Joseph Fletcher the Father of Biomedical Ethics by Richard Taylor

L J

Spring 1984 Vol. 4, No. 2

Joseph Fletcher The Father of Biomedical Ethics by Richard Taylor

Special Features The Foundations of Religious liberty Carl Henry, Father Ernest Fortin, Paul Kurtz, and Lee Nisbet God and the New Physics Mario Bunge, Mendel Sachs, and Paul Davies

Plus: Floyd Matson, Matthew Ies Spetter, Richard Kostelanetz, and Nicholas Capaldi SPRING 1984 ISSN 0272-0701

VOL. 4, NO. 2 Contents 3 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

SAVE OUR CHILDREN 4 Christian Science, Faith Healing,, and the Law Rita Swan 10 Ultrafundamentalist Sects and Child Abuse Lowell D. Streiker

17 Joseph Fletcher: The Father of Biomedical Ethics Richard Taylor THE FOUNDATIONS OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY AND DEMOCRACY 20 Religious Liberty: Cornerstone of Human Rights Carl F. H. Henry 27 Democracy Without Theology Paul Kurtz 32 Is Liberal Democracy Really Christian? Ernest Fortin 35 Father Fortins Protestant Politics Lee Nisbet

38 Biblical Views of Sex: Blessing or Handicap? Jeffrey J. W. Baker 41 A Naturalistic Basis for Morality John Kekes BIBLICAL CRITICISM 44 On Miracles Randel Helms HUMANIST SELF-PORTRAITS 46 A Humanist Credo Matthew les Specter 47 The Distinctions of Humanism Richard Kosielanetz 48 Humane-ism Floyd Matson VIEWPOINTS 49 Moral Absolutes and Foreign Policy Nicholas Capaldi 50 The Vatican Ambassador Edd Doerr BOOKS 52 God and the Physicists Mario Bunge, Mendel Sachs, and Paul Davies 51 POETRY 60 ON THE BARRICADES 62 CLASSIFIED Cover art courtesy of the Buffalo and Erie County Public Library and AP/Wide World

Edirur: Paul Kurtz -I ssueiare Editors: Gordon Stein, Lee Nisbet l s.sistartt Editors: Doris Doyle, Andrea Szalanski Ir, Director: Gregory Lyde Vigrass

Contributing Editors: Lionel Abel, author, critic, SUNY at Buffalo; Paul Beattie, president, Fellowship of Religious Humanists; Jo-Ann Boydston, director, Dewey Center; Laurence Briskman, lecturer. Edinburgh University. Scotland; Vern Bullough, historian. State University of New York College at Buffalo; Albert Ellis, director. Institute for Rational Living; Roy P. Fairfield, social scientist, Union Graduate School; Joseph Fletcher, theologian, University of Virginia Medical School; Antony Flew, philosopher, Reading University, England; Sidney Hook, professor emeritus of philosophy. NYU; Marvin Kohl, philosopher, State University of New York College at Fredonia; Jean Kotkin, executive director, American Ethical Union; Gerald Larne, professor emeritus of archaeology and biblical history, USC; Ernest Nagel, professor emeritus of philosophy, Columbia University; Cable Neuhaus, correspondent; Howard Radest, director. Ethical Culture Schools; Robert Rimmer, author; M. L. Rosenthal, professor of English, New York University; William Ryan, free-lance reporter. novelist; Svetozar Stojanovic, professor of philosophy, University of Belgrade; Thomas Szasz, psychiatrist, Upstate Medical Center, Syracuse; V. M. Tarkunde, Supreme Court Judge, India; Richard Taylor, professor of philosophy, University of Rochester; Sherwin Wine, founder, Society for Humanistic Judaism

Editorial Associates: H. James Birx, James Martin-Diaz, Steven L. Mitchell, Marvin Zimmerman

Executive Director of CODESH, Inc.: Jean Millholland Poetry Editor: Sally M. Gall Book Review Editor: Victor Gulotta Director of Publicity: Andrea Szalanski Assistant Director: Barry L. Karr

Systems Manager: Richard Seymour Typesetting: Paul E. Loynes Staff: Jackie Livingston, Alfreda Pidgeon

FREE INQUIRY (ISSN 0272-0701) is published quarterly by the Council for Democratic and Secular Humanism (CODESH, Inc.), a nonprofit corporation, 1203 Kensington Avenue, Buffalo, NY 14215. Phone (716) 834-2921. Copyright ©1984 by CODESH, Inc. Second-class postage paid at Buffalo and at additional mailing offices. Subscription rates: $14.00 for one year, $25.00 for two years, $32.00 for three years, $3.50 for single copies. Address subscription orders, changes of address, and advertising to: FREE INQUIRY. Box 5. Central Park Station, Buffalo, NY 14215. Manuscripts, letters and editorial inquiries should be addressed to: The Editor, FREE INQUIRY, Box 5, Central Park Station, Buffalo, N.Y. 14215. All manuscripts should be accompanied by two additional copies and a stamped, addressed envelope. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of the editors or publisher.

2 FREE INQUIRY the supposed miracle Wells is seemingly trying to disprove. To suggest that the original writer(s) could out of whole cloth create LETTERS TO THE EDITOR such a story and so successfully cover the conspiracy until it was uncovered by Wells is even more fantastic than the original version.

Kenneth Knipmeyer The Mormon Church Dr. Sterling M. McMurrin's comments are University City, Mo. enlightening. 1 am wondering why he has You are to be commended for shining some not been called before a "Bishops Court" The Existence of Jesus light on the dark origins and current dimness and declared an apostate. The L.D.S. faith of the Mormon Church (Fl, Winter would certainly have done so with a person In "The Future of Humanism" (FI, Fall 1983/84). George Smith's "Joseph Smith of less stature. If the court does ever con- 1983), Paul Kurtz. writes: "Whether Jesus and the Book of Mormon" presents very vene, 1 will be the first to extend my hand existed is still open to dispute; but assuming well some of the more obvious documented to Brother McMurrin and welcome him into that he did, he was either mad (his relatives facts that support a reasonable conclusion the richness and beauty of humanism. believed he was) or a magician" (p. 9). This that the Mormon prophet was a consum- is too simple and short-sighted a view. There mate con man who practiced a terrible fraud Ernie Conrad must have been a real and unique human on gullible people. Because, in spite of Mor- Rancho Cordova, Calif. being who gave rise to the writing of the mon philosopher Sterling M. McMurrin's Gospels. Unfortunately this exceptional man ("The History of Mormonism and Church was overburdened with a great amount of Authorities") somewhat disingenuous asser- Religion vs. Humanism myth by those who wrote thirty to one hun- tion that "the church shouldn't tie religious dred years after he lived and tried to make faith to its history," everything of major Congratulations to Joseph Fletcher him a deity. They did a great injustice to importance to it is based on claims of ("Humanist Self-Portraits, FI, Fall 1983) for the human Jesus: The view expressed by historical fact. Surely the issue of fact vs. pointing up the crucial difference between Paul Kurtz is just as great an injustice in fiction cannot be so lightly dismissed. religion and humanism. It is dangerous, as the opposite direction. If one considers the That this hoax is perpetrated on inno- well as confusing and disingenuous, to deny extraordinary teachings of Jesus regarding cent generations 1 find a great tragedy, and via semantics that religion requires a god human relations and the many acts of com- am particularly saddened for the young peo- and that humanism accepts none. At a time passion and courage ascribed to him, how ple. They are being taught to practice a form when the Religious Right seems on the verge can one say that such a man was either of double-think that puts Orwell's characters of convincing courts and legislatures that "mad or a magician"! to shame. The split-brain syndrome is just humanism is indeed a religion and that I like Brand Blanshard's statement in one of the many pathetic results of a nine- "humanist dogma," such as evolution, is thus the same issue ("One Man's Humanism" p. teenth-century deception carried into the inappropriate for expression in public insti- 15), which doubtlessly refers to Jesus: " .. . future by emotion in the name of religion. tutions, it should be clear that "religious shining through the mists and myths of the Two other obvious evil consequences are humanism" is an oxymoron that we can live New Testament there is the light of a moral holding mindless obedience to authority as without. genius whose doctrine of love is in a sense the highest value and blind faith as the the final word on ethics" (emphasis mine). supreme virtue. N. C. Jones I confess to an impatience with the so- Winchester, Va. E. Russell Tanner called intellectuals of the Mormon Church Longmont, Colo. who know the Book of Mormon is a fabri- The Historicity of Jesus cation (plagiarized at that) written for power Paul Kurtz replies: and money yet call it "inspired allegory." The reviews of The Historical Evidence for And what price is being paid by the youth Jesus and the response by author G. A. / don't deny that Jesus expressed some for all the unanswered questions, contradic- Wells (FI, Fall 1983) would have fit very splendid moral insights, but I think that if tions, anti-intellectualism? Evidence strongly conveniently and appropriately under the he existed he was either a disturbed per- suggests that the origins of Mormonism are heading on page 46. "Fools' Paradigms." sonality and/or a magician. The support of profoundly dishonest; that taint permeates Only someone who was at one time a funda- the latter is detailed in "Was Jesus a the modern doctrine that is supposed to mentalist would be motivated to bother with Magician?" (FI, Winter 1982/83). Anyone guide men and women to greater virtue. 1 such a thesis, as Wells has. No wishy-washy who believes that he was sent by God to believe that this patchwork religion does far liberal of the type so often found in the old- save mankind is, in my .judgment, clearly more harm than good. Although 1 am wil- time Protestant churches would do all that disturbed. ling to concede that the truth is elusive, research and writing for such a flimsy cause falsehood leaves clear tracks; Mormonism and unlikely hypothesis. To suggest that the Freedom at Falwell's College is covered with them. Gospels and Acts were originally written as fiction or fraud without any dimly remem- While reading Lynn Ridenhour's "Academic Adrienne Morris bered historical basis whatsoever is to sug- Freedom at Liberty Baptist College" (FI, Springville. Utah gest another miracle as great or greater than (Continued on p. 57)

Spring 1984 3

Christian Science, Faith Healing and the Law

The need for legal protection for children

Matthew Swan

Rita Swan

n June 1977, our fifteen-month-old son, Matthew, suddenly Who are these Christian Science practitioners and what does I developed his fourth raging fever. As lifelong Christian Sci- this church teach about illness? Practitioners take two weeks entists, my husband and ! telephoned the most prominent of religious instruction and can then apply for church accredi- Christian Science teacher in Detroit for treatment. Matthew tation as professional healers. They charge between $7 and $25 never walked, sat, crawled, or smiled again. a day for spiritual "treatments," usually given without seeing For two weeks, his practitioners reassured us that they the "patient" or knowing the nature of the illness. The church were healing him and demanded more faith and gratitude from gives them no limits on what diseases they may treat or any us. They claimed that our "false parental thought," in other duty to refer cases to other health care providers. It tells them words, fear, was hampering their treatments. When we wanted not to report diseases to health departments. The church does to report his unknown disease to the public health department, tell parents to obey state laws on reporting "suspected" com- a practitioner said we were "too concerned about what the municable diseases, but few would have the knowledge to community thinks." When Matthew gnashed his teeth deliri- "suspect" such diseases when their church tells them that disease ously, a practitioner enjoined us to "take the positive inter- is an illusion and that they should get exemptions, won by pretation of the evidence" because our baby might be "planning church lobbyists in many states, from studying about disease some great achievement" while "gritting his teeth." in school. If the patient voluntarily chooses medical treatment, Finally, a practitioner suggested that Matthew's convul- the church directs the practitioner not to treat him, thus sions and incoherent moaning might be caused by a broken impressing on its members that God and a doctor are mutually bone in his neck and pointed out that Christian Scientists are exclusive alternatives. The church is opposed to medical diag- allowed to have broken bones set by an M.D. We immediately noses, testing, and treatment for children and adults alike. It went to a hospital. Doctors found advanced meningitis, and opposes drugs, hygiene, immunizations, therapeutic diets, chi- with this news the practitioner's biggest concern was that her ropractic, chest X-rays, fever thermometers, and taking pulses. church would accuse her of recommending medical care. She Even the simplest human measures for the relief of pain, such said we could have taken Matthew to an X-ray clinic and not as heat, ice packs, enemas, and backrubs are forbidden in told "them about the fever and all this other" and she refused Christian Science nursing homes. Their church-trained "nurses" to pray for our son any longer. Matthew died after a week of give "no material application" except "normal measures of intensive care. We left Christian Science as fast as church cleanliness"' and are, like the practitioners, unqualified to iden- officials would let us, and today we are Methodists. tify the reportable diseases. Tied to its charismatic nineteenth-century prophetess, Mary Baker Eddy (1821-1910), the church accepts everything Rita Swan is a former member of the Christian Science church. in her published writings as valid, from statements that medi- She is the founder and president of Children's Healthcare Is a cine and hygiene attempt to delude reason and dethrone God Legal Duty, Inc., (CHILD) and adjunct professor of English to warnings against bathing babies every day. The religion has at Morningside College in Sioux City, Iowa. no way of evolving beyond her. She ruled that the bylaws cannot be changed without her signature: members cling to

