18. Is God Good? - Part 2

This is the eighteenth article in the series From Particles to Angels. If you are interested in this article you should read the previous articles in the series in order, beginning with the first (On Happiness).

Certainty: 

It is a bizarre experience to watch a modern Christian who believes that the Bible is The Word of God, perfect in the truth and righteousness of all its particulars, attempting to use the Bible as their moral compass, painstakingly examining and comparing obscure passages, looking carefully for subtle clues and guidance on the details and nuances of proper thought, feeling, belief and conduct for themselves and others. An alarming perceptual filtering is part of this process. For instance, when such a Christian reads a passage like: "If a priest’s daughter defiles herself by becoming a prostitute, she disgraces her father; she must be burned in the fire" (Leviticus 21:9); the information they come away with is: "Ah, yes I see, this passage shows us that it is disgraceful for the daughter of a priest to become a prostitute," when what they should come away with is this: "WTF?!" They see the gnat, but overlook the camel, see the mote but miss the plank, cannot see the wood for the trees. They fail to be shocked and appalled by the advice they are being given. The confused state of moral consciousness this leads them into makes it likely that they will arrive at an ignorant intolerance and cruelty. Ignorant and intolerant because of the blindness they must impose upon themselves to avoid the glaring contradictions. Intolerant and cruel because burning someone is hateful and void of humanity, whether you are actually prepared to do it to them yourself, or only believe that it is appropriate that someone should. Ultimately the attitude is founded on fear. Fear of the consequences of not believing in the truth and righteousness of the word of God. Fear of going against the commands of someone who incinerates people for disagreeing with him. Better that God incinerate others and not me. I'm on your side God, buddy, pal. As in dealing with any gangster, they cannot question the correctness of what is being asserted because of the terror they experience in the face of the one making the claims and calling it righteousness. They free themselves of fear and any faint taint of disloyalty by embracing the gangster and loving him, becoming his devoted servant. Just because we call something "god" does not make it so. If your god has all the characteristics of a demon, maybe it is a demon.

Christians fantasising fondly of the day when all the unbelievers will be hurled into an ocean of fire and blood sit at the feet of the Godfather. Some love him out of fear, others love him for his own sake, for his power and violence. Some want to be a member of his gang, to have a place of seniority and respect within it. To be able to wave their own hand and strike down their enemies with fire and thunder. To make the weak tremble and prostrate themselves before them with the power of their word.

The Bible offers us two gods, an Old Testament god of cruel vengeance, and a New Testament god of love and forgiveness. More generally, the many religions of the world offer us many gods to choose from. The inconsistencies, ambiguities and uncertainties of religion offer us many different ways to interpret the natures of the gods offered to us. In fact it is impossible to read a document as inconsistent as the Bible and not to choose simply to ignore some of the content in order to arrive at some semblance of coherence. We are free to choose a god of our liking. Our "faith in God" consists not only in a belief that He exists, but also in a belief that He is both self-consistent and good. Because if God is not good then we are completely screwed. If our priests, prophets and our religious texts and teachers offer us a cruel and unjust god, a god that contradicts the god that lives in our hearts, the human being can reject such outwardly presented gods and remain loyal to the one inside, in the gut. In the civilized world we understand that it is not appropriate to go around setting fire to prostitutes, and we expect God to abide by this same moral standard.


"'I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will they teach their neighbor, or say to one another, "Know the Lord," because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,' declares the Lord."

(Jeremiah 31:33-34)

"I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me"

(John 10:14)

If God is not self-consistent, how does He avoid the accusation of unfairness and hypocrisy? We may not understand his nature and purposes, but we assume they are consistent. His ways may be mysterious, inexplicable, incomprehensible; but we assume they are coherent. Much of religious apology is theorising how the world and established religion can be interpreted as consistent with a self-consistent god. If God offends our sense of what is right, it is a paradox to be resolved. An abiding premise of religion is what might be called the "Noah Complex", the assertion that you can be right while the rest of the world is wrong. While it is a characteristic of the deluded and insane, it is also the belief that gives rise to scientific and cultural innovation, and is the basis of forbidden love.


"[F]riendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God."

(James 4:4)

There is no protection trusting in the religion everyone around you believes in when you already know in your heart that it is wrong.


“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces." (Matthew 23:13)

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when you have succeeded, you make them twice as much a child of hell as you are." (Matthew 23:15)

"Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it." (Matthew 7:13-14)


Different people choose different gods to believe in. While some overlook the cruel god of the Old Testament and choose to believe in the loving god of the New Testament, others call themselves Christians but overlook the god of the New Testament, preferring instead the god of the Old Testament. Such people cannot any more demand that sinners be "burned in the fire" because civilised secular society will not allow it, but they hope and expect this to be the sinner's fate in the afterlife. Our godfather will be cruel on our behalf. Those who love cruelty are permitted their cruel god, but it is on one condition.


"For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you."

(Matthew 7:2)

At the beginning of Is God Good? - Part 1 we asked the question: "If right and wrong are absolutes, then which is the Christian Bible: right or wrong?" Based on what has been said here, how do we avoid the conclusion that the Bible is morally wrong? I don't see that we can. The Bible is not a perfect declaration of God's will and His instructions to us for living. It is a record of a time, and the mind of the time, and the God of the time. It is an anthology of the highest and lowest aspirations of the human heart and between its covers can be found satanic verses. Our god can never be much more advanced than we are, because such a god would make no sense to us. As we evolve, so does He. "[W]ith the measure you use, it will be measured to you" means that those who are tolerant and kind will find a tolerant and kind god. Those who are cruel will find a cruel god. It is only animals who seek a return to our animal roots.

We live in a complicated and uncertain world, and it seems to be getting more complicated as time goes on. We are required to act and make decisions often based on imperfect knowledge. We do not like to feel ignorant, and we do not want to feel that we are not in the right. If we cannot legitimately have these things there might be a temptation to claim them illegitimately. For instance we might claim that a single book is the self-contained and literal repository of all required knowledge. We do not need to understand the content of this book in the light of information contained in other books, in the light of its historical and cultural context. We do not need to compare its factuality with recent developments in science. We do not need to apply the information differently in different contexts. We can just focus on this one book and become experts on it by going over and over it, and apply it word for word. We can never become experts on all the information outside of this book. In that world, the wider world, the real world, we will always feel like ignorant novices, we will never be expert authorities in that world. Those unable or uninclined to study one whole book, might instead select just a few favourite passages regardless of context, and attempt to use these in all situations to determine right actions for themselves and others, and to offer as explanations and justifications for those actions.

The desire to be right is strong in some people, the desire to be able to tell others what is what and what to do. It is this impulse that causes some people to claim that we should reject all beliefs that have not been (or cannot be) proven. Because it is only this knowledge that we can be certain of. There is no danger in it that at some future time, after having confidently been informing people of the truths that we know, that we will discover that we were wrong. These are truths that are logically unassailable. The problem with this approach is that it leaves out a lot of important material. It: "throws out the baby with the bath water."

The other avenue to certainly is simply to adopt some doctrine as certain: a doctrine that is dogmatically asserted to be true by some authority: written, verbal or institutional. These truths are not logically unassailable, to say the least, but they are made unassailable by violence, threat, intimidation, force, coercion, punishment and the passionate denouncement and condemnation of all alternative points of view. Proponents of these doctrines assert that it is wrong to be uncertain, to lack conviction. They imply that it is vacillating, weak and disloyal. They demand that things which are not certain, be declared as certainties, and this assertion to be violently defended. The more logically indefensible the proposition, the more violently it must be defended. Those who cannot sway by logic, must do so by gunpoint. An unconvincing argument becomes a convincing argument when presented at gunpoint. The great strength of intimidation is that people do not merely pretend to accept doctrines presented in this way, but will genuinely adopt them to avoid their own fear and shame. They will literally embrace it.

If, in truth, we live in a world of uncertainty, how are we to navigate in that world? Jesus offered an elegant solution. He suggested: "judge not" (Matthew 7:1, Luke 6:37). He suggested we should try to get along with people who disagree with us, because we do not necessarily know who in the end will turn out to be in the right.

"Settle matters quickly with your adversary who is taking you to court. Do it while you are still together on the way, or your adversary may hand you over to the judge, and the judge may hand you over to the officer, and you may be thrown into prison."

(Matthew 5:25)

One of the distressing characteristics of the answers to moral questions is the frequency with which they are only clear in retrospect. You may often hear the phrase: "... mustn't judge", usually as a kind of suffix tacked onto some judgment. It is probably impractical, if not impossible to go through life without making judgments. But if one does not mistake one's judgments for certainties, one is well positioned for tolerating the judgments of others. Our judgments are for the most part working hypotheses.

Another phrase you will hear is: "... mustn't generalise", and similar comments apply here. Cognition is composed of generalisations. Without generalisation we cannot form ideas and words. "Dog", "tree", "chair", "African", "happy", "good"; are generalisations, concepts. Those people in whose hands generalisations become dangerous are not those who have too many, but those who have too few. A single generalisation is a first approximation of a description. We can then combine this with other general concepts and modifiers to build a more sophisticated model. We can compare generalisations, concepts, to pixels in an image. You can create an image out of half a dozen pixels, but it will not be very clear. And if you try to use the same half a dozen pixels for every image, they will all look much the same. By increasing the number and variety of pixels, generalisations, concepts; you are able to build up more precise and detailed images, richer in texture and more vivid in colour, shade and contrast, with many different kinds of ideas. The cognitively deficient person seeks to fit everything in the world into his half a dozen neat and bland pigeonholes.

It should be understood that generalisations are only true in a particular way. A generalisation can usually only be true "as a generalisation". The statement "2 + 2 = 4" is not a generalisation because it is always exactly true. If we ever found an instance where 2 plus 2 did not equal 4 that would be a serious problem with mathematics and all the sciences and technologies that use it. But a lot of things in life do not lend themselves to those kinds of precise statements of fact. If I point to a large pile of pebbles and say "the pebbles in the pile have a diameter of 2 centimetres" and you pull out a pebble that is larger or smaller than this, you have not disproven the generalisation. Context tells us that my statement should be understood as a generalisation, not as a statement like "2 + 4 = 4". That is why we have the phrase: "The exception proves the rule". Even if I make a more precise statement like: "the average diameter of the pebbles in the pile is 2 centimetres" there may not be any pebbles in the pile that have exactly this diameter. The more precisely me measure the diameter, the less likely it is that we will find a pebble with that diameter. Remember from the Atom article that measurement is an antinomy, an infinite limit. Another problem is that the pebbles are not exactly spherical, so what do we mean by "diameter"? We could define precise meanings for these statements so that we could test and confirm the hypothesis in a scientific way, but even without all of this, when I say: "the pebbles in the pile have a diameter of 2 centimetres", if this statement is approximately true for many of the pebbles in the pile, I have given you a pretty good idea of what I am looking at, even if the statement is not precisely true of any of the pebbles.

When someone makes a generalisation and then the person they are talking to cites a counter example like: "I once encountered a member of class X which was not like that" they have not invalidated the generalisation. They are making the mistake of thinking that generalisations are statements like: "2 + 2 = 4". A generalisation only needs to be generally true to be valid. To be generally true it needs to be somewhat true of a substantial portion of the class being referred to.

Characteristics of a class tend to be apportioned according to what is called the "normal curve", also called the "bell curve' because it is shaped like a bell, high in the middle and low at each end. The curve tells us that most of the members of the population will have the "average" degree of the characteristic. A few will have an abnormally high degree, and a few will have an abnormally low degree. For instance, if the characteristic being measured is intelligence: most people have average intelligence, a few will be extremely smart, and a few will be exceptionally dumb. If the characteristic is height: most will have average height, a few will be extremely tall, and a few exceptionally short. It doesn't matter what characteristic is being measured. It could be how fast they can run, musical ability, hair colour or some contrived measure of "virtue".

We can make true generalisations about populations, such as human genders or races. We can also make true comparisons between populations: saying that one race or gender has more or less of something than another. But when we do so we are referring to a difference in the average of the population. A difference in stereotype. But making a statement about an average member does not tell us anything about a specific member. A specific member may still reside anywhere on the spectrum (assuming the characteristic does not define membership of the class): smart or dumb, tall or short. In fact most of the members of the two populations may be indistinguishable. If 51% of population A is taller than 150 centimetres, but only 49% of population B is taller than 150 centimetres, then it is true to say that population A is "taller" than population B. But if most of the members of both populations are in the vicinity of 150 centimetres in height, you will not be able to tell which group they belong to using this criterion.

We might also mention the phrase "... mustn't assume". Assumptions are also a key part of perception and cognition. Perception studies have found the overall picture of a word is perceived rather than each individual character read. You may have had the experience when reading that you suddenly stop because the sentence you just read does not make sense. When you look again, one of the words is not what you thought it was. You glanced at the word and made an assumption. That is why it can be so hard to find typos. You see what the words were meant to be rather than what they are. This practice has evolved not only because we are lazy, but because it is faster, more efficient, and because a lot of the time our assumptions are correct. We assume the sun will rise again tomorrow because there is no reason to think otherwise. It is safest to assume that the rustling sound in the foliage is a predator and to stay very still until you identify what it is. You may only hear half of what someone says, but assume what it is based on context and the few words you do hear. Our perception and cognition works on probabilities a lot of the time. It is a jarring experience when something is not what we think it is. When a piece of bark turns out to be camouflaged lizard. To use assumptions is natural, inevitable and valuable. But again we should be careful they do not lead us astray, careful of their excesses, careful that we are not only being cognitively and morally lazy. While there may be practical value in assuming someone who looks or behaves a certain way, may be a certain kind of person, we should not assume they are that way. A lot of the time it seems that people are what they appear to be, but we cannot assume we know someone based on a cursory contact and "signs". Even if a sign turns out to be a true indicator of a particular characteristic or set of characteristics in a particular case, this does not mean there are not many surprises to be found in the person. Assumptions about people, stereotypes, can include many characteristics, but only some of these may be valid either as generalisations or in specific cases. Assumptions about meanings and causes of these characteristics may be false. Assumptions are a problem when they replace curiosity and investigation. When they are treated as knowledge instead of hypotheses. A superficial person is content to rest with their simple assumptions and thus will never learn otherwise. When people use the phrases: "... mustn't judge ... mustn't generalise ... mustn't assume", it may be a genuine self-reminder, an effort to address the shortcomings in their own thinking. Or it may be only an empty gesture of one complacent in their blind ignorance, one who does not believe there is a better way to think, but makes the statements only to seem more polite, in deference to those who will not accept the truth of their insights.

Our role as human beings is not to apply an algorithm of truth with mechanical consistency. Circumstance presents a new situation and a new decision with each new moment, and we must discover anew for ourselves what is right, or seems right. We do not look out at words, petrified on a page for final guidance, but inward where truth is a living and adaptable thing. The Word is not a book. Religion is not a fetish of The Book. Who seeks justification in the printed page in place of the living? The Cult of The Book is being replaced by human moral intuition. Written law is an imperfect encapsulation of the human moral intuition, requiring interpretation in given circumstances by moral and compassionate judges.

Most of the Bible's ten commandments are reasonable enough. We do not need a commandment: "Thou shalt not beat your infant to death because his crying annoys you". We just know that this is wrong. And this knowledge is eternal and changeless. We do not need religion to tell us right from wrong, but should only accept a religion we know instinctively to be morally right. Legal commandments are how we manage the people who do not want to be bound by this sensibility. Because knowing what is right is not the same as doing what is right. Laws codify what society agrees to be acceptable conduct, usually as interpreted by some legal authority, or sometimes elements included by influential interest groups or individuals. Were the 10 commandments of the Bible an advance over the Code of Hammurabi arrived at earlier without divine intervention? Even where religious teachers provide moral innovations such as "love your enemy", might these principles not have been arrived at by human beings on their own eventually anyway? The primary function of religion is not to teach morals, it is to teach religion. Religion does not teach us how to be moral. It teaches us that God is a moral being. The contribution of religion to morality is the offer of eternal life. Rewards and punishments do not make us moral beings, but if the religionist believes they will receive eternal life for virtue, this provides a powerful support in the contest between oppressed and tyrant because it rationalises sacrifice. Even if god does not intervene in our battles, it is a powerful emotional support to know that the true ruler of the universe is on the side of the righteous. It suggests that corruption and the supremacy of the predator is not foreordained and inescapable. In the earliest religions it was the predator that was prayed to, who was placated and begged to for mercy.

On the other hand, the religionists' greater willingness to lay down their lives because they believe that immortality awaits them, can make them more willing to wage war, and to take many others with them into death, others not so ready and willing to go. Or indeed, they might instead send others to death while remaining safe themselves. The atheist sees this as war mongering and a shocking waste of human life, which, if the atheist is right, it is, though in that case we are all doomed anyway. Also, the religionist cannot compete with the atheist in the realm of noble sacrifice. If a religionist and an atheist both give up their lives to save another or for some noble ideal, the religionist believes they will wake up safely on the other side and be rewarded by God for their good deed. While the atheist believes they face actual extinction. Whose sacrifice then is the greater, more noble and courageous? For them, the noble act offers no reward. Nobility is not a goal in itself, but only the protection of whatever it was they sought to protect. For the atheist, the life here is more precious because they believe it is the only life we have. Religion and superstition threaten that precarious life, its very existence and the freedom to live it.

It is sometimes suggested that reason has made civilisation, but the one who will cut off your head for disagreeing with them does not give a shit about reasoned arguments. It is the hero who has made the world safe for reason. Tyrants are more than happy to exploit the inventiveness of science. Once the atomic bomb was invented, tyrannies the world over sought one of their own. Scientists working under tyranny demonstrate that science and barbarism can coexist perfectly well, though scientists tend to thrive better under the liberal conditions provided by the golden rule. As the Viking is made a great warrior by the promise of Valhalla, so is a population backed by no more than the idea of a righteous God and heaven. If a tyrant cannot suppress religion, an alternative is to hijack it, insinuating himself as intermediary between heaven and Earth, redirecting the power of religion to his own ends.

Totalitarian regimes maintain their power through informants. Torture or threat, or payment or other benefits promote services, information and obedience. Fanatical allegiance to a party or ideology dwarfs human empathy and rights. The cultivation of an environment of distrust and paranoia, insecurity and fear, of disloyalty to your fellow man in favour of obedience to a monolithic engine of terror, isolates and disempowers the individual. A community who must keep their true thoughts and feelings imprisoned within their own skulls are not a community but motes without a foothold floating in a vacuum. The Holy Roman Empire took the idea of confession to God and turned it into confession to priests who were representatives of the State. Because when the State has all the people's secrets the people have no secrets, no private place, no refuge from the State. Opaque and silent, or porous and transparent. Secrets can only be personal and individual. They cannot be shared because you never know if the one you confide in and trust will confess them, or confide them in someone who confesses them, or confides them in someone who confides them in someone.... Society becomes a lynch mob because the only way to be safe from it is to be a conscientious member. Offering safety only in numbers.

A religion that does not accord with our own internal moral compass should be rejected. But if we are in the habit of handing over responsibility for moral decision making to some external authority we will lack an internal moral compass and the disquiet it brings. In fact possession of such a compass is likely to bring us into conflict with external moral authorities and harm our position within that community. Individual moral decision making can be given away in the name of obedience and humility, retaining such being seen as a kind of individualistic arrogance, as placing oneself above those in rightful authority. Evil collective actions can be justified as actually righteousness that is beyond the understanding of ordinary people. When an ideology, religious or political, demands its adherents to act contrary to their native moral compass, it cripples their ability to make day-to-day moral choices, making them dependent on advice from the moral authority for all such choices, both large and small, creating a moral bureaucracy.

In tribal societies it is the opinion of the group that matters, and individual beliefs are expected to align themselves to those of the group. Asserting individual beliefs can be interpreted as antisocial and disloyal to the group and its cohesion. Tribal loyalties are unconditional. You side with the interests of your own tribe, right or wrong, against the interests of any other tribe. But the concept of universal brotherhood, that is, of dedication and loyalty to all human beings, not merely your own tribe, undermines tribal loyalties and promotes deference to the interests of your tribe's enemies: If God is the god of everyone, and the Father of everyone, and not merely the god of your own tribe, as opposed to the other tribes with their own tribal gods. The internal moral compass of the individual undermines tribal loyalties when it answers to a standard higher than and beyond tribal loyalties. A moral standard that applies itself to all human beings breaks down tribal loyalties and asserts the value of the individual regardless of group affiliations. While institutions can atrophy, the individual moral compass promotes continuous change and upheaval, evolution and growth, overthrowing traditional ideas and allegiance. Thus the following is said.


"Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn ‘a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law—a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.’ Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me."

(Matthew 10:34-37, cf. Micah 7:1-7)

Each new generation is witnessed and judged by the eyes of its own children who clearly see the world the adults have made, without having seen the road that led them to it and all the steps that led them off course and clouded their judgment and perception. Respect for elders, while admirable, also comes to be used to avoid and suppress these clear and cutting perceptions. So that it is said: "unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 18:3). Yet even this gets portrayed as the virtue of unquestioning obedience (faith and trust), instead of the child's ability to recognise that the emperor is wearing no clothes. The young have a great deal to learn from the old. We could even go so far as to say that all children are idiots. There is much the young will not understand until they are old, but that is not the only way it works, because foolishness and wisdom cohabit. Change is part of human nature. The human animal is a learning machine, able to effect evolution with each new generation.

When one religion goes to war with another it is on the assumption that God belongs to the people who call Him by a particular name, as if He is no more than an element of their tribal culture and tradition. Those who call Him by some other name must refer to some other god, so that it is okay to murder his children. Loyalty then is to the name on men's lips rather than to a real living God. Because if God is god, He is so under any name, and we are answerable for killing His children under any name whatsoever they call Him. Acting according to virtue as judged by the tribe is insufficient justification.

The written and spoken word is a test we apply our heart to, to see whether it can pass the test. Can we give it a sound defence, or do our rationalisations collapse. But always the decision is made by the inner sense of "what seems right". In the face of this, whether we can articulate a convincing argument or not, we are impervious to counter-arguments, on the assumption that a convincing argument exists, whether we can find it or not.

