C.I.T.O.K.A.T.E.

I'm almost done reading Calculating God by Robert Sawyer, a novel about alien races who believe in Intelligent Design. It's a frustrating experience, full of vicarious embarassment.( Read more... )There is a reason that when I want science fiction, I don't go into a Christian bookstore, home of sloppy research, thought-killing sentiments, and a needless, too-easily surrendered despair about ever reconciling morality with reason. Reading Calculating God is like going back there.

I know that a character or civilization depicted in a book does not necessarily represent the viewpoint of the author. I want very badly to believe that's the case right now. ( Read more... )
I am accustomed to disagreeing with conclusions reached by science fiction authors in their novels. ( Read more... )
Here's a timely Doonesbury comic strip that treebones sent me just now.

I was referred to this over-the-top Planned Parenthood promotional cartoon by Christians outraged that it depicts a superhero killing them for nothing more than expressing anti-choice beliefs. Of course it's stylized kiddie-violence committed on inhuman zombie protesters in an obviously unrealistic heroes vs. villians setting, so it's not endorsing violence against real pro-lifers. But it's still the corniest heavy-handed preachy superhero story I've ever seen, even compared to Bibleman. Unlike Bibleman, this is mitigated by the fact that it doesn't take itself seriously, but I still can't decide whether to laugh or cringe.

I said some things in my response to zifferent's comment that I think should be appended to this entry, so I deleted my comment and added it here:

I support abortion rights. But this cartoon demonstrates the communications deficits that have resulted in pro-choice making so little headway in public opinion in the past few decades. The number of Americans who are actually as unthinking and reactionary against abortion as this cartoon depicts is surprisingly small. Granted, that small number is the loudest group. A surprisingly large number of moderate Americans would be much more pro-choice if it were debated differently.

The pro-choice movement is concerned with women's rights. They should be. But to focus on this one vitally-important value to the exclusion of concerns about the life in the womb leaves the pro-lifers as the only ones talking about the life in the womb, and they win that argument in the minds of Americans because they go mostly un-answered. We tend to cede a victory on that to the pro-lifers and try to make it seem that it doesn't matter whether the fetus is a person.

People prioritize whatever it is they feel has hurt them personally, so highly that they don't listen to other people to understand what drives them. I know I've done this at times. This accounts for the reputation of activists as self-righteous scolding memebots lacking humor or perspective. Too often we're so fanatically fixated on choice-- driven by our intense fear of how disastrous it would be to lose it -- that we'd like the question to be completely ignored, whether a fetus is entitled to rights. But the facts in that question are on our side! Pro-choice needs to scientifically address the question of whether a fetus is a person. It unequivocally is not at least until the twenty-eighth to thirtieth week-- the third trimester. I think two reasons pro-choice doesn't win the battle for hearts and minds as much as it could is that we also indulge ourselves in religious beliefs about souls, and when a baby is wanted we go ahead and indulge the mother-to-be in the idea that her baby-to-be already is a baby. This cuts the legs out from under the pro-choice position.

You know I am not having a very good day when I tell a Republican Party Organizer on PCCboard the following: "If I see even one judge or their families get hurt with the contact info you're distributing, I'm taking your words straight to the authorities to make sure you get put behind bars where you belong."

This is because he said, "we identify liberal judges. We publish their pictures online along with their contact information. When they make bad rulings, we call them at the office, at home, fax them, email them and let folks know who their family members are as well. ... Federal and state judges do not want to be the next abortion doctors. Nobody wants to walk around with a target on their back."

When taken to task by other fundamentalist Christians for being a low-rent South American dictator, he replied: "Don't act so self righteous. We're at war for the heart and soul of this nation and its very survival depends on restoring Godly rule to our country. Unless you are willing to get down and dirty, you won't win, and we must win for our childrens' sakes. Ronald Reagan said it best, "When you can't make them see the light, make them feel the heat.""

Elsewhere on the many mouth-foaming and ranting threads on that site about the Schaivo case, I said this to a reporter (also a graduate of PCC) covering Pinellas Park right now:
"It may interest you to know how these events [you are covering, such as demonstrations and riots and signs saying we deserve for God to shed our blood] are being perceived by the blue states. I have met almost no one who cares whether Terry Schiavo lives or dies. By this I mean your opponents are not angered by the thought of her body continuing to live.
However, we are angered and scared by the conservative protesters, pundits and preachers who we see on the news and on talk shows. We are not disturbed that they want Terry's body to keep on chugging away, but we are disturbed by their reasons and arguments.
There is a lot of talk about the Red States (or as they are now known, the Vegetative States) as an enemy nation like the Islamist theocracies, because of the perfect equivalence of what we hear out of the mouths of the fanatical and gullible mobs that fill their mosques and churches and spill out into their streets."