4 FREE INQUIRY her every word as divinely inspired final revelation. "The [Christian Science] church is opposed to Despite this hard line against medicine, church members medical diagnoses, testing, and treatment for are allowed to have medical attention under certain circumstances. They can have glasses fitted by optometrists Mrs. children and adults alike. It opposes drugs, Eddy wore glasses. They can have their teeth filled or extracted hygiene, immunizations, therapeutic diets, chi- by a dentist—Mrs. Eddy was caught by a reporter doing just that. They can have a "hypodermic" to relieve extreme pain— ropractic, chest X-rays, fever thermometers, Mrs. Eddy did. They can have their babies delivered by a and taking pulses." doctor—one of Mrs. Eddy's students was charged with murder when she attempted to deliver a baby, so Mrs. Eddy changed administers Medicare, concedes that these sanatoria render her rules on childbirth.' They can also have broken bones set "unique" services "not analogous to those provided in a hospital by a "surgeon." (On this point, W. A. Purrington, in Christian or a nursing home.' The law ties the federal government to a Science, an Exposition, suggests the motive was fear of prose- church by requiring that these sanatoria "be operated or listed cution. Administering drugs was such an inexact science then and certified by the First Church of Christ, Scientist, Boston, that internists were rarely charged in the courts, while surgeons Massachusetts . . in order to participate in the hospital had to take more legal responsibility for their actions. Thus, insurance program both as a `hospital' and `skilled nursing Christian Science practitioners could substitute for doctors by facility.' "" An HCFA program analyst told me that his agency giving drugs with impunity, but not for surgeons.) had no idea what "skilled nursing care" means in a Christian Many detached observers would expect this religion to Science sanatorium and requires no minimum number of nurses have credibility problems in the twentieth century. Who can to be employed in such sanatoria, although it makes staffing agree with Mrs. Eddy that "the less we know or think about requirements for other institutions receiving Medicare funds. hygiene, the less we are predisposed to sickness"?' Who believes HCFA has recently released Christian Science sanatoria from that a newborn baby is closer to God because his parents the obligation to provide a Medicare beneficiary with at least deprive him of a blood test that detects phenylketonuria (PKU) one hour of "skilled nursing care in a 24-hour period."" In his and other treatable disorders? Who believes that doctors "are view, Congress told them to give Medicare funds to Christian flooding the world with diseases, because they are ignorant Science institutions and "look the other way." that the human mind and body are myths"?5 Church practitioners are authorized to certify sick leave Yet, the Christian Science church today has astonishing and disability claims for both government and private wealth, prestige, and political power. Some Christian Scientists employees. You might wonder how people with no knowledge in government include Senator Charles Percy, Congressman of the body or disease can certify sick leave and disability David Dreier, former Congressman John Rousselot, Edwin claims, so I reproduce one of their forms below: Harper (Reagan's domestic policy advisor until recently), FBI Director William Webster, and former CIA head Admiral 1 hereby certify that was under my professional Stansfield Turner. The church maintains a salaried lobbyist in care from through due to a physical illness. From every state. All the branch churches appoint assistants for the what I was told by the patient and from my experience, it was lobbyists. The lobbying network is managed by "The. Mother considered inadvisable for the above-named person to report Church" in Boston, with the help of many staff attorneys. for work or attend to his; her regular duties during this period. The church has testified in Congress that it has a "system Signed C S of health care" that is a "recognized alternative to medicine" and is "without legal restriction."' Well of course something The church suggests that its practitioners say that "the condi- that parades as a system of health care ought to have legal tion seems(ed) to be " on disability forms, since they restrictions, but let's look at the events that gave it recognition. cannot make a medical diagnosis." The church persuaded the Internal Revenue Service that sums In forty-eight states the church has won religious exemp- paid to their practitioners, nurses, and sanatoria are deductible tions from immunizations. In the majority of states they have medical expenses. Hundreds of insurance companies, including recently won exemptions from metabolic testing of newborn Blue Cross, Blue Shield in many states, reimburse for the fees babies. In many states they have religious exemptions from charged by church practitioners and nurses. I can't resist inter- silver nitrate drops, premarital and prenatal blood tests, and jecting the defense of Massachusetts Blue Cross for such reim- from studying about disease in the public schools. bursements: Christian Science treatment goes under a category Far more sweeping are the "rights" it has recently claimed similar to psychiatric care "where treatment and the success or to withhold all medical treatment from children. These rights failure are nebulous."' Besides insulting psychiatrists, this have never been upheld in a definitive court judgment, but explanation ignores the fact that Christian Science practitioners they are nonetheless the basis of the church's advice to parents. represent themselves as qualified to heal all diseases. There is In 1967 a Massachusetts mother, Dorothy Sheridan, was con- nothing nebulous about the death of my son. victed of manslaughter for the death of her daughter after Medicare law authorizes payment to church sanatoria (in three weeks of Christian Science treatment. Rather than chang- Section 1861 (e) (y) of the Social Security Act). The United ing their beliefs or practices, the church decided instead to States Health Care Financing Administration (HFCA), which change the law.

Spring 1984 5 "The dangers to children associated with faith-healing ment is legal health care for children.'' A test case of their new sects are enormous. They are cared for by people "rights" came in Alaska in 1969 when Kimberly Sortore died with no medical knowledge, people who are trained of meningitis with no medical treatment. Manslaughter charges to deny disease and its symptoms as illusions." were filed, but the manager of the Christian Science lobbyists flew up from Boston and arranged a deal with the prosecutor: Church lobbyists approached both the United States The father would not contest the charges, but the conviction House Subcommittee on Select Education (which deals with would be overturned if and when the Alaska legislature passed child protection) and the Department of Health, Education, a religious immunity law. Within two years, the legislature had and Welfare (HEW), now Health and Human Services (HHS). obliged the church: Sortore's conviction was overturned, and Some top HEW officials at that time were members of the all records of the case were ordered expunged. church. Soon, HEW put the "religious immunity" provision Religious immunity laws have definitely deterred prosecu- into the Code of Federal Regulations: tion in many faith-related deaths, most notably in Indiana, where several dozen children have died because of Faith Assembly practices, and the prosecutor claims such a law pre- A parent or guardian legitimately practicing his religious beliefs vents him from filing any charges. who thereby does not provide specified medical treatment for a child, for that reason alone shall not be considered a negligent la January 1983, the U.S. Department of Health and parent or guardian; however, such an exception shall not pre- Human Services released its new child-protection regulations. clude a court from ordering that medical services be provided HHS made a good-faith effort to respond to my laborious to the child, where his health requires it. [45CFR.I340.1-2(b) correspondence over many years on this issue. They removed (11n religious immunity from the code, no longer requiring or recommending that states have such laws. They disclaimed The provision became an eligibility requirement for federal intention either to require or prohibit prosecution in cases of funding for the states' child protection programs. Given this religiously motivated medical neglect. They also added failure federal pressure and massive, coordinated lobbying by the to provide medical care to the states' definitions of child neglect, church, nearly all states have a version of it in either their thus making it a reportable condition regardless of religious juvenile or criminal codes or both. States such as Illinois, belief.'' Connecticut, and Washington mention only Christian Science The church was furious and circulated demands on Capitol in these laws. Many other states (and the House subcommittee) Hill for a "Christian Science amendment" to the Child Abuse have tried to restrict religious immunity to the Christian Science Prevention and Treatment Act. Despite the fact that the state church with language about "tenets" of a "well-recognized laws had been dictated by Washington and a lobbying network church" and "treatment" by a "duly accredited practitioner managed in Boston, the church now became the champion of thereof." In blatant violation of our Constitution's prohibition states' rights: against establishment of religion, government has been put in the business of promoting faith healing, especially Christian Science, and evaluating the social respectability of churches. It In various parts of the country religious beliefs and practices is entangled in determinations of whether a church is well differ. The states are better equipped to balance and protect these important interests in a country so vast and diversified enough "recognized" and whether the child's "treatment" is in as the United States. . _ . These sensitive matters are best accordance with the "tenets" of such a church. By granting addressed at the local level without distant regulatory pressures. "duly accredited practitioners" special status in law, government Without our amendment Congress will have taken an irre- is tied to the Christian Science church's standards for deter- vocable step toward singling out a religious group by name mining the qualifications of its practitioners to treat all diseases and severely limiting the religious rights of that group for the of helpless children. first time in a distinguished hundred-year history of faith and Many believe that court orders provide adequate protec- contribution to this country.14 tion for these children. I want to emphasize in the strongest possible terms that they do not, as dozens of recent deaths (The only reason they were mentioned "by name" in the prove. While blood transfusions are commonly obtained new regulations was that HHS was obligated to summarize the through court order for children of Jehovah's Witnesses, the letters that the church itself asked Edward Kennedy and Tip courts have no reliable way of discovering sick children in O'Neill to write in support of its "right" to deny children medi- sects that object to all medical treatment and diagnosis. The cal care.) only ways in which we may hope to protect these children are Congressman John Erlinborn, a leader on legislation to for the state to retain rights to prosecute parents regardless of guarantee medical care for handicapped infants, submitted a religious belief or to develop ironclad reporting requirements statement for the church at the reauthorization hearings. The for faith healers. House committee accepted it without one word of comment. Interpretations of the religious immunity laws vary. Some The next week, Senator Orrin Hatch presented the Christian scholars believe that the "for that reason alone" phrase makes Science amendment, exactly as the church had drafted it, to them virtually meaningless. But the Christian Science church his Labor and Human Resources Committee, which added it tells its members that they mean that Christian Science treat- to the child protection bill, again with no discussion. The

6 FREE INQUIRY l amendment states: "However, nothing in this Act shall be con- Mary Baker Eddy strued to limit the right of a state to determine the health care and treatment a parent may provide his child in the exercise of the parent's freedom of religion." It is hypocritical for the church and Congress to defend "states' rights" on this issue, considering how the states got their laws. It is horrible to have Congress labeling Christian Science treatment and other religious practices as "health care" for children and talking of "freedom of religion" to provide such "health care," when there has never been a definitive court ruling that parents have religious freedom to deny children medical care. Such characterizations of faith healing and Cour esy of Buffalo and Erie County Public Library the Constitution will discourage states from changing their The Church of Christ, Scientist (Christian Science) was laws imposed by Washington. While determined that all other established in 1879 when fifteen students of Mary Baker children should be guaranteed medical care, Congress has Eddy met with her and voted to "organize a church declared children in faith-healing sects to be pariahs about designed to commemorate the word and works of our whom the federal government must say nothing. The amend- Master, which should reinstate Christianity and its lost ment has not yet been voted on by the full Senate. element of healing." Should the government recognize religious practices as Mrs. Eddy claimed that the principles of Christian legal health care for children? I feel strongly that such recog- Science were discovered when she recovered her life and nition should be given only to state-licensed, secular health her health upon reading about Jesus' healing powers in care. A child's right to live supersedes a parent's right to prac- the New Testament. In 1875, her book Science and Health tice religion. (later retitled Science and Health, with Key to the Scrip- Today a wide variety of religions may cause injury to tures) was published, and is considered to be the only children. Many children have recently been beaten to death authorized text of the denomination. During her life, because of a belief that beatings promote obedience to divine Mrs. Eddy initiated and guided every phase of the will. Children have been maimed and killed because of belief church's development. "The starting-point of Christian in demon-possession. There is no question that the state will Science, "she said, "is that God, Spirit, is All-in-all, and file charges in such cases, sometimes even against the church that there is no other might nor Mind. Spirit is immortal leaders who counsel the parents. So why should our laws sug- Truth; matter is mortal error.... Spirit is God, and man gest that it is all right to deprive children of lifesaving medical is his image and likeness. Therefore, man is not material, care in the name of religion? he is spiritual." Recently in Ohio, for example, parents have been con- Applying the principles of Christian Science to all victed for beating and starving their children on religious problems of human life, its followers are working toward grounds, while simultaneously Ohio laws are among this coun- the salvation of mankind through the overthrow of the try's most cynical in abandoning Christian Science children. temporary and unreal—evil, disease, and death. The Its juvenile code states that "no report shall be required" on "healing of sin" is required even more urgently than the sick children under treatment of "a well-recognized religion,"'s healing of sickness. To fulfill these goals, there must be while its criminal code flatly declares that "it is not a violation "increasing prayer" resting upon the conviction that no of a duty of care, protection, or support" when a parent treats evil can come from God, who is infinitely good. Those his child's "physical or mental illness or defect ... by spiritual doctrines have led to opposition to medical treatment means through prayer alone, in accordance with the tenets of a and science and a belief in faith healing. recognized religious body."'^ Among the many ghastly Ohio Upon the death of Mrs. Eddy in 1910, the church's cases that could be cited is that of Christian Science child administrative power was assumed by the Christian Sci- Ronald Rowan, who died near Akron in 1979 by strangling in ence Board of Directors. The church, headquartered in his own vomit because he was too weak to expel it. His body Boston, Massachusetts, declines to publish its membership was 30 to 40 percent dehydrated by the time he died- without statistics, although it lists some three thousand churches any medical attention—but the state, of course, did nothing or reading rooms world-wide. Each church is self- about it. governing, although individual policies are based upon Or let's look at California's criminal code: the tenets as formulated by Mrs. Eddy and incorporated in the Church Manual. Readings at services include both If a parent provides a minor with treatment by spiritual means excerpts from the New Testament and Mrs. Eddy's through prayer alone in accordance with the tenets and prac- writings. tices of a recognized church or religious denomination, by a Many well-known persons are today identified with duly accredited practitioner thereof, such treatment shall con- the church, which publishes the influential Christian stitute "other remedial care," as used in this section. [Penal Science Monitor.—E D. Code, Section 270]