More important than both religion or science in the making of modern morality is mass communication: stories, printing, television, the internet; art, gossip and literature. These allow the isolated moral compass of individuals to link up with others in a moral community. The emotional catharsis of reading the same books or sitting in a cinema together is the formation of a moral community of approved and disapproved actions and ideas and shared sentiment. Free mass communication also accelerates the accumulation of knowledge and therefore experience, giving expression to different and contrary points of view whose arguments must compete and justify themselves in the open; and providing safe contexts in which to vividly play out consequences. The prevention of such communication retards moral and intellectual development and atomises the moral community so that it remains vulnerable and in the grip of an imposed authority and its doctrine. The tacit moral assumptions of its stories, be it drama or sitcom, are the force and bedrock of the moral community. The moral community can be a blind and violent mob, but it can also be shamed and changed by a single voice, if such a voice can be heard.

When people assert that the Bible is the perfect Word of God, they have in mind: "Would God allow a Bible to exist that did not accurately reflect his will?" But since there are many religions and many bibles, which bible are we referring to? It should be abundantly clear that God is not in the business of preventing human error.

It is not unusual for primitive societies to enforce the death penalty for a range of seemingly minor offences. Perhaps in impulsive primitive societies, it is only terrifying laws that will be obeyed. Cruel punishments are not an intrinsically religious phenomenon. The Bible seems unjustifiably cruel to us now only because it is so old. The savagery of the punishments were not out of character for the times in which it was written. When moral commandments are attributed to God, it gives them more authority, and therefore increases the likelihood that they will be obeyed. The problem with having moral commandments in a religious revelation is that it cannot be revised as society evolves because it is "The Word of God", and must therefore be perfect and true for all time. Even if God Himself returns with a revised set of commandments, He must contend with the creature's primitive notions of truth, attachment to tradition and good old fashioned inertia and resistance to change, for these new ideas to be accepted. For every religious revelation the creature accepts, a collection of others are rejected.

The only reason you or I have to believe the words of one religious teacher more than another, is if you or I feel that his words are better than those of the others.

Perfection

"Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect."

(Matthew 5:48)

"The thing about Heaven is that Heaven is for people who like the sort of things that go on in Heaven, like singing, talking to God, watering pot plants. Whereas Hell, on the other hand, is for people who like the other sorts of things adultery, pillage, torture those areas."

(Blackadder, Season 1, Episode 3: The Archbishop;

written by Richard Curtis and Rowan Atkinson )

The prospect of being perfect does not appeal to everyone, and not only those intent on doing evil. Do people ever really want to be perfect? They want to be free. Maybe they like to be imperfect. They imagine perfection to be stifling and dead. But there are varieties of perfection. When people imagine perfection, they may imagine a kind of "mathematical" or "geometric" perfection, or a "logical" perfection. For example, take a pen and a piece of paper, and draw a circle on the piece of paper freehand. The line of the circle you draw will wobble. It will not be a perfect circle however hard you try. If you use a compass you will be able to draw a better circle, but it still will not be absolutely perfect. Even a machine cannot draw a perfect circle, because of microscopic irregularities in the paper, ink, and the machine itself. Since all material objects are composed of atoms, ultimately the circle will be composed of separate points: ink molecules at intervals. Nothing in the material world is perfect. In mathematics, "circle" has a very precise meaning, with an associated mathematical formula that describes an actual perfect circle. Because mathematical formulas, unlike material objects, can be perfect. We get our conception of perfection from mathematics, imaging that if we are no longer composed of matter but spirit, we can have the kind of perfection mathematical formulas have. The idea goes back to the Greek philosopher Socrates who envisaged an "ideal realm" of ideas. Perhaps when we are spirit only, we will be capable of perfection, but do we really want to be? But consider that when I told you to draw a circle I did not specify that it had to be a perfect circle. Outside of the realm of mathematics, when we use words, we are usually not referring to perfect objects.

What I just described was "geometric perfection". Now consider another kind of perfection, what I will call "human perfection". You have already drawn a circle on the piece of paper. It is not a perfect circle, but it still deserves the name "circle". Now take the pen again and draw an "x" somewhere within the circle you drew. You do this easily. You do not even have to concentrate, but do it casually and wonder why you would bother to do such a simple thing. But you have fulfilled my instruction perfectly. I asked you to do something, but there were many ways for you to fulfil the instruction. Drawing the circle was very difficult, because there is no leeway. Once three points on a circle are determined, the locations of all other points on the circle are determined. There is no freedom. But placing an "x" somewhere within a circle there is much freedom. Human perfection is not about being, let us say, fixed to a perimeter like a train on rails. It is about living within a perimeter, within boundaries, within which you are free to do as you will. The perimeter you exist within can encompass an infinite area without intruding on any other infinite areas you are not permitted to enter. For instance, let us imagine that I give the instruction: "You may travel anywhere to the East of this point, but may not travel anywhere to the West of it." There is an infinite space to the "East" of the point we are permitted to travel in; and another infinite space to the "West" of the point that we are not permitted to travel in. (We usually use the words "East" and "West" to refer to directions on the surface of the Earth, which is not infinite in extent. But imagine I am using the words to refer to directions in space itself.)

God gives us certain instructions on how we must act, but these instructions do not determine everything about our lives. We have much freedom to go where we want to go, and do what we want to do. We only need to avoid sin. Whenever you learn a new skill, like playing tennis or solving Calculus problems: at first it is difficult, but with practice it becomes easy, almost automatic. Some people struggle to balance their own check book, while others can manage large organisations. With an eternity in which to grow there is no limit to the skills we can learn, which can become second nature to us. Now that we are all young souls, it can be difficult to avoid sin, but when we are old souls it will be easy, as easy as drawing the "x" within the circle. We will be wise and have no insurmountable desire to sin. Instead we will naturally live a righteous life as a result of all of our years of trying to be a better person. We will not desire to sin because it will seem childish to us. In general, we learn not to sin by sinning. We stop sinning when we get tired of our own sin. We get tired of feeling bad, of feeling guilty and ashamed, of seeing the harm we do, of suffering the consequences over and over again. Sinning is often a stop-gap until we find something better. The human being craves life, and will not easily forgo lesser satisfactions until it knows something better.

Living is a learning experience, learning through experience. By preventing experience to protect from sin, we can also prevent learning. God is prepared to forgive sin because it is one of the ways we learn. It is only those who do not learn who cannot be salvaged because they cannot evolve and grow. They can never become more than they are now. They have no place in an evolutionary heaven. The evil person will only play out the same behavioural algorithm over and over. We pray "lead us not into temptation" (Matthew 6:13) because learning from error is painful, for ourselves and sometimes others as well, and it is better to learn while avoiding error, by using our intelligence.


"Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—as her great love has shown. But whoever has been forgiven little loves little.”

(Luke 7:47)

"I will give unto this last, even as unto thee."

(Matthew 20:14)

In the Old and New Testaments we see two very different concepts of perfection. The Old Testament gives clear cut and achievable laws. A person can live in such a way as to perfectly meet all the requirements of the Old Testament laws and such a person is entitled to feel that they are righteous and blameless, above reproach. They have arrived at the finish line. The commandments of Jesus on the other hand seem to represent unachievable ideals. If Christians took seriously the commandment: "Give to everyone who asks you", and word of it got out, pretty soon there would be a run on Christians and they would be completely cleaned out. If someone slaps you on the cheek, offering them the other might make sense. But what do you do if they want to take your life? Jesus' example was to let them take that as well. Should the "turn the other cheek" principle still apply if someone enters your home to rape and murder your family? Should you say: "Here is my niece also." Aside from a few missionaries, saints, Ghandi, and some other inspiring and heroic figures, no one has taken this suggestion very seriously, and so Christian society has armed itself very thoroughly for its own protection and perpetuation, trusting instead in arms. The laws of the Old Testament lead to a shallow moral complacency, while those of the New Testament point in a direction leading to continual moral evolution.


"To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable: 'Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: "God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get."

"'But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, "God, have mercy on me, a sinner."

"'I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.'"

(Luke 18:9-14)

This is not a parable about pride and humility, but about learning and not learning, looking and seeing and not looking and not seeing, evolving and not evolving. The tax collector is still striving to be a better person, while the Pharisee is not because he thinks he is already perfect. The tax collector is learning, the Pharisee is not, so that the moral evolution of the Pharisee has come to a halt and he will never be any more than he is now. He believes he is perfect by refusing to see his own sin. He has no use for immortality because he will only repeat the same behavioural pattern, over and over. He has permitted himself to be a closed algorithm, a loop. A machine. An example of such a loop would be the one who claims to be learning and trying to be better, when in fact he has no interest in overcoming his own sin.

Unnatural Acts

"Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire."

(Jude 1:7 (English Standard Version))

"Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error."

(Romans 1:26-27)

Neither of the above statements are attributed to Jesus, but are the views of two of his followers. Jesus himself does not speak of unnatural acts. Jesus does speak of sexual immorality (Matthew 5:32, 15:19, 19:9, Mark 7:21). We saw in Is God Good? - Part 1 that Jesus does not indicate what he means by the phrase "sexual immorality", so we are left to wonder whether he refers to the acts the Bible usually describes as sexual immorality: such as homosexuality: or to the acts the Bible does not condemn, such as rape and sexual enslavement. It is perhaps more likely that he refers to acts such as paedophilia and incest. We might imagine in the context in which he uses the phrase: "anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, makes her the victim of adultery" (Matthew 5:32) that he refers to adultery as the "sexual immorality", in accordance with his ideal of marriage. That is, that you can only divorce your wife if she is already guilty of adultery. But elsewhere he distinguishes sexual immorality from adultery. "For out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander." (Matthew 15:19) Which seems to lead us back to idea that what Jesus means by sexual immorality is the same as those acts described in Leviticus 18 and 20, and Deuteronomy 22, including the condemnation of homosexuality, only with the proviso that he does not believe they should be punished, at least by man.

Can we find any support for our liberal inclinations within the Urantia Book? The phrase "sexual immorality" does not appear in the Urantia Book. When asked about divorce he replies in the following way.


"I have not come to legislate but to enlighten. I have come not to reform the kingdoms of this world but rather to establish the kingdom of heaven. It is not the will of the Father that I should yield to the temptation to teach you rules of government, trade, or social behavior, which, while they might be good for today, would be far from suitable for the society of another age. I am on earth solely to comfort the minds, liberate the spirits, and save the souls of men. But I will say, concerning this question of divorcement, that, while Moses looked with favor upon such things, it was not so in the days of Adam and in the Garden."

(The Urantia Book, 140:6.6)

When asked again about divorce, the Urantia Book states that: "Although Jesus did not offer new mandates governing marriage and divorce, he did urge the Jews to live up to their own laws and higher teachings." He did however state the following.


"Marriage is honorable and is to be desired by all men ... and it is the divine will that men and women should find their highest service and consequent joy in the establishment of homes for the reception and training of children, in the creation of whom these parents become copartners with the Makers of heaven and earth."

(The Urantia Book, 167:5)

The word "homosexual" also does not appear in the Urantia Book. Since homosexuality does not produce children, this would seem to suggest that homosexuality is a digression from the program. But while childrearing is the ideal, there are many ways people may fail to fulfil this ideal. Some people never obtain a partner, some are infertile, some die young, some are focused on their careers. While heterosexual marriage is a highly praised ideal, the alternatives do not necessarily constitute sins. There are other ways people can make positive contributions to society. Jesus himself did not get married and have children while on Earth, and neither did many of his followers, imitating his example. Celibate priests do not satisfy this ideal. The Apostle Paul tolerated rather than praised marriage. The Urantia Book Jesus states: "The fact that the Son of Man pursues his earth mission alone is in no way a reflection on the desirability of marriage. That I should so work is the Father’s will, but this same Father has directed the creation of male and female" (167:5.7). The Urantia Book's references to Jesus' views on sex are persistently indirect.


"Spiritual purity is not a negative quality, except that it does lack suspicion and revenge. In discussing purity, Jesus did not intend to deal exclusively with human sex attitudes. He referred more to that faith which man should have in his fellow man; that faith which a parent has in his child, and which enables him to love his fellows even as a father would love them. A father’s love need not pamper, and it does not condone evil, but it is always anticynical. Fatherly love has singleness of purpose, and it always looks for the best in man; that is the attitude of a true parent."

(The Urantia Book, 140:5.12)

Papers 82 to 84 of the Urantia Book give a frank history of sexual practices in relation to evolving marriage mores. These do not make mention of homosexuality, presumably as it is not relevant. "Bisexuality" is mentioned, but the term seems to be used as a synonym for "heterosexuality" (which word does not appear in the text), that is, it refers to sex between two distinct sexes, in such comments as: "Marriage is society’s mechanism designed to regulate and control those many human relations which arise out of the physical fact of bisexuality." (The Urantia Book, 83:1.1, see also 82:0.1, 87:5.2 and 46:7.6) We are hard pressed to find a concept of sexual immorality in the Urantia Book. Its criticisms are limited to considerations such as fairness or doing harm, so that we might wonder if the passages in the New Testament are his disciples' interpretation of Jesus' views, or actual interpolations.


"The most effective of all social groups is the family, more particularly the two parents. Personal affection is the spiritual bond which holds together these material associations. Such an effective relationship is also possible between two persons of the same sex, as is so abundantly illustrated in the devotions of genuine friendships."

(The Urantia Book, 160:2.4)

Although the word and concept of unnatural does not occur frequently in the Bible, it does occur frequently in religious discourse and moral discourse in general. What do we mean by the word "unnatural"? It is clearly intended in this context to imply the meaning: "bad", "wrong" and "inappropriate". But the word has a literal meaning. "Natural" is the opposite of "unnatural". Is there anything in nature that is unnatural? One would assume not, since everything in nature is natural by definition. So "unnatural" refers to something outside of nature or contrary to it. A synonym of "unnatural" is "artificial"; that is, "man-made". We distinguish what man does, from what "nature" does, placing man outside of nature. Similarly, we distinguish between nature and the Divine. Like man, God also stands outside of nature. The unnatural is therefore also what God does, the supernatural. So that, as we can say that anything done by nature is by definition natural, anything done by man is by definition unnatural, or perhaps anything that man does that is different to anything that occurs in nature.

If "unnatural" is intended to be a criticism, is "natural" then a virtue? Is the predatory behaviour of animals a virtue? It is natural for a dog to eat its own vomit, and for a crocodile or alligator to eat is own children. Looking at what goes on in nature it is difficult to see how it can be held up as a moral guide, and "natural" interpreted as a virtue.


"With respect to the theological view of the question. This is always painful to me. I am bewildered. I had no intention to write atheistically. But I own that I cannot see as plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae [a parasitoid wasp] with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice."

(The Correspondence of Charles Darwin:, Volume 8 (1860))

In relation to acts specifically referred to as unnatural in the Bible we might consider the following.


"No species has been found in which homosexual behaviour has not been shown to exist, with the exception of species that never have sex at all, such as sea urchins and aphis. Moreover, a part of the animal kingdom is hermaphroditic, truly bisexual."

(Petter Boeckman, a zoologist at the Norwegian Natural History Museum of the University of Oslo)

So that homosexuality is not unnatural, though this still leaves open the question of whether it is a virtue or not. While the Jews were strongly opposed to homosexuality, this is not true of all cultures, ancient or modern. The ancient Greeks famously treated homosexuality as normal.

Perhaps then we need to distinguish those parts of nature that are natural from those parts that are unnatural. Perhaps for those animals for which heterosexuality is the norm, homosexuality is an aberration and therefore might be called "unnatural". Perhaps there is such a thing as unnatural nature. Perhaps the devil has made his own contribution to nature. God arranged that a cat would eat a mouse, but it is the devil who makes a cat take pleasure in torturing and terrorising a mouse before eating it? As you will. Perhaps although crocodiles do sometimes eat their own young, they should not. What is "unnatural" then, might be in the eye of the beholder. For the ever reliable Apostle Paul, the following is self evident.


"Does not the very nature of things teach you that if a man has long hair, it is a disgrace to him."

(1 Corinthians 11:14)

Given that Jesus is typically depicted with long hair, it is difficult to see how Paul's Roman hairdressing sensibility can be reconciled.

"American Gothic" by Grant Wood (1930)

(This image is taken from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Gothic
where it is available as "in the public domain".)

Sexuality can apply itself to almost anything: men, women, animals, vibrators, dildos, fruit and vegetables, inflatable women or "fleshlights". Virtually anything penis shaped or vagina shaped has probably been tried by someone at some time. But not only these: ropes, tangled bedsheets, straps, balls, whips, flails, chains. The clitoris lends itself to being pressed against almost anything, a tree branch, a bedpost, or the saddle of a galloping horse. The practice of pressing the clitoris against a running washing machine or dryer has led to the coining of the phrase: "the abuse of white goods". If someone is only interested in sex with their own gender we call them "homosexual". If they are interested in sex with both genders we call them "bisexual". But what should we call people who have sex with whoever or whatever is at hand? Can we justifiably assert that this behaviour is unnatural? If now again, amongst a person's sexual repertoire is included members of their own gender, do we need a special name for what they are? Should we have a special name for women who use vibrators, since their sexual orientation extends further than just human beings, but also includes mechanical devices? Should we perhaps call them "technosexual" or "animatesexual" (since they run the gamut from man to machine) and treat them as having a distinctive sexual orientation beyond pure heterosexuality? If one person asks someone to carry a box for them, while another uses a trolley, are they then two different kinds of people, or just using different tools, whatever is convenient at the time, to achieve a common end? We make the distinction because, in the case of sex, people are not indifferent to the means, but feel passionately for some and against others. And so we naturally classify people according to these distinctive and sometimes mutually exclusive tastes. Even liberal heterosexuals may be repulsed at the sight of same sex affection. Not out of any ideological or moral objection, but physically, because they do not have that inclination themselves. But the liberal suppresses such a response as a courtesy. And perhaps the homosexual feels the same way when confronted by the sight of heterosexual love. The same may be said of the sight of two fat people in an embrace, or inadvertently walking in on your own parents having sex, or showing tripe to someone who does not like tripe. If you passionately do not like Star Trek, you might be inclined to view the people who do as a species apart, and to ponder whether it is therefore legitimate for them to be so. Sexual preferences are very personal and may even be unique. It may be that you are the only person who would even want to have sex with your spouse.

If someone is made uncomfortable by these practices in others, does this alone give them the right to use force and violence to prevent others from committing such acts, or to condemn them? Or to assume they are immoral or pathological because they do not like them? Or is the fault rather in themselves, and whatever is at the root of their uncontrollable discomfort?

If there is such a thing as an unnatural act it is driving in a car, living in a house, wearing clothes, using computers, going to church, reading books. This all undermines the notion that unnatural is a criticism, and makes the proposition seem incoherent. Some individuals seek to turn their back on modernity and "get back to nature". Deciding what is and is not natural in this context is difficult to determine and seemingly arbitrary. Consider for instance the Amish community. Here: riding in a car in not good, but riding in a horse drawn carriage is. Living in a house with electricity is bad, but living in a house without electricity is not. A computer is a bad machine while a plough is a good machine. Wearing clothes is a must, but those clothes should not be attractive or colourful. If beauty is immodest and to be avoided, what do we make of the very great beauty of the natural world, and the rainbow of colour it conspicuously displays? Why is it that we must use unnatural means to conceal the natural beauty of the human body? Is "natural" to live like Adam and Eve, naked in the jungle or forest, picking fruit from the trees? Can we adorn ourselves like butterflies and birds in the open air under a clear blue sky, or must we live as dull grey rats, hiding what we are in shame in corners and scurrying under ledges? Stasis and regression are not more natural than evolution and progress. Repression is not more holy than joy. Nature is expressive and creative. Nature is what it is. In nature the new replaces the old. There may well be a case to be made for the assertion that change is happening too fast and too recklessly. A case can also be made to preserve what is good from the past, and to be more discerning in determining what new innovations are worth adopting and what are mere trash and empty novelty and distraction. To focus on what is important. But all this occurs in the context of evolution and the energetic bloom of creativity.

What is natural behaviour varies from one species to another. It is natural for termites to build large clay mounds, cities for their kind. It is natural for a beaver to build a dam, and bees to build a hive, and for monkeys on occasion to use tools. For human beings it is natural to ride in cars, wear clothes and carry smart phones. Human beings do not stand outside of nature, but are a product of nature, its latest evolutionary innovation, in God's overall evolutionary plan. We considered aspects of this question in the two articles: Like a Seed from a Tree and AI (Artificial Intelligence). When we speak of what is "unnatural" then, in relation to human beings, we are referring to what we imagine to be unnatural "for human beings". Determining what is and is not natural for human beings is a challenge. The word "natural" is being used as a synonym for right behaviour, and there is much disagreement on what that is. The notion of "natural law" is being called on to abet a moral speculation, while nature itself shows little evidence of any moral consciousness, such consciousness again being a characteristic largely unique to human beings and therefore pre-eminently artificial and unnatural as divinity itself.

When we think of unnatural we are thinking of not normal, and when we think of not normal we think of not common. But just because nature does something one way most of the time and another only now and then, does not imply that the uncommon way is somehow reprehensible. For instance, in the case of sexuality the norm is heterosexuality, and this must be the norm because the survival of the species depends upon it. But the continuing popularity of heterosexuality suggests that this is not under threat. While homosexuals do not contribute to the gene pool, neither do they do any harm, and they can contribute to society in other ways. In the case of bisexuals, these can also contribute to the survival of the species. Though because monogamy is also the norm, bisexuals usually have to make a choice one way or the other. Nature itself is not averse to generating what we call "abnormalities" that we tend to think of as unnatural because they are uncommon, or sometimes because the abnormality itself is so extreme that it substantially interferes with the organism's ability to function, or indeed, drastically shortens its life span. Some physical abnormalities appear grotesque, and so might we not assume that some psychological abnormalities are likewise?

But where does disease and abnormality end and simple variation begin? We might simply leave such a decision to the person with the abnormality. If they are fine with it, what right does anyone else have to assert otherwise? If nature provides not only our body but also our mind, what are we to make of the person who believes they have a mind of one gender but the body of another? It is easy to assert that they are deluded, or acting out in some way. But who is anyone else to be making such judgments about what goes on in another's mind? Is it inconceivable that nature might give rise to such a situation? If it is a delusion, it is one that some people demonstrate an extraordinary commitment to. Nature produces genetic hermaphrodites. It is only with artificial interventions that these products of nature can be "put right".

