage them from coming back to the negotiating table, and the snub to Mr. Biden also had to be a calculated attempt to see if Israel could continue to push back on the U.S. and get President Obama to back off his criticism of the settlements.

So after the public humiliation of the Vice President and a refusal to apologize for the affront, the U.S. made light of the public insult [either through weakness and fear of the Jewish lobby, or by a decision to take the high road] and proposed sending George Mitchell, the special envoy on Mid-East peace, back to Israel and Palestine to hold separate talks with the parties. Enter now Mr. Netanyahu, with a proposal for a Palestinian state with “temporary borders”–an approach already rejected by the Palestinians, once again making Mr. Netanyahu appear to be giving up something that he knows the other side will reject. [See April 23 Reuters article carried in the Washington Post.  Just today as I was writing this paragraph [April 25] Mr. Netanyahu announced that he was “temporarily” suspending new construction in East Jerusalem, despite opposition by his party and the threat by some in his coalition to bring down the government.

For those having trouble keeping up with the machinations on this 50-year old unsettled conflict, every few years there are negotiations followed by a calculated breakdown in the talks because neither side really wants to give up anything their side believes is important because it tends to weaken the political standing of the negotiators who do not get more than they give. Each side then pressures the other, the Israelis by closing down trade, limiting travel, and general harassment of the Palestinians, and the Palestinians respond with rock-throwing at Israeli troops and occasional Katusha rockets launched from within the Palestinian territory, some of which actually reach Israel and cause minor damage. The attacks serve each side as an excuse to escalate and so it goes.

After the last intifada, the Israelis launched a brutal, indiscriminate and devastating attack into the Palestinian territories that clearly went beyond reasonable retaliation. Israel’s friends were embarrassed and appalled at the attack, the UN launched an investigation under Justice Richard Goldstone, an eminent jurist, a supporter of Israel and a Zionist. The Goldstone Report  was lengthy, exhaustive and detailed, despite the fact that Israel refused to cooperate in the investigation, and questioned the motives of anyone who questioned Israel’s honorable actions.

We now learn, through an extensive article by Chris Hedges in Truthdig [Israel Crackdown Puts Liberal Jews on the Spot] that, in the words of Mr. Hedges,

“The Israeli government … has implemented a series of draconian measures to silence and discredit dissidents, leading intellectuals and human rights organizations inside and outside Israel that are accused—often falsely—of assisting Goldstone’s U.N. investigators. The government of Benjamin Netanyahu is attempting to shut down Israel’s premier human rights organizations, including B’Tselem, the New Israel Fund (NIF) and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel. It is busy expelling or excluding peace activists and foreign nationals from the Palestinian territories….”

 “The campaign against Israeli dissidents has taken the form of venomous denunciations of activists and jurists, including Justice Goldstone. It includes a bill before the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, which will make it possible to imprison the leaders of Israeli human rights groups if they fail to comply with crippling new registration conditions. Human rights activists from outside Israel who work in the Palestinian territories are being rounded up and deported. The government is refusing to issue work visas to employees of 150 NGOs operating in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, including Oxfam, Save the Children and Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders). The new tourist visas effectively bar these employees from Palestinian territory under Israeli occupation…. Im Tirzu, the front organization behind many of the attacks, includes among its financial backers the John Hagee Ministries and the New York Central Fund, which also support extremist settler organizations….

“The Knesset bill, if passed, will force human rights groups to register as political bodies and turn over identification numbers and addresses of all members to the government. These groups will lose their tax-exempt status. Most governmental organizations, such as the European Union, which is a large donor to Israeli human rights organizations, cannot legally pay taxes to another government, and the new law will effectively end European Union and other outside funding. The groups will be mandated to provide the government with the records of all foreign donations and account for how these donations were spent. Any public statement, event or speech, even if it lasts half a minute, by these groups must include a declaration that they are being supported and funded by a foreign power. Those who fail to follow these guidelines, including local volunteers, can face a year in jail….”

These extreme measures show how serious the Israelis are about criticism and the extent to which they will go to silence those who speak for values of freedom and truth. The article is powerfully written and readers are encouraged to read for themselves the trouble and second guessing these actions are among those who would have been inclined to be sympathetic to Israel. It is often true that we become the enemy, and Israel surely must begin to take a look at itself and see what it is becoming. More important for the U.S, we must begin to see the situation in the harsh glare of reality and begin to ease ourselves away from uncritical support of whatever Israel does. It is long past the days when it can continue to gain support by merely mentioning the Holocaust. American policy cannot afford to be held captive to the interests of Israel.

It is apparent that many Americans do not understand the Palestinian issue. There are many reasons for this. The events that started this conflict occurred at the end of World War 2 and most Americans were not yet alive or not old enough to remember the early history, and that includes most reporters who cover the continuing story. Religious Israelis argue that the land of Israel is the same as biblical Israel and that god has given them this land, an argument that resonates with Christian fundamentalists but fails to acknowledge the Muslim interest in Jerusalem as sacred to its past just as it is to Jews and Christians. The frustration of the Palestinians at their treatment by Israel and their inability to be taken seriously by the rest of the world, the failure to understand the root issues of Palestinian anger, the attacks on the Palestinians by Israel that are characterized without challenge as “defensive strategies,” and the unwillingness of the U.S. to criticize Israel and end massive military and social services funding for Israel, are the root causes of the Palestinian acts of terrorism against Israel and hatred of the U.S. by Muslims throughout the world.