Spring 1984 7 only over the decades as children die in state after state and their deaths are well publicized. Even after they are repealed, other problems remain. One is the problem of proving that a child's illness could have been treated successfully by medicine. Court opinions have sometimes reflected the assumption that a child may be subjected to any amount of pain unless medicine can guarantee a cure. Another problem is proving that parents whose religion demands ignorance of disease knew that their child's life was in danger. In the Philadelphia area, a Faith Tabernacle family has lost five children to untreated pneumonia over nine years. The prosecutors do not file charges because they say it is possible for the symptoms of pneumonia to develop so rapidly that an untrained parent might not comprehend that the child was dying. It is hard to understand how the same tragedy could happen five times to the same parents and the prosecutors could still conclude that ignorance was a valid excuse, but that was their view. In 1979, twelve-year-old Michael Schram died of a ruptured appendix. His mother and Christian Science practitioner would not even notify the funeral home for several days. The Seattle area was outraged; both the mother's home and the Rita and Matthew Swan church were firebombed. But the prosecutor quickly decided In 1973, California convicted parents of manslaughter whose not to file charges because the boy's Christian Science beliefs fundamentalist beliefs directed them to withhold insulin from might have discouraged him from expressing pain and therefore their son, while simultaneously recognizing the spiritual "treat- his mother might not have known he was seriously ill. ment" of Christian Science practitioners as legal health care In May 1983, infant Eve Andrews died of diarrhea because for children. the Church of the First Born objects to medical care. Washing- Most bizarre of all are state laws that have allowed courts ton state prosecutors declined to press charges because the to order Christian Science treatment for "any child whose parents might not have comprehended the danger to their child, health requires it." Maine and Florida had such laws until a even though the parents had also refused to obtain medical few years ago.'7 They are a logical final consequence of state care for their first child and had buried his body in their yard. recognition for Christian Science treatment. In October 1983, fifteen-year-old Susan Forslund died in Religious exemption laws put the state in the position of Arkansas after three months of kidney inflammation along establishing special privileges on the basis of religion, in viola- with pneumonia. For two and a half weeks she was treated by tion of Constitutional prohibitions against the government a Christian Science practitioner who never once visited her. establishing religion. Furthermore, the Constitution has a four- She missed a week of school. But again prosecutors decided teenth amendment mandating equal protection under the laws. against filing charges because her parents claimed they were In 1979, the state of Mississippi overturned religious exemp- unaware that their daughter was seriously ill, and she never tions from immunizations because they deprived children of complained of pain. The children in faith-healing sects are equal protection from deadly diseases." Let's hope that many trained not to verbalize their pain. Denial is basic to these other states follow Mississippi's example. religions. In summarizing the legal status of faith healing for chil- The dangers to children associated with faith-healing sects dren, it is an area where we urgently need a Supreme Court are enormous. They are cared for by people with no medical ruling. The Mississippi court ruling suggests that all of these knowledge, people who are trained to deny disease and its religious exemptions may be unconstitutional, yet legislatures symptoms as illusions, people who demand more faith as the continue giving laws to Christian Science lobbyists that sug- disease gets worse. They have no standard for judging when to gest that denial of medical care is legal. Before these religious give up on their religion and culture and go to a doctor. immunity laws came into the states in the 1970s, it was fairly Furthermore, the state has no reliable way of discovering these much agreed upon that religion could not be raised as a defense sick children. To my knowledge, no state has a reporting law to manslaughter charges. Since then, no charges of child abuse, for sick children that a Christian Science practitioner will obey. neglect, or manslaughter were filed in cases involving faith Some states have tried to compel reports on sick children from healing until 1982, when at least six such charges were brought Christian Science practitioners, but have not received any. The and convictions were won where religious immunity was only reason is that the church tells the practitioners that denial of in the juvenile code and not the criminal code. These convic- medical care is not neglect when practiced by Christian Scien- tions are being appealed. Also they all involved small funda- tists. For example, in Missouri, a state specifically requiring mentalist groups not the powerful Christian Science church. Christian Science practitioners to report suspected child neglect, Most likely, the religious immunity laws will be changed the church tells its practitioners: "In Missouri, state laws do

8 FREE INQUIRY recognize Christian Science treatment. Therefore providing Christian Science treatment for the child may not be considered "Many believe that court orders provide adequate pro- as neglect."19 tection for these children. I want to emphasize in the Determined that Christian Science treatment is legal health strongest possible terms that they do not, as dozens care for children, the church advises parents as follows: of recent deaths prove."

While parents generally are accorded the right to select the type of treatment or care to be rendered for their children Many have asked me if it is possible to draft laws that when they are ill, nevertheless it should also be recognized that such isolated people will obey. I can't offer any guarantees, but care of children is given very special importance under the I think we should try. In many faith-healing sects, members juvenile laws. Thus, if a child is being given Christian Science have a posture of passive compliance with the state, of ren- treatment for an illness, inquiries made by school or other dering unto Caesar that which is Caesar's. It would relieve public officials as to care of the child should be answered with many parents of the onus of breaking a religious law if the assurance that such child is being given good care and is having state would make its standards plain. treatment for the illness. Otherwise, such officials may conclude We as a society can establish in law that parents have a that the child is a neglected child. I n talking with such officials, a parent should stay clear of statements such as "belief of duty to provide medical care for children without exceptions illness" or "claim of sickness" which may result in the officials for religious belief and that something that calls itself a health thinking that the illness is being ignored or treated as a fanciful care system has duties to both the state and its patients. aberration of some kind. Officials must feel the assurance that Christian Scientists love their children and give them effective treatment and responsible nursing care when the nature of the Notes illness indicates the wisdom of having such nursing care.2" I. Christian Science Board of Directors, "Facts about Christian Science" This semantics game, which I consider deliberate decep- (Boston: C. S. Publishing Society. 1959), p. 9. tion, will go on if Senator Hatch's Christian Science amend- 2. Robert Merritt and Arthur Corey, Christian Science and Liberty (l.os Angeles: De Vorss & Co., 1970), pp. 96-100. ment, describing religious belief as health care, becomes law. 3. W. A., Purring ton. Christian Science, an Exposition: A Plea for The prevailing attitude among legislators is to exempt Children and Other Helpless Sick (New York: E. B. Treat & Co., 1900), pp. parents and faith-healers from prosecution, while retaining 28-29. rights to medical treatment by court order. But why do the 4. Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health With Key u the Scriptures children associated with faith-healing sects not have the same (Boston: Trustees under the Will of Mary Baker Eddy. 1983), p. 389. 5. Ibid., pp. 150-51. statutory rights to medical care that other children have? Other 6. Hearings on HR 3394, HR 3411, and HR 3814 before Subcommittee parents have a duty to provide medical care, and other children no. 3 of the House Committee on the District of Columbia, 89th Congress. thus have intrinsic rights to medical care. The children in faith- 1st Session. 36 (1965). p. 36. healing sects have no rights until courts accidentally stumble 7. Mitchell Lynch, "A Church in Crisis; Blue Cross Supports Prayer," upon their cases and then can prove they are in imminent Wall Street Journal, February 27. 1979, pp. I. 40. 8. Carolyne K. Davis, Health Care Financing Administration, U. S. danger of dying. Department of Health and Human Services, letter to Congressman Berkley As a former insider, I know that the Christian Science Bedell. November 23. 1983. p. I. church uses every concession from the state and the insurance 9. "Medicare Christian Science Sanatorium, Hospital Manual Supple- industry to persuade its members of its success as a health care ment." NHS Health Care Financing Administration publication 32. CS-102 system. In a brochure, they say Christian Scientists seek "Conditions of Participation." 10. Ibid.. see change in policy CS-200, March 1983. II. C. S. Committee on Publication for California, Legal Rights and Obligations of Christian Scientists in California (Garden Grove and San recognition by law of their right to rely wholly on Christian Francisco, 1980). pp. 68. 70. Science healing for themselves and their children. The wide- 12. C.S.C.O.P. for Minnesota. Legal Rights and Obligations of Christian spread legal recognition which this right has already won rests Scientists in Minnesota (Minneapolis, 1976), p. 23. on the proven ability of Christian Science to heal not some 13. U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services. "Child Abuse and but all sorts of disease. Christian Science treatment in lieu of Neglect Prevention and Treatment Program, Final Rule," Federal Register, medical treatment has received full recognition by an increas- January 26, 1983. pp. 3698-3704. ingly large number of insurance companies.' 14. C.S.C.O.P. for Washington, D. C., "Rationale for Christian Science Amendment to HR 1904." Spring, 1983. Given his ignorance of the body, the church member will 15. Ohio Revised Code 2151.421. 16. Ohio Revised Code 2919.22. see many healings from the practice of his religion. He sees 17. Florida Statutes. Section 827.07, and Maine Statutes 22.3852. defini- legislators repeatedly giving the Christian Science church what- tions. ever it asks for. Absurd as it may seem, he assumes that objec- 18. Brown vs. Stone, 378 Southern Reporter, 2nd series, pp. 218-24. tive public officials agree with his church that Christian Science 19. C.S.C.O.P. for Missouri, "Legal Rights and Obligations of Christian treatment will work just as well as medical care for healing all Scientists in Missouri" (March. 1976). p. 15. 20. C.S.C.O.P. for Michigan, Legal Rights and Obligations of Christian diseases known to man. He does not comprehend the risks to Scientists in Michigan (Detroit, 1978), p. 23. his children. 21. "Facts about Christian Science." pp. 10-11. •

