Month: September 2009

The theocons are obsessed with keeping gays marginalized and making abortion illegal. To listen to them discuss Catholic orthodoxy entirely through this prism is quite a lesson in the total politicization of faith. They say nothing about the Catholic view of healthcare – that it's a human right; nothing about Catholic view of the economy – that unfettered free markets are unjust; nothing about the Catholic position on immigration – that the GOP is wrong; nothing about the Catholic position on torture – that it is an inherent and absolute evil.

They avoid these things because for them, religion is a means to political power. Since the party they support is so strongly opposed to much of what the Catholic church stands for, they remain silent, while castigating those of us who are, in fact, more orthodox as somehow un-Catholic. This is the trick, and the Vatican hierarchy, just as obsessed with abortion and gays, backs them up.

But not always. Benedict XVI is not an adjunct to GOP power as, say, Richard John Neuhaus was. And so his recent strong statement on environmental issues is ignored. Check it out here. Now, I don't believe in transposing Catholic dogma into political positions; but I do believe a faithful attempt to live according to one's conscience as a Catholic can guide one's approach to issues, an approach that can then be translated into a discourse accessible to all, Catholics, non-Catholics and non-believers alike.

On the environment, the Catholic position is clear. We cannot simply use this planet as a resource without also seeing it as an inheritance. We have no right as human beings to destroy ecological balance in ways that kill off other species, set off climate changes that could truly alter the planet, melt the polar ice-caps, and hurt vast numbers of the poor in the developing world. For Catholics, becoming wealthier is not a reason to ignore this duty.

Now, how we do this is, of course, up for debate. Carbon tax? Cap and trade? These are political questions. But a simple cost-benefit analysis is not the last word for Catholics. And I have to say that the deeper moral commitment to God's creation is not, in my view, optional for a believing Christian. We have all the moral responsibilities of dominion over other species and the natural world. 

I see this is a practical issue – and generally view cap-and-trade with skepticism. I tend to believe that the only real solution will be technological. I'd like a small but gradually increasing carbon tax to help encourage more conservation. But beneath this, it's important to argue that being green is not some secular issue. It is, for some of us, a religious imperative.

Hanoi, Vietnam, 10.30 am

Goldblog calls Roger Cohen Ahmadinejad's Charlie Brown:

Yesterday, Ahmadinejad, on "Qods Day," the day designed to divert the attention of Iranians from the failures of their own bloody and repressive government to the supposed sins of the Jews, once again denied that the Holocaust took place. I guess "that's just way of things in Iran."  It's uncanny — every time Roger Cohen tries to explain why the Iranian regime might just be ripe for rational negotiations, Ahmadinejad enters the room with a plateful of crazy.

I suppose, at this point, I need to say it again: I'm opposed to an Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear facilities, and I'm for a time-limited negotiation between the U.S. and Iran. Unlike Cohen, however, I think the Iranian regime is not so hard to understand. It's malevolent and narcissistic and violent and corrupt and anti-Semitic, and for all those reasons, I hold out virtually no hope that something good will come from these talks. But at least, at the end of the talks, we'll see the Iranian government for what it is.

So after all the sound and fury, Goldblog agrees with Cohen. The question, of course, is how to balance this regime against the country that, for the most part, despises it. It's not an easy question – and the prospect of any talks with Khamenei turns my stomach. But that's what statecraft is: sometimes it requires some nausea and delicacy. Sometimes it doesn't easily comport with morally easy choices. And if bombing Iran helps the regime, as I think it would, and unleashes another wave of Jihadist terror against the West, and Israel is widely seen as the country that started it all – then I suspect Khamenei will be very happy indeed.

The GOP's new leader: Carrie Prejean.

Ahem:

A heartfelt confession.

Jonah Lehrer daydreams:

Before long, I bet we'll have simple preference tools installed on our phones. These tools will track our social network – that's easy to do on a phone, since our network is stored in the contacts folder, thus bypassing the mess of Facebook – and then give us advice based on the feedback of our friends. I imagine one day we'll simply be able to walk into a mall and ask the phone where we should go. It will think for a second before suggesting a particular clothing store selling vintage shirts, or a quaint cafe serving a good tuna sandwich, or that poster store on the ground floor. It will be like word-of-mouth, only transmitted indirectly – the hearsay of an algorithm. Your preferences will be calculated as a function of your network, and not as an abstract human island, which strikes me as much closer to the social reality of preference formation.

A reader writes:

The tepid praise directed by Mohler toward Dawkins for at least taking an intellectually honest stand, and the portrayal of Armstrong as a spineless loon is rooted in a piece of scripture that was driven into me as a child:

“So, because you are lukewarm – neither hot nor cold – I am about to spit you out of my mouth.” Rev. 3:16

Fundamentalist Christians like Mohler are more comfortable aligning with the devil they see standing in broad daylight than the one they perceive lurking in the shadows, tempting true believers into a dalliance with uncertainty. As usual, the tempered, cautious, nuanced middle is denounced as wimpy and intellectually sloppy. But Mohler’s assault of Armstrong’s cosmology-as-therapy (“Will anyone believe this nonsense?”) is laughable.

He’s appealing to the intellect here, and yet he stands on a tradition that includes talking serpents, talking donkeys, disembodied hands, snakes-cum-staffs, people-cum-pillars of salt, man-swallowing fish, giants, angels, demons, resurrections, and ascensions. Any intellectually honest Christian must acknowledge that a literal understanding of each of these can’t meet the test of reason. I’m not attempting to denounce Mohler’s intellect, nor diminish the tradition from which he (and millions of others) find meaning in this remarkable life. I’d just like to see him show a hint of understanding that he dwells in a glass house.

Armstrong’s reduction of faith to a source of therapeutic insights about how and why life works out as it does (including horrific plagues, wars, illness, and aging) may be simplistic, but she is no simpleton. Her reduction is an attempt at a single-sentence rationale that seems far more plausible than the convoluted systems of theology that fundamentalists promulgate. But because she looks to preserve the meaning in religion while dumping the fundamentalism, she, not Dawkins, is the real enemy.

Fundamentalists don’t care about meaning, rather they must proclaim “absolute truth.” Meaning is all too feminine.

I started to read Armstrong yesterday. So far, I'm impressed. She understands how fundamentalism in many ways is the opposite of actual faith, a dysfunctional and uniquely modern fusion of rationalism and ignorance. Recovering actual belief, recovering the divine from the cacophony of human certainty and arrogance: that is our task as Christians today.

Tehran Bureau is live-blogging:

Some of the slogans chanted were:

Palestine, we are just like you
Oh [Imam] Hossein, Mir Hossen [Mousavi]
Karroubi, Mousavi, we support you
Death to Russia
Torture, rape, have no longer any effect
Not Gaza, not Lebanon, I’ll die for Iran

Leave Palestine alone
Long love [Dr. Saeed] Hajjarian [the jailed reformist strategist], long
live Mousavi
Long live [Grand Ayatoollah Hossein Ali] Montazeri, Long live Karroubi
The real Basiji, Hemmat and Bakeri [two commanders killed in Iran-Iraq
war, whose families support the Green Movement]
Long live Montazeri, long live [Grand Ayatollah Yousef] Sanei

And to Ahmadinejad:

Shut up liar
Get lost liar
Where is your 63% [of the vote], liar

Rumors continue to persist that the arrests of Mousavi and Karroubi are imminent. Several relatives, children, and grandchildren of the jailed reformist leaders have also been arrested, in order to pressure the leaders to “confess.” In one case, one of the reformist leaders has been told that, “we have found so much evidence against your son that his punishment is death,” in order to get him to “confess.”