A quick refresher on what happened–Palestinians who owned homes and businesses in Palestine were forcibly uprooted into refugee camps to make a place for the Jews of Europe. They were supposed to be compensated, but they weren’t. A series of wars occurred between Israel and displaced Palestinians supported by the neighboring Muslim states. The Israelis won the war and decided to keep the land they took from their neighbors. Israel controlled land surrounding their country and began to put their settlers there forcing more Palestinians to lose their homes. In Jerusalem the Israelis keep forcing more and more Muslims from their homes ALTHOUGH THIS IS ILLEGAL UNDER UN RESOLUTIONS that are officially recognized by the US. Israel ignores the rest of the world. The Palestinians are trying to get their lands and homes back and they are doing it in the only way they can–by fighting the Israelis. They see themselves as freedom fighters. But Israel is very vicious in its offensives against Palestinians and thinks they can get away with revenge attacks by calling what they are doing defending Israel.

Without recognizing the root cause of Palestinian and Muslim anger and frustration and finding a way to resolve those underlying issues it will not be possible to resolve the Arab-Palestinian problem. This is NOT an anti-Israel or pro-Arab statement; it is merely a statement of the underlying issues that seem to have become lost in the Israeli attempts to characterize the standoff as Israel’s right to defend itself against terrorism. There is a reason for the terrorism that the current discussions ignore.

Because humanists do not have a religious bias that is for or against the parties on underlying religious grounds, they may be able to see the issues more clearly. Unfortunately given the political realities and the intransigence of the parties that may not help resolve the problem.

The Christian Humanist 

For some reason that must be deep in the psyche of our contemporaries there seems to be a lot of interest in the debate about god—is he or isn’t he?  Advocates on either side of the issue from the well-known outspoken advocates of atheism to the defenders of the reality of god are on the airways and the bookstands defending their views.  The sudden recent interest in this issue puzzles me because it seems like a regression backward to an earlier generation of lively debate on the topic.  I had thought the issue had been placed in the “no point of arguing” bucket because there was no way to resolve the issue by discussion.  Some seemed inclined, regardless of evidence, to take that “leap of faith” into the world of gods and spirits, apparently believing that it could do no harm to decide for god, whereas believing the contrary might put them uncomfortably in harm’s way if god were real and vindictive.

I fall on the side of the non-believer in that I do not think that the arguments for god have much persuasive ability or much attraction.  I used to “believe” in god as a child and young man, but over time and education, the belief in god seemed uninteresting and irrelevant.  There was never an “ah-ha” moment when the light bulb went off and I changed my mind on the subject.  It was like many childish ideas in that as I got older and knew more about the world and had more experiences, the inherent problems with religious belief just became insurmountable and the concept disappeared from my consciousness and my belief system.

I have never felt a need to become militantly atheistic.  I think you have to take the concept seriously in order to debate it seriously, and I do not have much interest in the topic.  However since I have been writing on the subject of Christian Humanism I have had numerous people write to me to show me the error of my thinking, asserting that if I just understood more, or listened to their arguments carefully, or gave god a chance, or did not close my mind to religious thinking and opened my heart to the Holy Spirit, or even if I prayed with them about my unbelief, that they could get me back on the path of right thinking on the subject of religion and restore my belief.  One of the usual tactics is to tell me that it is my education that destroyed my belief and that education is the work of the devil, subtly taking away belief when I bit into the attractive apple of knowledge.  I must admit to being annoyed by the arrogance of belief that dismisses unbelief as a churlish refusal to believe what to them is so obvious.  

In graduate school I did a lot of reading in philosophy of religion.  Back in the 1950s (when I was in grad school) some of the most interesting philosophers were in England.  One writer in particular made a significant impact on my early thinking in the philosophy of religion, Antony Flew, an Oxford professor who was a prolific writer and speaker who regularly took the negative side in frequent debates about the meaningfulness of religious language in general and talk about god in particular.  One passage in particular struck me as stating in very simple language the essence of the argument, a short article in his book Logic and Language, entitled “Theology and Falsification,” (Blackwell, 1953).  I still have that book in my library.

He says:

Let us begin with a parable. It is a parable developed from a tale told by John Wisdom in his haunting and revolutionary article “Gods.”  Once upon a time two explorers came upon a clearing in the jungle. In the clearing were growing many flowers and many weeds. One explorer says, “Some gardener must tend this plot.” The other disagrees, “There is no gardener.” So they pitch their tents and set a watch. No gardener is ever seen. “But perhaps he is an invisible gardener.” So they set up a barbed-wire fence. They electrify it. They patrol with bloodhounds. (For they remember how H. G. Well’s The Invisible Man could be both smelt and touched though he could not be seen.) But no shrieks ever suggest that some intruder has received a shock. No movements of the wire ever betray an invisible climber. The bloodhounds never give cry. Yet still the Believer is not convinced. “But there is a gardener, invisible, intangible, insensible, to electric shocks, a gardener who has no scent and makes no sound, a gardener who comes secretly to look after the garden which he loves.” At last the Sceptic despairs, “But what remains of your original assertion? Just how does what you call an invisible, intangible, eternally elusive gardener differ from an imaginary gardener or even from no gardener at all?”

