Month: December 2009

Jerry Coyne returns to the theodicy debate. He quotes this Francis Collins paragraph:

The tragedy of the young child killed by a drunk driver, of the innocent man dying on the battlefield, or of the young girl cut down by a stray bullet in a crime-ridden section of a modern city can hardly be blamed on God. After all, we have somehow been given free will, the ability to do as well please. We use this ability frequently to disobey the Moral Law [note: Collins believes that the "Moral Law," the group of moral views that we all share, was instilled in us by God.]  And when we do so, we shouldn’t then blame God for the consequences.

And responds:

What Collins is implying is that the Holocaust was necessary so that Nazis could use their free will.  Can there be anything more monstrous than this — or any explanation more ludicrous? This would be simply silly if it weren’t so pathetic.  Millions of innocent people died so that a small group of anti-Semites could work out their hatred on helpless victims?  What kind of God has a plan like that? And couldn’t God have staved off the Holocaust without interfering with people’s “free will”? Couldn’t He just have prevented the conjunction of the particular sperm and egg that yielded the zygotic Hitler? Or must sperm have free will, too?

Robert Worth explains:

Ayatollah Montazeri was widely regarded as the most knowledgeable religious scholar in Iran, and that gave his criticisms special potency, analysts say. His religious credentials also prevented the authorities from silencing or jailing him. Last month, he stunned many in Iran and abroad by apologizing for his role in the 1979 takeover of the American Embassy in Tehran, which he called a mistake. Iran’s leaders celebrate the takeover every year as a foundational event of the Islamic revolution.

Ayatollah Montazeri, who long advocated greater civil liberties and women’s rights in Iran, was angered by the bloody crackdown that followed the June election and issued a series of remarkable broadsides against the authorities. “A political system based on force, oppression, changing people’s votes, killing, closure, arresting and using Stalinist and medieval torture, creating repression, censorship of newspapers, interruption of the means of mass communications, jailing the enlightened and the elite of society for false reasons, and forcing them to make false confessions in jail, is condemned and illegitimate,” he wrote.

(Photo: Iranian mourners attend the funeral of Iranian cleric Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri in the holy city of Qom on December 21, 2009. AFP/Getty.)

The Montazeri funeral has become an opposition rallying cry in Iran: More videos of the protests here. Montazeri, it is important to remember, is a guiding light of the 1979 Revolution who declared the current coup regime illegitimate. A more ominous and aggressive demo today after the jump:

"The editorial ‘Sonograms, child porn’ ” which ran in (a recent) opinions section was completely inaccurate and based on false sources. No bill has been passed in North Dakota that states a picture of a fertilized egg is now considered child pornography … We wrote an editorial based on what we later learned was a satirical piece. … We at the Targum deeply regret the error…please accept our deepest apologies for not checking our sources," – The Daily Targum, Rutgers. From Regret The Error's annual list.

This weekend on the Dish we tracked fallout over the Senate Democrats' deal on healthcare reform. Major reax here. More reactions from Greg Sargent, David Kurtz, Austin Frakt, Timothy Noah, and Dish readers. We were also on top of news of Montazeri's sudden death and the outpouring of sentiment.

Friedersdorf reexamined the "politics of ressentiment" at length and Patrick responded again to under-blogger imbroglio.  Sprung took a long look at the cult of personality surrounding politicians. scrutinized Obama's rhetoric on Copenhagen, highlighted a Bloggingheads on Af-Pak, dug up a damning quote from Bush, presented a Christmas poem, and commented on the healthcare bill here, here, and here. His farewell here. Sully returned from his blog break to critique Palin's Copenhagen twittering and meditate over the meaning of the Dish.

In other contemplations, Jonah Lehrer turned his focus on free will, readers ran with determinism, Will Wilkinson took on moral realism, Carl Zimmer touched on consciousness, and Jonathan Safran Foer discussed the morality and mortality of eating animals.

We listened to more depressing Christmas songs from Aimee Mann, Nina Simone, Jonathan Coulton, Laura Nyro, Kyle Broflovski, John Prine, Prince, and John Eddie. More touching words on "The View From Your Window" here. 

— C.B.

“Death panels” puts her over the top:

The editors of PolitiFact.com, the fact-checking Web site of the St. Petersburg Times, have chosen it as our inaugural “Lie of the Year.”

It was, in some ways, the least of her lies.

In case you had forgotten just how hostile to core liberties Republicanism now is: Gingrich implies that all Obama officials who once acted as pro bono lawyers for terror suspects have no place in government. Notice in this diatribe how he has no term for "terror suspects". All captured terror suspects in his eyes are terrorists, and never given a chance to prove otherwise. We tend to assume that the worst of the Cheney abuses is over. Not if an unreconstructed GOP gets back to power.