Spring 1984 9 Ultrafundamentalist Sects and Child-Abuse

Lowell D. Streiker

Faith Maims, Blinds, and Kills only God could cure her and that it would be an act of rebellion aith heals. Or so contend believers in spiritual healing and against Him to use medicine for the purpose of healing. Fdeliverance. Faith also maims, blinds, and kills according According to an Associated Press news story: to recent reports of court cases and legislative matters concerning cult and sect groups. Wearing a blue gingham dress and walking with crutches, the girl gave her testimony Saturday from a couch in the judge's On July 2, 1983, Faith Aliano, age ten, died in Woodbury, chambers, answering lawyers' questions in a soft, breaking New Jersey, of complications from untreated juvenile diabetes. voice. Her parents, members of "an unorganized religious sect," hid "I believe that I can be healed without taking treatments her body and held daily worship services, praying for her resur- and all that." she said. "I don't care what the doctors say." rection. On September 12, the body, now partially decomposed, Asked by a state lawyer if-she was ready to die, she with skin as tough as leather, was discovered by the police. A replied, "When the Lord gets ready for me."' local superior court judge gave the parents three days to arrange for the burial of the child. He said that if they refused, In December 1982, an Oklahoma jury acquitted the he would "consider the county's application" and appoint an parents of a nine-year-old boy of charges of manslaughter administrator authorized to bury the child.' Three days later, arising from the child's death from a ruptured appendix. The the couple appeared in court and informed the judge that they parents, members of a sect known as the Church of the First refused to comply with his wishes. Mr. Aliano explained: "God Born, were indicted for refusing medical treatment for their said she will come back and that is what I believe." He added: son. The parents argued that their religion prevented them "When the people see her come back to life, 1 trust they'll from seeking medical help. The jury's verdict was based on the begin to believe in God again, because as sure as we're sitting judge's ruling that Oklahoma's laws concerning religious in this courthouse, God is going to raise her." The parents exemptions from child abuse laws could also apply to the were given six days to comply with the order.' couple. Public outcry over the verdict led the Oklahoma legisla- At the same time, in Knoxville, Tennessee, a state appeals ture to revise these regulations. Under a new state law, enacted court delayed its decision on whether twelve-year-old Pamela in April 1983, belief in and practice of spiritual/faith healing Hamilton should be forced to undergo medical treatment for may no longer be used as a defense in cases of alleged child Ewing's sarcoma. Physicians testified that the girl would die abuse. According to Charles Green of the Philadelphia within nine months unless she received immediate chemo- Inquirer, the legislature decided that "religious exemptions therapy and radiation treatments. Her father, Larry Hamilton, would not apply in cases in which the lack of medical care pastor of the thirty-eight-member Church of God of the Union could result in permanent physical damage to a child."' As the Assembly in La Follette, Tennessee, said that he would go all author of the statute state Senator Tim Leonard explained, the way to the Supreme Court to keep his daughter from "My argument was the child's constitutional rights to life over- receiving medical care. Pamela and her parents believed that ride the parents' constitutional rights to freedom of religion."` A similar case in Colorado had a starkly different out- Dr. Lowell D. Streiker is come. The founder of a sect called "Jesus Through Jon and executive director of the Judy" were sentenced to three years' probation for allowing Freedom Counseling Center their child to die of pneumonia. The judge overturned the in Burlingame, California, exemption, claiming it applied only to recognized religions. which has helped more than The case is being appealed.' I wonder if the judge realized that 1,000 families throughout the he was involving the state in determining what is and what is world whose lives have been not acceptable religion, a task which is clearly forbidden by disrupted by cults. He is the the United States Constitution's declaration: "Congress shall author of several books, make no law concerning the establishment of religion." Surely including Mindbending and the Colorado legislature cannot limit religious freedoms to a The Gospel Time Bomb list of established mainline faiths. (forthcoming). On September 29, 1982, a provincial judge in New Carlisle, Quebec, sentenced Roch Theriault (also known as "Moses"),

10 FREE INQUIRY "Society's first obligation is to protect the lives and the House of Judah religious camp in Allegan, Michigan. liberties of its citizens, particularly those who cannot Sixty-seven children were taken from their parents and placed protect themselves. All other liberties, including reli- in state custody, pending an investigation into the alleged beating death of a twelve-year-old child at the camp. In subse- gious freedom and the right of parents to determine quent television interviews, the House of Judah's leader, the care and education of their own children, flow "Prophet" William A. Lewis, justified the beatings as the "will from this first obligation." of God." He explained that the parents had to make a choice of obeying God and beating their wayward child in accordance with the Bible or not beating him and risking the eternal dam- the leader of a "doomsday religious cult," to two years in nation of the child's soul. He stated that the parents bore no prison in connection with the beating death of a child and the responsibility for the child's death because God had told them castration of a cult member. Theriault had pleaded guilty to a to beat the child. Lewis explained: "God killed him because charge of criminal negligence in the death of two-year-old God doesn't like bad children."10 Samuel Giguere, the son of members of the cult, and to a On December 2, 1982, Larry and Lucy Lonadier, members charge of bodily harm stemming from the castration of cultist of a seven-member adult religious commune located in their Guy Veer. Veer, who actually beat the child, was found not home in Rensselaer, Indiana, pleaded guilty to involuntary guilty by reason of insanity and placed under psychiatric care.' manslaughter in the beating death of their three-year-old son, On August 2, 1983, Stuart Green, twenty-eight, and his Bradley. The parents were told by a third commune member wife, Leslie, twenty-five, were sentenced to one year in jail and that beating the boy with a paddle would save the child's soul. fined $1,000 upon their conviction of involuntary manslaughter Larry's brother, David, testified that Steven Jackson, who is in the fatal spanking of their two-year-old son. The child, also charged with involuntary manslaughter in the child's death, Joseph Green, died of shock October 5, 1982, after his parents urged the Lonadiers to beat Bradley. According to David, had spanked him for two hours with a wooden paddle for Jackson would say "a butt isn't anything compared to a soul. refusing to apologize for striking another child. The incident If you didn't discipline your child, he would probably go to occurred at Stonegate, "a self-styled Christian commune" hell."" located at Kabletown in Jefferson County, West Virginia. In 1983 a major church-state dispute emerged in several According to a Washington Post article, the child was states, including Arkansas and Florida, concerning the right of taken into the farmhouse: other children and adults formed a civil governments to regulate residential child-care facilities run circle, while his mother held him and his father spanked his by religious organizations. In may 1983, the Arkansas Child buttocks with a foot-long, half-inch-thick wooden paddle. The Care Facilities Review Board rejected rules allowing spanking beating continued until the child turned pale. His father took in child-care facilities. In so doing, they set aside earlier "emer- him to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead.' gency rules" that allowed spanking under certain circumstances. Judge Frank DePond said it was "incredible" that he could Some religious groups claimed that they had been "stabbed in not impose a stiffer penalty. The sentencing was interrupted by the back" by the review board's action. The Reverend Glenn a man who said that the Greens should be tried for murder. Riggs, president of the Arkansas Christian School Association He later apologized. and pastor of the Hot Springs Baptist Temple, said he "was In imposing the maximum sentence, Judge DePond told shocked when 1 learned that the board reversed its commitment Stuart Green: "It is clear that this court had no control over to the emergency promulgated rules. "We believe we are man- the indictment for the crime you were charged with, but this dated by our faith . . . to spank," he told the Board. "We court finds it incredible that the calculated, deliberate spanking believe that very firmly, and we will pursue our faith whether of a two-year-old child over a two-hour period would result in the Board likes it or not." He added, "Simply by the act of an indictment for involuntary manslaughter, a misdemeanor." your vote you can strike out a basic doctrine of our faith.' The judge added: "By entering a plea of guilty you have Elsewhere in Arkansas, Tony Alamo and the members of admitted that you killed another human being, a defenseless the Tony and Susan Alamo Christian Foundation keep vigil two-year-old boy. your own child. It is a sad day for our around the clock in a prayer room inside the Alamos' sprawling society when a court must intervene to protect a child from its mansion. They kneel and pray before the coffin containing the own parents." the judge continued. "Joey's fate is out of our embalmed remains of Susan Alamo, who died of cancer over a hands today, but your fate is not." year ago. They are patiently awaiting the resurrection of the Addressing himself to Mrs. Green, the judge declared: controversial female evangelist. "You abandoned [your] duty when you sat within arm's length Last summer, Tony and his followers began actively of your husband and son, holding and caring for someone recruiting unwed mothers in major cities of the north and else's child, while your own child was slowly being beaten to south. Posters appeared by the thousands appealing to unwed death." He added, "You could have said `stop; or `don't.' mothers not to murder their unborn children. Instead, they Indeed, you had a duty to interfere."' were urged to accept Tony's offer: "We will pay for the delivery An Associated Press news photo, which appeared in news- of the child and raise the child until he or she is an adult, papers on Sunday, July l0, 1983, shows Michigan state educate the child and pay all expenses until fully grown." When troopers removing a wooden stock that was confiscated from I learned of this campaign, I contacted media acquaintances,

Spring 1984 11 suggesting that they look into the matter. Like Arkansas Assis- The compelling interest of the state ... is the protection of its tant Attorney General Robert Waldrum, I thought that the children from hunger, cold, cruelty, neglect, degradation, and Alamos' Christian Foundation might be involved in a black- inhumanity in all its forms.... To fulfill this responsibility, market adoption racket. However, our best intelligence informs the Legislature has elected to impose licensing and inspection us that Tony is raising "volunteer" workers for his many busi- requirements. To these requirements, the [Cowells) free exercise ness enterprises. It would appear that the mothers are required rights must bow; the balance weighs heavily in favor of those unfortunate children whom the state must protect." to surrender their infants to married couples in the group at least for two years and until the mothers marry someone "acceptable" to the group, i.e., a dedicated member. In seeking the intervention of the Supreme Court, When Arkansas state social services officials obtained a attorneys for the Cowells argued: "This appeal concerns the court order to examine the foundation's child-care facilities, right of religious persons to create a totally religious environ- they discovered a facility but no children. According to ment for children, secluded from all worldly matters, in which Wald rum: the basic tenets of the Bible are taught and practiced." Kansas Attorney General Robert Stephan deemed the appeal to reli- Tony has said there were at least 70 children. There were gious prerogatives as a way to dodge state licensing require- none. We found 17 little beds and four cribs and two potty ments "patently meritless." He explained: "The freedom of the chairs and one commode. The only heat was from a wood- [Cowells] to believe as they see fit remains inviolate, but their burning 55-gallon drum. We believe the women were to have freedom to act in society is not inviolate and is subject to their babies in Memphis. Then they would come to Alma reasonable regulation by a state for the protection of the society [Arkansas] to be prosyletized and sent to work. The mother which extends the right of religious freedom." gives the child to Tony." In November 1982, Lester Roloff, the fiery evangelist whose radio preaching supported controversial homes for On September 8, 1983, I received a letter from a legislative rebellious children, was killed when his private plane crashed. analyst for the Florida House of Representatives. Shortly the In 1973, it was alleged that girls at his Rebekah Home were House was expected to conduct a "sunset review" of statutes beaten and starved. Roloff conceded that the girls had been relating to the licensing of residential care for dependent chil- paddled and whipped for misbehavior. He maintained that dren. Current law, which expires in 1984, requires licensing, such discipline was meant to save their souls. "There's nothing with no exemptions except for legal guardians or relatives, for wrong with handcuffing a girl to keep her from going to hell."j5 all persons or agencies caring for children away from home. When state officials insisted that Roloff obtain licenses for his During the 1983 session of the legislature, an amendment was homes and maintain state standards, he refused, claiming that offered that would permit an exemption for a church-related the licensing requirement was "Communistic" and violated reli- agency that met basic health and safety standards. The amend- gious freedom. Upon learning that the Supreme Court had ment was attacked by Florida's two largest Protestant denomi- ruled against him, Roloff closed the facilities temporarily and nations, the Southern Baptists and the Methodists, and was reopened them under the aegis of his People's Church. In defeated. Totally opposed to the licensing requirements were 1981, a state court ruled that the church could operate the small sectarian groups that run their own facilities. It is their homes without a license.''' position that they are answerable only to God and not to civil During the past two years, a majority of our cases at authority. "We recognize no law but God's," they told the Freedom Counseling Center have involved ultrafundamentalis- legislature. tic sects—offshoots of older charismatic groups that practice The appeal to a higher authority than the state has been speaking in tongues, healing, and deliverance and believe in made repeatedly by ultrafundamentalist, independent sects in the imminent return of Jesus Christ. In several instances, recent years. Numerous statutes that inconvenience the faithful extreme child abuse, wife-beating, and avoidance of required or restrict their freedom to discipline their children or deny medical treatment, such as inoculations, removal of operable them access to medical care or state-mandated education have tumors, setting of fractures, chemotherapy, etc., have been been challenged. In most instances, the outcome has been iden- reported to me by my clients. The saddest record of any of tical to the United States Supreme Court's decision in the case these groups is that of Faith Assembly or "Glory Barn," which of Reno County, Kansas v. William and Carol Cowell, also has its headquarters in the Warsaw, Indiana, area. According known as Heart Ministries. On October 6, 1980, the Supreme to several newspaper accounts, at least fifty-two people-- most Court left intact a lower court decision barring the Cowells of them infants and children—have died as the result of fol- from running the Victory Village Home for Girls. Since 1972 lowing the teachings of the group. Faith Assembly, which was the Cowells had been operating the home and a related reli- founded ten years ago by the Reverend Hobart Freeman (who gious school. State officials brought the Cowells to court in is today its pastor), has about two thousand members. They 1977, asking that they be prohibited from running the home are discouraged from seeking medical attention on the grounds unless they obtained proper state licensing. that only God can heal and that using medicine is evidence of On April 9, 1979, the Kansas Supreme Court upheld a lack of faith. trial court order that, in the absence of a license, the home be Reporters Jim Quinn and Bill Zlatos of the Fort Wayne shut down. The Kansas Supreme Court ruled: News-Sentinel have disclosed that

12 FREE INQUIRY

tos

There have been twice as many medically unattended deaths Pho

as previously reported among those adhering to Freeman's Wide teachings. ld Only a small fraction of the 52 known victims were old r

enough to understand the teachings of Faith Assembly. Wo P

An even smaller fraction made their own decision to shun A medical treatment. One victim asked for a doctor a few hours before her death, but no doctor arrived because her husband and friends decided prayer was best for the woman. They prayed for her for hours after she had died. Faith Assembly deaths were found in Indiana. Illinois. Ohio, Kentucky. Michigan and Missouri. Seven families suffered more than one death. The families accounted for 18 of the 52 deaths. Two of the families lost three members each."