In this parable we can see how what starts as an assertion, that something exist or that there is some analogy between certain complexes of phenomena, may be reduced step by step to an altogether different status, to an expression perhaps of a “picture preference.”  The Sceptic says there is no gardener. The Believer says there is a gardener (but invisible, etc.). One man talks about sexual behavior. Another man prefers to talk of Aphrodite (but knows that there is not really a superhuman person additional to, and somehow responsible for, all sexual phenomena). The process of qualification may be checked at any point before the original assertion is completely withdrawn and something of that first assertion will remain (Tautology). Mr. Wells’ invisible man could not, admittedly, be seen, but in all other respects he was a man like the rest of us. But though the process of qualification may be and of course usually is, checked in time, it is not always judicially so halted. Someone may dissipate his assertion completely without noticing that he has done so.  A fine brash hypothesis may thus be killed by inches, the death by a thousand qualifications.

And in this, it seems to me, lies the peculiar danger, the endemic evil, of theological utterance. Take such utterances as “God has a plan,” “God created the world,” “God loves us as a father loves his children.” They look at first sight very much like assertions, vast cosmological assertions. Of course, this is no sure sign that they either are, or are intended to be, assertions. But let us confine ourselves to the cases where those who utter such sentences intended them to express assertions. (Merely remarking parenthetically that those who intend or interpret such utterances as crypto-commands, expressions of wishes, disguised ejaculations, concealed ethics, or as anything else but assertions, are unlikely to succeed in making them either properly orthodox or practically effective).

Now to assert that such and such is the case is necessarily equivalent to denying that such and such is not the case. Suppose then that we are in doubt as to what someone who gives vent to an utterance is asserting, or suppose that, more radically, we are sceptical as to whether he is really asserting anything at all, one way of trying to understand (or perhaps to expose) his utterance is to attempt to find what he would regard as counting against, or as being incompatible with, its truth.  For if the utterance is indeed an assertion, it will necessarily be equivalent to a denial of the negation of the assertion. [emphasis mine].  And anything which would count against the assertion, or which would induce the speaker to withdraw it and to admit that it had been mistaken, must be part of (or the whole of) the meaning of the negation of that assertion. And to know the meaning of the negation of an assertion, is as near as makes no matter, to know the meaning of that assertion.  And if there is nothing which a putative assertion denies then there is nothing which it asserts either: and so it is not really an assertion. When the Sceptic in the parable asked the Believer, “Just how does what you call an invisible, intangible, eternally elusive gardener differ from an imaginary gardener or even from no gardener at all?” he was suggesting that the Believer’s earlier statement had been so eroded by qualification that it was no longer an assertion at all.

Now it often seems to people who are not religious as if there was no conceivable event or series of events the occurrence of which would be admitted by sophisticated religious people to be a sufficient reason for conceding “there wasn’t a God after all” or “God does not really love us then.” Someone tells us that God loves us as a father loves his children. We are reassured. But then we see a child dying of inoperable cancer of the throat. His earthly father is driven frantic in his efforts to help, but his Heavenly Father reveals no obvious sign of concern. Some qualification is made — God’s love is “not merely human love” or it is “an inscrutable love,” perhaps — and we realize that such suffering are quite compatible with the truth of the assertion that “God loves us as a father (but of course…).” We are reassured again. But then perhaps we ask: what is this assurance of God’s (appropriately qualified) love worth, what is this apparent guarantee really a guarantee against? Just what would have to happen not merely (morally and wrongly) to tempt but also (logically and rightly) to entitle us to say “God does not love us” or even “God does not exist”?  I therefore put to the succeeding symposiasts the simple central questions, “What would have to occur or to have occurred to constitute for you a disproof of the love of, or the existence of, God?”

The issue here is so obvious that it does not need any further exposition.  It is known in philosophy as the “principle of falsification.”  If there is no fact, experience or observation that would lead one to conclude that a statement was not true, then there is nothing that the statement asserts.  In other words, if a statement cannot be falsified the statement is meaningless.  That is the fundamental issue that must be faced by those who assert the meaningfulness of language about god.

_________________

Note:  I am not unaware of the controversy surrounding some statements made by Antony Flew prior to his death in which he is alleged to have conceded that modern science may not be inconsistent with deism to which we respond that [a] if true, it is not relevant to the logic of the statement above; and [b] he was in his 80’s, admittedly senile and may have been mis-quoted or quoted out of context.

http://www.christianhumanist.net

There is a troublesome news article on MSNBC about a Pakistani terrorist who had planned to use a 14-year old boy as a suicide bomber, the boy not knowing that he was to be killed in the attack.

There are three sentences in this story that raise issues that are instructive in understanding the mind of the terrorists and in instructing ourselves on issues that we as westerners need to consider.