Societies typically impose strong pressure on its members to abide by well defined gender roles, whether it is rejection by the opposite sex for the abnormal heterosexual, or the active persecution of what has come to be referred to as LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender, or sometimes LGBTI, including "intersex"). This pressure has historically been driven by practical requirements. Gender roles constitute a practical division of labour. The biological fact of childbirth means that women will typically be bound to nurture their children, while the man goes out into the world to make a living to support the family unit. Nature itself seems to have enhanced these distinct roles with the differing personalities and motivations of men and women. In circumstances where war or other attack is a constant threat, it makes sense to cultivate a warrior mentality among the male population, to protect and defend the family unit. Historically it has not been uncommon for societies to be under constant threat, from foreign invaders, from corruption and criminals, from starvation arising through inefficiency and disorder. For much of human history it has seemed that society did not have the luxury of liberal values, because society was in the midst of desperately just trying to survive. We might note as an aside that the bisexuality of the ancient Greeks did not seem to hamper their martial abilities, and they thrived culturally, politically and intellectually. If anything, their martial abilities were perhaps overindulged.

But given that most people are naturally heterosexual, it is difficult to see a purpose to the suppression of the few that are not. Heterosexuals naturally impose heterosexual gender roles on each other. Heterosexual men want to have sex with "real women". And heterosexual women want to have sex with "real men". How this has been defined down through the millennia has not really changed that much. The issue is more about the excluded middle. Does the heterosexual man have to be afraid of the femininity within him? Does the heterosexual woman have to be afraid of the masculinity within her? In the Western democracies we have become accustomed to believing that every man has a "feminine side", and every woman a "masculine side", and that a person is more complete, and better able to relate to their partner when they embrace that other side of themselves. If that embrace goes too far, it will typically be the heterosexual partner themselves who will object. Thus a natural balance is reached. A man who cannot value the feminine for fear of losing his masculinity, cannot value a woman, and vice versa. Societies that suppress women tend to be afraid of this excluded middle, afraid to undermine the masculinity of its men, and to empower its women.

Human beings are typically not at their best in the form of a crowd. One of the strange characteristics of a crowd is the way that it can be unsettled by the presence of a single individual in its midst who "does not fit in" and is "not one of us". This single individual need not attack the crowd or pose a threat to it, hold or express any hostility toward it, or even wilfully call attention to themselves. Yet the ill-fitting individual, by their mere existence and presence, can illicit such a degree of discomfort within the crowd that they want the individual gone from their midst, either by sending them away or by attempting to "fix" them so that they are no longer different. Failing either of these, to be simply punished for existing. This shows the crowd to be a pathetically weak organism when compared to the individual who must go through life without the support and vindication of a crowd of others just like it. The frailty of the crowd, and its abuse of the power of numbers, is the abiding shame of normal people. In a milder form, it is the same attitude that treats as antisocial behaviour the failure  of a minority to share in the same interests as the majority, like watching a bunch of grown men play with a ball.

God is not harmed by blasphemy or sacrilege, criticism or name calling or insult. He has notoriously broad shoulders. We do not need to protect god from men. Only the esteem with which people believe their opinions ought to be held is harmed by sacrilege. Human beings are offended by blasphemy, sometimes to the point of rage. So the question becomes, what severity of punishment is appropriate for one who offends another, when the one offended might simply choose not to be? Civilised people do not pour out into the streets as a mob to yell murder if someone pokes fun at their religion. An angry mob that kills an individual for expressing an opinion does not deserve the name "society" or "community". It is rather a pack of wild dogs. Needless to say, such barbarism cannot be called "Godly". The kind of politeness that emerges among a community composed of people who fly into a rage if disobeyed, disagreed with or criticized is not civility or civilisation. Tolerance is not only an end in itself but the source of a great multitude of good things. A society too polite for truth cannot take hold of truth, cannot combat lies, cannot communicate, learn, grow or evolve. It is a society frozen in stasis, sometimes in the name of tradition; painted people going through the motions of pretended social interactions while their humanity lies dormant. Likewise, a premium is placed on politeness in societies where offense is considered sufficient grounds for murder. Since tyrants are unaccustomed to people disagreeing with them they are likely to be offended whenever they interact with the inhabitants of free nations beyond their borders.

Religion is cherished, so that to criticise someone's religion is like casting aspersions on their mother. The case might be made that ridicule of religion dissuades people from it by robbing it of prestige and authority, and therefore it is the religiosity of the population, their immortal souls, that is threatened when religion is disrespected and diminished, so it is this that is being protected. But this is a case of the cure being worse than the disease. By eradicating criticism we eradicate freedom of thought and expression and make people vulnerable to the most idiotic superstitions and abuses. Which in the end makes the religion unworthy of its followers. In place of love is terror. The religion morally compromises its followers instead of elevating them. It is better that religion be supposed to possess the resilience and character of the child we teach to say: "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me." So that religious dialog becomes possible. Religion must earn and retain its followers on its merits, not by force. Its followers must have faith, and not abandon the hope that religion does not require us to act badly in order to succeed.


"Live such good lives ... that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds"

(1 Peter 2:12)

Conservative Morality

In the article On Happiness we introduced religion as a solution to the problem of personal mortality. We do not want to die, and religion offers us eternal life. The religious instinct is prompted by the desire to live forever in paradise, and therefore is not intrinsically selfless. It satisfies a want, a desire. It is puzzling then that religion so often arrives at conservative, even oppressive or cruel morality. We might wonder that there is a limit to the good the human being can believe in. We might be inclined to think that if we are being offered a great prize, there must be a great price to pay for it. Or perhaps the danger that is inherent in believing what one chooses to believe, is that it applies both to one's hopes and to one's hatreds. So that when we meet people keen to give us the good news of religion, after we hear what it is, it does not sound like good news at all.

The rationale is often: suffer or do without now in order to obtain a reward later. Without the promised reward the suffering has no meaning. We work hard at school and college so we will have a good career. We work hard through the day so we will have a good home to go home to. The ability to defer gratification is an investment in the future by bearing a cost in the present. We struggle against adversity in order to overcome it. The ability to defer gratification is an important element of character. But for some the suffering becomes an end in itself and one wonders if such people ever really want anyone to be happy. Suffering becomes a measure of status and worth and happiness a shameful weakness and indulgence. Instead of happiness as the reward, the reward is admiration and dominance, a cold self-satisfaction. Life is hard, and so therefore must we be, so that we are equal to reality and seeing it with open eyes. Such people have no place when the war and misery ends, so they must be perpetuated forever. A parent might sacrifice themselves for the life of their child, on the rationale that they have already lived a good part of their own life while their child is yet to have that opportunity. Or an older person might feel that way even for young people they are not related to. Although it might be called selfless, it is not an irrational impulse, or contrary to desire. The cruel inverse of this is when wars are started by old men who have had their fill of life, but must invariably be fought by young men who have as yet lived little of their lives.

It is pointless to have eternal life if it is not a life worth living. If everyone is selfless, then who is reaping any benefit from the program that everyone is participating in? One may argue: "What is right and wrong is what is revealed as such in divine revelation". But we have seen in what appears above that divine revelation is flawed, and we have been making an argument that the source of moral truth is to be found instead within the moral intuition of each human being, in the human heart. The word "selfless" does not appear in the Bible. Jesus asserts that you should: "Love your neighbor as yourself" (Matthew 22:39), not that you should "Love your neighbour instead of yourself".


"I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full."

(John 10:10)

"You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows."

(Psalm 23:5)

Christianity is a religion of abundance, not scarcity. It does not consist of the mechanical accounting of karma, but the generosity of forgiveness. It offers the satisfaction of desire, not its extinction. The philosophy of selflessness has two origins. First and foremost, you should assume if anyone ever suggests to you that you should manifest "selfless love", that they want something from you and do not want to give you anything in return. The second source is about escaping one's own self-talk; the constant monitoring of one's own past, present or future actions, thoughts and feelings, and other chatter that goes on almost constantly in our heads; calming the mind in order to experience the reality of sensation, intuition and feeling directly. We can become lost (in one sense) within this self-talk, experiencing reality as if through a telescope turned the wrong way around, interceded by a veil of interpretation. References to calming "beta brain wave" activity in favour of "alpha brain wave" activity are sometimes made. This idea of selflessness is strong in the Buddhist tradition, although there many other ingredients also intrude. According to Buddhists, the residue that is left when we stop all of this other mental activity, a state they refer to as "emptiness", is a state of calm bliss. There is some evidence that periods spent in meditation have therapeutic benefits. This self-talk is not the same as "ego". Real being comes out of one's true nature. Real being may be lost through the fear of being different.


“You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot. You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven."

(Matthew 5:13-16)

Some seek to achieve this state through rigorous mental exercises, while others find it simply through being busy (what is sometimes referred to as "flow" or being "in the zone"), when one "loses oneself" (in another sense) in activities one finds interesting and rewarding. This is not to suggest that self-examination, self-correction and self-control are not necessary and desirable, but rather to point out that such activities have proper limits beyond which they lose their usefulness and may do more harm than good. It is nevertheless true that "the unexamined life is not worth living" ("Apology" by Plato), and also: "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy". Even "stopping to smell the roses" is not merely a selfless experience of the pleasure derived from the roses themselves. It is pleasurable to be aware of our own participation in the event: "I am happy to be here smelling these roses" is a reflection on, and manifestation of, the joy of living. That is why people insist on taking their own photographs of tourist locations that have already been photographed countless times. Human beings are also objects of interest to themselves and others. If you have never taken the time to know yourself, how are you supposed to communicate who you are to someone else who is interested in you? Reminding oneself periodically of one's own presence and present experience helps to prevent one from missing one's own life through sheer lack of attention. To be constantly busy may cause one to realise decades later and perhaps too late that one has entirely missed the act of living and being alive. Being busy can be a distraction from the realisation of failure to obtain life, and from addressing it. In economics there is the distinction between "selfishness" and "rational self-interest".


"Rational self-interest is not the same as selfishness. In the economy, increasing one's own wage, rent, interest, or profit normally requires identifying and satisfying somebody else's wants! Also people make personal sacrifices for others. They contribute time and money to charities because they derive pleasure from doing so. Parents help pay for their children's education for the same reason. These self-interested, but unselfish, acts help maximize the givers' satisfaction as much as any personal purchase of goods or services. Self-interested behaviour is simply behaviour designed to increase personal satisfaction, however it may be derived."

("Economics", by McConnell, Brue and Flynn, pp.4-5)

There is something in us, a kind of moral imperative, that demands that we each live the life we have been given. Failure to do this gives rise to a natural and deep seated shame and guilt despite the fact that we are the only affected party. Our conscience is ready to harshly condemn us for a failure to live, as an act of cowardice and neglect, treating the harm we do ourselves the same as harm we do to others.

Acting contrary to our conscience can set in motion its own inner dialogue, a persistent and ceaseless inner argument, and people engaged in such are often recognisable if this inner argument frequently spills out into their conversation. They are recognisable by their constant need justify their thoughts and actions and in seeking others' agreement that they "did the right thing" according to their representation or misrepresentation of events. In such a case, rigorous mental discipline might be used as a tool for suppressing harassment by the conscience, for instance in the form of the avoidance of negative thinking.

The brain operates largely according to habit, and deeply entrenched habits are difficult to break. That is why psychological change usually requires conscious effort. Ideas of selflessness, of not thinking about oneself, often manifests as a failure to honestly and frankly examine ones own motivations and actions. This can serve as an excuse for the harm we do to others, or merely lead to a failure to address and thereby potentially resolve our own problems. For a time, the "power of positive thinking" was a fad in the West, and unfortunately amid all the hype, the true value and appropriate practice tended to be obscured. Certain kinds of depression are habits of the mind. If one has experienced much hardship or disadvantage, one can simply get into the habit of feeling bad and expecting the worst, habits that are likely to be self-fulfilling prophecies. And deeply entrenched habits are hard to break. So that practices such as Cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) focus on changing these habits. Other mental ills such as anger and resentment, addiction and so on can be treated in a similar way.

Through persistent self-observation we catch our self in a bad mental habit, and over time train ourselves to change this habit: replacing a negative (in the sense of unhealthy) thought, with a positive (healthy) thought. This does not suggest that thoughts that are negative are intrinsically bad and positive thoughts intrinsically good, because the more important criteria is whether the thoughts are accurate or not. A lot of negative things exist in the world, and we do not do ourselves a service by refusing to recognise them. If we are avoiding something our conscience is telling us, it will not stop unless we either address the issue or allow ourselves to become a sociopath. It will keep at us. The addict of "positive thinking" is a fragile, glass-like creature, who feels besieged by negative thinking, where admission of a single negative thought will open an floodgate and overwhelm them. Such a condition is likely the consequence of persistent moral neglect. As in anything, it is a question of balance. A proper balance of recognition of the bad, with active cultivation of the good. So that we see this term "selflessness" has a variety of meanings, uses and misuses.

In the article On Happiness we saw that what gives us happiness changes and grows more complex as we age. "Conservative" is a broad brush with which to define human behaviour. It is often characterised and manifested as ignorant, oppressive and intolerant. But there is a flip side to most things. We might for instance distinguish between "conservative" and "sustainable". There is a difference between the enjoyment of sensual, emotional and ego related pleasures, and destructive excess. But living is dangerous and sometimes the desire to protect the young becomes an excuse to rob them of freedom and experience, and to infantilise adults in order to create a "child friendly" world (by which I mean preventing adults from accessing adult material or activities).


"censorship is like saying I can't have a steak because a baby can't chew it"

(Matt Santos in "West Wing", Season 7, Episode 12: "Duck And Cover"

(quote sometimes attributed to Mark Twain))

Those who want to make of their world a protected cocoon free of exposure to anything they don't want to be exposed to may not be averse to brutalising anyone who interferes with that, having stronger views on bad language and lewd images than assault. It is unseemly for the architects of moral virtue to be seen beating the life out of people who disagree with them, but collectively, through manipulation of legal and political process they are sometimes able to enshrine their personal likes and dislikes in law, so that prisons can be filled with people who only make other lifestyle choices. These sealed concrete and iron villages trap these people defenceless in rooms with murderers and rapists so that the architects of moral virtue can assault and terrorise by proxy to enforce their will and vengeance. So that our police and court system have a dual role: one to protect the community from the abuses of real criminals, but also to arbitrarily imprison members of that same community for going against the views of powerful and active interest groups. So that it becomes unclear whose side these institutions are actually on.

It is usually not so hard to tell when someone is feigning reason, and to recognise the futility of argument. One is tempted to continue only because they will claim victory whenever you stop. Pointing out inconsistencies in the philosophy and doctrine of those who love to control and restrict the lives of others can be a vain and pathetic exercise, since the oppression they give rise to may itself be the end they seek. The reasoned arguments they provide should not be treated seriously when it is clear that these doctrines are imposed and maintained by force, violence and terror. Their rationalisations and pretence of moral intent are only part of the game sadists play with their victims, like the cat with a mouse. Once their lazy arguments obviously do not stand they only threaten or assault their opponent. So that retarded opinions can be expressed openly without fear of contradiction. Their reasoned justifications only provide the people's justified fear with a rationalisation for kneeling to the will of gangsters. Such leaders and their supporters typically do not deny themselves the benefits of sin, but only do them in secret. Such are the hypocrites.

Somehow, bad news is easier to believe. The great strength of those who are intolerant and hateful, those who are convinced that whatever they now think is the only right way to think, is their thoroughgoing conviction and certainty, a seeming clarity and singleness of purpose. Those who are uncertain because we live in an uncertain world, are swayed by those who have unshakeable conviction, thinking: "There must be some reason, some foundation for it". So that those who lack the ability to see from any point of view but their own, are accepted as leaders. Those who are deficient in their thinking are accepted as possessing a supposed superior insight. By the time the irreconcilable contradictions in the leader's "clarity" are revealed, it may already be too late. The same principle allows interest groups with strong moral convictions to dominate voters who are not certain they are wrong.

If we accept the premise that the laws of the Old Testament are the product of the primitive mind, what then is their significance? How do they come about? In the article on Suffering we saw how personal likes and dislikes become personal values of right and wrong. If we consider things like homosexuality, anal sex, and sex with animals; we may need look no further than the fact that many people find such things icky, to explain the origin of moral prohibitions against such acts. There is a natural tendency for people to think that if they find something icky, then so should everyone else, and that there is something wrong with anyone who feels otherwise. If it is common to find something icky, and uncommon to find it not icky, then finding it icky is defined as normal, while the opposite view is not normal, which may lead to the view that it is abnormal. Some people are enraged at the mention of things they find icky, or any kind of reminder of something they find icky. The knowledge therefore that someone does something icky, makes that person's mere presence an unwelcome reminder and therefore a cause of rage, as though they had been invaded or defiled by the thought.

Many children find the sight or thought of tongue kissing icky. They will shut their eyes and cover their ears and run out of the room. But as they get older they usually grow out of this view. A person may find icky their first experience of a cigarette, dark beer, an exotic cheese or a fish head, or their first exposure to modern art or a horror movie, but in some circles these things are considered sophisticated, acquired tastes. Interacting with other cultures often involves expanding one's palate as well as one's views about what is desirable or not. Not everything in the world needs to be assigned a moral value of right or wrong. Some things merely are. We do not need to decide whether, for instance, the colour blue is "better" than the colour red, or rather, the colour red is "better" than the colour blue, and have long moral arguments to attempt to decide the matter. We do not need to expend mental effort on deciding whether it is okay for someone to like green apples. Because it is not our job to decide what other people can like or not like. Some people dislike cauliflower with a vengeance, but there are enough people in the world who are happy to eat it that such a negative view is not in danger of becoming a moral prohibition imposed by force. Given that most people in the world are having monogamous sex with an ugly person it is difficult to see how sexual morality can be based on aesthetic considerations.

Experiencing something as physically repulsive or disgusting ought not to be interpreted as implying that it is morally wrong. Cleaning a toilet is a disgusting activity, but also a virtue. In India, those who perform this work are called the "Untouchables". A woman cleaning the shit off a baby's ass and then kissing the baby's ass, or elbow deep in manure in her beautiful rose garden is not participating in shameful activities. Neither are the doctors, nurses and other carers engaged daily in their gross activities. If we were wondering, in our examination of serpent mythology in The Scientific Creation Myth (article 5), why serpents were associated with healing, we might remind ourselves both of this, and the fact that most medicines are also poisons, and many are also narcotics. And like Ceres in the rose garden and cleaners, serpents are close to the earth. So we might set aside our disapproval. We are learning in our battle to rid the world of viruses and bacteria through antibiotics and disinfectants, that we are strengthening the viruses and weakening the ability of the human immune system to fend them off. We are learning that along with the bad bacteria, there are good bacteria that live in our stomach, the so-called "probiotics", and one way to replenish them is by eating yogurt. While for the most part, personal hygiene and the eradication of disease through medicine, science and technology is good, we might also remember, in the words of Jane E. Brody and the New York Times article: Babies Know: A Little Dirt Is Good for You (26 January 2009). If we are coy about sex and other bodily functions, we might pause to consider the attention to detail demonstrated in the design of the penis and the vagina, the mouth, and even the anus, by the god who made them, along with "every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good" (Genesis 1:25).

It is also worth noting that if a man would find it repulsive to do what a woman does, how does this affect his perception of her? The usual route to human empathy is to put yourself in the place of the other person, to put yourself: "in their shoes", to see the situation "through their eyes". For the homophobic male this is not possible. The fact that a woman is sexually attracted to men makes her alien and suspect from the outset. Those things a woman is prepared to do for a man may conjure the impression that there is something intrinsically shameful about being a woman. So that the man's natural inclinations appear to himself to be evidence of a woman's moral perverseness. Instead of personality differences between men and women leading to attempts to embrace the other's point of view (to embrace one's feminine/masculine side) and thus expand the range of the personality of each, women are regarded as a "second sex" while men dominate society. Women then return the favour by viewing men's typical characteristics as flaws of character to be "fixed", exploiting the same egocentric point of view.

The spread of disease is often suggested as the rationale for why certain activities are judged to be "wrong", such as prostitution or homosexuality; as if disease is some kind of a signal of something's moral wrongness, nature's (God's) way of punishing the behaviour. Perhaps as natures way of punishing unnatural behaviour or at least unhealthy behaviour. But nature consists of organisms competing with each other for survival. One animal eats another to live. Infectious disease represents our competitive battle with microscopic organisms: bacteria, viruses and parasites who are only trying to survive at our expense. The intractability of disease is because nature has engineered both contestants, us and them, well, so that it is always a close battle. To fall prey to infectious disease does not imply some failing in ourselves, but rather the strength of adaptability of the virus, as a product of the rigours of biological evolution the same as us. Sexually transmitted diseases are a subset of infectious diseases in general, and the more dangerous diseases are those that are more easily contracted. The influenzas are among the most devastating diseases. In 1918-1920 the Spanish flu (H1N1) pandemic killed 3-5% of the world's population. You do not have to have sex with someone to catch influenza, it can be caught with a kiss, a handshake, breathing the same air, or touching the same doorknob or cup. But we do not consider any of these actions morally wrong because they can lead to contracting a deadly disease (God's punishment).

Nature is very much geared toward procreation, so that heterosexual sex culminating in the penis ejaculating in a vagina will forever be the common practice since this is required for the perpetuation of the species. But occasional departures from this norm are not going to have any pronounced detriment to this goal, especially if compared to the devastating effects if the world had chosen to live as the Apostle Paul.

In the modern world, the view has emerged that those things are morally wrong where one person imposes their will on another, against the will of that other person (the relationship between child and guardian is a partial exception to this rule). This is the Golden Rule in action. Consensual acts between adults that do not harm some third party, are therefore not morally wrong. In the modern world, a prostitute serving a customer is not morally wrong as long as both she and her customer are a willing party to the action. If the customer is married his action may be morally wrong, but it is not up to the prostitute to inquire into or police his actions. His actions are his own "fault", not the fault of the prostitute. So that we do not fix his moral failure by punishing the prostitute, or attempting to rid the world of opportunities for him to sin by restricting the freedom of anyone he might be tempted to have sex with. However, setting fire to a prostitute is morally wrong if she has not freely consented to such an act, which consent is unlikely. So that today, if someone tries to set fire to a prostitute, society will put them in prison, or possibly a mental institution, in order to protect the life and wellbeing of the prostitute. Because, contrary to what the Bible says, setting fire to a prostitute is an act of gross and despicable evil.