Other newspaper accounts report that a twenty-week-old fetus Self-proclaimed prophet William Lewis of the House of Judah in Allegan, Mich., brandishes instrument of punishment. was buried in a backyard in a shoe box; babies and their mothers were dying in childbirth while registered nurses looked child abuse aspects of the matter (infants and children have on and did nothing; children have died of chicken pox com- accounted for twenty-eight of the fifty-two reported deaths) plications; one girl was denied treatment for a massive tumor and inquiries as to whether the "unlawful practice of medicine that destroyed one eye and finally killed her; a forty-year-old contributed to the deaths.' At least one legislator has indicated diabetic stopped taking his insulin shots and died four days that he will introduce legislation designed to prevent the deaths later.'" In November 1982, Leah Dawn Mudd, age five, was of children whose parents belong to Faith Assembly. removed from her home by court order so that doctors could On May 25, 1983. the New York Interfaith Coalition of remove a cancerous tumor as big as a basketball from her Concern About Cults, meeting at the City University of New abdomen. Earlier the girl's four-year-old sister had died of a York, issued a statement decrying the abuse of women and tumor. In July 1976. Alice Rogers, twenty-three. a pregnant children "in many destructive cults" and urging law enforcement church member, bled to death after two days of labor. No officials to "do all within their power to ensure that these doctor was called. victims receive the full protection of the law as applied to their health, education and welfare."2' The Coalition consists of Can Anything Be Done? representatives from the Council of Churches of the City of New York. the Greek Orthodox Archdioceses of North and What, if anything. has been done about this apparent epidemic South America, the Jewish Community Relations Council of of child abuse and neglect? There have been a number of New York, the New York Board of Rabbis. the Queens significant developments some of which have been mentioned Federation of Churches, the Roman Catholic Diocese of New in passing. Courts have not been loath to punish offenders. York, and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn. Appealing The media have certainly not ignored the issue. Oklahoma has to "recent research." the Coalition claims that growing numbers closed the faith-healing loophole in its child abuse laws, and a of children are being separated from their parents and siblings. Colorado district court judge has held that his state's exemption receive little or no natal or post-natal medical care, do not clause was unconstitutional. Further, the Department of Health have their births recorded, receive little or no education, live in and Human Services notified states in January' 1983 that it no crowded and unsanitary conditions, and suffer from inadequate longer required them to exempt religious groups from child diets that damage them physically and mentally. Moreover, abuse regulations. the Coalition contends, these children are often sexually Meanwhile, the Region V Resource Center on Children exploited and harshly disciplined (often to the point of death). and Youth Services announced at its Milwaukee headquarters The Coalition also recorded a similar litany of alleged indig- in May 1983 that it was willing to allocate up to 510.000 to nities suffered by women in destructive cults, including arranged stop the abuse and neglect of children in the Faith Assembly marriages, interference with existing marriages, inadequate pre- church. According to Adrienne Heuser. director of Region V: natal care, poor nutrition, delivery of children under unsanitary "It's our position that more can be done for the children conditions, lack of medical attention, and forced separation involved. If more people knew about the situation and how to from their children." deal with it, lives might be saved in the future." The funds But the Coalition's statement raised questions in many will be used for a public education campaign intended to pro- minds, to wit: Are "destructive cults" any more guilty of child vide information to local prosecutors. public health nurses. abuse, neglect than our society as a whole? Are cults any more welfare department officials, legislators. and members of the restrictive and abusive of women than America in general? general public.'" State officials have promised investigations of What is the data base for the generalizations made in the

Spring 1984 13 statement —scholarly research or anecdotal reports by ex-cult me each year. If there are three million adults involved in over members and deprogrammers? Is it fair to single out "destruc- twenty-five hundred cults, as Margaret Thaler Singer maintains, tive cults" rather than deal with the broader problem of the it would seem that the incidence of child abuse is low, although role of poverty, lack of education, societal stress, instability, specific instances are often brutal, dramatic, and horrifying. decline in respect for authority, distrust of the medical profes- As the former administrative director of Parental Stress sion, economic dislocations, and unemployment as contributory Service of San Mateo County, a multifaceted program for the factors in America's current epidemic of domestic violence and alleviation of child abuse and neglect, I am well aware that the neglect of health care? incredibly high incidence of child-beating, neglect, abuse, and An attempt at answering the question of whether the inci- sexual exploitation is the secret shame of our society. Even dence of child abuse/neglect is higher in cult groups than without authoritarian communal groups, America is beset with among the general population was undertaken by researchers a vicious overabundance of domestic violence, assaults (physical at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Since and sexual) upon women, children, and the elderly, and serious current cult members refused to return questionnaires to the neglect of health, nutritional, and educational needs. Or if one four researchers, the results are based entirely on responses of wants real horror stories, the observer should spend a few seventy-five former cult members. According to these data, the nights at any state mental hospital, home for the retarded, or researchers found that the children of cult members "tend to facility for juvenile offenders. be more physically abused and received fewer balanced meals Have years of exposure to such abuses jaded me to the than those of parents not in such sects."'a The researchers also offenses of cults and sects? By no means. Incidents like those reported a large number of atrocity stories to support the ex- enumerated above should be investigated, and where appro- members' claims. Accusations centered on alleged acts of priate, promptly remedied by action on the part of local police, beatings, confinement, physical punishment, enforced fasting social-welfare authorities, and the courts. Failure to permit and sleep deprivation, denial of medical care, humiliation, and needed medical attention for an ailing child or to utilize man- other psychological abuse. The report was attacked as one- dated preventive measures like small pox vaccination and other sided and biased by Professor Jeffry Hadden, chairman of the inoculations is a public health matter which must be dealt Department of Sociology of the University of Virginia. David with through the established channels of public policy. A cen- Bromley, professor of sociology at the University of Hartford, tury of jurisprudential experience with the Jehovah's Witnesses referred to other studies that have found that children in cults on the issue of lifesaving blood transfusions for minors should are not psychologically different from children in the rest of provide ample precedent for approaching the problem of ultra- society. Spokespersons for the Unification Church unequivo- fundamentalist rejection of medicine. cally denied the allegation of mistreatment of children made On April 18, 1951, the State of Illinois sought temporary by the survey's respondents.=` custody of six-day-old Cheryl Labrenz, the daughter of The rescinding of the religious exemption by the Depart- Jehovah's Witnesses parents. The infant was the victim of a ment of Health and Human Services has not been without medical syndrome that was destroying her red blood cells. opposition. The exemption had been largely the work of lob- Medical testimony established that the child would die without byists for Christian Science, a small but wealthy and influential blood transfusions. The parents, Darrell and Rhoda Labrenz, proponent of faith healing. The 1974 Child Abuse Prevention spurned the physicians' advice on the grounds that they were and Treatment Act read: "No parent or guardian who in good more concerned with their daughter's eternal salvation than faith is providing to a child treatment solely by spiritual means with her temporal existence. (Since 1944 blood transfusions . shall for that reason alone be considered to have neglected have been prohibited by the governing body of Jehovah's Wit- the child." Forty-seven states have adopted such exemptions.' Now that responsibility for such exemptions has been returned to the states, the Christian Scientists may be expected to be busy indeed. Noted child advocate Richard Krugman, associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Colorado and director of the school's C. Henry Kempe National Center for the Prevention and Treatment of Child Abuse and Neglect, has indicated that he does not consider religion-related child abuse a serious problem. In his words. "I'd hate to see a lot of effort going into stamping this out when you compare 50 or l00 cases of this a year with the millions of children who are victims of child abuse.' It is hard to know if Dr. Krugman means that there are only 50 to 100 deaths a year in religious sects, compared to millions of such deaths in our society as a whole, or if he means that there are 50 to 100 known instances of child abuse in sects compared to millions among the general The father of twelve-year-old Pamela Hamilton, shown here with her population. About six cult- and sect-related child deaths and stepmother Ann, fought cancer treatment for his daughter based on probably hundreds of instances of child abuse are reported to religious beliefs. He was a minister in La Follette, Tenn. AP/ World Wide

14 FREE INQUIRY nesses on the grounds that the consumption of blood is prohibited in the Bible. The proof texts for this position are Leviti- cus 17:10 and Acts 21:25.) The Labrenzes were secure in the position that' even if their baby died, she would surely be resurrected by Jehovah. The court declared Cheryl a ward of the state for the time necessary to administer the lifesaving transfusions. The Labrenz case was the first of many involving Jehovah's Witnesses parents who refused to allow blood transfusions in life- threatening circumstances. In virtually every case, the courts have ruled that the state's right to preserve and maintain life transcends individual claims of religious freedom.' As the court ruled in the case of John F. Kennedy Memorial Hospital v. Heston (1971), "there is no constitutional right to choose to die. . . . The State's interest in sustaining life . . . is hardly different than its interest in the case of suicide." Lester Roloff and the girls of his Rebekah home in Corpus Christi, The community, through its government agencies, social- Tex. It was charged that some girls were beaten and starved. welfare programs, legislatures, and courts, has the power and Dan F. Connolly/TIME Magazine the obligation to act. The reason for this has very little to do instances, leads to the dissolution of the cult. If a mother in with the nature of the groups in question, for society's first my community announced that tomorrow at noon she planned obligation is to protect the lives and liberties of its citizens, to immolate herself and her children in a shopping mall, and if particularly those who cannot protect themselves. All other the next day she arrived at the scene with cannisters of gasoline, liberties, including religious freedom and the right of parents the full coercive machinery of the state would be called into to determine the care and education of their own children, service to stop her suicide-homicide. If she justified her inten- flow from this first obligation. The very foundation of this tions on the grounds that God had told her to do it, the country is the recognition that the right to life transcends all response of the community would be no less tolerant. Unless other rights. All other freedoms must be governed by this prin- society protects those who are incapable of protecting them- ciple—in this or in any viable social order. selves, it abdicates its reason for existing. When that happens, Although the state may not interfere with the religious vigilantism as strident, fanatic, and harmful as that which it beliefs and opinions of its citizens, it can punish religious prac- opposes is all that is left. tices that are criminal offenses."' And under the law of most As we have noted elsewhere, a new kind of civil disobe- states, the failure of parents to provide medical care is a public dience is rampant, i.e., the systematic refusal to obey the law wrong. If the child is injured from such omission, the parents based on an appeal to higher authority. Deprogrammers prac- can be convicted of criminal neglect. And, if the child should tice this disobedience in order to "rescue" cultists and other die as the result of such neglect, the parent may be tried for nonconformists. And self-appointed interpreters of God's voice manslaughter." As a Pennsylvania court ruled eighty years wield "the will of God" as a magic shield to defend them from ago: income tax, property tax, zoning ordinances, health and safety regulations, traffic laws, and any other rules that inconvenience The common faith of mankind relies not only upon prayer, them. The religious man who recognizes no authority but God's but upon the use of means which knowledge and experience (as he interprets that authority for himself) is truly an outlaw. have shown to be efficient.... In certain diseases the individual He belongs to no society. The vast majority of religious indi- affected may be the only one to suffer for the lack of proper viduals and religious movements, ranging from most mainline attention: but in other cases, of a contagious or infectious denominations to the most radically innovative sects, recognize nature, they may be such as to endanger the whole community, that "the powers that be are ordained of God" and that it is and here it is the policy of the law to assume control and require the use of the most effective known means to overcome the obligation of each believer to "render unto Caesar the and stamp out disease which otherwise would become epi- things that are Caesar's and unto God the things that are demic.... "For none of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth God's." to himself," and the consequences of leaving disease to run The outlaws constitute a menace, without a doubt. That unchecked in the community is so serious that sound policy menace springs from the combination of loss of impulse-control forbids it.' and otherworldly ideology. People beat children because, under stress, they lose control of themselves, and not because the In more than a dozen cases involving abuses similar to Bible tells them to. The Bible, as always, is cited in justification those just listed, we have discovered that remorseless pressure of the indefensible. What happens all too often is that sect from the media, child-protective services, the police, and the leaders who are themselves child abusers institutionalize their courts throws the sects off balance, produces self-doubt and own weakness as a norm for behavior vis-à-vis women and dissension among members, unites the previously apathetic children. In groups with such leaders, the beating of the power- local populace in challenging the nonconformists, and, in many less is engaged in, methodically and deliberately, often while