[1] “I was happy to be in place where I could kill unbelievers,” he said. “I thank God that we all returned safely and had a successful mission.”   He wanted to kill “unbelievers” not because of anything they had done to him, but they were not believers in his god and his religion.  His religious faith was so distorted and fanatical that he believed that killing was an appropriate response to unbelief.  There is something very wrong in the heart of a religious faith that sees the world in such “us versus them” terms, yet it seems to be endemic to the nature of fundamentalist interpretations of religion—muslim, Jewish or Christian. I have studied this issue and discuss it in an essay on “Fanatic Fundamentalists”  at http://christianhumanist.net/fanatic.aspx

[2] “Baseer worked as a mosque preacher in the Khyber region, not far from the northwestern capital, Peshawar.”  He was an uneducated peasant with no school other than study of the Quran at fanatical schools that taught nothing other than the Quran.  Unfortunately this is all too true in countries like Pakistan, where religious schools provide little by way of education and certainly no study of science, history, the humanities, or even practical subjects like engineering or accounting,  which could not only prove enlightening, but might provide some job skills that would get these people out of poverty.  A nation that does not educate its people is doomed to poverty and second class standing, and that is the very ground from which terrorists with nothing to live for are created.

[3] Did he feel any guilt about what lay in store for his traveling companion? No, he said. “I was feeling good because he was going to be used against Americans.”  The end justifies the means.  There is no value to another life even when that life was being sacrificed in a cause not understood by the person being sacrificed.  This is pretty much child sacrifice of the sort practiced by primitive peoples.  Human life has little value in this context, although we note with disgust that Baseer was not sacrificing himself, he was sacrificing another.  A religion so primitive does not warrant being called a serious religion, certainly not on a par with Christianity and Judaism. 

The politically correct and the advocates for Islam will say that is not a fair statement, that these attitudes are an aberration and a misunderstanding of Islam, that there are fundamentalists in all  religions that distort the values of the religion for political or personal purposes, and it is not fair to judge a religious faith by its outliers.  Maybe.  So here are some basic questions that advocates of Islam must deal with:

[a] Why are there no academic and educational requirements for being a “preacher” or an Imam among Muslims, as there are for Christians priests and ministers, and Jewish rabbis?  How can a person with no education be put in a role of educational and religious leadership? Sadly we must note here that even in our country it is possible to become a “preacher” of fundamentalist churches and religious sects by just saying one is a minister and having the local church agree—with no education required.   

[b]Why do Muslim countries almost universally have no educational system worth noting? Education in the Quran, without general and vocational education, is almost certainly guaranteed to keep a country in poverty, and most Muslim countries are very poor. Poor people become desperate and are the recruiting ground for troublemakers and terrorists.  In our own country the “haves”– who are so concerned about taxes for schools, or are against extending unemployment benefits, or oppose helping  the needy, or who advocate state money for religious schools as an escape from modern ideas that they oppose on religious grounds—can learn a useful lesson  here about what happens to countries when there is a very small middle class, and a vast underclass of the poor who are uneducated religious fundamentalists equipped with constitutionally-protected guns, who set up church schools to teach distortions of history and deny the validity of science, and teach their students to live in the world of the last century.

[c] If Muslims believe that they are unfairly portrayed, why don’t they actively criticize their fundamentalist preachers and drive them out of positions of leadership?  Where is the active and constant criticism of terrorist practices and terrorists that we have a right to expect from those who say they espouse Western culture? Why do Muslims move to Western countries, but then fail to assimilate by learning the language and culture of the country where they choose to live? Why do they so often insist that they have a right to their traditional and cultural practices that go against the norms of western cultures?

[d] Historically, going back centuries, Muslim countries were educated and leaders in science and technology.  In recent times that has not been true.  Where is the demand from the leadership in Muslim countries, from Arabia to Pakistan, to dissolve the religious schools and bring about serious education, so that the peoples of their countries can participate in the modern world, where educational skills are important to financial success?  Isn’t it because the leadership of Muslim countries, as now constituted, are tyrannies of one sort or another [monarchies, kingdoms, military dictatorships] where the leadership believes they can only remain in power if they keep the people uneducated? Are they afraid of democracy, which seems to be the dream of an educated and literate populace?

 http://www.christianhumanist.net

OK, we get it. The Tea Party and its sympathizers are feeling frustration and rage at government, at economic conditions, at a sense of unfairness at others getting help at what they believe is their expense and they have lost a belief in shared values and common interests.  That’s too bad.  However they seem to overlook some inconvenient facts—the amount of Federal tax any of us pays is a lot less than it used to be just a few short years ago, and the Obama administration has not increased taxes on anyone, at least not yet.

READ FULL POST

The New York Times, in an article April 13 by David Leonhardt, reports that 47% of households owe no Federal income tax for 2009 but concludes that figure is highly misleading because it does not tell the whole story.  Cable television and talk radio are using that number ahead of the Tax Day Tea Party protests to suggest that “the wealthy face a much higher tax burden than they once did while growing numbers of Americans are effectively on the dole.”

Leonhardt makes three important observations on why that conclusion is misleading:

[a] Over the last 30 years, rates have fallen more for the wealthy, and especially for the very wealthy, than for any other group. At the same time, their incomes have soared, and the incomes of most workers have grown only moderately faster than inflation. So a much greater share of income is now concentrated at the top of distribution, while each dollar there is taxed less than it once was.

[b] Taking into account both taxes and tax credits, the average household in this group paid a total income tax rate of just 3 percent…. But the picture starts to change when you look not just at income taxes but at all taxes. This average household would have paid 0.8 percent of its income in corporate taxes (through the stocks it owned), 0.9 percent in gas and other federal excise taxes, and 9.5 percent in payroll taxes. Add these up, and the family’s total federal tax rate was 14.2 percent.

