Asymmetric Religion and Philosophy

Watch the video or read the statement below. What is Mr. MacAskill talking about? What are these "Scottish values?" Where do they come from? By his reasoning, every murderer should be released a few months before their anticipated death so that they can be with their family (why should anybody else receive less compassion than the murderer of over 200 people?).

I notice no mention of God and Scots have begotten several famous philosophers so one would have expected a purely scientific, rational basis for the decision. I just can't figure out what it is.

Actually, I do know. It's narcissistic, callous, emotionalism. Narcissism, because I'm sure MacAskill feels like a good person for releasing Al Megrahi. Emotional, because I don't see any other basis for his argument. Callous, because he doesn't care that the victims' families have to endure the spectacle of Al Megrahi being feted in Libya.

It reminds me of a quote I saw on NRO, part of which said that leftist liberalism is a Christian heresy. Releasing Al Megrahi is a uncredited perversion of the Christian commandment to forgive.

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Interesting.

In response to this question:**

Dear Sir,

I am a college freshmen, and have found myself in a very curious situation. I stumbled upon Zeitgeist by happen stance and ever since have been questioning the world around me. Zeitgeist has opened my eyes to a many number of things. As a result I am considering denouncing my faith.
You seem to be a very knowledgeable man. I have a question that has been nagging at me. I hope that you can answer this question:
Why won't God heal Amputees? They served honorably in the Military,and yet they are the least taken care of by the church and state.
Also, Who invented "no mail on sundays"?

Sincerely, Brianna

Brianna,

Zeitgeist "opens eyes" in the same way that the The Protocols of the Elders of Zion opened the eyes of the world to the Jewish menace. In other words, both are nonsense.

As to the amputees:

I'm guessing you're asking why there's no recorded incidences of legs having grown back. Some points:

1. Nobody knows, of course.
2. It's necessary for Christians to believe in miracles, in general, and a few in particular.
3. I don't think it's necessarily wise to ask why there aren't any miracles of a certain type. There have been the miracles that God has wanted.
4. If one were to speculate, however, one might say that a leg growing back leaves no room for doubt which would also leave no room for faith, which God considers a good thing.
5. God can help people in different ways, not just physically.
6. Everybody needs, in the ultimate sense, God. Some, with particular problems will always have the comfort of knowing that Justice is certain and that some being cares for him.
7. I don't know about the claim that amputees aren't cared for by the government. I worked with amputees at Walter Reed and I didn't sense any mass neglect.
8. The beauty of America is that people can choose to help whomever they wish. Go ahead.

Mail on Sundays:

1. Sunday, for Christians, has traditionally been a day of rest. The United States, having been founded by Christians, mostly, would prefer Sunday as the day not to conduct business. Remember, it wasn't too long ago that cities would have ordinances prohibiting businesses from opening on Sundays.

**I know this may be a Bill Maher-style joke, but what the heck?

It's not a nice thing to take people's personal correspondence, but since it's already out there:

Protect my family and me. Forgive my sins, and help me guard against pride and despair. Give me the wisdom to do what is right and just. And make me an instrument of your will.

It's a lovely prayer that covers all of the bases, I think.

Tony Snow is the second broadcasting giant to pass away in as many months, after Tim Russert. One of the most important factors in determining how much respect a man should receive is his relationship to his family, especially his spouse. Like Russert, Tony Snow seems to have been a dedicated father and husband: R.I.P.

All of us will face physical problems. Indeed, all of us will die. Illness can lead one to despair because it negatively affects one's time on earth and forces one to ponder his demise.

Christianity teaches us to use our inevitable suffering to identify more closely with Christ's Passion ("offering it up"). Some even thank God for their suffering. Tony Snow didn't exactly say as much, but he did point out the "blessings" of his terrible illness:

Blessings arrive in unexpected packages—in my case, cancer.

Those of us with potentially fatal diseases—and there are millions in America today—find ourselves in the odd position of coping with our mortality while trying to fathom God's will. Although it would be the height of presumption to declare with confidence What It All Means, Scripture provides powerful hints and consolations.

The first is that we shouldn't spend too much time trying to answer the why questions: Why me? Why must people suffer? Why can't someone else get sick? We can't answer such things, and the questions themselves often are designed more to express our anguish than to solicit an answer.

I don't know why I have cancer, and I don't much care. It is what it is—a plain and indisputable fact. Yet even while staring into a mirror darkly, great and stunning truths begin to take shape. Our maladies define a central feature of our existence: We are fallen. We are imperfect. Our bodies give out.

But despite this—because of it—God offers the possibility of salvation and grace. We don't know how the narrative of our lives will end, but we get to choose how to use the interval between now and the moment we meet our Creator face-to-face.

We can all agree that something like this happened.

Even Christopher Hitchens can agree that on a Friday just before Passover, approximately 1975 years ago, the Roman authorities crucified a person named Jesus Christ who claimed to be the son of God and whom some believed. It's what happened on Sunday that people disagree about.

"If Christ was not raised, then all our preaching is useless, and your trust in God is useless" (1 Cor. 15:14)

No great faith-based belief system lists "tolerance" as a virtue. Neither do Roman or Samurai belief systems. William Bennett wisely didn't include tolerance in his Book of Virtues.