Spring 1984 15 the entire group stands by as witnesses, offering its acceptance between the standards of such authoritarian subcultures and and support. When conscience, responsibility, and compassion the ethical norms of mainstream society are unavoidable. are destroyed by the passions of the angry mob, then persons-the members of the crowd as well as their victims- are reduced to a status less than human. When this happens, the acts that we are observing in today's fringe groups and on the part of deprogrammers are to be expected. They are the mani- Notes festations of the spirit of the social pariah, the dispossessed, the disinherited the behavior of those who have no stake in I. United Press. San Francisco Chronicle, September 20. 1983. p. 22. 2. Associated Press, San Francisco Chronicle, September 23. 1983. p. anything, no love of family, friends, reputation, or themselves. 33. Some cults and sects (but not all) are a haven for such people. 3. Associated Press. The Tintes (San Mateo. California). September The worst examples of child or spouse abuse occur in dooms- 19. 1983. pp. I and 10. day sects, groups that see themselves as the last generation of 4. Philadelphia Inquirer, May IQ 1983. Reprinted in The Advisor, vol. mankind. Why should one worry about the law or decency or 5, no. 4, August September 1983. p. 3. 5. Ibid. propriety or well-being if the world is coming to an end-and 6. Ibid. soon? 7. Associated Press, San Gabriel Va/levy Tribune (California). Septem- Look again at the list of newspaper reports described at ber 30. 1982. the beginning of this article. Is it significant that no incident in 8. Washington Post. October 18. 1982, p. A23. my 1982-83 files documents similar abuses by the Moonies, the 9. Associated Press. Washington Post, August 3. 1983. 10. Chicago Tribune. J my 9. 1983: The Advisor. vol. 5, no. 4, August Scientologists, Divine Light Mission, the Children of God, or September 1983. p. 3. the Hare Krishnas? At most, it tells us that ultrafundamentalist IL William Harms. Chicago Tribune. December 2. 1982. groups more readily lose control and lash out at those who 12. Jeff Waggoner. Arkansas Democrat (Little Rock). June 23. 1983. p. cannot protect themselves. However, clients drawn from scores 3 B. of groups, including the five just mentioned, have told me of 13. Chet Hippo. "Siege of the Alamos." People Weekly, June 13. 1981 p• 30. equally horrifying occurrences-many of which I have verified. 14. Associated Press. Topeka State Capitol-Journal. October 7. 1980. The list also discloses that the more familiar Bible-based groups 15. Time, November 15. 1982. p. 77. receive the censure of the agencies of social control, at least in 16. New York Times. November 4, 1982. some communities, long before the more exotic groups. For 17. Fort Warne News-Sentinel. May 2, 1983. See also Associated l'ress such groups draw their members not from wandering dropouts reports. May 3. 1983. 18. Globe, June 7, 1983. p. 7: Associated Press. November 24, 1982. or foreign visitors but from working adults with jobs and 19. The Advisor, op. cit.. p. 3. homes, perhaps right across your street. 20. Ibid. I should note that having to deal with the intentional 21. Ibid. infliction of suffering upon children and the deaths of medically 22. The Advisor. vol. 5. no. 3, June July 1983. p. I. unattended women and infants in childbirth constitutes the 23. Ibid. 24. The Advisor, vol. 5. no. 4. August September 1983. pp. I and 3. most emotionally upsetting aspect of my work. However, there 25. Ibid., p. 3. are two lessons I have learned from these disgusting realities. 26. Green. op. cit., loc. cit. The "religious immunity" provision is found The first lesson: No group can replace parents as sources of in the juvenile or criminal codes of most states. Illinois, Connecticut. and stable, caring love. The focus of the group is upon its purposes Washington mention only Christian Science in their laws. Several other and seldom upon the offspring of its members. Surrendering states have adopted wording that could only apply to Christian Science. i.e., exempting those who follow the "tenets" of a "well-recognized church" that the responsibility for child-rearing to a sect is like turning an offers "treatment" by a "duly accredited practitioner." It is incredible to me invalid over to a local bridge club. No group really cares. that such statutes escape the scrutiny of civil libertarians. These laws clearly The second lesson is a corollary of the first: In comparison constitute an "establishment" of religion. Ten years ago. California courts with an allegedly ultimate concern, all other concerns appear convicted parents of manslaughter who withheld insulin from their son on ignoble, unworthy, and mere distractions. When the group the basis of their religious beliefs. However. under California's exemption clause, it is legal for Christian Scientist parents to deny medical attention on purpose is not focused upon the next generation as their own the same grounds. and the world's hope for the future, children and women (in 27. Ibid. their maternal role) become radically devalued, useless, and 28. Barbara Grizutti Harrison, Visions ut Glory: A History and a expendable. As mere objects of little utility for the purpose of Memos ~ offehovah's Witnesses (New York: Simon and Schuster. 1978). pp. the group, they become encumbrances that sooner or later are 97-98. 29. Ibid. going to be damaged. 30. 1. H. Rubenstein. Law on Cults (Chicago: The Ordain Press. 1948 I have met loving, devoted, and nurturing parents in every [reprinted 19811). p. 107. type of cult, sect, commune, self-help therapy group, and politi- 31. Ibid.. p. 44. cal cell. 1 know exemplary parents who would never knowingly 32. First Church Christ Scientist. 205 Penn. 543. 550-1. 55 Atl. 536 abuse or deprive their children. But cult and sect groups are (1903). Sec also State y. Probst, /65 Minn. 36/. 206 N. W. 642 (/925). • largely governed by the whims of manipulative and powerful figures, to whom all commitments other than that to the man- This article is adapted from the muhor's forthcoming book, Mind bending: dates of the leader are of secondary importance. Friction Cults in the Eighties. that will he published this .summer by Douh/edar.

16 FREE INQUIRY Joseph Fletcher The Father of Biomedical Ethics

Richard Taylor

recently called upon Joseph Fletcher, now in his eightieth their narcissism. The editor of Theology Today, commenting I year, to try to know a little better this man whose thinking in 1977 on Dr. Fletcher's writings, described them as "original, has so profoundly affected contemporary views of ethics and incisive and fearless," and this somehow seems almost an the role of religion in our lives and who, more than anyone understatement. else, initiated the large realm of discourse that has since come Joseph Fletcher is, of course, best known for his book to be known as biomedical ethics. Changes of attitudes in our Situation Ethics, of which more than a million copies of the medical schools, together with new directions of thought among original edition have been printed. It is doubtful whether any theological faculties, are in many cases directly traceable to book of its kind has in this century had a more profound Dr. Fletcher's influence. His effect upon millions of others is influence on ethical thought in the English-speaking world. It of course more subtle, but real and sometimes profound. is also doubtful whether any recent book of its kind has stirred I soon realized, as we sat talking in his study, that Dr. more hostility, in spite of the growing acceptance of its central Fletcher's capacity for laughter and joy is as great as the claim. tolerance and compassion expressed everywhere in his writings. The origin of Situation Ethics is as extraordinary as its As I looked over his great collection of books, I had the sense history. It grew out of a talk that Dr. Fletcher gave as the that he actually knew the contents of them all. Masses of annual alumni address at the Harvard Divinity School in 1964. scribbled notes lying about seemed to confirm this impression. Anyone coming to know Dr. Fletcher cannot fail to be struck by his vast learning and his fearless honesty. The first of "Joseph Fletcher is, of course, best known for these qualities would be terrifying were it not for the warmth his book Situation Ethics ... It is doubtful of his personality and the ever-twinkling eyes of a man who is whether any book of its kind has in this cen- impressed by few things, least of all by himself. He seems to have read everything, and to have analyzed everything he has tury had a more profound influence on ethical read. His erudition, never affected, flows appropriately into his thought in the English-speaking world." most casual conversation, and one is not tempted to try to match it. In the audience was a publisher's representative, who almost His honesty is similarly something that its possessor does casually asked the speaker whether he might be willing to set not strive for. It is, in him, a natural virtue. He recognizes only those ideas down in a book. That was in May. He got to work one kind of truth, and that is the truth of fact. He has no on the book at the end of June, and on August 4, hardly a patience with ideology, mysticism, or pretense, or with month later, the final manuscript was delivered to Westminster attempting to treat what is dubious or even absurd as somehow Press. The author still refers to it as his "fat pamphlet," for he believable mythologically. or by faith, or by "notional assent," had not intended it to be more than a prolegomenon to the or whatever. His scorn for those who wrap their virtue in the larger work in moral philosophy that he had always intended symbols of religion is simply his response to what he views as to write. He also erroneously thought that it would have little effect upon theologians, or in the circles of Roman Catholi- Richard Taylor is professor III cism, where in fact its impact was swift and pronounced. It of philosophy at the Univer- would be difficult to estimate the number of doctoral disserta- sity of Rochester. He is the tions it has inspired, and even the vilification it has received author of Good and Evil. from some quarters is tribute to its power. The expression Action and Purpose, and "situation ethics" has in the meantime gained inclusion in Freedom, Anarchy, and the Law. Webster'' Dictionary. Although Dr. Fletcher's fame will probably always mostly

Spring 1984 17 Quotations from the writings of Joseph Fletcher

"When the mind is gone, the brain's human function, there is "Death control, like birth control, is a matter of human dignity. no point in keeping anything else alive. We should speak of Without it persons become puppets. To perceive this is to cerebral death, not whole or total `brain' death. The law needs grasp the error lurking in the notion—widespread in medical to catch up with brain physiology." [New England Journal of circles—that life as such is the highest good." [Humanhood] Medicine] "The saying you can't change human nature has always been "Why should this particular wrong, the wrong of knowingly the slogan of anti-rational philosophies and conservative poli- transmitting grievous genetic disease, be an exception to the tics." [Morals and Medicine] general principle that a sane society prohibits by law substantial injuries by one member of society to innocent others?" "The word natural, like God, creation, and soul, is a `pan- [Symposium on Genetics and Law] chreston'—it explains everything in general and nothing in particular." [Ethics of Genetic Control] "I believe that needs have precedence over rights; that is my ethical stance. Therefore to be candid and careful I am not "Any sexual act—hetero, homo, bi or auto—is good if it is concerned about any supposed right to live or right to die; I done with loving concern; otherwise it is evil and morally am primarily concerned with human need—both of life and wrong, no matter how legal." [Moral Responsibility] death. That is my confession." [The Humanist] "To be men we must be in control. That is the first and last "Consequences determine rightness or wrongness; therefore if ethical word." [New England Journal of Medicine] fetal research benefits others, especially children, then it is permissible. The fetus is not an actual person, ethically or "... the crucial question is not whether the end justifies the legally, until it is born alive outside the mother's uterus sup- means (what else could?) but what justifies the end." ported by its own cardiovascular system." [Federal Register] [Humanhood] "The autonomy of ethics in its independence of religious ideas "I cannot seriously consider being a Humanist with a capital is now generally recognized, even in religious circles . . . H, any more than I would be a Christian, a Communist, or Although there is no way to know whether God is dead, as anything else with a capital letter. I have sworn off all ideo- some theologians have rumored, it is definite in any case that logical or doctrinaire postures. It follows therefore that I cannot God is dead in ethics." [Odyssey] belong to a church—unitarian, trinitarian, proletarian, or whatever." [Odyssey] "Yes, we ought to do research on recombinant DNA molecules, and we ought to use what we learn to exert genetic control "We are now approaching a situation in which genetic causes over the health and quality of human beings. Dangerous account for as many or more deaths than disease in the popular knowledge is never half so dangerous as dangerous ignorance." sense." [Hastings Report] [Humanhood]