[c] State and local taxes … may actually be regressive. That is, middle-class and poor families may face higher tax rates than the wealthy.  As Kim Rueben of the Tax Policy Center notes, state and local income taxes and property taxes are less progressive than federal taxes, while sales taxes end up being regressive. The typical family pays a lot of state and local taxes, too — almost half as much as in federal taxes.

A week ago I wrote an article entitled Paying Taxes is a Privilege in which I noted that the stated objective of the tax cutting movement is to lower the “marginal” Federal income tax rates to benefit the wealthiest Americans. The essence of the argument is “fairness” and the tactic is a proposal to eliminate differential income tax rates in favor of a “flat tax” that everyone would pay at the same rate.  The question of tax “fairness” is a complicated one that could be answered in different ways depending on what values and assumptions are considered in the discussion but, regardless, the practical effect of lowering taxes on the wealthy inevitably involves shifting more of the burden onto the middle class and the poor. That is not an opinion—it is just a mathematical fact. 

It is reasonable to argue that “fairness” of the tax burden means fairness in terms of ability to pay and that those who are wealthy have profited more from society and should pay more for its support. It is also obvious that requiring a wage earner with a middle class income to pay 10% of his income as tax, which cuts into the amounts required for food, clothing and shelter, creates a much greater burden on the middle class than a 10% tax on the income of a millionaire creates on the lifestyle of the wealthy. Arguing otherwise involves an “Alice in Wonderland” view of reality.

Remember, as pointed out above, the current real Federal tax rate paid by most of that 47% taxpayer group is 14.2% inclusive of payroll taxes of 7.65% for Social Security and Medicare taxes, so it is important that the implications of the Flat Tax proposal be compared on an “apples to apples” basis.  In other words, does the Flat Tax include all Federal taxes, or does it intend to exclude the 7.65% FICA tax paid now by all wage earners, because if the FICA tax is in addition to the flat tax rate, then to get the actual rate paid by lower and middle income taxpayers you need to add the two rates together for a real Federal tax rate of 17.65%.

To clarify the fuzzy math of the flat tax advocates, as I argued in more detail in an earlier essay, [It’s Time To End Entitlements For The Wealthy] here is a fact, from the IRS, about the super wealthy–they paid an effective tax rate of 16.6% on their average income of $344.8 MILLION, a tax rate slightly lower than my tax rate, because of loopholes, capital gains and other tax gimmicks that favor the wealthy.

Here’s another fun fact about how the tax system transfers wealth from lower income people to the wealthy—Social Security tax is paid on wage income up to $106,000 at a rate of 7.65%. An individual making $50,000 per year has $3825 taken out of his wages. An individual making $2.5 million has $8109 taken out of his wages, for a net tax rate of .325%. The lower paid person pays a rate 23.54 times HIGHER than the millionaire.

For the doubters out there, here are the actual calculations:

$50,000 x 7.65% = $3825 total social security tax on the individual.

$2,500,000 income is taxed only on the first $106,000.  $106,000 x 7.65% = $8109 total tax on the individual.

$8109 divided by $2,500,000 is a rate of 0.32436%.

The person making $50,000 pays 7.65% of their income ($3825) to social security.

The person making $2,500,000 pays 0.32436% ($8109) of their income to social security.

7.65% (the rate paid by the lower income) divided by 0.32436% (the rate paid by high income) is 23.58 times higher.

Contrary to the argument made by the wealthy, lowering taxes on the wealthy and shifting the burden onto the middle class involves a wealth transfer (redistribution of wealth, anathema to the right) from the lower and middle class to the wealthy, and that cannot be fair in any reasonable sense of what “fairness” means.  This is a message that needs to be constantly repeated to the Flat Tax advocates.  It sounds on the surface like a good idea, but it will not pay the bills without transferring the burden away from the wealthy to the middle class, and that is the primary objective of the flat taxers.

http://www.christianhumanist.net

The Boston Globe published a terrific feature article on Sunday April 11 entitled “The Unbelievers: What happens when a minister decides there’s no God.”   The article is based on a study conducted by Professor Daniel Dennett of Tufts University that summarizes the content of interviews he conducted in depth with a number of ministers who over the years found that they have lost their faith in god and yet who continue to serve as ministers of churches because they are “trapped” in a profession that they do not know how to gracefully remove themselves from, and in many cases are also caught in a situation in which they do not know how to break the news to family, friends and parishioners.  Someone described the situation as similar to being a closeted gay, unsure how they will be accepted once they come out of the church closet, unsure how they will support themselves if they have to give up their vocation as a result of their belief.

This study resonates with me because it is my story also, a story that I have been telling in some detail on my own Christian Humanist website.  Professor Dennett calls himself an atheist, but I prefer the term non-theist, because it is less confrontational and softer.  I do not oppose the concept of god and do not see any particular reason to be combative about my beliefs or to provoke believers, I have just lost interest in god and do not find that term helpful, necessary or meaningful.

On the other hand, I believe that an ethical system is necessary, and I find there is a great deal of value in Christian ethical beliefs and in the teachings of Jesus, and I choose to base my ethical choices and priorities on those teachings.  Therefore while I am a Humanist in that I value humanity and the humanities (and like many humanists, I do not believe in gods), I am a Christian in that I choose to be a follower of the teachings of Jesus.