A reader writes:

"The Christmas Shoes" by NewSong by far is the most depressing Christmas song. It’s a story about a poor boy who wishes desperately to buy a shiny new pair of shoes for his mother who is going to die and “meet Jesus tonight” in the hospital on Christmas Eve. I think there was a made for TV movie starring Rob Lowe based on the same general theme.

This made it, I think, in last year's Cristmas hathos contest. Puke-inducing lyrics after the jump:

It was almost Christmas time, there I stood in another line
Tryin' to buy that last gift or two, not really in the Christmas mood
Standing right in front of me was a little boy waiting anxiously
Pacing 'round like little boys do
And in his hands he held a pair of shoes
 
His clothes were worn and old, he was dirty from head to toe
And when it came his time to pay
I couldn't believe what I heard him say
 
Sir, I want to buy these shoes for my Mama, please
It's Christmas Eve and these shoes are just her size
Could you hurry, sir, Daddy says there's not much time
You see she's been sick for quite a while
And I know these shoes would make her smile
And I want her to look beautiful if Mama meets Jesus tonight
 
He counted pennies for what seemed like years
Then the cashier said, "Son, there's not enough here"
He searched his pockets frantically
Then he turned and he looked at me
He said Mama made Christmas good at our house
Though most years she just did without
Tell me Sir, what am I going to do,
Somehow I've got to buy her these Christmas shoes
 
So I laid the money down, I just had to help him out 
I'll never forget the look on his face when he said
Mama's gonna look so great
 
Sir, I want to buy these shoes for my Mama, please
It's Christmas Eve and these shoes are just her size
Could you hurry, sir, Daddy says there's not much time
You see she's been sick for quite a while
And I know these shoes would make her smile
And I want her to look beautiful if Mama meets Jesus tonight
 
I knew I'd caught a glimpse of heaven's love
As he thanked me and ran out
I knew that God had sent that little boy
To remind me just what Christmas is all about

A reader writes:

When the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were adopted, nine states had religious tests for officeholders and several still had established churches. No one thought that the limits imposed on the federal government applied to the states. There is a good discussion of this subject in Chapter 16 of Gordon Wood’s superb Empire of Liberty, with specific information in the text preceding footnote 13 about the tests then in force. It was only after the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment that the First Amendment’s guarantee of free exercise of religion could be found to apply to the states. It was on that basis that religious tests for officeholders were found by a unanimous Supreme Court to be unconstitutional in a 1961 decision, Torcaso v. Watkins.
Obsolete constitutional provisions don’t repeal themselves; they live on, useless and ignored, like vestigial organs.

Many state constitutions are difficult to amend, often requiring a supermajority of the voters. So it should be no surprise that religious tests still exist on paper in a few places, ignored by everyone with sense. I respect Rachel Maddow, but I respect her a little less after watching this segment. A few religious zealots propose to enforce one of these tests in one town, and she treats it as a serious threat to religious freedom. Those people’s lawyers will tell them they will be wasting their time and money if they sue, and the ACLU will be on the case if they try anyway. It’s not that I think Maddow was wrong to discuss the matter, but she handled it in the shocked and sensationalized way Fox News would handle a story about a child sent home from school for wearing a religious symbol. We don’t need a trumped-up War on Atheism to go with the trumped-up War on Christmas. In addition, I can’t help but think that Maddow was being disingenuous when acted surprised that these state religious tests could exist despite the no-religious-test clause and supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution. She must know that the illegality of these tests has been settled law since Torcaso based on the First and Fourteenth Amendments. That doesn’t make the words disappear, but it should discourage this kind of “ain’t it awful!” reporting on a real new channel.

Montazeri's burial today at the Ma'asoumeh shrine is drawing Iranians far and wide:

The event threatened to turn into a security nightmare for the authorities amid reports that thousands were travelling from as far away as Isfahan and Najafabad, Montazeri's birthplace. Reformist websites reported that the road between Tehran and Qom was clogged with motorists heading to the funeral. Riot police were deployed throughout Qom in preparation for a mass turnout of anti-government demonstrators, while security forces surrounded Montazeri's house. The reformist website Rah-e Sabz reported that some political activists had been contacted by intelligence agents and warned that they would face arrest if they tried to attend the funeral.

The regime has also jammed the BBC's Persian TV signal. For another look at Montazeri's centrality to Iranian politics, Tehran Bureau has composed a lengthy obituary.

(Photo: AMIR HESAMI—AFP/GETTY IMAGES)