18 FREE INQUIRY rest on Situation Ethics, simply because of its immense popu- theory to classical physics. It does not lend itself easily to the larity, his earlier book Morals and Medicine is in some ways patterns of thought to which people have become comfortably more significant. This work grew out of his Lowell Lectures at accustomed. Harvard in 1949 and was the pioneering effort in what has The word situation, which so aptly expresses the basic since burgeoned, in many quarters, under the name "biomedical concept of Dr. Fletcher's ethics, came to him from working ethics" or, simply, "bioethics." with physicians, attorneys, and others faced with making deci- Morals and Medicine was nearly twenty years ahead of its sions for other people. Sometimes these decisions were loaded time. Books and anthologies on bioethics are numerous; courses with moral significance, and he noticed that such persons and seminars on the subject have sprung up in virtually every characteristically began with the question, "What is the patient's college and university. The attention of medical school faculties [or client's, etc.] situation?" The answer to that fundamental and hospital staffs has been focused on it, and it has become a question, necessarily different for every case, was the starting favorite topic of conferences. Until Dr. Fletcher's book the point for the resolution of a particular problem. The question only available comparable texts were the manuals based on yielded different answers in different cases. dogmatic theology for the guidance of doctors and nurses in Joseph Fletcher has since separated his ethics, which ori- Roman Catholic hospitals. Indeed, until this book appeared, ginally grew out of his interpretation of the Christian concept the very expression "medical ethics" was thought to refer to of love, from any religious presuppositions. A few years before the guidelines for the demeanor of physicians in their contacts retiring from his teaching position at the Episcopal Theological with patients how they should dress, whether it was suitable Seminary, and after forty years in the Anglican communion, to sit on a patient's bed, matters concerning billing for fees, he, as he expressed it, "de-Christianized" himself. "I faced the and so on. Manuals of this nature were sometimes made avail- final realization," he said, "that the social justice I had hoped able to physicians through medical associations. for from Christian social ethics and social action by the Reading Dr. Fletcher's book now, nearly thirty years later, churches was in truth outside the range of any realistic expecta- one appreciates the immensity of the changes that have taken tion. This forced me in consequence to take a hard look at place. Almost nothing is said in the book about abortion, for Christian doctrine itself, on its own merits God, Jesus, revela- instance. One entire chapter is devoted to the ethics of contra- tion, sin, salvation, the whole thing." He decided that Christian ception and another to artificial insemination matters that doctrine, when examined that way, was "weird and utterly have become so commonplace that they stir virtually no discus- untenable." And along with Christianity, he decided, he would sion any longer. The chapter on truth, however, is still very reject all ideologies. relevant. For example, much of what Joseph Fletcher has said Dr. Fletcher recalled William James: "James explained concerning honest disclosure is urgently in need of application why the will to believe withers when nothing is won by believ- in the practice of law. ing, so I backed off and realized that it is an absurd story— Dr. Fletcher's writings extend to well over two hundred that God created the world, let men be wicked and weak as titles, including eleven books. His earlier works focused on they chose, then waited until two thousand years ago before social and economic problems, but it was not long after these he picked out a peasant in Palestine to redeem the world." He were written that the author began concentrating on issues in told his colleagues and students at the seminary that he would medicine, and of life and death. The same central theme is no longer participate in chapel services, although he considered woven into all these writings, and the author has himself per- himself still to be a theologian, albeit an alienated or unbeliev- fectly expressed it this way: "Human benefit is the talisman of ing one. "I am," he said, "and always will be a theologian," ethical propriety and justifies everything we do." making the unusual but valuable point that a vast knowledge At one time Dr. Fletcher considered love to be the gover- of theology does not necessarily imply the belief that it is true. ning principle of ethics, as that which approaches most closely Joseph Fletcher is the holder of some great and unique an absolute demand upon us, but he has since moved to a honors, among them the Henry K. Beecher Award for distin- view of human personality as his central idea. His extensive guished service in medical ethics, bestowed by the Hastings writings consistently deny the importance of moral rules--and Institute, and membership in the National Council of Alpha it is this, of course, that has stirred hostility. People have a Omega Alpha, an honorary medical society. He is one of only deep need for rules and find it difficult to think of their conduct eleven nonphysicians to be thus honored, and is the only such as morally justified, however beneficial it may be, unless it can person from the ranks of the humanists, all the others being somehow be interpreted as the expression of some rule or scientists. Dr. Fletcher is the only member of the faculty of the another. To deprive people of rules, especially rules of ethics, University of Virginia Medical School who does not hold a makes them feel uncertain, insecure, and without consistency degree in either medicine or science. Recently he was officially or stability. And yet, from a purely intellectual and philosophi- made a full-fledged brave in the Clan of the Turtle of the cal standpoint. Dr. Fletcher does seem to be quite provably Mohawk Indians—a distinction that appears, from the way his right about this. Rules, by themselves, justify nothing, but face brightens upon mentioning it, to be the one of which he is must themselves be justified by their relevance to human bene- proudest. fit. It is the latter, therefore, that must be paramount. Situation That day, listening to Joseph Fletcher reflect upon his life ethics thus bears a relationship to classical moral philosophy and the things he has seen come and go, will cling to my that is somewhat analogous to the relationship of relativity memory for a very long time. •

Spring 1984 19

The Foundations of Religious Liberty and Democracy A Symposium

Three of the following papers were delivered at a conference entitled "Religious Freedom East and West: The Human Rights Issue for the Eighties." The conference was sponsored by the Institute for Religion and Democracy and co-sponsored by the National Association of Evangelicals, and held in Washington, D.C. on July 10, 1983. The theme concerned the foundations of religious liberty and liberal democracy in the world. Since FREE INQUIRY is committed to presenting opposing points of view, we have invited speakers Carl Henry, a leading Protestant fundamentalist, and Ernest Fortin, a Catholic theologian, to publish their papers. Henry, a critic of humanism, argues that democracy needs a theological foundation. Paul Kurtz, editor of FREE INQUIRY, and Ernest Fortin disagree with his thesis, though from different perspectives. Lee Nisbet, associate editor of FREE INQUIRY, concludes the symposium with a commentary on Father Fortin's paper—EDS.

Carl F. H. Henry was a founding editor of Christianity Today magazine and the author and editor of several hooks, including The Christian Mindset in a Secular Society, which includes this article and is due to be published in the spring hr Mult- nomah Press. He is considered one of the leading fundamentalist conservatives today and has been a long-standing critic of secular humanism.

Paul Kurtz is professor of philosophy at the State University of New York at Buffalo and editor of Fkyt IyQI tkv.

Lee Nisbet is associate professor of philosophy at Medaille College and associate editor of FREE INQUIRY. He is now on sabbatical under a grant from the John Dewey Foundation, working on a hook about Dewey and Sigmund Freud.

Father Ernest Fortin, a Roman Catholic, is professor of theology at Boston College. He is the author of the forthcoming book Dissent and Philosophy in the Middle Ages (University of Chicago Press). Ile is a contributor to Michael Novak 's new journal Catholicism in Crisis.

Photo by Rebecca Hammel

20 FREE INQUIRY Religious Liberty Cornerstone of Human Rights

Carl F. H. Henry or the first time in the history of the nations and of the irrespective of creed; third, that the right of religious freedom in 1.1 churches of Christendom, there exists a consensus in sup- fact shelters and nurtures all other human rights; and, finally, port of the principle of religious liberty. This consensus is the that evangelicals who value human freedoms as the gift of the flowering of a long and arduous process of debate and reflec- Creator, whom we seek in good conscience to worship and serve, tion. In pre-Christian times, all societies were bound by a should engage more actively in championing religious freedom common religious and political loyalty. Religious freedom was everywhere, as well as promoting the religious freedom of first extended by Christian and Muslim nations to pilgrims in Christians in secular American society. transit to Palestine; later many nations extended it also to Serious discussion of religious freedom begins with the foreigners engaged in navigation and commerce. The Protestant recognition of religious freedom as a basic human right, a right Reformation enabled princes to choose their own religion, yet whose suppression strips away essential components of human their subjects were expected to adopt the ruler's faith or move dignity. Religious liberty is not mere religious tolerance, depen- to a territory where a preferable faith had been established. dent as that is upon the arbitrary will of rulers. If religious The protection afforded early Mennonites, however, anticipated freedom is advocated only for pragmatic reasons, it can and will a wider tolerance. Baptists insistently voiced a call for rights be sacrificed for expediency. Modern secular scholars depict for religious minorities. supernatural religion as hostile to human rights in view of epochs The United States Constitution broke new ground: It of intolerance and inquisition. But the most vicious assault on refused to leave religious liberty and other human rights to human rights has been inspired by naturalistic philosophies like determination by the majority. The very first article stipulated Nazi socialism and Russian and Chinese Marxism. The most that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment brutal repression of human rights and maltreatment of human of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...." In beings has occurred during movements launched by foes of 1948 the concept of freedom of religion was embraced in the biblical theism. Some even misrepresent revealed religion as United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. hostile to human rights. Despite the affirmation of religious liberty in secular and Western humanists, to be sure, champion human rights, ecclesiastical documents, most societies and an incredibly large although humanism as a philosophy provides no adequate number of individuals still do not possess it. United Nations metaphysical basis to distinguish them from other principles, signatory states are, moreover, unable to agree on a definition which are reduced to sociocultural by-products of a particular of religious freedom. The Helsinki Declaration of 1975 espouses period in history. Universal and permanent human rights are the principle that, alone or together, individuals are free to logically inconsistent with the humanist theses that personality is profess and practice religion or religious convictions according an accident in the universe and that human nature is evolving. to the dictates of conscience; yet the document allows each We cannot empirically extrapolate unchanging values and final state to interpret and apply this principle. Radical thinkers truths either from a world of impersonal processes or merely redefine religious liberty to mean something that generations from the human situation. I commend humanists who promote before Freud and Marx would have found unthinkable: that human rights, even if they wholly lack a consistent philosophical religion is a product of neurosis and that deliverance from basis for justifying them; it would be far better for them to neurosis entails freedom from religion. Today, religious free- connect their social agenda with an overarching theistic world- dom is bartered not only by totalitarian rulers seeking to view able to support an absolute standard of rights and other advance official atheism, but also by Free World leaders who fixed ethical imperatives. adjust human rights considerations to military and economic On the basis of God's scripturally revealed purpose, evan- priorities. gelical Christians affirm values that transcend all human cultures Despite impressive verbal support for religious liberty, no and societies. Objectively grounded human rights are logically consensus exists on its theological or sociological basis. The crisis defensible on the foundation of the supernatural creation of man touching religious freedom therefore runs much deeper than its with a unique universal dignity. It is no accident that much of the atheistic totalitarian repression and its restriction by authoritarian rest of the world overlooked rights recognized in the biblically and by insistently theistic nations. My thesis is fourfold: first, that enlightened West and that early leaders of the modern human biblical theism alone provides adequate intellectual support for a rights cause were influenced by the Decalogue and the biblical meaningful doctrine of religious liberty and other human rights, doctrine of human dignity. while nontheistic views render such rights merely postulatory Secular philosophy today not only is incapable of defending and problematical; second, that religious liberty as a universal human rights but, in the absence of absolute values, it increasingly human right is appropriate and indispensable to human beings also encroaches upon and erodes them by a selective reduction of