Professor Dennett is right, however, when he observes the difficulty that a minister or priest encounters when they realize that faith has quietly left them and they must figure out how to navigate their way through some treacherous waters as they try to work out the implications for them, for their family and friends, for their church.  Over the past two years since I set up my website I have been contacted by a number of ministers who are struggling with the issue of faith, belief and vocation and it is sometimes so difficult that it results in the breakup of marriages, conflicts with families and private despair for those who want desperately to believe, feel a great loss in their life, but know that they cannot go back again.

Dennett summarizes his study this way:

“What emerges is a portrait of men (the one woman interviewed backed out at the last minute) grappling earnestly and incisively with the sort of theological quandaries familiar to anyone who has studied and doubted Christian doctrine. Just as strong, though, is the sense of secrecy and evasion that pervades their lives: having to hide their lack of belief from parishioners, friends, even family members. Some spoke of feeling trapped: questioning their fitness for the pulpit but unable to leave because of a mix of personal, cultural, and even financial reasons.”

 

Jim Wallis, founder of Sojourners, wrote an article A Christian Covenant For Civility that was published on the Huffington Post.  It is worth reading.  It says in part:

“Just a few months ago, a deeply concerned, veteran member of Congress called me to express real despair about the alarming level of disrespect, personal attacks, and even hateful rhetoric that was occurring among her colleagues — reflecting a degeneration of public debate in our national culture. This month, another member of Congress called to express real fear about threats of violence he and other elected officials had experienced against themselves and their family members. Political debate, even vigorous debate, is a healthy thing for a democracy; but to question the integrity, patriotism, and even faith of those with whom we disagree is destructive to democratic discourse, and to threaten or even imply the possibility of violence toward those whose politics or worldview differs from ours is a sign of moral danger, and indeed, a sign of democracy’s unraveling.”

I have a website and a blog [ http://www.christianhumanist.net ]. I encourage/permit comments by readers.  Most are positive and encouraging, but occasionally I get a nasty note from someone who says in ignorance that Christian Humanist is an oxymoron, they will pray for me, I must be confused, etc.  One comment this past week went way over the line – in an email he described himself as in his second year of bible college, he was on a mission, he was giving me a warning that if I didn’t stop “confusing people” with my non-theistic Christian beliefs that he would “stop” me.  He kept up his threats, despite my soft non-confrontation replies, so I finally sent him a “cease communicating” email or I would report him to the FBI for felony threat.  It is too bad that we have gotten to that point.

More worrying than the occasional whacko comment is the almost daily vitriolic commenting on the online blog commentary of my local newspaper, where the extremists are very verbally abuse anyone who expresses even a moderate view. Most of the comments are angry, mean-spirited, contemptuous, insulting, and hateful by the ignorant and uneducated, who seem to be repeating Glenn Beck views of the world and politics.  I wrote a commentary on guns and gun violence and commented on the Constitutional provision for gun ownership–to which one person (with the avatar “sixgun”) replied that it would be interesting when the revolution comes because the liberals and lefties won’t have guns, and the right will, so it will be a very short battle.  It is very disconcerting to see that much anger, intolerance of views and simmering hostility. It leads me to suspect that it would take very little for armed conflict and violence to occur.

Even a cursory reading about the life and teachings of Jesus suggests that if our nation were to become a Christian nation, with Christian values playing out in our public policy, it would be a very different country than it is today, a country that Christian conservatives and their Tea Party allies would not like.

Our domestic policy priority would be to care for all of our citizens without regard to power or influence.  We would feed the hungry, clothe the naked, house the homeless, care for the sick, provide for the widows and the elderly, heal the veterans, teach and protect the children.  We would be a caring nation, which means that we would see that all in our society were cared for.  We do this now, grudgingly, stingily and with much complaining by ideological Republicans that people must be responsible for themselves and that government should have no role in caring for individuals who cannot make it on their own.  The selfish in our society want all their money for themselves as an entitlement and do not want to part with it in taxes levied for the common welfare of all—but this attitude reflects just the opposite of Christian values. [Oddly, those who are most likely to argue that the U.S. is a Christian nation are the same people most likely to complain that the government should not tax “hard working Americans” to provide benefits to others under some theory of individual responsibility.]

Our foreign policy would be less arrogant, more humble, not so quick to take offense, not as bellicose and belligerent, less inclined to resort to force, less inclined to see every problem in the world as requiring a military solution, more interested in making and keeping peace.  Our Peace Corps would be larger than our military.  When Air Force planes or Navy ships headed to another country their holds would be filled with food, water, tents and medical supplies rather than bombs, and the primary mission would be to provide aid in response to famine, flood or earthquake, with sufficient strength for robust defense if and when necessary.

Our government and our citizens would demand justice and equal treatment for all: economic crimes and white collar criminals would be treated as any other crimes and criminals; our officials would throw the money changers, money managers and lobbyists out of the temples of power in the state and national legislatures; corporations and business interests would have no more power and influence than the least among us; we would value integrity and honesty in our public and private dealings and we would not tolerate hypocrisy and self-dealing in our public officials.

We would speak truth to power. As a people we would stand with the victims among us against their oppressors. Our people would not be so quick to condemn others for their actions while ignoring their own foibles. We would not stone adulterers or lesbians or throw rocks at gays or condemn those whose values and priorities are different than ours but no less legitimate.  We would not attempt to compel others to live by our values while disrespecting their values and beliefs.  We would not condemn so easily those who believe in a woman’s right to choose, and we would not support violence against those who support the right to abortion.  We would not pretend to support a culture of life while building bombs, promoting war and supporting the death penalty.