Human beings spend a lot of time trying to figure out right and wrong. Is prostitution right or wrong? Is taking drugs right or wrong? And based on the answer they arrive at they determine whether these things should be legal or illegal. But the more fundamental question is: right or wrong, does one adult person get to make decisions for other adult people? If I think what you are doing is wrong, do I get to decide you can't do it, and have my will embodied in law? Or is that your decision to make? Where do I get the idea that I can make those kinds of decisions for anyone but myself? We get to make decisions for our children, because that is the defining characteristic of being a child. The defining characteristic of being an adult is making ones own decisions and the freedom to live one's own life, chart one's own course, make one's own mistakes and discoveries. The experiment of living, living our lives, consists of the decisions we make. If we are not here to make those decisions, to live our lives, then why are we here?


"who are you to judge your neighbor?"

(James 4:12)

The web of humanity is a web of inclinations and decisions, and where those decisions are constrained by others who have deemed themselves fit to make those decisions for everyone, everyone has been rallied into behaving according to the decisions of these, imitating these. The world is painted over with a monochrome brush. A few adults have made children of the rest. There are compelling reasons to pass some laws: against murder, rape, theft, enslavement and exploitation, misconduct, corruption, deception. All these legitimate laws protect someone's rights, that have been infringed by another, and there are practical laws like everyone driving on the same side of the road. But there are also a whole swathe of laws that are nobody's business. Laws protecting no-one's rights, but only infringing them as some seek to impose their own will on others, the self appointed righteous, protecting people from themselves. Busybodies. There are many unavoidable restrictions on our lives, such as the need to find gainful employment and make fair trades for what we want. But piled onto these is a mound of unnecessary regulations. Lines are painted on the ground that we must follow and no one even remembers who painted them or why. The moral lessons learned by one generation are often forgotten by subsequent generations. It is not enough for the moral proscriptions to be preserved in tradition if the lesson has been lost. The lesson, the reason why, must be relearned, perhaps by doing, by making the same mistakes over again. It is the lesson that is to be preserved and passed on, so that future generations have the opportunity to avoid unnecessary, painful learning by doing, and to avoid repeating the errors of the past.

It is not the purpose of human beings to all be the same. It is not the purpose of morality to uncover the template from which we should all be cut, turning the world into an endless parking lot. In biology the replication of undifferentiated cells goes by the name "cancer". In ecology it is called destruction. It is the purpose of human beings to form communities and ecosystems, what in religion and mysticism is sometimes referred to as the "great man". Human beings can be thought of as bridges and custodians. Imagine an n-dimensional spectrum of human character and inclination. Between any two people who cannot relate to or understand one another, there is usually a third person who befriends both, and who thus serves as a link and translator between them. Their individual regard for this third person allows them to trust and respect each other, even if they cannot understand each other. Society is formed of such bridges. They are its fabric.

Everything that exists in the world has its self-appointed custodian. For some it is archaeology, for some astronomy, for some it is social justice or racing cars, tennis or architecture, porcelain cats or plastic superheroes, gemstones or shoes, old detective novels, comic books or philosophy, insects, stray dogs, children, cooking, medicine, religion and art, accounting, history, pornography or poker. Through an innate instinct and compulsion they voluntarily seek to preserve whatever it is and to convince the rest of the world of its value. They are the ones who will cry and mourn over its disappearance. They are the ones who will fight to protect it. If we ask the question: "What is a human being?" An answer is: "It is something that values things." Society is a web of values.

The following passage seeks to make a similar point, though the shortcoming of the metaphor is revealed when one declares: "I am the head, and so the other members of the body must do as I command." "The head" does not reside in a single individual, because we are all human beings, not mere parts of a human being.


"Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought.... For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so ... we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts...."

(Romans 12:3-6)

Those acts we naturally recognise as crimes because they have an unwilling victim, are obscured amid the condemnation of victimless crimes, till a morally confused populace is able to collectively condone the commission of real crimes as the just retribution against those who commit acts that are crimes in name only. Where calls to be "tough on crime" attempt to lump the perpetrators of victimless crimes together with murderers and rapists by assigning the same label: "crime" to both, so that seeking to rid the world of crime becomes the same as ridding the world of freedom.

By confounding actual wrongdoing with nominal wrongdoing (wrongdoing in name only), people become confused about right and wrong. If someone believes that something as innocent as having multiple sex partners, watching R rated movies or becoming intoxicated is "bad", they may also begin to believe that being "good" is a limited, timid, lifeless, hypocritical and discredited state. So that being "bad" begins to look like a virtue. Their being "bad" might not consist of doing any real harm, but may manifest as being a dick in general. How do we convince them to stop being a dick when the language of morality has been corrupted and discredited? Confounding the meaning of words like "good" and "bad" undermines the effectiveness of addressing issues of genuine evil, and cultivating this kind of confusion is the conscious intention of evil people in their efforts to protect and disguise themselves and carry out their various programs. If we are lost in a tangle of contradictory meanings every time a phrase like "tough on crime" is used, we cannot do good without doing even more evil, and evil is allowed to operate freely while we argue over semantics. It is therefore important that people be able to differentiate clearly and accurately, things that are actually bad from things that are actually not bad.

The "tough on crime" muddle is an example of a common practice that I will call "The Mushroom/Toadstool Problem". Two different things bear some similarity or something in common. One is bad (the toadstool which is poison), while one is not bad (the mushroom which is food), but by denying the distinction between them, the one that is not bad is represented as bad. They operate by posing illegitimate equations or transitive statements like: "smoking pot = a crime", and "murder = a crime", therefore "smoking pot = murder".

Any attempt to defend the mushroom simply elicits a stream of condemnation of the toadstool, as if that is what is being discussed. According to the equation: homosexual = paedophile; a defence of homosexuality elicits an attack on paedophiles, and who would argue with such an attack?

If someone wants to oppress you and make you unhappy, they might kill you, beat you or torture you. But this desire can express itself in many other more sophisticated forms that may be much more satisfying. The problem with killing someone is that the dead do not suffer. Oppression is about taking away from people the things they want, and imposing on them the things they don't want. This can be done by force, but it is easier and more fun to do it by deception, and especially to make one's victims accomplices in their own oppression. Even if you intend to kill someone, it is better to make them nothing first. While God may forgive, the Devil will not. The Devil wants you to feel bad, even if you've done nothing wrong, or especially so.

It is a time-honoured technique of evil people to take away what you want by painting it as bad, and that happiness is bad, and insisting that the things you don't want are actually good, that suffering and misery and anger, fear and hatred are all things that you should do. Leading you into evil by portraying it as good. By convincing us of this they make us their instruments, and we then go out and do to others what they did to us, in a great spreading contagion, a pyramid scheme, an empire. At the apex of the pyramid preside the hypocrites, the sociopaths, with their wealth and power, their slaves and concubines, laughing from sun-up to sun-up. Their feigned moral indignation representing no more than they have not gotten their way in something. If their slaves are ashamed to be slaves, and their concubines ashamed to be concubines, so much the better. If prostitution is illegal, their prostitutes will have no legal rights, and they can do whatever they want with them and they will have no recourse. If society condemns them, they will have nowhere to go, they will not find assistance or protection anywhere. If the promiscuous woman is automatically a "whore", and rejected by society, to live, she may have no recourse than to become an actual whore, society's toy slave, the society proclaiming itself to be her moral and physical guardian. And they win again: LOL! If drugs and prostitution were not illegal, they would not be the massive revenue streams they are for organised crime. A society attempting to embody conservative morality is much in the interest of evil men.

Once people are convinced of such ideas it then spreads like a virus. Parents teach it to their children and their children's children. Peers press it on each other. Leaders impose it on their followers. It may still be in place centuries later as an unquestioned assumption, no one knowing where it came from or why it is. Many not wanting to discover it has all been unnecessary, all the cruelty and waste in the name of righteousness.

The evil person's paradise is one of sordid secrets, where people must hide the truth. The more restrictive the laws, the more people who will find themselves on the wrong side of it. Having been compromised, they are then ripe for exploitation, they will do anything to keep their secret and shame hidden and avoid punishment. This compromise might happen at a time of financial distress. The sociopath seeks to convince their victim that they deserve what happens to them. Evil wants to compromise the integrity of its victims before destroying them, by presenting them with cruel moral dilemmas: to choose between death or pain and doing the right thing, or saving yourself at the expense of others. Economic inequality is not an accidental feature of society under tyranny, resulting from greed and economic mismanagement, or planned only from a desire to disempower the masses. It is an essential part of the tyrannical dream. Economic inequality maintains an inexhaustible supply of willing slaves, competing against each other to find new ways to serve their masters. By forbidding knowledge and communication, people are kept ignorant and isolated, powerless. The tyranny protects its people from exposure to information. "Corrupting" influences from the outside world or "subversive" influences from within. Information may galvanise them, motivate them, clear the cobwebs and wake them up. The kingdom of evil is the kingdom of lies, built on misrepresentation and confused, confounded meanings. Logic and meaning are disassembled into a fearful cathartic chaos where good has no more concrete effect than someone grabbing at phantoms. The tyrannical state treats its people like infants, who are kept from accessing information that is bad for them, or exercising decision making, making judgments or acting autonomously. The state becomes the all-powerful, all-controlling, all-knowing parent. By atomising communities into isolated individuals, it suppresses the human part of people. They create a population unaccustomed to thinking and speaking rationally and honestly, acting responsibly or rightly, or defending the rights of their neighbours, and where criminal forces seem all-powerful and insurmountable. Putting brutality in the place of maturity. It is part of the sense of humour of tyrants that they like to call their state : "Democratic Republic"; and to suggest that those who were abducted and later found dead must have committed suicide. For some, freedom means the joy of acting with impunity.

Despite all of this, the suppression of human communities can only go so far. The essence of the human being is driven underground but not destroyed. If a sizeable portion of the population sees a crack in the armour of tyranny, a confluence, a conjunction of circumstances, through which it can see a real chance at freedom, true humanity can spring up again in all its natural wholeness, vitality and optimism. Some of the toughness the population has been imbued with by its harsh environment can finally be put to good use. It can manifest again at a moment's notice in the massive, spontaneously coordinated popular uprising, either to find its rightful place in the sun, or fall back again, through vendetta, into the shadow of the old or some new tyrant. Though the distortion of that humanity by a history of the acceptance of fear and cruelty may cause the practices of being brutalised and brutalising others to continue for a time, together with the challenges of uprooting entrenched corruption. When generosity of spirit overcomes the instinct to restrict for fear of unknown consequences.

Tyranny always retards the social development of the population. So that whenever that tyranny ends, the population will find it has a lot of catching up to do. This can be demoralising and may even lead to avoidance, resorting to traditional values as a salve for injured dignity. It has been noted that, once it begins, economic and technological development can proceed at a greatly accelerated rate for developing nations compared to the time it originally took for the leader nations. This can also be true for social evolution. Avoidance only delays the inevitable and sets the population further behind. In the interim causing a lot of suffering for those in the community seeking real freedom. Removing the gap allows the true culture to bloom. While some members of the community may identify with modernity immediately, the more conventional members are likely to require some time.

People who live within societies where dissent is suppressed cannot help believing the lies of the ruling party even when they know they are lies, because they have no other material with which to form their ideas. They think the truth is some diluted form of what they are being told to believe, not its complete opposite. When they criticise the government, quietly, in private, it is all framed in concepts provided by the government. They thumb their nose at the arrogance of the rich liberal nations who think they are better, and loyally defend their abusers, as if their stubbornness is harming anyone other than themselves. While distant bemused democracies shrug, at least unless the shadow of their economic might and the threat of a new dark age rises when they are no longer trapped and rendered harmless in a cycle of perpetual implosion, and their social malfunction strides onto the world stage asserting its own dignity. Lauding the potential for economic growth of a population that started with nothing as an "economic miracle" of good societal management. Like the fast growing sapling imagining it will overshoot all the old trees. An impoverished population has enormous, straight forward opportunities for rapid economic growth because they are coming from so far behind. Increase the scale of agriculture and build modern factories, transport and communication systems, and the economy will grow. Once a nation has reached a high level of efficiency, economic growth is slower because there are fewer obvious opportunities for further improvement. It takes more ingenuity and creativity. The population of the developing world vastly outnumbers the developed world, so that even inefficient economies, if they are big enough, can wield great power. A growth that makes getting your house in order the concern of everyone.

To the outside world, a population raised on propaganda in a land where truth is against the law has an eerie, ominous psychology, in their willingness to be mobilised to whatever purpose their leaders set them, as an unthinking, unquestioning instrument without recourse. Their citizens will be offered up to war if the outside world threatens the leadership with regime change. The citizens will be offered up to war if the leaders' business interests are threatened, or if they feel slighted or frustrated in some way. Or if they are upset and nervous after witnessing the demise of a kindred foreign dictator. While the leadership seeks to be careful not to risk the viability of the nation as a whole, they have no qualms about sacrificing any number of their own people within those bounds. So that the population under such a leadership is seen as a danger to and by the outside world. As the world shrinks and business interests become more international and interconnected, the nation willing to remain under tyranny is seen as a threat. If the economy and power of such a nation is growing it becomes a race. As the middle class grows, will they demand democracy before their leaders decide to use their population as a military asset in the realm of international strategy and business, or to spread their tyranny to other lands, or to serve as a safe harbour for criminal organisations operating globally? Will their moral apathy be purchased with first world commodities and their pride puffed up with nationalism? Tyrannies are forever painting the outside world, and its "spies" and its agents, as the enemy, to steer the population's attention away from their real enemy, and to justify martial law. So it is a simple matter to mobilise the population against such an enemy when no one can disagree with the party line, and information is not allowed in from outside.

While economic growth offers much benefit for many, even in the face of gross corruption and mismanagement, the corrupt society never reaches high levels of efficiency and equality. Resources are always squandered and the losers will always be many. One should not overstate the importance of the national leader who happened to be in place, for instance, when a communist economy transitioned to a free market economy, as if they are somehow personally responsible for the benefits, if it was clear to everyone that was the way to go. Nor if their efforts to combat corruption only extends as far as their enemies or sacrificial lambs. Nor if they substitute a cult of themselves for democracy. A lot of faith is placed in the growth of the middle classes. But this all depends upon how much injustice the middle class is willing to stomach. Economics provides the means but not the will to reform society, and to decide between a democracy or a corporate oligarchy. The supremacy of the Western powers to date has depended upon the fact that the rest of the world had not yet experienced modern economic growth. As the developing world, which is most of the world, closes the gap with the First World economies, the influence of those nations will diminish. The kind of world we will inhabit then will depend upon which side of the the liberal/conservative divide the various nations come down on. It has tended to be assumed that as nations adopt the modern economic model they will simultaneously adopt the liberal ideal. However the desire for money and the desire to permit others freedom and equality may not be correlated. The first world economies developed slowly and in parallel with social changes. The developing world is developing rapidly and with vast sums of money accumulating in a few hands within relatively backward societies. So that economic development may outstrip social development. And the growing power of the State outstrips the growing power of the populace. Developing nations find themselves under totalitarian regimes before their populations have had a chance to become politically and socially educated and informed.

It is similarly assumed that when people migrate to liberal democracies it is because they embrace the liberal ideal, and not only to escape persecution by their enemies or to gain economic advantages, while bringing their conservative values with them, swelling the ranks of old world values within the new world. It is likely that their children and their children's children will adopt liberal views, but this transition, needless to say, takes generations, so that large scale immigration holds the potential to make liberals a minority within a liberal nation.

In the first world, the social changes wrought by the industrial revolution in the late Nineteenth Century, changes that came to be known as "Capitalism", set in motion violent attempts by the working classes to free themselves of the oppression of their new economic masters. In some countries this took the form of Communism. In the West it took the somewhat gentler and ultimately more effective form of Unionism. We forget today how militant Unionism once was (see for instance the movie "Hoffa" (1992), directed by Danny DeVito and starring Jack Nicholson). The "free market" did not automatically deliver worker's rights from the power of bosses. While Communism itself failed, it is not clear to what extent the threat of Communism assisted the cause of worker's rights in the Western democracies. Capitalism had to get its house in order or face the more dire possibility of a Communist takeover. The frantic fear of Communism in the West at the time was not an irrational fear. One of the errors of Communism was that under it, the bosses and the State were one and the same. The transition from the Communist economy to the free market economy does not affect the basic oligarchic structure, any more than did the transition from Monarchy to Communism.

Professional economists do not sing the praises of Karl Marx. Only men with guns who want to take what the rich have praise Karl Marx. Once the men with guns have what the rich had they keep it for themselves. It should be noted that the descriptions of working class conditions in late Nineteenth Century Great Britain that appear in Marx' "Capital" are taken from a series of reports commissioned by the democratically elected British government, in an effort to address the social changes brought about by the industrial revolution. Communism was a colossal error, not only because the economics was wrong, but because it was a totalitarian system.

The workers "owning the means of production" is a meaningless, nonsense concept under Communism. If you are working on a factory production line getting yelled at by your supervisor, in what sense do you the worker own the factory you are working in? Your supervisor will have a better house than you, and his boss, away in his office will have an even better house, because the hierarchical nature of society is necessary to its functioning. The Party hierarchy are those who benefit most, and in a totalitarian system they are not answerable to the people but simply eliminate dissent. A variation on this idea that occurs in democratic nations and has some measure of the truth to it are instances where workers own shares in the company where they work. While they typically do not own enough shares to have much influence over the company, it does make them invested in the well-being of the company. In a democracy, workers own all of their own labour, and choose when, where and whether to contribute it.

We are now seeing rapid industrialisation in the rest of the world without much regard to how they are to make the necessary parallel institutional changes, expecting the magic of the market economy to take care of it automatically.

In its effort to redefine people as anti-people, evil confounds not only reason and truth, but also desires; blocking natural wants, actual natural inclinations, by portraying them as sins or political evils, and cultivates artificial ones through brute conditioning and training in the name of self discipline and reformation, until people are no longer able to perceive what is their own real nature and what they genuinely do and do not want, but depend upon someone else to tell them what these should be.

If a positive love is frustrated, a negative love may be allowed to take its place. A positive love is something we love for its own sake. A negative love is something we are attracted to out of frustration or anger. Take away the frustration and anger and the attraction disappears.

Those who live in the desert, learn to love the desert. Those who live in the swamp, learn to love the swamp. If the only world you know is abusive, you will love it nonetheless, because people need to love and will find something, because good can be found anywhere, even in the midst of evil, and so the one is confused for the other. This again is a manifestation of the mushroom/toadstool problem, but operating in the other direction this time. Just as something that is not bad can be made to seem bad through some superficial association or resemblance; so something bad can be made to seem good through some superficial association or resemblance to something good. It is again the blurring together of two distinct things, a failure of discrimination. Any attempt to criticise the toadstool is diverted into praise for the mushroom.

It has always been the case that the lone sociopath has had a disproportionate ability to cause harm to others before society can put a stop to them, and technology has only enhanced this ability. People will almost willingly offer up their lives to a great and noble cause, in the absence of other options, but the reasonings offered by the sociopath for depriving someone of so precious a thing as life, are typically so clinically moronic and trivial, one can see nothing but shocking waste and only a deep mourning that such a useless space-cadet could not have been stopped sooner. The person who can only offer the world damage and nothing good, permits their reasoning to sink into disarray and nonsense in their infantile grasping for excuses and respect. Transparently dressing up the pettiness of the revenge for whatever it is they resent not having. Whether they did not get enough hugs or they got too many. Or using injustices committed against them to justify the injustices they commit against others. Because their own feelings matter more than anyone else's. Or if it is only the trivial entertainment of someone for whom everything is trivial. They embrace horror to lend dignity to personal characteristics that would otherwise be laughed at or seen only as bland. Finding personal pride in the fear they can instil and the pain they can inflict. The only way they have to matter to another person. Or act on a rage that allows nothing else to enter. The person who has a talent for brutality may choose to make that the measure of a man's worth. But the hero is not brutal for its own sake, but hates brutality and only uses it when it is justified and unavoidable. He values his own life as well as the lives of others. Whether they have no skills or simply squander those they were given. The willing moral regression of the sociopath causes them to become no more than a force of nature, a snake that bites only because it is its nature to, and has no use any more of reasoning. A simple virus. The thug is an ape. A falling piano or a runaway vehicle with no driver and failed brakes. Something for others only to get out of the way of. Or bow to and pander to if no viable alternative is available. Someone who hates nothing more than the happiness, freedom and purpose of others. Angered by those who are not afraid and compelled to make them so. Enraged in the presence of beauty, wisdom and goodness because they possess none of them. If someone without any of these qualities can make someone else grovel and beg, it is a good day. If everyone thinks you are a turd, but are too terrified of you to say so, you have respect and dignity. Less than zero because the world would actually be improved by their removal from it. Their memorial is the relief others feel when they are gone. Oppressive causes offer such people a home. Any cause will do. Those who are more clever in their evil and leisurely in their walk to destruction, will happily exploit such individuals' blind rush to their own demise by providing them with the means and motivation to increase the carnage they can do on the way down. A different kind of a human would be troubled that cheering crowds honouring them had been coerced or terrorised into this performance. But for the tyrant it is all great fun, a sign of his great success at making people do what he wants. Look at the sheer number of them!

Not all villainy is irrational. To the one who sees that we will all be dead soon enough, and we have only a limited time to get the good things life has to offer, crime and brutality offer success, hookers, servants, slaves and all the beautiful things money can buy, as well as freedom, power and prestige. To them, conscience and virtue are irrational superstitions and there is only winners and losers in a world of predators and prey. To them, reason leads only to a single conclusion. They wish only that everyone see the same bleak reality they do. Power gives respect to the overgrown infant. Perhaps it is only wishful thinking that causes us to expect conscience and the reality of human emotion and empathy to distort and pervert their reason till they go insane, or perhaps insanity is the only adaptation to such a reality. That empathy, guilt and shame must exert a force, inspiring the irrational rationalisations and unjustifiable justifications as a defence. In the absence of real reform, leading to the breakdown of the mental faculties and madness displayed in the form of their perverse moral judgments. If conscience can be switched off like flipping a switch leaving pure reason and animal desire, we need not impute any madness, only evolutionary regression. Is it possible to fault their logic? Or is it rather we who are irrational? They are the rational foundation of evil. They will live for a time and then they will die. They will succeed for a time, victorious, and then they will fall. How is it different for anyone else, except that some are prevented by their weakness and morality from ever succeeding? They are the enemy, not because they use reason, and not because their reason is flawed. But because we deem their emotions, the truer part of their humanity, to be flawed, malfunctioning, or simply absent, because we value kindness, empathy, and ideals of justice. Not because they are practical, because often they are not. On what rational basis? Because altruism helps the survival of the species and is programmed into us by our genes? Not because they benefit the species, but because we feel them and love them and do not want to lose them. Because we do not want to lose our soul to the living death that is evil. Because we do not condemn the weak. Because we do not want to lose the love that is alive within us. With or without religion, this core conviction unites those who here we call "morally good".