The BOOK OF VIRTUES by William J. Bennett

"Justice" is there as is "mercy" and "self-restraint."

The reason tolerance doesn't appear is that toleration requires no effort (character). In fact, its essence is the opposite of strain; it merely demands one to do nothing when confronted with a decision- to not care. Justice, the closest virtue to tolerance begs restraint and the application of some concept of fairness. Justice also obligates one to judge.

Tolerance can be as negative as it can positive. People can tolerate bad behaviors and toleration of the malevolent may lead to the increase of the tolerated evil. I can list hundreds of examples, but let's say that Giuliani would have been more circumspect had he sought office in Hester Prynne's day, and a Victorian-era Brangelina may have married before Shiloh.

Tolerance can be a good strategy to an end. It certainly makes living in a religiously diverse society easier. Companies can be less tolerant of poor performance if it tolerates differences in bottom-line irrelevant traits like race.

It is because of the uniqueness of our society that tolerance is preached in schools (My daughter just told me of a movie she saw in school called Marisela about a Salvadoran girl who's ostracized by the white kids, and two-thirds of all textbook stories have to do with "accepting" and tolerating.) and by politicians. It's also emphasized because our weaker society naturally gravitates towards the easy. It's easier to look away than to confront, give, or assist.

So, the next time somebody lists tolerance as one of his virtues, just shrug your shoulders. Good for you!

Just following the logic of her beliefs

In Chapter 13, Ambush, of Tim O'Brien's Vietnam novel, The Things They Carried, O'Brien's daughter asks him if he ever killed anybody. He replies "no" even though, in the previous chapter, he describes how he did. Obviously, O'Brien felt bad about killing somebody when he lies to his daughter, but why would O'Brien find such a revelation embarrassing? Does he think that his daughter would think less of him? It seems reasonable to conclude that O'Brien finds something wrong with killing people.

The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien

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A recent article in the New York Times by Cornelia Dean quotes the astronomer Owen Gingerich as saying that, by simultaneously advocating evolution and atheism, 'Dr Dawkins "probably single-handedly makes more converts to intelligent design than any of the leading intelligent design theorists".' This is not the first, not the second, not even the third time this plonkingly witless point has been made (and more than one reply has aptly cited Uncle Remus: "Oh please please Brer Fox, don't throw me in that awful briar patch").

It seems witless to Dr. Dawkins except that people instinctively realize that without God, life is meaningless, and recoil from such a conclusion. I don't mean that atheists can't have fun or love or think their life is meaningful. What I mean is that anybody who thinks about it realizes that being a living creature whose existence depended on nothing more than lightning striking some chemical compounds and whose fate will be the same no matter how they conduct themselves in life logically means that their life only has value if people (or just himself), for some phychological necessity, agree that it does. If Dawkins wasn't animated by a hatred for religion, he would admit as much. Oh, and seeing Dawkins interviewed probably sends more people rushing to church than free bingo cards. Standard Asymmetric disclaimer.

Chamberlainites are apt to quote the late Stephen Jay Gould's 'NOMA' - 'non-overlapping magisteria'. Gould claimed that science and true religion never come into conflict because they exist in completely separate dimensions of discourse:

To say it for all my colleagues and for the umpteenth millionth time (from college bull sessions to learned treatises): science simply cannot (by its legitimate methods) adjudicate the issue of God's possible superintendence of nature. We neither affirm nor deny it; we simply can't comment on it as scientists.

This sounds terrific, right up until you give it a moment's thought. You then realize that the presence of a creative deity in the universe is clearly a scientific

hypothesis. Indeed, it is hard to imagine a more momentous hypothesis in all of science. A universe with a god would be a completely different kind of universe from one without, and it would be a scientific difference. God could clinch the matter in his favour at any moment by staging a spectacular demonstration of his powers, one that would satisfy the exacting standards of science. Even the infamous Templeton Foundation recognized that God is a scientific hypothesis - by funding double-blind trials to test whether remote prayer would speed the recovery of heart patients. It didn't, of course, although a control group who knew they had been prayed for tended to get worse (how about a class action suit against the Templeton Foundation?) Despite such well-financed efforts, no evidence for God's existence has yet appeared.

This is just silly reasoning. Except that Dawkins brings up a good point. Why doesn't God just appear (again), rent an office downtown, and start settling arguments? For some reason, God thinks faith is one of the three most important virtues. By making the question of God merely a matter of making an appointment with him, God would render that virtue obsolete.

I have too many flaws to really hold myself up as a moral model, however, I think about these things and try to apply them to my life. So, in order to carry out my obligation to love, I try to think thusly: Unless the person I'm dealing with plans to use his well-being to do bad or to hurt me either physically or by other means, I will try to behave in such a manner that he will benefit or, in other words, do what's best for him. It's kind of like Covey's win-win except that I only think win-for him. I may win as well but only indirectly or cosmically. I don't have too many examples yet as I'm still practicing, but let's say my wife and I both want to see a movie that's showing twice a day and each showing will force one of us to miss something important to them. Well, I'd go to the show allowing her to preserve her event. Try it one day and report here at Asymmetric. Below is the Catholic dictionary example of love.

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