Critics say that these Christian values are impractical, idealistic and unworkable as national policy.  Maybe so.  But then don’t tell me this is a Christian country.  That’s not realistic either.

[This is the last of three articles on the subject of the United States as a Christian Nation.  The complete article can be read on my website or on my electronic newsletter Perspectives.]

While we believe that the record is clear that we are not now and have never been a Christian nation, if we assume for the moment that we are a nation founded on principles that are consistent with Christianity, and if we further assume that the majority of our citizens identify themselves as Christians, and given that some of our citizens want to believe that we are a Christian nation, what would it mean, theoretically speaking of course, to say that the United States is a Christian nation?  What operating principles are implied in being a Christian nation, and how would we then differ from a nation that was not a Christian nation?  What would being a Christian nation imply for our laws? For our treatment of our citizens?  For social policy? For our foreign policy and our relationships with other countries? For our views on crime and punishment? For economic and distributive justice? For our views on war and peace?

In short, if we are a Christian nation, as some would like us to believe, what behavior and policy considerations are implied by that fact?

There are two different ways to approach the question of what it would mean to be a Christian nation.

The first way is to look for guidance to the principles consciously established by the founding fathers which, as we have already said, are reasonably consistent with Christian values and may have been derived from them, as annunciated most clearly and emphatically in the Declaration of Independence—that all men are created equal at least in the eyes of the law and therefore have the inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  Inalienable means that inherent rights cannot be taken away, even if the government thinks that it can better protect us if it takes away those rights.  We believe that those fundamental rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness imply and underlie the Bill of Rights in our Constitution.  We believe that they are based in the social contract theory of government—that we join together for the common good, for protection, for security. We believe that fundamental human rights include the right to a job or other financial security, to be free from hunger, to shelter, to health care, to a share of the benefits of our society.  The social contract theory at least establishes the legal basis for developing implications for policy and conduct that is consistent with being a Christian nation.  It gets us to the same place as the second approach, but admittedly takes more work to parse out the implications in concrete terms.

The second approach, which I assume Christian leaders and followers would be eager to pursue, is to look at the implications of Jesus’ teaching and the model of his life as a guide to our national and international policies.  It should be obvious (but needs repeating) that being a Christian nation should not be merely a hollow phrase or an empty slogan. Being a Christian nation has serious implications for our behavior as a nation that many of those who would like to think we are a Christian nation may not be prepared to concede.  Just as being a Christian means being a follower of Jesus and living out his teachings in our daily life, so being a Christian nation means valuing and using the teachings of Jesus as a guide to our national policies and our behavior as a nation.

So we look to the teachings of Jesus for guidance at least to the extent that we can know them through words attributed to him in the Gospels as they have survived through the centuries, and we look to the example and model of his life, again to the extent that we know anything about his life from the surviving historical documents.  On the basis of what we know or think we know about the life and teachings of Jesus, there are some useful fragments we can assemble to guide us in our policy considerations and our actions.

When I was a child, both through various church activities and groups, as well as by parental dictate, I was forced to memorize passages from the Bible—some psalms, the Ten Commandments, some bits from the prophets, the essay on love in Corinthians, the Lord’s Prayer, a large part of the Sermon on the Mount, and that particular portion of collected wisdom that we know as the Beatitudes.  They have stuck with me and 60 years later I can still recite them from memory.  They remind me what fundamental Christian values are about and they impact my thinking about social and public policy.

It is clear from the teachings of Jesus as we have come to know them as well as from the writings of his followers that have come down to us through the generations that love is the essential Christian value, sometimes crystallized into the singular phrase “love thy neighbor as thyself.”  To avoid any misunderstanding or misinterpretation, we need to elaborate a bit about what love means when used by the Christian as the fundamental guiding principle behind Christian moral values.

While Jesus probably spoke Aramaic, the common language of the region in which he lived and taught, what we know about Jesus and his teachings has come down to us in Greek, the language commonly used in the centuries following Jesus’ time.  In Greek there are three different words with quite different meanings that are all translated into English as “love”–eros, philos and agape.  Eros refers to sexual attraction, sexuality, making love.  Philos is best understood as a “liking for” or “enjoyment of” as in the love of a good friend, or the pleasure of a beautiful sunset, or the love of a good book, and is often joined with another word in the Greek, as in philosophy (philos + sophia), the love of wisdom, or in philanthropy (philos + anthropos), the love of mankind resulting in works of compassion.

The Christian use of love comes from agape, which means the affirmation of the worth and dignity of another person, valuing others for who they are as persons, respecting the humanity of others and treating them with the dignity and respect that they deserve.  It is “self-less” love.  Love in this sense of the term is what Christian love is all about.  So when we use the phrase “love thy neighbor as thyself” we understand it to be the fundamental premise of Christian values—what it means is to treat others with the respect and dignity they deserve as fellow human beings, just as you would wish for yourself if you were in their place.