We should distinguish here between people who commit evil acts and people who are evil, because the former does not necessarily imply the latter. Many people never question the ideas given to them by their environment, and some have been conditioned not to. That is: they know no better. Or those who are simply afraid to disobey their masters. In these cases a change of environment or conditions, and exposure to a different set of ideas can have a profound effect. People who have suffered greatly may have such a powerful emotional charge associated with the relevant ideas that it is virtually impossible for them to think logically or objectively about them. Others might only realise the errors in their thinking after pursuing them through to the bitter end. It is probably impossible to know who can be saved, however unlikely it might appear in some instances. But when it comes to the practical and immediate requirements of protecting the innocent, sometimes people must be treated according to their present acts rather than their spiritual potential. And as soldiers are sometimes apt to say: "let God sort them out" (Arnaud Amalric (1209)).

This all means that there is a natural partnership between conservative morality and the desire to do evil. While evil is in its essence hedonistic, its desire to deceive and disguise itself means that it is commonly portrayed as its opposite, the perennial wolf in sheep's clothing. By insinuating themselves into communities seeking only to lead good and blameless lives, they radicalise conservative morality into something militant and cruel. In a hail of blinding chants of: "Believe and do not question!", "trust us" they turn the desire to believe into the requirement to, transforming a hope for something better into a fear of something worse. That is why it is not enough to be "innocent as doves", we must also be "shrewd as snakes" (Matthew 10:16). So that our own poor judgment and ignorance does not cause us to align ourselves with snakes. This in turn requires scepticism, knowledge and reason in place of blind trust. The innocent become a resource to be exploited, because it is easier and more fun to exploit the innocent than the wise. The isolating effects of shame and silence increase their vulnerability, and fear increases their willingness to believe and trust. If you will see you are in a pit of vipers if you open your eyes, and perhaps you have been party all along to what they have done, better to keep them closed and hope for the best, and defensively maintain the illusion that it is all for righteousness' sake, for God or country or community.

Those with no scruples will pretend to be whatever will get them what they want. Acting like the kind of person who will receive respect, success, trust and power over others is a typical response. We are accustomed to looking for criminality at the fringes, not in the polite and respected core of society. We commonly identify as criminals those people who more or less advertise themselves as such, what we might call the "honest criminals". But evil insinuates itself, to protect itself and to get what it wants. It weaves itself into its environment close to what it wants. So that you might be completely surrounded and not see a single one. We will only find evil's poor cousin among the helpless and the have-nots. People with conscience marvel unbelieving and uncomprehending at the willingness of evil to deceive and destroy. But the deceptiveness of evil is not some metaphysical puzzle. What we call evil is only predation, a remnant from our animal origins. Guile, disguise, stealth, misdirection, deception and concealment are all a natural part of the predator's toolkit. They act openly only when they believe their prey cannot escape or is helpless. Otherwise they conceal themselves until they can act effectively and safely. Concealment for survival is used by both predator and prey in the spy versus spy of the animal and vegetable kingdoms. The insect that looks like a stick, the chameleon, the butterfly with a pair of enormous eyes painted on its wings. The flower that looks like the head of a bird. The low crouch of the stalking cat. The alligator floating quietly just beneath the smooth surface at the water's edge. The inviting pitcher plant.

The human predator uses words, ideas, body language, seduction to weave its web. This is both its disguise and its display. And like the leech or other parasites, it is not always intent on the death or destruction of its prey, but may only seek to turn a community into a host to feed on indefinitely, like the good shepherd keeping his flock together.

The predator seeks out the vulnerable (prostitutes, homosexuals, Jews, children), separates them from the rest of the herd and has them for dinner, taking the things or pleasures that it wants. It is not indifferent to its prey. It enjoys its win and its victim's loss. One is not angry at one's dinner. Despite language, clothing and the other trappings of civilisation they have never made the transition out of the animal kingdom by laying claim to those qualities we label as: "humanity".

Most people are not evil. Most people are normal. But people can be resentful, jealous, narrow minded, bigoted, offended, angry, paranoid, fearful, vengeful, vindictive, timid; or they can be trusting, naïve, ignorant, as well as vain, proud, indifferent, covetous and greedy. And this can be exploited. These are the people who can be convinced to do evil, although they are not evil. Some evil people do not murder or rape or steal. They only exert influence. A tyrant does not need to kill people himself. He uses normal people for that. With a gun you can kill maybe ten people. With words you can kill and enslave millions. With influence they can create a world to their liking.

In actual fact, most people lead conservative lives. Most people do not take hard drugs (except maybe for a few years in their youth), but only have a few glasses of wine or beer a week. They only have sex with their monogamous partner (except maybe for a few years in their youth). Rarely if ever have anal sex. They go to work, raise their family, and seek to be a good member of society, a good parent, a good partner. But we do not refer to these people as having "conservative morals" because they do not attempt to impose their will on others who are currently living differently. It would not occur to them to do so. Instead of saying that they have conservative morals, we describe such people instead as: "liberals". For these peace is easy and uncomplicated. Because the demands of moral conservatives does not initially interfere much with ordinary people it does not always meet the kind of resistance it should. By the time their excesses emerge they may already be entrenched.


"First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me."

(Martin Niemöller)

It is in the nature of conservative morality to be more outraged by people having fun, than by people being murdered. The desire to control others is entirely distinct from being good. It is without mercy or restraint. "Values" are more important than people. To the one with conservative morals, liberals are negligent and libertarian because they permit freedom. A value is not a living being. It is only someone's opinion. While liberals are accused of weakness and laxness, the appearance of evil in the midst of a community that loves life: beauty, goodness and truth, galvanises that community like a mother who sees their own child threatened. While such a community may act blindly and end up attacking the wrong people, it will act to defend itself.

What are we to make of all of this in the context of Jesus' advice to "turn the other cheek" and "go the extra mile" and "do not resist evil". I can't say that I know, but I might suggest that his words constitute an ideal, to be implemented more or less perfectly in the real world. To go "the extra mile" is not necessarily to suggest that we should go an endless number of extra miles. After two cheeks, we run out of cheeks to turn. Should there be no limit to how long we should not resist evil?

Jesus made the ultimate sacrifice. He gave up his life passively without fighting. But that is not the same as the suggestion that we should all do the same. Jesus did not die, but only went home, and he promised eventually to cast into the fire those who do not do any good. Such is not a passive and infinite tolerance of evil, but marks a line in the sand and says: "You have until here, and no further." There are occasions when to offer yourself up passively to the destruction offered by evil, is the most effective thing that can be done. Times when a symbol is the most powerful and effective tool. And it is up to the individual to sense when or if that moment has arrived. And there are times when no good comes of fighting evil directly because it is too strong, and self sacrifice would be meaningless, and people can only bide their time and await their opportunity. And there are times when evil has used up society's indulgence and must be ended.

The crucifixion serves as part of Jesus' street cred'. It demonstrates courage and commitment and prevents all his pacifist sentiment seeming merely as weakness and dreams. It made him greatly admired and lent power and therefore influence to his words, and sympathy to his person. It made him truly part of the human condition, connecting man with deity through a shared experience.

If religion fails to evolve with biological and social evolution, this might manifest itself in a number of ways. Those who find the greatest authority in the religion of greatest antiquity are able to hinder the progress of religion even in the face of divine intervention, by simply disregarding all more recent revelations. As institutions, churches are more comfortable praising prophets who are safely in the grave, and a God who stopped communicating millennia ago.


"Woe to you, because you build tombs for the prophets, and it was your ancestors who killed them. So you testify that you approve of what your ancestors did; they killed the prophets, and you build their tombs."

(Luke 11:47-48, see also Matthew 23:29-32)

By placing moral and spiritual insight directly into human consciousness, an unofficial religion can emerge in the populace independent of atrophied official religions. So that even those professing themselves members of those religions may hold beliefs quite different to those professed by the religion's official spokesmen. The harsh moralising of the priests and doctrine may pass unregarded over the naturally enlightened and tolerant congregation, like water off a duck's back. Churchgoers may attend not for doctrinal instruction but only for the comfort of ritual and the tone of holiness. To be among people, some of whom at least, are earnestly aspiring to do God's work. To believe that God is alive in the community and not just themselves. So that the church as an institution becomes only a bearer of ritual, void of any doctrinal significance. Doctrine perhaps mouthed by priests similarly disconnected from its content.

Or the opposite might occur. As the official religions seek to reform and update themselves, through the actions of enlightened priests and scholars, they may be prevented from doing so by their tradition-bound and narrow-minded congregations, who demand priests bearing traditional values with more fire and brimstone.

We might also find the good work of religion being carried out by agnostics and atheists, free to think and intuit for themselves, while the self-declared believers are afraid to depart from tradition, trapped in repeating the sins of history.

It is true that pleasure holds dangers, primarily the dangers of excess. But if pleasure is not a good, then what is the point of anything? To deny pleasure is to deny the joy and the point of living. Those who are uncomfortable with pleasure and joy ought not to be our moral guides. The first problem of living is in attaining the necessities of life: survival, safety, food, shelter, companionship, etc. Once this has been achieved, the second challenge of living is to control our own desires. To deny or destroy desires is not to control them.


"Someday man should learn how to enjoy liberty without license, nourishment without gluttony, and pleasure without debauchery. Self-control is a better human policy of behavior regulation than is extreme self-denial. Nor did Jesus ever teach these unreasonable views to his followers."

(The Urantia Book 89:3.7)

It is true that with desire comes sadness, but so too does happiness. To free oneself of sadness by freeing oneself of desire, takes away happiness as well. To lose all of this is to lose the point of existence. This anaesthetised state does not deserve the name "bliss". In the article on Suffering we saw that happiness is not the absence of sadness because human beings experience a multitude of emotions simultaneously. In the language of economics, we tolerate costs for the sake of benefits. We are happy when we have something that is worth the price. Heaven is not the end of tears or desire. Without desire there is no satisfaction.


"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled."

"Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted."

(Two of "The Beatitudes", Matthew 5:3-10)

"Angels are so near you and care so feelingly for you that they figuratively 'weep because of your willful intolerance and stubbornness.'"

(Urantia Book: 113:5.2)

Revelation 21:4: "He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away": should be taken as relative rather than as an absolute statement. A comparison of paradise to Earthly existence.

The problems of drugs are the problems of pleasure and self-control in general. Blocking access to this or that specific object of desire does not solve the basic problem, which is the control of the desire. It may be sex, beauty, money, power and control, prestige and honours, respect, anger and rage, vengeance and envy, covoutousness, gluttony. When one door is closed another opens. The person who gives us cigarettes gets fat. The ex-drug user becomes a religious zealot within an Evangelical or Pentecostal church, hyperventilating and speaking in tongues, trying to get high on the Holy Spirit and the drama of coming armageddon. A practice that also works in the other direction, priming its congregation for future drug abuse when the hit you get from Holy Spirit no longer does the trick, and something stronger is sought. The ability to control desire is developed through being excercised, not by being blocked from action by external forces. No one wins an award for successfuly resisting what they cannot get.

Which is why when the grip of oppression is finally released, the population recently living under tyranny is so inexperienced in exercising responsibility and restraint, a moral independence of authority, and acting autonomously, like children suddenly left to mind the house while the parents are away, or peasants dancing on the dining tables of their defeated lords. In the ensuing chaos and collapse they seek order and a return to old familiar patterns of behaviour, and may find dignity in unnecessary hardships. Oppression only delays a development that must come eventually, and so does every form of hysteria. Eventually the hang over comes. And society wakes up to survey the damage it has wrought.

In their efforts to disuade people from taking drugs, conservatives have invented certain myths of drug use. One of these is the myth of the "drug pusher", conceived as a Lucifer-like character lurking in dark corners, whispering seductively in people's ear: "You wanna buy some death sticks?" Typically at the retail end, drug suppliers are beating their customers off with a stick and do not need to promote the use of their product, only its quality relative to that of other sellers. The real drug "pushers" are other users, your friends if you move in those circles. "Try this man! It's awesome!" Drug use may be pursued in solitary, but is often a social activity. People like to get high with their friends, sharing a common joy and excitement. Everyone thinks they will escape addiction.

The other myth of drug use is that people take drugs in an effort to avoid life and its problems. People take drugs because they are intensely pleasurable, and people like pleasure very much. We do not need to seek ulterior motives for drug use. This well-intentioned lie seeks to convince non-users that drugs have no intrinsic appeal. To one steeped in this myth, the joys of drug use are a profound revelation. By lying about drugs the authorities compromise their credibility and pervert the dialog about genuine issues. Once those opposed to drug use have been shown to be liars, or ignorant, hysterical and deluded, the opposite myth that drugs are good gains credibility. Drugs offer pleasures so intense that people will risk their lives for it. They will risk their standing in society and their liberty. They will risk everything they have and forfeit their future. Certainly, in the latter stages, they will hide out in their drug use to avoid the mounting problems it has generated, if they are an addict, but this is not the original cause.

We should note that we do not represent everyone who drinks as an alcoholic, or everyone who eats as an obese glutton. Yet we use the drug addict to represent the drug user. Because once we have declared something illegal it must be all bad, and only a crazy, criminal or deceived person would do it. The human race keeps inventing new and more intense, and therefore more addictive, pleasures to tempt itself with. But it should be noted, occasional recessions aside, the liberal nations are doing very well. Indulgence has not caused a descent into anarchy. Their cultures are vital, their population educated, capable and largely healthy. Because nature imposes limits on behaviour. People do not only desire pleasure and sin. They also desire meaning and virtue. Desire leads us to God, not away from Him.

Liberal democracies typically have strong and adaptable economies with effective public healthcare, social infrastructure and social justice. "Self indulgence" and "decadence" have not created nations overrun by hedonistic bums. Rather the work ethic in such nations tends to be strong because the opportunities on offer are appealing and because work is considered to be an important part of social responsibility and how people define themselves as worthwhile and capable individuals. This is true even in liberal democracies that do not have a powerful "Bible belt" to keep them on the straight and narrow. In fact, the Bible belt is increasingly supported by subsidies paid for by the more productive inhabitants of the major cities, on account of its failure to keep up with changing economic conditions. Which may go some way toward explaining their resentment for the "modern world". If this same group of people turn their back on science and a rational education, they are primed to become a third-world nation embedded within the first, destined to cry out against that nation's "neglect" of them as their own infrastructure begins to disintegrate.

Drug use is a real problem. Not everyone who joins the drug culture makes it out alive. But neither does everyone who rides a skateboard or a bike, who drives a car, goes for a swim, climbs a mountain, drives a Formula One race car, or sails solo around the world. We do not make these other activities illegal because they are dangerous. But we do put some controls around the more dangerous examples. With freedom comes risk. If you want to live in a world without risk, you might be inclined to forsake freedoms, only to find that the greatest risk is that posed by the absence of freedom. The cause of all suffering in the universe is life itself. It is consciousness. If we want to cure all of life's ills then extinction will do it. If we want to have life, real life, then with it comes risk. The risk of sin. The risk of pain. The risk of loss.

People are attracted to drugs because they desire real life. They go to work. They go home. They go to work again. They see their friends, their family. They go to work again. Desire wants more. It wants excitement, exhilaration. It dreams of the perfect lover, the perfect love. It dreams of purpose and God.

Drugs offer a direct path to pleasure and joy, by activating the pleasure centres in the brain. The user sits like the perfect Buddhist guru, aglow with inner bliss, shedding his mortal coil like an old coat. Only to discover....

We seek experience and knowledge, and when avenues to experience are blocked, so is access to the accompanying knowledge, and the physical consequences of experience. For the addict who has lost everything and almost his life, everything is stripped away but for one sole and all important achievement: the daily exercise of self control. He literally counts the days he has been victorious over temptation. He knows why we pray: "Lead me not into temptation" (Matthew 6:13).

Drug use is dangerous and makes problems. But these risks are self-imposed and problems self-inflicted by people seeking life, and it is therefore within their rights to the extent that they are not causing undue collateral harm. We hide our children away from such temptations, but once they reach the age of autonomy we can only look on anxiously and hope they have been taught well, and will be fortunate.

Those who believe in personal mortality, that is, those who do not believe in eternal life, are already operating according to the presumption of inescapable personal doom. In such a case there is a certain logic in the decision to spend the time they have high. And there is the arrogance and stupidity of suicidal youth, blind to the values of maturity, seeing nothing ahead. If we really want to stop losing our young, we should show them a better world. One worth sticking around for. Not imagine in our fear for them that our fist is love's vehicle. Or resenting their rebuke at not following in our footsteps.

Drugs offer real benefits. If the goal of life is the pursuit of happiness, there is a contradiction in making illegal those things which offer the most intense pleasures. But these benefits come at a cost and a risk. Some drugs are relatively low risk, and it requires persistence on the part of the user to manifest the harm. Other drugs are high risk, and relatively likely to cause serious addiction and the associated harm. A 2010 article in the medical journal Lancet, entitled "Drug harms in the UK: a multicriteria decision analysis" assigned a numeric value out of 100 to each of the common recreational drugs (legal and illegal), as a measure of the drug's harm. The value combined two criteria: "harm to self" and "harm to others". According to this report, the most harmful drugs (shown with their numeric score) in descending order are: Alcohol (72), Heroin (55), Crack Cocaine (54), Metamfetamine (33), Cocaine (27), Tobacco (26). The least harmful drugs in descending order are: Cannabis (20), Ecstasy (9), LSD (7). Surprising perhaps is the high score for alcohol relative to the other drugs. The report states the following.


"Gable [Gable RS. Comparison of acute lethal toxicity of commonly abused psychoactive substances. Addiction 2004; 99: 686–96] has shown that, on the basis of a safety ratio, alcohol is more lethal than many illicit drugs, such as cannabis, lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), and mushrooms."


Heroin withdrawal can be unpleasant, eliciting flu-like symptoms, but alcohol withdrawal can be deadly. Although the report gives Heroin and Crack Cocaine higher scores in terms of harm to the user, Alcohol receives a higher score overall due to its high rating for harm to others. This is largely due to alcohol's association with violence. An Australian report from 1990 ("Violence: Directions for Australia") makes a similar point.


"It is self-evident that a strong association exists between alcohol and violent behaviour, although the exact nature of the relationship is not clear.... Nevertheless, research studies indicate that alcohol plays a major role in violence in Australia." (p.46)


Whereas:


"Thus, almost all of the violence associated with heroin may be attributed to policies relating to its control, rather than to any inherent pharmacological properties." (p.90)


Likewise:


"The most common effect of cannabis is to produce a feeling of relaxation and mild euphoria in its users. A number of researchers have found that cannabis, far from engendering violence, may actually inhibit aggressive behaviour.... Cannabis is much less addictive than alcohol, tobacco or heroin, and the potential for incidental violence associated with its acquisition or distribution is relatively minimal. However, because cannabis is an illicit substance, users risk the violence associated with all dealing in the drug trade...." (pp.90-91)


The lack of clarity around "the exact nature of the relationship" between alcohol and violence is due to considerations such as personality, contextual and cultural factors.


"Since the 1960s the inadequacy of the disinhibition theory as a complete explanation of a link between alcohol and aggression has been recognised. To be sure, alcohol tends to lower inhibitions. But a number of studies demonstrate that behaviour after drinking is extremely diverse.... And all behaviour under the influence of alcohol is affected by social and cultural rules and conventions and the setting in which the drinking takes place, as well as particular personality factors in the drinker." (p.87)


In considering cultural factors, the report makes reference to an observation made in another report.


"we have no reason to believe that the French would start drunken fights should they lower their consumption to the same level as the Scots or the Finns"

(Klaus Mäkelä, "Level of Consumption and Social Consequences of Drinking."

In Research Advances in Alcohol and Drug Problems, vol. 4. 1978. pp.303–348.)

We can conclude from the above that current drug policy the world over is not evidence based, except perhaps in those countries living under Sharia law where the consumption of alcohol is prohibited. In liberal democracies the eradication of illicit drug use is unlikely ever to be a reality. We should question therefore whether attempts to minimise use by means of the threat of criminal prosecution is an appropriate tactic. The report: "Statistics on Drugs Misuse: England, 2017" states the following. "In 2015/16, around 1 in 12 (8.4 per cent) adults aged 16 to 59 had taken an illicit drug in the last year. This equates to around 2.7 million people." According to the US "National Survey on Drug Use and Health" for 2013: "In 2013, an estimated 24.6 million Americans aged 12 or older were current (past month) illicit drug users, meaning they had used an illicit drug during the month prior to the survey interview. The estimate represents 9.4 percent of the population aged 12 or older." Of these, 2.2 million were adolescents aged 12 to 17 (8.9% of the total). Was there ever seriously the expectation that Americans would stop taking drugs? If not, what was the purpose of the war? If the only goal was to suppress rather than eliminate drug use, how could society justify even a tiny fraction of the cost, financial and social, that eventuated? A war that does not have victory as a goal is necessarily endless. Yet is so destructive in its nature it can never become a part of routine law and order. It is not appropriate for a democracy to criminalise a behaviour acceptable to 10% of the population. The other 90% of the population needs to stop punishing this minority. Instead of criminalising the behaviour, drug use can be treated soberly, so to speak, recognising it as a legitimate but risky adult human pursuit, one whose dangers should be respected and clearly stated.