This is why the feuds among some of my friends are so unimportant and I take no part. Feuding power struggles or cat fights in a science-fiction fan club reveal an amazing lack of perspective about what is worth getting mad over. I want to tell them, "How can you call this person an enemy just because of your personality conflict? Have you listened to the theocrats lately? You don't know what an enemy is."

Well, the conversation with a radio preacher has drawn to a peaceful close. Although my friends list is unlikely to want to read it, I'm including his final letter in an lj-cut below because this Live Journal is my own record of memories. Mr. Thomas has some charitable things to say in parting about his opponent. Then he concludes by relating miracles, never suspecting that Mormons and JWs and Muslims and new age healers and readers of horoscopes and paranoid schizophrenics experience identical events in plentiful supply to validate their claims that oppose his. It's astonishing that the standard of what will pass for a "miracle" these days is so lenient as to be an insult to miracles as described in scriptural narratives. Biblical miracles, had they truly happened, were mostly of a character that would have been impossible to even contemplate as coincidences. You'd think his concept of God would be a big enough God that Mr. Thomas would expect him to do the impossible, at least occasionally. Oh well.

( Mr. Thomas' last letter. )

This exchange has brought to mind the saying of Thomas Paine, "Reasoning with one who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead." If through technology we could someday revive the dead to health, what might this suggest about Paine's assertion? I'm not sure where this metaphorical connection is going to lead. But here is the continuation, and probably the finale, of the correspondence with a radio preacher.

( Mr. Thomas' third reply. )

( My response. )

( My letter to the Illinois Leader. )
( Scott Thomas' personal reply. )

Mr. Thomas,
thank you for sending a personal reply. I understand your concerns, since I am the son of a pastor. Early in life I became a born-again Christian by choice and conviction, although you know I came to different convictions in my adult life. I acknowledge that you want society to be safe in our decisions and you have admirable good intentions, as I did at that time.
Thank you specifically for asking such important questions in your letter. I'm pleased to report that scientific instrumentation verifies that in an advanced fetus, possessing distinct tissues, organs, limbs and other features that an embryo lacks, the lights are on and somebody's home. Did you not know we have the ability to detect the onset of brain waves and even the ability of third-trimester fetuses to learn? You and I agree that a nine-inch trip down the birth canal is not what bestows personhood. Even though the answer to your question is more of a months-long window than a single universal instant, that window has an obvious beginning and end: how can there be thoughts in an organism without brain cells?
This is why one may as well call a human corpse or human sperm a person, as call a human embryo a person. If we are to take the path you advise, we would have to extend human rights to sperms and eggs. They are not from a different species. They are not dead. That makes them "human life," but life in the biological and not biographical sense. If conception is the onset of personhood, why is it that an embryo will just sit there and become nothing if it doesn't implant in the womb wall? They can be kept in a petri dish for a while, or frozen alive, as can sperm and eggs. The morning-after pill, RU-286, merely prevents implantation of this speck.
Your example of an infant is very helpful to my case. As a father, you would surely agree that your infant can not rightfully claim the full human right of freedom. Human parents grant independence gradually through the teenage years. So you are already used to the idea that human rights come in degrees with age. An organism that has not yet grown its first brain cell is not capable of choosing, feeling, thinking, loving, suffering, and desiring. Only people can do that.
This proves that the excerpt you cite from the bible is legendary embroidery. I can't recall from memory of my bible studies and bible college whether or not John the Baptist was even far enough along in pregnancy to have developed limbs to jump with. I understand, from personal experience, that when one's idiosyncratic and arbitrary choice of which holy book to place one's faith in is called into question, this is an instant thought-stopper for a person of faith. I wonder what you would do if you were confronted with a Muslim, a Jew, or a Hindu who would quote their own holy book back at you as a thought stopper and telling you they would pray for you? It's really enough to make me weep when I think about humans not employing the only interface they have-- reasoning with each other. I'm sorry for my choice of phrase "moral incompetence" which obviously has hurt your feelings. Nevertheless, ethics is a skill of observation and reasoning, like arithmetic. And like a mathematical illiterate who only uses a calculator, you exempt yourself from having to practice moral reasoning by getting it out of a book. I really can't describe it any other way.
-Matt