If the United States were a Christian nation, the principle of love, of respect for others and the affirmation of their dignity and essential humanity, would be the guiding principle underlying our laws, our social policy, our treatment of our citizens, and the basis of our foreign policy, and we would expect to judge ourselves and have others judge us on the basis of how well we fulfilled our national commitment to express love (agape) in our laws, our social policies and our actions.

[This is the second of three articles on the subject of the United States as a Christian Nation.  The complete article can be read on my website or on my electronic newsletter Perspectives.]

Dear Traditional Americans:

Those of us in the Tea Party believe that the rest of you do not understand what is best for you and we believe that our approach will be best for America in the long run.  We are angry about a lot of things. We believe that taxes are too high.  We believe that taxes should be cut dramatically at all levels from the Federal government all the way down to States and Towns.  Sure, that means that we will have to cut some programs, like services to women and children, and Medicare and Medicaid, and Social Security and unemployment (after all, why should people get paid not to work) and food stamps (those people use them to buy cigarettes, and junk food, and beer)  and of course we will have to cut our school budgets and our libraries, but most of those things are used by illegal immigrants and the “do nothings” who do not contribute to society like us hard working real Americans, and we can get along just fine without these things.  The really important  thing is to cut our taxes.

We need to stop all this foolishness about healthcare for everybody.  I can hardly afford my medical insurance now, and when all those people who don’t have insurance or the money to afford health care start getting access to the healthcare system, it is going to put a strain on limited resources and I will have to wait longer, and doctors are going to be frustrated and leave the system and go to Canada or Europe or somewhere else where they don’t have to put up with this socialist plan that Obama has to destroy our good old American health system.

We need to start focusing on jobs, jobs, jobs.  We in the Tea Party (and of course our close relatives in the Republican Party, to whom we pretend we are not really related, but that’s another story) believe that if we only could cut taxes on business, that employers will rush out and expand their factories and start employing lots of people, and the problem of unemployment and recession will be over.  You see it’s kind of a “chicken and egg” thing, and we’re going to cut taxes and that’s going to be the chicken, and then we will have eggs; or maybe it’s the other way around, we’re the egg and we’re going to have a chicken…I forgot where I was going with that, but it had something to do with markets and business expansion, but that’s kind of over my head, but Glenn Beck said if we just cut taxes, something good would happen… Oh, I can’t explain it, just take my word for it.

The President wants to provide stimulus funds to create jobs, so people will have money, so they can spend it on goods and services, and help the economy along.  On the surface giving stimulus funds to business as incentives for them to bring back jobs to America might seem to make sense until you think about it. As we tea drinkers thought about we discovered some problems.  According to our party leaders (well, we’re not really a party, but you know what we mean) the only incentive that should be available under a free enterprise system is profits and if the labor costs are cheaper outside the US, our political leaders believe that is where manufacturing and technical jobs should go and we should not attempt to bring them back because that would defeat the whole beauty of the free enterprise system.  Corporations are free to make money any way they can and if moving jobs overseas is good for the corporations, we have to trust our leaders that if it is good for the corporations it must be good for America. 

It is too bad for the American worker that the good jobs are gone, but there are still plenty of non-manufacturing jobs in the service sector, so there are still jobs for Americans, and even if they pay barely above subsistence level Americans can still have jobs if they want them so they don’t need to be asking the rest of us taxpayers to subsidize them.

The Obama administration has proposed granting incentives to American businesses to subsidize wages (for a short period of time to get us through the recession) and to provide grants and loans for business expansion through the Small Business Administration but we oppose any such subsidies because we believe that financial incentives to business ultimately weaken the moral character and strength of business leaders and lead to business owners becoming dependent on handouts and less likely to work hard.  We do not want to do anything that would undermine the moral character of business men by giving them something that they have not earned, so we want to abolish the Small Business Administration because we believe that it has a socialist mission of providing welfare for business and interferes in the natural right of businesses to fail.  Anyway, failure breeds character and those businessmen who have failed should just pick themselves up, not look for the government to help them, but move forward with hard work to a new plateau of success.

We know that the future of our nation depends on our small businesses, particularly now that our large businesses have gone overseas.  We believe that any business that wants to succeed can find a way without depending on the taxpayer for support.  It is just laziness and unwillingness to work hard that is causing businesses to fail.  There is simply no excuse for any business to fail except for the sheer unwillingness of its owners to work hard and be productive.  If you provide business with subsidies to help them get through hard times they will never learn to stand on their own and will be perpetually looking for more handouts from tax payers.

Smart businesses and corporations are taking their jobs overseas so they can make more profits. Americans have to get used to the fact that we conservatives support the right, the wisdom and the strategy of business to move overseas where taxes may be higher but where labor costs of foreign workers can replace American workers to increase profits, which is the only thing that matters.  We have heard the argument that if you move business overseas so that you employ fewer workers with good jobs then the purchasing power of Americans declines and your potential market becomes smaller and that ultimately hurts business, but we have an answer to that.  There are plenty of new markets in the developing world, so we do not need the purchasing power of the American market. 

So here is the bottom line—so long as lots of profits are made by business the blue collar worker in the US is not important and does not matter; there is no corporate duty to country or workers, the only duty is to the owners, managers and stockholders.  God bless the capitalist system, where the rich can get richer and the poor—well, you guys are scr**wd!.  We surely hope you will vote for our candidates in the next election.  You owe it to corporate America.

Sincerely,

The Tea Party

http://www.christianhumanist.net