With decriminalisation, the government can treat illicit drugs similar to how it currently manages the harm associated with other legal drugs such as tobacco. By levying a tax against their sale. Instead of a sizable portion of the government annual budget being squandered on an unwinnable "drug war", recreational drugs instead become a source of government revenue. Revenue that can be used to fund government education and health programs dealing with the consequences of addiction. And American farmers can grow something that does not require government subsidy. If society is willing to spend billions of dollars on killing and imprisoning those associated with illicit drug use ("After 40 years, $1 trillion, US War on Drugs has failed to meet any of its goals" (Fox News - World)), it should be willing to spend a tiny fraction of that on helping them instead. With decriminalisation for adult use, the problem reduces to efforts to keep drugs out of the hands of children, as is the case for cigarettes and alcohol.

The Spirit of Truth

In Christian doctrine, the natural intuition of morality and religion that I have described above is referred to as the "Spirit of Truth" (the "Holy Spirit").


“If you love me, keep my commands. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever—the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. ... On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them.... Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. Anyone who does not love me will not obey my teaching.... All this I have spoken while still with you. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you."

(John 14:15-26, see also John 15:26)

"I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth."

(John 16:12-13)

In the Book of Acts the arrival of the Holy Spirit is a dramatic supernatural event with storm and fire imagery.


"When the day of Pentecost [a Jewish festival: the 50th day after Passover] came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them."

(Acts 2:1-4)

The idea of an innate ability to intuit moral and religious truths is a dangerous idea liable to give rise to a population of infallible Popes. But such an ability distributed among the population in general instead of a handful of authorities also has a natural trend toward balance as all these different individuals seek to come to some agreement and consistency. Intuition is sometimes right and sometimes wrong, and establishing which is which may not be a simple matter. But intuition is better suited to some things than others. Seeking to determine laws of Quantum Physics by intuition alone is probably not a viable program (here our intuition leads us to the scientific method). But morality is a human sensibility, and it is fitting that its definition reside in ordinary human hands.

Since in a sense the rules of morality are a description of what people want, people are reasonably qualified to be making such judgments. Because nobody wants to be victimised themselves, rationality naturally leads to the Golden Rule. No supernatural intervention or obscure analysis is required for this. Those things that are forbidden are those that most people are not doing anyway, or where everyone can easily recognise the harm they do. The more debatable moral proscriptions are those where some harm is evident, but where some of the population is inclined to take the risk for the sake of some benefit, while the rest of the population suggests it is either not worth the risk or should not be desired in the first place. But here the Golden Rule can be applied again to permit these minorities their liberty.

Where morality becomes difficult is in complex social consequences, where someone's freedom impacts upon others. Also, where personal consequences are recognised by some but not others. Experience brings knowledge, and some may not have that experience or knowledge, and be led as a result into making avoidable mistakes. Even if the dangers are pointed out to them they may not believe it, and think they can avoid such consequences. Where ordinary people can make no sense of a moral prohibition, what sense can it have?

There may be those who see more clearly. In particular who have knowledge of the processes of society and psychology, and who can judge the likely truth of a situation even amid the deceptions of devious people. Sin is thought to create a kind of confusion in the mind of the sinner. Those who live by deception in the end must confuse and delude themselves. So that the one who is free of sin will be better placed to see clearly, and to rely upon their own intuition. One's ability to correctly intuit right and wrong is a function of the quality of one's life, upon whether you: "keep my commands". When someone acts in a good cause, in accordance with the divine will, the divine will guides their behaviour.


"Whenever you are arrested and brought to trial, do not worry beforehand about what to say. Just say whatever is given you at the time, for it is not you speaking, but the Holy Spirit."

(Mark 13:11, see also Luke 12:11-13 and also Exodus 4:10-12)

By acting rightly, in accord with the divine will, one forms an intimate connection and union with deity.


"Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me."

(Revelation 3:20, cf. John 14:23)

This creates something of a hierarchy, where those who are perceived as heroic or otherwise incredibly virtuous are assumed to have a better grasp of right and wrong. But it does not take this wholly out of the hands of the populace, or remove the requirement that the ideas of moral and religious leaders resonate with that populace who have chosen to follow them. There is a role for the moral and religious teacher, for the populace is not all good: the "world cannot accept him". Many do not follow their better nature, or are under the influence of wrong ideas. The Holy Spirit too is open to misuse when claimed as exclusive property: "the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey him" (Acts 5:32). Or is claimed not to belong to anyone who did not receive it in the form of "a sound like the blowing of a violent wind [that] came from heaven and ... what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them."

Neither is this idea of innate religious wisdom unique to Christianity. To give a few examples.


"The All-pervading God Permeates all hearts; yea, He the One alone Pervades all."

(Sri Guru Granth Sahib, Vol. 4, Prabhati M.3 (Sikhism))

"The Pandits, the religious scholars, the teachers and astrologers, and those who endlessly read the Puraanas, do not know what is within; God is hidden deep within them."

(Guru Granth Sahib, 419:4 (Sikhism))

"Out of compassion for them, I, dwelling in their hearts, destroy with the shining lamp of knowledge the darkness born of ignorance."

(Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 10, Verse 11 (Hinduism))

"According to the Hindu tradition, there was once a time when all human beings were gods, but they so abused their divinity that Brahma, the chief god, decided to take it away from them and hide it where it could never be found. Brahma called a council of the gods to help him decide where to hide human divinity.... Then the gods gave up and said, 'We do not know where to hide it, because it seems that there is no place on earth or in the sea that human beings will not eventually reach.' Brahma thought for a long time and then said, 'Here is what we will do. We will hide their divinity deep in the center of their own being, for humans will never think to look for it there.'"

("Religion & Spirituality: Bridging the Gap" by Stephen R. Honeygosky, p.62 (Hinduism))

"We verily created man and We know what his soul whispereth to him, and We are nearer to him than his jugular vein."

(Qur'an, 50:16)

"Total awareness, pure wakefulness, is the Buddha within, the innate purity of your own heart-mind. That natural authenticity is the ultimate refuge. That's the inner truth, the inner teacher, the absolute guru...."

("Awakening The Buddha Within" by Lama Surya Das, p.67)

"Yes the answer lies within, so why not take a look now? Kick out the devil's sin, pick up, pick up a good book now"

("On The Road To Findout" by Cat Stevens, from "Tea For The Tillerman" (1970))

This means that religion is intrinsically democratic, because the voice of the citizen is equal to the voice of the ruler and the voice of the priest. Rulers and priests are not appointed by God to dictate to those who have no direct access to God's will. Because God lives in each person, the oppression of anyone is the curtailment of God's will. Thus is the following warning given.


"whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me"

(Matthew 25:45)

Rulers and leaders are chosen by the people as the people's servant, and removed from office by the people when deemed by them to be unfit for this role. Any society for which the only mechanism for doing this is civil war is a tyranny. If the only mechanisms that exist carry the threat of being executed, imprisoned or tortured, then these mechanisms are not performing their function, leaving only civil war as the remaining option. The people suffer during civil war, so that to maintain their power, a tyranny need only sustain the people in a condition only slightly less bad than civil war, and the people will choose that condition over civil war. A trivial, nominal concession now and again can sustain the leadership another decade or more. It is not for nothing they call it: "The Party". Before long, another century has passed. The criminal gang in general will tend to let people alone who do not get in its way, so it is when a society seriously seeks to uproot organised crime that the society is suddenly subject to wholesale terror. It is this threat that permits a tyranny to advertise itself as "stability" and "safer" than the alternative. Since tyranny is ultimately political rule by gangsters, toppling the leadership changes nothing if the society is still in the hands of the gangs, and this in turn depends upon the people's willingness to join gangs, and the tribal mentality it represents, but also the magnitude of the terror perpetrated by the ruling group.

A tyranny that fears losing power will turn to grotesque tortures, almost beyond imagining. How much of this can the people be expected to withstand before bowing once more to its authority? Particularly if the expectation is that if this set of rulers is toppled it will only be replaced by another that is much the same? How does a society make the transition to civilisation? The society that believes cynicism is a sign of intelligence will not make the transition. It has adapted to the current regime and has nothing better to offer in its place. It is content to congratulate itself on seeing through the lies. If it can seem that most of the world's problems are caused by idealists with guns, it is worth considering that many who self-identify as cynics are actually judging events according to a higher standard. But there is an enormous difference between seeing the truth and doing what is right, especially when the right thing to do is more than anyone can bear. And many of those who self-identify as idealists, act only out of self-interest.

Sometimes it seems to be the historical accident of choosing the right leader, the one who does not turn out to be just like the others. It's failure can also sometimes depend upon the interference of greedy foreign powers who channel vast sums of money to the tyranny to maintain itself and its terror machine, and its exports. It is also the moral cohesion of the society as a whole. The ability and reasonableness of each citizen to be able trust and depend upon his neighbours to do the right thing. It depends upon a society-wide moral ideal. In this way, instead of focusing on attempting to cut off the head of the beast, when the beast is your own country. You concentrate on transforming the body of the beast. So when the time comes to replace the head, it is already disempowered and keen to demonstrate its civic consciousness, and a trustworthy functioning alternative is ready to take its place. Sometimes this change in social consciousness is slow, sometimes it is a sudden revelation, spreading like wildfire. Sometimes it comes after the decimation of war (or some other social or economic collapse), as a realisation.

The difference between a society in which gang activity can be stopped by a phone call to the proper authorities and a society where everyone runs for the hills when a pickup truck carrying the gang's henchmen holding AK-47s comes down the main street of town, is a few brave individuals, but supported by a law-abiding and responsible citizenry, who form a cohesive net of trustworthy and good behaviour, against which criminal activity and intent forms a contrast that must hide its presence. The simple integrity of ordinary people who do their job. Such a society will more likely develop the economy and infrastructure to protect itself, assuming the absence of powerful outside interference, because it has the ability to cooperate and its elements are not intent on robbing each other. A community that sees "government" in principle as corrupt, and only a home for useless bureaucrats, and who throw their allegiance behind the black market, will not make the transition. There is no way to uproot corruption that is endemic, where the population as a whole has adapted to it as normal. But criminal elements depend upon a productive society to prey upon, because they cannot be productive themselves. This productive society must be large enough to absorb the economic drain posed by the criminal elements, because if the drain becomes too extreme, the economy will fail and the citizenry will be driven to rise up. Therefore the unproductive elements must be outnumbered by the productive elements. This in turn is why the unproductive elements must somehow seduce the majority into believing in their own helplessness.

Fundamentalist religions or extreme political philosophies are sometimes seen as the only force strong enough to oppose endemic corruption, but cruel government is never in the interest of the people, and is only exploited by the next generation of tyrants and hypocrites. A society that terrorises itself does not instil a spirit of civic duty, but hands itself over instead to hyenas.

As authoritarian governments are replaced by democracies, it can seem that democracy is some recent innovation, one requiring some special level of modernity and economic development. It is widely known that the ancient Greeks were a democracy (see for instance the movie "300: Rise of an Empire" (2014)). But democracy is a basic characteristic of tribal human society, from which all societies arose, one that may be forsaken in fits of desperation, and once lost, difficult to regain.


"It is not only that humans are the one species who could use discussions as a then-basic political institution but that humans had to use discussion or they probably would not have survived. The question now before us is the form and process of this new political institution based on discussion, rather than physical conflict.

"The actual political process has three stages to it: let us assume that a political decision has to be made--like moving from one territory to another--or that a dispute needs to be settled, a dispute over food or sexuality, say. Let us assume that there is a disagreement over the issues. The vying parties could fight to determine what the group does. In animal groups, such fighting would be the process of politics itself. Politics would begin and end with the fight. And the dominant animal would then restore order. In human bands, fighting, or near fighting, signals the beginning of the political process.

"In human groups, once the physical fighting is stopped--and such fighting occurs often enough--the unique political process of human beings, that is, discussion begins."

("The Origins of Democracy in Tribes, City-States and Nation-States",

by Ronald M. Glassman, p.lxxviii)

When the ancient Jews clamoured for a king like the great civilised nations around Israel, their prophet Samuel told them what the result would be.


"This is what the king who will reign over you will claim as his rights: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots. Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants. He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants."

(1 Samuel 8:11-15)

The acceptance of tyranny is a failure of faith in the power and rights of the individual ("they have rejected me as their king" (1 Samuel 8:7)). The revolving door of bringing down one tyranny only to replace it with another will continue until this faith is instated in the population, regardless of the "-ism" or "-cracy" after which the political system is named. Tyranny sustains itself on the idea that the people will make the wrong choice. It convinces the people they are not ready to be free, and their lack of faith in their fellow man supports the government's assertion. But the choice is theirs to make, and will improve only with practice. One can only marvel at the psychology of one who insists on being addressed as "Your Majesty". The psychotic egotism of tyrannical rulers seeks to make the rest of the population fodder for their ambition. Asking all to them to be willing to sacrifice themselves for an abstraction called "the State" that none of them has a right to enjoy.


"Religion has at one time or another sanctioned all sorts of contrary and inconsistent behavior, has at some time approved of practically all that is now regarded as immoral or sinful. Conscience, untaught by experience and unaided by reason, never has been, and never can be, a safe and unerring guide to human conduct. Conscience is not a divine voice speaking to the human soul. It is merely the sum total of the moral and ethical content of the mores of any current stage of existence; it simply represents the humanly conceived ideal of reaction in any given set of circumstances."

(The Urantia Book 92:2.6 (Note however in this regard: 101:0.3 and 110:5.1))

"Only ethical consciousness can unmask the immorality of human intolerance and the sinfulness of fratricidal strife. Only a moral conscience can condemn the evils of national envy and racial jealousy. Only moral beings will ever seek for that spiritual insight which is essential to living the golden rule."

(The Urantia Book 52:6.5)

Vikings et al

Our consideration of criminality above has brought us to a place where we should consider another variation on our theme. Our discussion of criminality so far has been very negative, but here I want to touch on a grey area. In another article (Suffering) I suggested that a good Viking could go to heaven (Valhalla) if he was good by the standards of his community, even though his community condones murder. But I included a significant proviso that he was only allowed to murder other warriors who voluntarily took part in the life of a warrior, and that killing innocent bystanders was not allowed and still counted as murder, that is, wrongful killing. This proviso was unlikely to be met by Vikings and other warrior races like certain tribes of North American Indian, but it raises issues that we will consider here.

Consider that what I have described as the "hero" and what I have described as the "predator" are two ends of a spectrum, and somewhere between the two there is what I will call the "warrior ethos", for want of a better term. The "warrior ethos" as used here is distinct from the hero because the hero defends the weak instead of condemning them.

There are parts of the criminal world that are extremely violent, and to survive and succeed in that world takes courage, skill and endurance. The warrior ethos prides itself on that courage and endurance. There is a tendency in some criminal communities to only murder other members of the criminal community ("catch and kill your own"), but to refrain from the murder of ordinay citizens; mainly because the authorities are more tolerant of criminals murdering other criminals, but must act if the violence spreads outside of the that community. They must prevent criminal activity impacting on ordinary citizens. Members of the community might also be killed according to a "code" that is not seen to apply to people outside of that community.

Criminal communities then can become homes for those who want to lead the warrior life and obtain its spoils. Such a person might look unfavourably on a world destined to be inherited by the meek. (Matthew 5:5, Psalm 37:10-11, Zephaniah 3:11-13) Where a bunch of science geeks make a bomb that can erase a city at the press of a button from thousands of miles away, or picking off enemies one at a time with a drone flown from an office chair. Where individual acts of aggression must be submitted for prior committee approval as to necessity and appropriateness. Surveillance technology and robotics are likely to continue this trend, so that war is fought not only without muscle, but without courage, at least for as long as your enemy does not have drones of their own. This is not to suggest that these weapons are necessarily used appropriately.

The warrior ethos could be treated as a legitimate lifestyle choice if it restricted its impact to others who choose to be a part of that subculture. But if in its disdain of weakness and cowardice, it sees fit to terrorise and abuse those who have not chosen that life, it goes beyond its legitimate bounds. Most people do not want to live in fear. Their tolerance for fear extends as far was watching a scary movie. Proponents of the warrior ethos do not get to impose that ethos on everyone else. In the past they have been able to dominate by force, but those days are coming to an end.

Some people see weakness as abhorrent, shameful and disgusting, despised in themselves and therefore also in others. Something to be suppressed and rectified. Something overcome and held at bay through brutality. So that brutality becomes a necessary element of society in order to keep it healthy and free of weakness. Anyone raised in this milieu and having suffered its hardships is resentful of those who have avoided all of this, and live carefree and without armour, having grown up in a soft and nurturing environment. They react with fury and a need to terrify, hurt and humiliate.

It would be logically inconsistent of the proponent of the warrior ethos to claim that society does not have the right to protect itself from the threat of those who would harm it. Proponents of the warrior ethos cannot logically object to their own demise and extinction at the hands of those weaker than them. Ordinary people are not interested in threatening each other with death or torture or doing violence to each other. They would rather read a book, listen to music or watch their children play safely.

If the warrior ethos seeks to claim the right to steal someone's life savings that they have earned, or to traffic in human slaves, it belongs in prison, safely out of the way. Prisons could serve as a suitable preserve for the criminal ethos, if they did not mix hardened criminals together with non-hardened criminals, and people who should not be in prison in the first place. If prisons were segregated better, according to the class of crime, like the circles of hell, those committed eternally to being murderers could murder each other, those committed eternally to being thieves could steal from each other, and those committed eternally to being rapists could rape each other, so that everyone is happy, doing what they love. With a high wall around to keep them all the fuck away from everyone else. But of course, we have no way of differentiating "those committed eternally to being" one of these, from those whom circumstance has led into temporary error. Only deity possesses this certain knowledge of people's future potential.

Courage and endurance are only virtues when they have productive application. If courage is not in the form of a hero, it is not worth anything at all. Applied harmfully it is a parasitic disease feeding off of the productive effort of others.

Until quite recently the warrior ethos was justified by the fact that the neighbouring village, town or country, or those more distant, might at any time attack, murder or enslave everyone, and carry off everything you own. Citizens in general were expected to be military ready unless too young, too old or female. Some countries still make their citizens spend a certain period in mandatory military service as part of keeping the nation in a state of readiness. To be hardened to death and pain was part of one's social responsibility, and ritual torture on entry into "manhood" might be aimed at this end. In this context the "warrior ethos" was aimed at producing the tribal or national hero, but tended also to become an end in itself. Where predatory action may be praiseworthy if it was to the benefit of one's own tribe or nation. So that nations were effectively just rival gangs.

It has become the trend in developed nations that military duty is purely voluntary, for those who are into that sort of thing or feel the call of duty. It becomes a highly specialised profession of highly trained individuals. This model depends on the existence of a substantial technological superiority of the nation over any and all of its enemies. If it is ever confronted with its equal in an enemy, and the homeland threatened, all the "men with thin arms" must be conscripted or volunteer, and must be hastily trained and sent out onto the battlefield.

The warrior ethos is not in fact a grey area, but falls either under the hero ideal or is predatory. People may not agree on whether the ethos should be adopted universally in readiness, or only should circumstances unfortunately necessitate it. The degree of preparedness for war depends upon a risk assessment, an estimation of its likelihood and the magnitude of the threat. And this assessment can vary over time. A small nation surrounded by powerful nations who are hostile to it is likely to have a high degree of preparedness and to seek powerful foreign alliances. A large, isolated and powerful nation is likely to devote a smaller percentage of its resources to defence. Peace too requires an investment. The nation that is only prepared for war is likely to have one ("it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail." (Abraham Maslow (known as the "law of the instrument" or "Maslow's hammer"))). The society must be adapted to peace. If only warriors are admired, how does peace take root and endure? How do men have worth in peace times if not by manufacturing strife to face? Some in the society must be devoted to peaceful pursuits of art, science, service and commerce. The demilitarisation of society is an expression of faith in lasting peace and opens the door to the wonders of the creative and expressive society.

Another of the modern myths is that when what we love is threatened, ordinary people will discover untapped reserves of military prowess, and those devoted to peaceful pursuits under normal circumstances will quickly make whatever transition is necessary should circumstance suddenly demand. And in fact, the lovers of peace and life will ultimately perform better than those conditioned to see themselves as brutalised fodder for the national war machine, better even than the paragons of moral rectitude, in the face of real and present danger. While forethought and preparedness are good practice, we do not need to make hell on Earth a self-fulfilling prophecy in order to prepare ourselves for the possibility. Some adjustments need to be made only when or if the need arises, with responses measured and so as to maximise humanity. Some feel a compulsion for such preparedness, but within the model of the hero, and should the need arise, these can lead the rest.

While the Earth seems to be moving in the direction of a single government and therefore the potential for an end to war, the move into space and the corresponding population growth may again raise the possibility. The dynamics of human groups is such that the potential always exists for animosities to emerge over time, that may develop into violence. In the meantime, our would-be warriors can content themselves with paintball and extreme sports.

Cover of "Galaxy Science Fiction" magazine, April 1954.
Painting by Ed Emshwiller (1925 - 1990).

(This image is taken from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Ed_Emshwiller
where it is available as "in the public domain".)

Status within the warrior ethos is founded on courage and endurance under difficult circumstances. But the goal of the art of physical torture is to arrive at methods that no one can withstand. To inflict pain without causing death, with all the time in the world. In the end, under the right conditions, it is likely that courage and endurance is a test that no one can pass. Who decides how much pain and suffering we should be willing and able to endure? How much pain and suffering should we be subjected to in order to test and prove that we are adequate? As much as we willingly accept. As little as our conscience will allow. Instead of seeking to win the approval of sadists, we might focus our attention and effort instead on the mundane goal of being a better person tomorrow than we were yesterday.

The warrior requires a large number of people not as good at killing as he is, in order to demonstrate prowess at slaying large numbers of foes. So that farmers and shopkeepers are conscripted to go up against professional soldiers. After slaying the incompetent horde he then reaches his worthy foe, and the stage is set and all eyes are on him. Like a bloody ballerina standing on a pile of waste.

We might suggest that the dynasties of the meek commenced with the invention of the atomic bomb. All the armies of millions of brave soldiers cannot withstand the power of a few geeks scribbling their strange symbols on pieces of paper. A remote, push button weapon discovered as an accidental and somewhat unwelcome by product of their curiosity. A weapon of such might that mankind realised it could no longer afford to wage all out war without threatening the extinction of all life on Earth. So that national might and proud patriotic military victory and conquest lost their prestige and mutually assured destruction made cooperation, compromise, peace and disarmament no longer shameful and cowardly. The meek do not subjugate the world because they do not have that as one of their goals. They assume that every nation has its meek and that they probably constitute the majority, wishing them only freedom and happiness, and that it is the warlords and tyrants who are the enemy of all. The enemies of the meek protect themselves by hiding among the innocent. So ignorant tyrants attempt to militarise their own geeks at gunpoint to fight the geeks of the foreigners, enamoured with the power of their new weapons of high-tech warfare, thugs slowly lose control in a world they are not able to understand. If those who win the AI war will rule the world, it will be those who would rather play Final Fantasy than wage it. It will be the meek. They will render courage an unnecessary virtue.

Religion and Politics

Wars have been waged in the name of religion, and murder and tyranny; but it is not religion that causes such things. World War II was the deadliest conflict in history with over 60 million killed, 3% of the world population at the time. But its cause was secular. Aside from the casualties of military action there was the murder of 6 million Jews; and hundreds of thousands of others: including gypsies, handicapped people, homosexuals, Poles, Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Serbs and so on. Many killed in the name of a pseudoscience called eugenics and the theory of evolution.


“During the War [Hitler] reflected that in the long run, ‘National Socialism and religion will no longer be able to exist together'. Both Stalin and Hitler wanted a neutered religion, subservient to the state, while the slow programme of scientific revelation destroyed the foundation of religious myth.”

("The Dictators: Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Russia" by Richard Overy, pp. 287.)

In Stalin's Russia: "at least 15 million people" were killed ("The Great Terror: Stalin's Purge of the Thirties" by Robert Conquest). In Mao's China: "The Cultural Revolution [1966-1976] was modern China’s most destructive episode. It is estimated that 100 million people were persecuted and about five to ten million people, mostly intellectuals and party officials lost their lives." ("The Chinese Case: Was It Genocide or Poor Policy?", by Merrill Goldman) Both of these cataclysms we owe to political science and economics.

War, torture, murder, persecution are the ways in which one group of people imposes their will on another group of people. In a way it doesn't matter what are the beliefs that are being imposed, because the methods are always the same. But in the end, the doctrine, the ideology must justify its methods, and so these methods are made part of the doctrine and ideology. Hitler, Stalin and Mao all represented themselves as positively disposed toward religion early on. They were all about protecting freedom and the people from their oppressors. But to survive you had to agree with them, and with their view of the world, whatever it was. The Ayatollah Khomeini implements a theocracy, a religious tyranny. His neighbour Saddam Hussein implements a secular tyranny. Which is why for a time, the West preferred Saddam, thinking secular is a shorter distance to democracy, even in the hands of a villain from James Bond. Then Saddam and the Ayatollah go to war against each other, killing a few hundred thousand soldiers and civilians on each side. Opposite ideologies embodied in identical actions and kindred states.

When we think of the political sins of religion in the West we are thinking of Medieval Europe when rulers had to at least pretend to be Christians because that was the prevailing ideology imposed by the Catholic Church. As they are ascending to power, tyrants will tend to be populists, expressing popular opinions. So that even tyranny begins as a democratic movement. The people elect their tyrant and give up their freedom amid cheers and applause. Tyrants ride the wave of the aspirations and beliefs of the people, acting as its mouthpiece, raging against a common enemy, real or imagined or invented, to remove the existing rulers; and once in power, they crack down on those same people. Even when it is entrenched, tyranny is still a kind of democracy. While the use of terror and pain greatly enhances the power of a minority, a handful of terrorists cannot rule a nation of millions without some degree of consent and support from a substantial portion of the population.

It is not an ideal political system that is being sought but an ideal society. Politics cannot help but mirror the society because it is whatever society tolerates. As society evolves so does the political system. A political system does not fix society. Such a system only exists to the extent that society abides by it. Society fixes politics by not siding with criminals and hypocrites. Political changes are an almost automatic consequence of changes in the consciousness of the society. By the time the political change arrives, the real change has already occurred. Leader can only say: "We consider these truths to be self evident" if they are in fact already self evident to most people. Otherwise they will appear to be talking nonsense. Political changes only occur when most people believe it is absurd that it has not happened already, at which point those who constitute the obstacle are cast in sharp relief.

It is in rendering changes in popular consciousness that the importance of freedom of speech and freedom of expression arise. That is why tyrannies expend so much effort to suppress these, why they are seen as such a great threat, and why the people must be protected from ideas coming in from the outside world.

It was not science and reason that liberated the West from tyranny. Tyranny appropriates science and simply laughs at reason. It was The Golden Rule: "do unto others". It was the contradiction between the expressed political views of Jesus, and the rulers who claimed to act on His authority, our dead hero. It was the exposure of hypocrisy to a population trained to value and obey moral ideals. It was the slow but inevitable outcome of those ideals. It was the crystallised realisation of the people that the Emperor wore no clothes, and was their enemy. Leading to an enduring scepticism of the divine right of rulers, and to the checks and balances of democracy.

In political and economic thought, even a subtle nuance can have disastrous consequences on the lives of a multitude. Small imbalances are magnified a million fold, and the disenfranchised wander the streets without recourse. Government must adopt some point of view and then enforce it, and with its enemies waiting in the wings, it seeks to destroy its enemies first, with no sure way to know who they are. When you are fighting for your life, in mortal danger, killing seems justified.

850,000 soldiers died in the Civil War imposed on the United States by Abraham Lincoln in his persecution of those who believed in the right to own slaves. Lincoln and the North's will prevailed over that of the South. Whether he was justified depends upon how you feel about owning slaves. So that the morality of one group imposes itself on another. So that sometimes war can bring a positive outcome for those who survive it ("Might does not make right, but might does make what is" (The Urantia Book 81:6.15)). Killing for peace is a familiar paradox. We seek to avoid war, but it sometimes cannot be avoided. Not while ever there is someone less liberal than you. China's Sun Yatsen (孫中山) balked at the prospect of civil war, and the Western powers were aligned with his opponents. It came anyway, but in different hands with different goals, and at the end of it all they were still living under tyranny.

For those who call themselves liberal, history is the long march toward a liberal ideal and away from cruelty, while the conservatives push back toward the past. There is no such thing as a militant liberal, because they never seek to escalate, and only use force to defend against an attacking force. At least that is the ideal. The liberal is only roused to violence in the face of greater violence. Only roused to outrage in the face of greater cruelty. The liberal does not kill you because you do not agree with him, does not torture or threaten you because you do not respect him or what he loves. Conservatives often see themselves as the champions of responsibility. But we do not require moral conservativism, or laws or dogma, to learn responsibility because reality teaches it to us. It teaches us consequences and sustainability. It teaches us loss. It teaches us why. So that experience will cause rational people to choose responsibility on their own. Dogma and law will not save us from our own foolishness. It will only disguise and distort its form as it plays itself out. Arbitrary rules and meaningless dogma teach nothing.


Santos: It's true, Republicans have tried to turn 'liberal' into a bad word. Well, liberals ended slavery in this country.

Vinick: A Republican president ended slavery.

Santos: Yes, a liberal Republican. What happened to them? They got run out of your party. What did liberals do that was so offensive to the Republican party? I'll tell you what they did. Liberals got women the right to vote. Liberals got African-Americans the right to vote. Liberals created social security and lifted millions of elderly people out of poverty. Liberals ended segregation. Liberals passed the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, Liberals created Medicare. Liberals passed the Clean Air Act, and the Clean Water Act. What did Conservatives do? They opposed every one of those programs. Every one. So when you try to hurl the word 'liberal' at my feet, as if it were dirty, something to run away from, something that I should be ashamed of, it won't work, Senator, because I will pick up that label and wear it as a badge of honor.

("The West Wing", Season 7, Episode 7, "The Debate")

A society's major ills are never caused by liberals, weirdos or minorities, because these do not possess the power. Though these are often cited as the causes in dire warnings. A liberal society is not corrupt because everyone is accountable and everyone has a voice. Only a conservative society can be corrupt because these do not admit of correction. The presence of corruption implies powerlessness and impunity. Powerless minority groups cannot drive a society into anarchy or tyranny, the only two major social ills. "Decadence" in itself does not constitute a serious social ill, it must be argued as leading to some real ill. Only the powerful in a society and their supporters have the power to promote organised crime and corruption, release a secret police to torture its citizens, bankrupt the nation through corruption and mismanagement, or drive the nation into war and ruin. None of the people accused of corrupting society's morals or values can do any of these things. Such people can persuade, but only men with guns can push a nation to ruin.

No society was ever brought to ruin by its artists or musicians. It is the King and the generals, nobles and politicians, the chief of police and the high court justice, the master of industry and the bankers, its priests and its schoolmaster. The only threat posed to society by homosexuals is an as yet undemonstrated correlation with volcanic eruptions, or the worry that they will turn everyone gay. On the other side, however, we have honest to God evil. For instance: see "'We'll cut off your head': open season for LGBT attacks in Kyrgyzstan" (The Guardian, 4 May 2016, by Andrew North) and "Russian anti-gay law prompts rise in homophobic violence" (The Guardian, 2 September 2013, by Alec Luhn). Up to a point we might say that the society that delivers itself willingly into the hands of tyranny in the name of traditional values deserves the government it asks for, except for all those members of the society who were dragged along unwillingly with it, and except for the impact the nation may have abroad.

The negative impact of minorities on society is only rightly a question of whether they commit real crimes. The only issue then is whether the national justice system is competent to maintain law and order, and justice, regardless of what minority or majority a given offender belongs to. Society must also assess whether social problems within certain groups are a product of injustice committed by the society itself, such as unfairly limited opportunities. If a certain group commit more real crimes, then more of them will be in jail. They will experience a consequence of their choices. We do not judge or punish their lifestyles or views, only the real crimes they commit. They can be left to question the wisdom of their own actions and ideas. We do not make something illegal only because it is thought to "lead" to criminal behaviour. We do not put every priest in jail because there is a higher than average likelihood that they are a paedophile. If a junky neglects the care of their child, they are charged with neglect, not drug use. Neither do we fail to prosecute a paedophile merely because they are a priest. Justice is something understood by all. If an esteemed institution is producing more than its fair share of criminals, it is proper that its image suffer and its legitimacy is questioned.

Society's morals and values will respond to common sense, self interest, empathy, and natural consequences, unless prevented at gun point from doing so. Liberal society is founded on hope and trust in the essential goodness of human nature. Conservative morality is based on fear, dread and the assumption that people must be saved from themselves. The devil waits around every corner and fear is fed to the point that it threatens to take possession. To the one whose master is fear, love cannot be. Free thought and action are fraught with danger. Liberals do not fear the devil because they trust themselves and they extend that trust to others. "Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me" (Psalm 23:4). Not in the sense that evil cannot do them harm, but in the sense that evil cannot make them its own. The liberal trusts in themselves and the living God even when they claim not to believe in Him. He does not trust in the redeeming power of fear and obedience to authority. The liberal ideal is therefore, relatively speaking, the embodiment and culmination of faith and divine love. The liberal lives according to the Golden Rule that is the central tenet of Jesus' teaching. The conservative does not. The conservative seeks to impose his own will and values on others by force.


"Love is patient, love is kind."

(1 Corinthians 13:4)

"Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love."

(Ephesians 4:2)

"help the weak, be patient with everyone"

(1 Thessalonians 5:14)

"Better a patient person than a warrior, one with self-control than one who takes a city."

(Proverbs 16:32)

"Give to everyone who asks you"

(Luke 6:30 and Matthew 5:42)

Some however continue to believe that righteousness is about being cruel and intolerant. To be upright is to be inflexible. Goodness is measured by the number of things you disapprove of and the excesses of many acts of "religious zeal" that have only symbolic significance. Where love for god is proven at the expense of His children, the welfare of whom is His first and only concern. The person who is very very religious thinks he is much more good than the person who is simply religious. The person who is very very good believes he is more good than the person who is only good. Simple kindness, which can seem so trivial and not even demonstrably religious, is lost in the love of one's own virtue and how much better than everyone else you are. The cruel and the stupid can have status and magic by being the most righteous of their peers and the foremost right-arm of the most-high cunt. Who cannot see the value of a religion that cannot be seen and admired by all.

For the person who lacks actual virtues, disapproving of things can become an easy substitute. If a person is not very smart or talented or desirable or popular. If a person is small minded, unimaginative, petty and vindictive. They can make a badge of honour out of disapproving of things. It does not require them to do any actual good. On the contrary. They define their virtue not by what they do, but by what they don't do. They choose a few ritual and meaningless symbols of righteousness, like dressing in a certain way or speaking certain phrases, and they claim as a result to be a hundred, a thousand times more righteous than the weak and decadent peoples who are free and prosperous. They go around smacking people for not disapproving of enough things. It is an opportunity for them to feel superior, in a context in which they would otherwise feel inferior. The global village is a very big pond. And it can make some people feel very small. Some people who had status in their little village, perhaps hereditary or otherwise undeserved, lose it when the village joins the rest of the world. Or crave such status. There is always someone smarter than you, better looking than you, with more than you. This does not bother some people, who are happy just to be a part of such a marvellous world. Happy about the opportunities it offers. We might call such people ordinary. Others want to drag the world down to their own level. Who want to keep their pond small so they can feel big within it. Who want to boss people around.

This is not to say that liberals do not cause problems, but to say that the problems caused by liberals are always much smaller than the problems caused by conservatives. They may be pampered and soft and indulgent. The witches were a fairly harmless lot. The monolithic Church murdering them was the devil. The Chinese government proudly cites reduced rates of prostitution and AIDS as some of the successes of the Communist era, and all it required was the much maligned cultural revolution. But the moment the grip of terror is eased in the slightest, the prostitutes instantly reappear like a carpet of wildflowers. The cure is much much worse than the disease. Maybe just promote the use of condoms instead? Better to keep the arm than to cure the fidgeting.

Drug use gives us the guy snorting lines on a Friday night after work. Criminalising drug use gives us the mega-rich third world international cartel that films itself cutting off the head of a police informant with a chainsaw and then posting it on the internet as a warning to the rest of the community. As we weigh these two problems, one in each hand, and decide which is intolerable to us, what kind of person decides it is the former? If the US and the other liberal democracies accept ownership of their own drug use and keep both production and consumption within their own borders they will cease blanketing developing nations in horror and exporting a drug war intended to be fought for appearances sake, as an expression of disapproval, but never won. Given that the demand is not going to disappear, what is the goal that is being sought by the drug war except to fight it and to kill anyone involved in drugs? If supply is not permitted within the law, what does that leave? We could destroy the international drug cartels tomorrow, quickly and easily, by cutting off their revenue stream. It only requires making the decision. It would be better to do this while our own economies still outstrip  theirs. The problem has outgrown the simple desire to stop other people taking drugs.


"As Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan dominated the news agenda, Mexico's drug wars claimed 23,000 lives during 2016 -- second only to Syria, where 50,000 people died as a result of the civil war."

("Mexico was second deadliest country in 2016", by Elizabeth Roberts, CNN, May 11, 2017
(the figures come from a somewhat controversial report, the "Armed Conflict Survey 2017",
released by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (www.iiss.org)))

The Vietnam war was not a war between America and Vietnam. It was a war between America and China. Vietnam just happened to be where the battlefield was located between the two parties, and that was how the Vietnamese people became affected and involved. Likewise, the US has not gone to war against Mexico. Mexico is just the venue of its drug war. The US does not like to fight its wars within its own territory and among its own civilian population. So America's new civil war (American money versus American money) is being fought in other people's homes.


There are only two ways for the US to end the drug war. Either concede the right to the sizeable percentage of the population who want to take drugs, or implement a totalitarian regime with powers akin to Sharia law or China's cultural revolution. It cannot be won while ever the US remains a democracy. The drug war is fundamentally anti-democratic because when interest groups successfully manipulate the democratic process the government ceases to mirror the citizenry so that the two then come into conflict. It is no small matter. It is essentially an undeclared civil war where the suppliers are being scapegoated and the consumers stand by and watch, because however many suppliers are killed or imprisoned, there will always be someone to sell them their drugs. Because supply is in the hands of criminals, legalisation is not in their interest. To them the casualties of the drug war are expendable, the cost of doing business. The commodity comes to be associated in the popular consciousness with the psychopaths who are managing the supply, and so the commodity comes to be seen as a terrible social ill and the drug war as a battle against evil men. But it is much easier to put psychopaths behind bars if you do not give them millions of dollars first. The consequences of the drug war are much the same as the consequences of "Prohibition" in America.


"On balance, Prohibition probably reduced per capita alcohol use and alcohol-related harm, but these benefits eroded over time as an organized black market developed and public support for [national alcohol prohibition] declined.... There are also good reasons for believing (as did the American people in voting for Repeal) that the decline in alcohol use came at an unacceptable social and economic cost; namely, increased crime and corruption, disrespect for the law and foregone tax revenue. There are also good reasons for believing that these benefits could have been achieved by less restrictive alcohol policies, with fewer adverse effects (e.g. by increasing alcohol taxes and stricter regulation of alcohol sales)."

("What are the policy lessons of National Alcohol Prohibition in the United States, 1920–1933?",

by Wayne Hall, Addiction, 105, 1164–1173 (2010))

There is no mystery, no surprise. It is the same consequence as the attempt to unnaturally suppress the human sexual instinct. It is the same consequence as whenever the busybody State gets in the way of a basic human drive to live, experience and enjoy life among a population devoted to liberty, but not sufficiently motivated or too ambivalent to enshrine the particular right in law, either for themselves or on behalf of a minority. If the guardians of public morality ever decide to make it illegal to drink coffee and eat muffins, they will create a black market of such magnitude, an illicit money supply so limitless, and unleash a terror of such ferocity, that it may mean the end of civilisation. A muffin apocalypse. Society handed over on a silver platter to organised crime and a quick return to the dark ages, in which coffee and muffins become the privileges of a corrupt and merciless elite, while the rest sip water and eat plain bread while singing carols to traditional values. Because once the muffin economy has established the new rulers, their business interests shift and the muffin economy is effectively suppressed, when there is no liberty to oppose it, remaining only as a limited connoisseur's market and extravagantly priced. They will have succeeded in winning the drug war (muffin war) where their predecessors failed. The evil of the illicit market is not in the commodity itself but only in the fact that it is something desired by many (and therefore big money) and yet illegal (and therefore steeped in murder). We get the impression the evil is in the commodity itself because it is only commodities that society disapproves of that are declared illegal in the first place.

People invariably have some story about someone they know or knew who was a drug addict, and the dire consequences that this had for them, ruining their lives and perhaps even leading to their death. These examples are cited as evidence of the evils of drugs, and justification for their forceful eradication. While this is an accurate description of the dangerous potential of drugs, the real question is what to do about it. Do the risks associated with drugs give us license to take away the freedom of those adult human beings who choose to take that risk, because we think they should not? Some people manage their drug use reasonably the same way many people responsibly manage their alcohol consumption or eating habits. Some people do not. Do we implement a police state in order to protect adult human beings from their own decisions when they are only harming themselves? Freedom has casualties. But its casualties are all volunteers. Some people like to take risks, to live on the edge. For them, it makes them feel alive. They accept the risk to themselves. Risk taking can take many forms, of which drugs are only one. So I see a pretty young woman in worn jeans at the railway station surrounded by a tall group of burly policeman with sniffer dogs, being forced to turn out her pockets in an environment of threat and intimidation imposed by an obese mainstream on a counterculture.

If someone informs you of their intention to sail solo around the world, are we entitled to imprison them to prevent them taking such a risky course? Or to imprison anyone who might be willing to sell them a boat?

Have you ever wondered: "Why are smart people all so screwy?" Regardless of the legitimacy of the generalisation, one of the answers, aside from the one which merely stems from being out of place in one's milieu, or the physical awkwardness that comes of being mentally preoccupied, might be akin to the answer to another question: "Why are physically strong and fit people forever breaking their limbs and spraining their joints? Aren't they supposed to be healthy by definition? The answer in the latter case is that they are always pushing their body to its limits, and sometimes beyond. The answer in the former case is sometimes that they are always pushing their mind to its limits, and sometimes beyond, even into madness. Because mainstream society legislates according to its own understanding and values, we have a culture in which those who would not dream of changing their mental state, legislate to prevent those who might be inclined to do so. So that everyone may remain normal.

Mainstream society sees itself as simply normal, as the way for normal people to behave. It does not question the validity of what is normal, being utterly convinced of its own virtue and truth. To those even in the liberal mainstream, the greatest virtue is to welcome others into the mainstream and to embrace them as "one of us". To those outside the mainstream, however, the mainstream is seen as a dangerous and menacing monolith, regardless of any warm and fuzzy declarations, and the entire history of judicial and political progress is seen by these as one of progressively and at great cost, of imposing and maintaining restrictions on the mainstream's ability to murder, torture, imprison or suppress others, for their views or lifestyles.

Nowadays, anti-discrimination is part of mainstream culture, and we have the spectacle of members of the mainstream all donning the same uniform to celebrate and show solidarity for the tenets of anti-discrimination on International Anti-discrimination Day. Nowadays, those in the mainstream think that discrimination is something committed by extreme social misfits, who ill-fit membership in a civil community. While it is doubtless a good thing when one mob declares its willingness to tolerate all the other mobs, this rather misses the point when someone in their midst is frowned on for failing to don the uniform. Because ultimately our societies are composed of minorities of 1, a collective of individuals. And being a minority of one is still a dangerous undertaking. Because even on International Anti-discrimination Day, our prisons are still full of people whose only crimes are lifestyle choices disapproved of by the mainstream, as heresy and other differences of opinion, lewd art, unmarried sex, or homosexuality once were. Its easy cruelty carried out mechanically by its social institutions while the citizenry feels as innocent of doing harm as someone buying sausages at the supermarket. It is not from the instinct to conform to the will of the group, and to change oneself for the sake of social acceptance, to fit in, that social change and progress comes, not from the misty-eyed sentiment when advertisers assure us of our individual distinctiveness as we participate in the latest trend.

Anti-discrimination law is only incidentally about the tolerance of other nationalities, religions and sexual orientations. Its goal is to make the world safe for the odd one out, in the midst of the great and powerful multitude who decide the laws. To feel safe without donning a uniform and declaring one's allegiance. Where "sociable" means being interested in what everyone else is interested in, thinking what everyone else thinks, and liking what everyone else likes. Where failure to be so is either an arrogance, or a lack of social skills. Where the warm and welcoming arms of the mainstream are conditional upon you becoming "one like us!" Because one can be for the people without being of them.

Not everyone is successful at living. Excessive drug use may be a symptom of a larger dysfunction, as is alcoholism or overeating. Not everyone finds meaning in living. Some people let themselves die only because it is easier than living. Because living is a struggle. They don't want to work and be responsible. Do we put them in prison or make slaves of them to keep them alive? Do we call it an illness and intervene medically to put them in a prison and make slaves of them? Dysfunction has its own consequences. To be cold and hungry and alone. These and the fear of death when it comes near are the natural incentives driving us to succeed at living. The most essential human freedom is the freedom to fail. We can offer help and advice, but not the legal force of the State. Some people do not make it, and can be allowed to quietly slip away into nonexistence with whatever dignity and peace they can muster. Their passing mourned by those who remain.

Few people are bums for life. The vast majority of the dissolute and wayward, freedom-seeking youths become responsible adults. Most eventually get jobs and lead normal lives. As Bukowski says: being a bum is hard, and most people are not up to it. They tire of being cold, hungry and rejected, and of living outside the law. A few people die of their foolish misadventures. But this is a lesser evil than protecting them from themselves through tyranny. Because themselves is who they are entitled to be. If people become discouraged and dissolute during times of economic upheaval and social change, there may be a resurgence of interest in the solace of tradition. Rediscovery of what was good in the past is good. Sometimes we rediscover the value of some forgotten things when we are forced to do without others. But this does not mean a return to the past is required because modernity is a dead end. After a time the economy recovers and society adapts to change, but perhaps still incorporating the newly rediscovered "traditional value", the values of their forebears that were at first rejected by ignorant youth, and rediscovered every few generations.

Sometimes it is considered that what an indulgent society needs is some tough love. But material reality has its own version of tough love already. It is called "consequences". Tough love does not justify depriving adults of the right to self determination, that is, the right to chart their own course.

Consider for instance the isolated town that depends economically on a single large local industry that closes due to broader economic changes. Some of the townspeople leave to go where the jobs are, but some do not. Small local businesses close, the town becomes depressed and dissolute. The townspeople spending all day in local bars, children growing up under idle parents, turning to drugs and crime. Before long we are reading headlines about the small town "decimated" by drugs, and how the soul of the town must be saved from the drug's devilish influence. The evil drug is blamed for the town's ills and conservative values offered as the solution. The problem is a community that refuses to change and evolve. Who think they can just plant themselves somewhere and opportunity must come to them. Who perhaps expect to have a single job for life and only need enough education for that. Who instead of finding something useful to do, make a nuisance of themselves instead. A similar fate may befall a community with limited economic opportunities through no fault of its own, but through externally imposed limitations on freedom. Another illustration might be the community in which the local religion has failed to keep pace with social evolution, moral and intellectual, and has lost its credibility as a result. The community may become discouraged and dissolute by the prospect of personal mortality, while calls to return to traditional values prove futile.

What does this phrase "traditional values" mean? We might mean old and intolerant and restrictive ways of life. But it is difficult to make sense of this interpretation because it is difficult to see the value of cruelty. So the phrase is usually defined obliquely, elliptically, abstractly. It is about "values" and "tradition". Or we might mean a simpler, more natural, less commodity focused way of life. In its good form it is an appreciation and valuing of simple things available to anyone. Like sunshine, fresh air and clean water, healthy food and a modest but comfortable home and clothing, family, friends and useful work. It is valuing being good over being rich or famous, and of being clear headed instead of clouded by intoxication. But there is nothing in any of this that suggests we should be throwing people in jail or murdering them for doing otherwise. Or imprisoning our women under an opaque black tent. It is a decision we make for ourselves and only ourselves.

But eventually most of us will get bored with such an existence if that is all that is available. From time to time we will have a drink of beer or scotch, or take out our smart phone to see what is new, and re-join modernity. Conservatism is not balance. It is an extreme, contrary to both nature and science. Conservatism refuses to evolve as nature and spirit demand. A decadent but free society will eventually become health conscious and want clean air and clean water. Sex itself demands that we be healthy, fit and clean. It is beauty that drives us to achieve. It is the desire to go on living that makes us prudent. People under tyranny are only fodder, drinking poison forced on them by their abusers.

A religious war is only a religious war for the parties who are fighting it to impose a religion by force. For those fighting against those fighting to impose a religion by force it is not a religious war. To them the religion of their enemy does not matter. What matters is that their enemy is attacking them, murdering them, oppressing them. For them it is a war for physical freedom from harm, and freedom to live in a way of one's own choosing. For them, the problem is not that their enemy is this or that religion. For them the issue is only that their enemy are cunts. Cunts are the problem, whatever religion, whether atheist, whether a particular political or economic philosophy, whether they are part of some other social group or your own. Beyond all of the rhetoric and rationalisation, what matters is whether you are a cunt, or not. Here too we seek the advice of our gut. A cunt is someone who wants to cut off your head for no good reason.

Tyrannies come in different kinds and degrees. Some are nightmares, like Stalin's purges or China's cultural revolution. Some are not particularly unpleasant for much of the population. If a really awful tyranny is replaced by one that is not nearly so bad, the people feel much better off and embrace the new arrangement. For instance, if people are no longer starving in the streets because the economy is developing. Tyranny is also better than the anarchy of competing warlords or roaming bands of bandits. Such a government is seen as bringing peace, stability and some degree of prosperity. Under such circumstances, foreign liberals and NGOs winging of unequal distribution of wealth and a lack of freedom of the press and endemic corruption can seem to be missing the point of what is "required" in the country in question. But such a society is the most primitive form of civilization. Only a single step removed from barbarism.

Most people in a society are not journalists, political activists or artists, and lead simple conservative lives of work and rest. And so they may not be adversely affected by so-called tyranny. The freedoms lost are not missed but are the concern of a minority. But the importance of freedom is not only that it is an end in itself. It is also a protection against a multitude of sins. It is the sunlight that disinfects a society. We defend the rights of others because it indirectly protects our own.

Those who are not adversely affected by tyranny may accept that the persecuted minorities are criminals and troublemakers, and that the political activists and journalists are troublemakers, and those calling for freedom of speech and freedom of expression are freaks and perverts. And they may never have cause to regret such a position. When the cardinal and the king shake hands, it means that all is right with the world.

When a family of lions lounge on a hilltop in full view of a large herd of antelope, the antelope continue their grazing, only glancing up nervously at the hilltop when they see one of the animals move, and only flee when they see the animals approach. Even then they do not run for the hills but only trot a distance to put some other antelope between them and the lion. An antelope all alone, without the herd, behaves differently on seeing a lion. In the herd, the antelope are playing a numbers game. There are lots of other antelopes between them and the lions. Odds are, it will probably be one of those that are eaten. The lame or slow one. The one that keeps wandering off. The stupid one that never pays attention. I do not need to run faster than the lion, I only need to run faster than you. In a tyranny, the smart antelope is the loyal friend of the authorities, so that the target will be painted on someone else's hide. For something seen to benefit the main body of the herd, it will sacrifice the interests of outliers. The main body of the herd, less worse off than some others, come to identify themselves with "the state", calling for unity and praising the fatherland.

"National greatness" is an infantile political goal and does not justify anyone suffering anything. Of course "greatness" can mean different things, but in this context it usually means subjection to the state, which means subjection to the people who control the state. True greatness is a light on a hill that others look to for inspiration, and has little to do with GDP or the size of one's borders. While a healthy economy is obviously a good thing, as is the network of friendly cooperation with one's neighbours, where exactly lines are drawn on a map is only really important as far as whether the group over here do or do not want to be governed by the group over there. That is, considerations of racial and cultural independence and autonomy. Considerations like "national greatness" can tend to work against such considerations, where the wealth and prestige of the "state" is increased by annexing the resources and territory of neighbouring nations, and suppressing the autonomy of minorities.

Once freedom of speech and freedom of expression are gone, so is accountability, and civilised society is replaced by the herd. While much in the preceding consideration of evil is fairly obvious, it is included for thoroughness and clarity, and in view of evil's mission to do violence to common sense.

In the course of this article I have taken the position: "liberal good, conservative bad", but I have been using these terms in a particular sense. Every well-functioning democracy has a liberal party and a conservative party. The US has Democrats (liberal) and Republicans (conservative). Great Britain has Labour (liberal) and Conservative (conservative). Australia has Labor (liberal) and Liberal (conservative). Each party represents itself as the champion of freedom, democracy and the people. In a liberal democracy both parties should be composed of liberals. The conservative party should only be relatively conservative, that is, conservative relative to the liberal party. The overall historical trend is for society to become more liberal, but every new freedom and innovation brings with it new challenges and problems for society to integrate and learn to manage. Some will embrace it. Some will resist it. And between them they set the pace of progress. Much of the population are not firmly aligned with one or the other political party, but will opt for one or the other depending on current conditions and what each is selling at election time. The two parties are seen as each embodying a legitimate political and economic philosophy, and psycho-social predisposition. But each is also seen as being vulnerable to excess. The function of having two parties is so that they can serve as a check and a balance on each other. When liberalism is seen as running amuck, the people swing toward the conservative party and self discipline and industry is promoted. When the conservatives are seen as getting too much the upper hand, the people swing to the liberal party to restore balance, consolidate freedom and innovation, and promote the well being of ordinary people. The parties themselves and their immediate supporters are likely to be fixedly aligned to one or the other philosophy, and therefore likely excessive and not representative of the people as a whole, who play them one against the other and frustrate both, forming a tolerable, evolving status quo. The democratic process aligns the government actors to the people's will and values. When conservatives clamour that government should get out of the boardroom and into the bedroom where it belongs, the people decide.

Society cannot always afford the infinite indulgence of the liberal, economically or socially. Liberals might agree that drug users should not be imprisoned, but society may balk at providing them with free public housing because they are incapable of holding a job, and a visit from a publicly funded nurse to bring them their daily dose of methadone on a silver tray.


"We called her mother ... wouldn't you?"

(William S. Burroughs)

Drug users writing to their local member of parliament/congress to complain about the tardy service. Or if every form of overindulgence is defined as an "illness" eligible for publicly funded healthcare. Sometimes natural consequences need to be allowed to run their course so that people learn from their choices.

The conservative party is supposed to be the party of fiscal responsibility. The liberal party typically is aligned with the interests of "the workers", while the conservative party is concerned with the well being and growth of the economy overall (and therefore supportive of bosses and the rich). The conservatives build the economy, the liberals build hospitals (using public money). There is a trade-off society makes between benefits to workers and benefits to business. There is such a thing as tough love, and reality is implacable. Society needs to be composed for the most part of disciplined, responsible and effective citizens and institutions. These citizens will not be inclined to carry a bunch of freeloaders. There is a limit to society's tolerance of those who create problems and do harm. Parents in particular have a burden of responsibility. There are a great multitude of tricky social questions needing decisions from society. The distinction between conservative and liberal as it appears here is much gentler than how it appeared above. Here it means cautious and responsible. Above it meant oppression and violence.

The United States State Department each year issues a set of "Country Reports" on human rights for each country in the world (except, conspicuously, for the US itself). These are all freely available on the internet at https://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/. The reports compile data provided by international, national and local NGOs from across the world. The reports are arranged according to a standard set of chapters. I will call these chapter headings: "Sins - Group A"

Sins - Group A

• Section 1. Respect for the Integrity of the Person, Including Freedom from:
1. Arbitrary Deprivation of Life and other Unlawful or Politically Motivated Killings
2. Disappearance
3. Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment
4. Arbitrary Arrest or Detention
5. Denial of Fair Public Trial
6. Arbitrary or Unlawful Interference with Privacy, Family, Home, or Correspondence
• Section 2. Respect for Civil Liberties, Including:
1. Freedom of Speech and Press
2. Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and Association
3. Freedom of Religion
4. Freedom of Movement, Internally Displaced Persons, Protection of Refugees, and Stateless Persons
• Section 3. Freedom to Participate in the Political Process
• Section 4. Corruption and Lack of Transparency in Government
• Section 5. Governmental Attitude Regarding International and Nongovernmental Investigation of Alleged Violations of Human Rights
• Section 6. Discrimination, Societal Abuses, and Trafficking in Persons
• Section 7. Workers Rights
1. Freedom of Association and the Right to Collective Bargaining
2. Prohibition of Forced or Compulsory Labor
3. Prohibition of Child Labor and Minimum Age for Employment
4. Discrimination with Respect to Employment and Occupation
5. Acceptable Conditions of Work

Notice that none of the following (what I will call: "Sins - Group B") appear in the list above.

Sins - Group B

• taking selfies
• taking drugs or being drunk
• reading violent books or watching violent movies
• watching pornography
• being gay
• being promiscuous
• being disrespectful or disobedient
• being proud or arrogant
• being rich, free, happy, popular, smart or beautiful
• being foolish or wrong
• blasphemy
• nudity
• voluntary prostitution

The first and probably foremost task of a moral being is to have a clear and accurate conception of the difference between right and wrong. The most effective means of defeating the goals of righteousness is by confusing this conception. If we can make anything in Group A appear a just response to anything in Group B, we will have successfully inverted the natural moral compass of the population. Confusing what is clearly wrong by confounding it with what is not clearly wrong.

If we as a world can eradicate the problems in Group A, we will have established universal peace and justice on the planet Earth. Effectively established heaven, what some might suggest is in fact God's kingdom, on Earth. In such a case, is there anything in Group B that we really need to be seriously concerned about? Where these do any harm at all, it is likely due to the arrogance, ignorance and indulgence of youth, that will be naturally eliminated within most individuals as part of the maturation process and the acquisition of personal responsibility.

The sins in Group A are simply, clearly and openly defined. The most effective way to defeat attempts at the eradication of the sins in Group A is by directing society's attention instead to the full-time job of permanently keeping at bay the sins in Group B in a never ending war on sin. Attempts to eradicate the sins in Group B will in fact lead inevitably to those in Group A. When someone living under tyranny complains about Westerners watching movies like "Natural Born Killers" or "A Clockwork Orange", they only reveal that their moral intelligence has been shredded.

If the human race can agree that Group A defines what needs to be fixed, making that the clear goal, it will be. That is why, whether you are a liberal or not ... matters. We may call it: "moral good sense".


"No one expects you to be perfect. But there's a few basic things you got to get right."

(from the movie "Edge of Darkness" (2010))

Superstition

It is true that superstition is one of the tools used to intimidate and control people. A lone shaman may seek to protect himself or carve out his own little domain of power by threatening the evil eye or other supernatural attack. Or organised religions instill doctrines whereby the people must obey the dictates of the religious institution and depend upon it for their spiritual salvation. Mao was correct in his criticism of religions. Religions often represent the old, traditional ways preventing progress into the new, modern way. Religion has dogma: "do what we say or you will burn in hell forever", while secular tyranny has decrees and ultimatums: "do what we say or we will imprison, torture and kill you".

It is true that science has come to replace many superstitions. But it has not disproven any of them. It offers an alternative explanation with better explaining power for many events. But science and superstition can easily coexist. Judaism and its inheritor Christianity are opposed to many superstitions, putting the monotheistic single god in their place, thus wiping away from the culture many of the old superstitions. Among the sins of Manasseh, King of Judah were the following.


"In the two courts of the temple of the Lord, he built altars to all the starry hosts. He sacrificed his own son in the fire, practiced divination, sought omens, and consulted mediums and spiritists. He did much evil in the eyes of the Lord, arousing his anger."

(2 Kings 21:5-6)

So that science and Christianity are aligned in this. "See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world...." (Colossians 2:8) "[T]hose who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur." (Revelation 21:8) "Do not allow a sorceress to live." (Exodus 22:18) Monotheistic religion has its own magic and superstition, but it reduces the chaos of natural magic to a supernatural realm that must align with the will of a rational and loving God. Instead of fearing the local sorcerer or the spirit of the crocodile or that mountain, we only need to fear God and He will protect us from the rest, and He is fair and just. So that in that sense, monotheistic religion clears the way for the atheist by presenting him with only one last remaining god to eliminate. Superstition was eliminated by the fear of persecution by the Church before it was eliminated by rationality. We had already seen that we could get by without it. Rationality was raised to the place it has now, in part by the belief in the rational god. The belief that keeps the other superstitious dreads at bay. Now when people are exposed to the mothman or some other dark supernatural entity, they pray first to god and then to science to remove their fear. Science tells us: "It was only a dream". If that doesn't work, the Church is called in to exorcise the demon.

The separation of Church and state is part of the separation of powers, the checks and balances that protect modern society. Secular government responds to and protects the material needs and freedoms of the people, ignoring but not suppressing religion and other supernatural beliefs. It treats the priests, prophets and cardinals with well deserved suspicion. The religions can sow their fears and dogmas, but are deprived of the political means to physically impose them. The Church can only influence government (the interest group effect aside) when it can rally the people as one behind some cause. The tyrant kills the priests when they attempt to usurp his power, or when they speak up on behalf of the people. Religion should not interfere in affairs that are properly secular ("Give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s" (Mark 12:17, Matthew 22:21)).

In previous articles I have bemoaned the long hiatus in scientific progress represented by the Dark Ages, but we might ask if the world would have been better off if the atomic bomb had been invented 1,000 years earlier; if it would have been available to King Henry VIII or Genghis Khan. The Dark Ages were a long period of introspection when moral and spiritual questions were placed at the centre of society's concerns. In typical human fashion we found every wrong way to pursue the matter before finally resolving on the right way. The ultimate victory of Christ's ideals are not represented in the ugliness of the Dark Ages, but in the eventual dismantling of the Dark Ages at the Enlightenment and Renaissance, and the emergence of the modern world. We no longer believe that it is okay to raid neighbouring villages and towns because they are not of our tribe, and we are keen to forgive and protect even our enemies. These ideals are not limited to those calling themselves Christians or religious, but are society-wide and have found their way into every religion and moral philosophy. So that today, remnants of the old order struggle desperately to hold back the tide. It may well have all happened anyway without Christ's visit, through a common human instinct, but he is certainly prominent among its proponents.

Greek science re-entered Europe at the end of the Dark Ages because Europe let it back in, because it was a changed Europe. It was not science itself that changed it. Europe was tired of lies and dogma and ready to seek the truth wherever it could be found. The Church in particular had earned criticism. Europe did not change because it thought: "Good Lord! The sun is actually the centre of the solar system! We better start listening to this thing called 'science' from now on!" Although it was to become a kind of emblem of just how factually wrong the all-wise government authorities could be, the will to suppress such knowledge was already waning, despite the controversy, as evidenced by the fact that it was not effectively suppressed when it could have been. Most people are not that interested in astronomy. Science, theories of astronomy or evolution, are not required to call religion into question. The reasoning ability of any primary school child is sufficient to find fault with the books of Genesis. What marked the end of the Dark Ages was that such dissent was allowed its voice. Science was one of the immediate beneficiaries of this.

People were happy with science's ability to provide objective truths, and a long list of Christian scientists set to work, among them: Francis Bacon, René Descartes, Galileo Galilei, Pierre Gassendi, Blaise Pascal, Isaac Barrow, Robert Boyle, Isaac Newton, Johannes Kepler, Gottfried Leibniz, Leonard Euler, Antoine Lavoisier, Maria Agnesi, Alessandro Volta, Andre Ampere, Bernhard Riemann, Michael Faraday, Charles Babbage, James Clerk Maxwell, Gregor Mendel, Heinrich Hertz, Louis Pasteur, Kurt Gödel, James Joule, Lord Kelvin, Ernest Rutherford, Max Plank, Arthur Eddington, Max Born, Werner Heisenberg, Werner von Braun, etc. For these there was no contradiction between religion and science, both avenues for seeking truth.

We saw how the Arabs were the custodians, preservers and protectors of Greek science while Europe slumbered in the Dark Ages. But for all the centuries they possessed this knowledge they developed it relatively little. When this science re-entered Europe at the end of the Dark Ages it set off an explosion of scientific endeavour that continues to this day. What was different in Europe? What transformation had taken place within the chrysalis, the long dark dream of the Dark Ages? Perhaps it was only fresh eyes in search of something, viewing the information. The ancient Greeks themselves had once been only a primitive collection of tribes. Their encounter with the knowledge of the then ancient civilizations of mighty Egypt and Mesopotamia had a profound impact on them. Egyptian learning had reached a high level of sophistication, but since had stalled and atrophied into tradition and habit. In Greek hands, this knowledge flowered into something entirely new. A new scientific method. Or perhaps it was the printing press that made the difference, or technologies like the microscope or the telescope. Or perhaps all of these.


"Soon after the middle of the twelfth century the whole of the Organon [by Aristotle] was in circulation, either in the old version of Boethius or in newly made translations, and within the next half century most of the rest of Aristotle's writings became available in Latin. Some translations were made at this time in Spain from Arabic versions and some in Italy by scholars who were in touch with Byzantine learning. That translations were made at this time in either way is to be explained by the intellectual awakening of the western world, rather than by any historical accident; for men who had heard of the learning of the Arabs made long journeys to find what they wanted.... [I]t is arguable that the exercises of the medieval universities prepared the way for modern science by sharpening men's wits and leading them to think about the methods of acquiring knowledge. For it is certainly a mistake to suppose that all the philosophers of the Middle Ages believed in systems of deductive metaphysics, and that experimental science began quite suddenly when Galileo or some other Renaissance worthy made an observation for the purpose of refuting a generalization of Aristotle or Galen...."

("The Development of Logic", by William Kneale and Marth Kneale (1962), pp.225-226)

While ideally suited to the investigation of matter, attempts to apply the scientific method to religion itself were less successful. We considered this in the article Cosmic Conspiracy - Part 2 - Strange Creatures. The only avenue to religious knowledge remained revelation, that is, supernatural events that stubbornly refused to appear in the laboratory. So science and religion were deemed separate domains, and importantly, government was separated from both. Government was no longer to be the determiner of truth for society. The principle of separation of powers applied to Church, State and Academia, was extended to subdivide the State itself, into independent judiciary, executive and legislative branches, and there was to be a free market and a citizenry exercising private ownership of goods and resources. These checks and balances became the basis of Western freedom and prosperity, and have served the purpose fairly well.

We conclude our consideration of the morality of the Judeo-Christian Bible in the next article: Is God Good? - Part 3.

Any comments welcome.