Spring 1984 21 human value and worth; so, for example, in sexual ethics, the ration of Human Rights of 1948 was and is its failure to clarify rights of fetal life are neglected while those of homosexuals are the source and sanction of human rights that signatory powers energetically pursued. The historical connection between revealed are required to honor. Since all the states are called upon to religion and freedom has nonetheless been disconcertingly give constitutional guarantees of these rights, the individual ambiguous. Theists have not always championed religious states cannot themselves be the source of these rights, but liberty as they ought. Leo Pfeffer even holds that "compulsion in rather are answerable for preserving them. Yet the United religion is a heritage of the monotheistic worship which Moses Nations declaration does not identify the transcendent source commanded must, under penalty of death, be accorded to a of rights. It leaves unstated whether or not a superstate— jealous God" (Church, State and Freedom, 1953). But much as perhaps the United Nations itself—might ultimately be viewed the Hebrews protected their religious heritage against alien as the source and stipulator of human rights. Were Marxist or influences, they did not compel Gentiles throughout the Near other totalitarian powers to dominate the United Nations, could East to adopt revelatory monotheism; in fact, the Hebrews they then manipulate the definition of human rights on the lacked missionary passion. While death was the stipulated premise that all nations are answerable to the catalogue of penalty in the Old Testament theocracy for anyone in the rights that this international body imposes? That eventuality Hebrew community who departed from strict monotheism would not only render the content of human rights fluid; it (Deut. 13:6-9; Lev. 24:16), the New Testament by contrast could also suspend them on the whim of totalitarian rulers. presupposes pluralistic nations in which state and church occupy The American political charter documents made explicit different spheres of influence and fulfill different functions under what the United Nations declaration later obscured: that God the sovereign will of one God. The state is not to be the servant of the transcendent Creator is the source of human rights and the church, nor is the church to be the servant of the state. In New that human beings universally possess these rights by virtue of Testament perspective the state serves a limited function; it is not divine creation. The Declaration of Independence expressly the source and stipulator of human liberties but rather preserves affirms human rights on the ground of the sovereign creative and promotes divinely given rights in a political framework of act of the moral Maker of mankind. All men, it states plainly, justice and order enabling human beings to voluntarily do what are "endowed by their Creator" with certain inalienable rights. God requires. This transcendent theological reference excludes the legitimacy Yet Constantinian Christianity, as we are painfully aware, of any tyrannical suspension of human rights and instead revived the confessional state and repressed any threat to requires the state to recognize universally given prerogatives imperial and ecclesiastical unity. Christianity and Islam, as well that belong to the dignity of the human person as a super- as socialism and communism, have as historical phenomena natural endowment. sponsored pernicious religious repression. Not until post- The United Nations declaration of 1948 included religious Reformation Christianity in sixteenth-century Holland was freedom as part of its agenda of human rights. It affirmed: religious tolerance extended to Anabaptists, Jews, and people of other faiths. It is only fair to concede that evangelical Christians Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and have not in the recent past been the active vanguard of human religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or rights concerns, including religious liberty issues; they have belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others neither aggressively condemned rights violations nor aggressively and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in championed the preservation of rights except when their own teaching, practise, worship and observance. interests have been involved. Some evangelicals, worse yet, have dismissed the concern for rights as irrelevant, or as an unnecessary Since some nations rule out changing one's religion under risk detraction from evangelistic priorities, and a few have even given of death or exclusion from the community and restrict the the impression that the redeemed people of God inherit rights right to pursue evangelism, this affirmation is doubly impor- that mankind generally lacks or has forfeited. Historical circum- tant. The right was transformed into a legal obligation for stances invite the reactionary view that an ideal society, defined ratifying states in 1966 by the International Covenant on Civil as essentially humanistic, requires the subordination of church, and Political Rights, whose Article 18 affirms everyone's "free- synagogue, and mosque. dom to have or to adopt a religion or belief of his choice...." Yet a necessary link exists between Judeo-Christian faith Due to subsequent Muslim pressures, however, in Novem- and human freedom, since biblical beliefs best anchor and ber 1981, after twenty years of committee work, the United illumine the values essential to social well-being. The evangelical Nations declaration on the elimination of religious discrimina- view is that human rights are grounded in the revealed will of tion was revised, references were deleted to the right "to adopt" God, that religious liberty and political liberty are both based (and hence "to change") one's religion, and only the right "to on the Bible. The attempt to ground human rights other than have" a religion was retained. Article 1 consequently reads that in theology cannot effectively sustain itself. The crucial issue "the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion . . . therefore arises whether religious freedom, properly understood, shall include freedom to have a religion...." The final article requires freedom from God or freedom for God, freedom from in the 1981 declaration does affirm that nothing therein is to man or freedom under God for man, freedom from conscience be construed as restricting any right defined in the 1948 decla- or freedom for conscience. ration or in the 1966 International Covenant, but it is dis- A major weakness of the United Nations Universal Decla- appointingly weaker as a document on religious liberty.

22 FREE INQUIRY The 1966 International Covenant and the 1981 declaration, moreover, blur the sense of religious freedom by perpetuating the confusing reference in the 1948 declaration to freedom of "religion or belief." Since the meaning of religion is itself widely in debate, and recent philosophers (e.g., Paul Tillich) equate the religious referent with whatever is man's object of "ultimate concern" (and atheism is the ultimate concern of some con- temporaries), freedom of religion is here rendered ambiguous. Some would accordingly ground religious liberty only in a respect for the vast multiplicity of human faiths and beliefs or even base it on skepticism about the possibility of arriving at truth of any kind. My point is not that religious liberty should be withheld from those whose beliefs we find extremely objectionable or whose beliefs may diametrically oppose our own. But it does not serve the cause of religious freedom to assume that the term religion (or religious) has a universal definition, since anything and everything from devil-worship to human sacrifice has been proclaimed religion. We should designate specific religions or not use the term at all. Freedom does not mean that human existence is without moral norms and duties. Either human rights and liberties have a fixed and definable content that excludes deviations or the concept of human rights must include the right to dehu- all human beings irrespective of their religion or lack of it. manize human nature, and religious freedom becomes freedom Instead, it acknowledged only what scholars call a "negative for its contradiction and negation. If one infringes on the rights right," that is, the right of immunity from religious coercion. of others or endangers the morals of others in the name of The encyclical Dignitatis Humanae (1965) implies that every religious liberty, liberty becomes irresponsibility. Religious free- person has a private realm in which he must individually and dom is not a rubric that licenses the liberty to do anything and responsibly decide matters of religious reality and truth. everything in the name of religion. Either the Ten Command- Yet Dignitatis Humanae refused to separate discussion of ments provide a divine prototype of enduring rights or religious religious freedom from the question of religious duty on the liberty consists ultimately in freedom from God. grounds that privilege inescapably implies responsibility. Every This is not to deny that religious freedom is an uncondi- person has the right to immunity both from coercion to act tional civil or legal right. No human agency has the right to against conscience and from impediment against acting accord- invade man's inner spiritual life. No corporate authority, ing to conscience. Not a single human thought or act, there- whether ecclesiastical or political, can be considered absolute, fore, is exempt from conscience. In short, everyone has a right since the sinfùlness of humanity permeates even social bureauc- to do one's religious duty; that is, to worship God as conscience racies. Human beings have, in respect to religious concerns, a dictates. Vatican II moreover resisted the widespread modern right to immunity from coercion in civil society. In view of notion that all religions are of equal worth. But it did not this, the effort of religious majorities to influence governments recognize any right of those holding other religions to propa- to deny religious freedom to those of other persuasions and to gate error. preserve a privileged role for themselves has in recent times The relationship of religious freedom and conscience been aggressively challenged. Even when the constitutions of remains one of the most important and difficult facets of dis- some nations still give special legal recognition to the Church cussions about religious liberty. Religious freedom is not of Rome, the civil right of religious liberty is now acknow- unconditional in the sense of dissolving the obligation to be ledged. Concordats with Argentina, Portugal, and Spain, for true to one's conscience. That human beings knowingly and example, have been modified in the interest of civil religious universally act contrary to conscience is a basic emphasis of freedom. the Christian doctrine of the sinfulness of mankind. But the Affirming civil religious liberty, however, need not right to act according to conscience is recognized, for example, expressly presuppose that human beings have an intrinsic right in the recent provision for pacifists of alternatives to miltary to religious liberty, or even that an individual's religious beliefs service. But to act according to conscience is not necessarily to and commitments should be free from either ecclesiastical or perform good acts. Public expressions of conscience are not parental coercion. What we are due as citizens need not coin- wholly exempt from legal penalties. cide with what ecclesiastical bodies hold is due us in other The traditional Roman Catholic emphasis on religious relationships. Vatican II (1962-65) did not affirm religious tolerance implied that the church should feel humane under- liberty as a positive right, fundamental to human dignity and standing toward those who in good faith and conscience profess universally intrinsic to human personhood, a right shared by religions that the church considers false. Such understanding

Spring 1984 23 did not, notably, involve any acknowledgment of the right of hensive and indivisible in principle; it cannot be fragmented those professing another religion to proclaim and promulgate without jeopardizing the whole. it. In recent decades, however, the Church of Rome has supple- Thus the whole bastion of universal rights and duties rests mented this traditional emphasis on human understanding by upon a theological basis in a double sense. Although the United an additional emphasis on respect for others irrespective of the Nations declaration of 1948 did not address the question of content of their religious beliefs. In December 1976, Pope Paul interdependence of human rights, the priority of religious VI declared that religious freedom is "intimately linked with liberty has gained increasing recognition during the past gen- the dignity and the personal dynamisms of man" (Observatore eration. Paul VI remarked that among fundamental human Romano, Dec. 9-10, 1976). rights "religious liberty occupies a place of primary importance" Freedom of conscience means that those committed to (Evangelii Nuntiandi, n. 30). The statement of the central com- other faiths and those claiming to be committed to none not mittee of the World Council of Churches, (1949) is even more only must be respected but also must be accorded equal rights. pointed: "Religious freedom is the condition and guarantee of Yet this is not to affirm the inviolable sacredness of human all true freedom." The Bible grounds true freedom at every conscience, for in that case no distinction can be made between level expressly in God: Israel's deliverance from totalitarian good and bad conscience. An inner compulsion to do what is pagan enslavement is God's free choice; civil government is immoral cannot be defended in the name of human rights or divinely ordained to maintain a free course for justice and duties, or even in the name of religious freedom. When poly- order (Rom. 13:3 ff.); Christ Jesus frees humans enslaved to gamy was banned in the last century, the prohibition turned sin (John 8:36); and the creation itself will one day be set free on what, contrary to Mormonism, was perceived by the rest of supernaturally for the liberty for which it now yearns (Rom. American society as immoral. The Hindu practice of suttee, 8:21 f.). that is, the immolation of a widow on the funeral pyre of her Despite international covenants that complement and sup- husband, is now forbidden. Human conscience is fallible; it plement the United Nations declaration, religious intolerance needs correction and guidance by a transcendent norm or, continues in many countries. Although totalitarian regimes more specifically, evangelical Christians stress, by the Word of active in the United Nations legally recognize the right of reli- God. gious freedom, such governments are among the first to abridge The reason no oiie should be compelled to act contrary to it and to substitute in its place religious tolerance suspended conscience is not that conscience is always right but that no upon the will of the state. The political tolerance level varies divine or good power motivates one to act against conscience. from totalitarian state to totalitarian state, but restriction runs The apostolic imperative was not simply to "obey conscience the gamut from official efforts to destroy religion to discrimina- rather than men" but to "obey God rather than men" (Acts tion against those who personally cling to religious faith. 5:29). In short, religious liberty shelters liberty of conscience, Despite constitutional guarantees, totalitarian countries in that man is ultimately responsible not to his fellowmen but repeatedly violate assurances of religious freedom even while to God for the decisions he makes and the options he pursues. they seek to persuade the outside world that religious rights The apostles say nothing about an absolute or wholly unquali- are respected. States whose official philosophy is atheistic rou- fied right to repudiate God. What they recognize is that man tinely practice religious intolerance. The fact that Marxist per- chooses whom he will serve and bears the consequences of secution often strengthens religious commitment and purifies such decision as determined not by state or society but by the religious belief spurs the totalitarian bureaucracies to greater final judgment of God. The will of God constitutes the ultimate refinement of their systematic and sporadic restrictions on reli- justification of religious voluntarism. A mechanically imposed gious freedom. faith is not genuine faith; a coerced commitment has value No governments have been as inhumane and intolerant as neither to God nor to man. the Nazi socialist regime of Hitler's Germany and the com- Religious liberty is not only a fundamental human right, munist regimes in Stalin's Russia and in Mao's China. Post- but it shelters also the whole broad spectrum of human rights. Mao China, for the moment at least, seems to be relaxing It is the mainspring of freedom. The right to worship and religious intolerance more than post-Stalin Russia, Bulgaria, serve the true and living God carries with it all the divinely and Romania. After President Carter raised the subject of vouchsafed rights and duties. Religious liberty involves much China's resistance to importation of Bibles, Vice Premier Deng more than the right to hold one's faith and to express it both Xiaoping in 1981 initiated a constitutional amendment guaran- in worship and practice, to propagate the Gospel and to per- teeing freedom of worship, although China's official policy suade and teach others, and to give religious education to remains in favor of the abolition of religion. While atheistic one's children. It embraces also the right to peaceful assembly states acknowledge the freedom of individuals to hold any and association, freedom of opinion and expression, freedom religious commitment privately, they seriously restrict the right from arbitrary arrest and detention, and freedom to leave one's of individuals to publicly express or practice religious beliefs. country and to return. Deprivation of such rights impairs reli- Both in Russia and in China the communist regimes have gious freedom. If curtailment of one's political and civil liberties created a pro-government ecclesiastical agency to negotiate with rightly raises anxieties about religious liberty, curtailment of all churches, and groups that seek to preserve their indepen- one's religious liberty inevitably prepares the way for many dence have difficulty functioning legally and are suspected of strictures on political and civil liberty. Freedom is compre- being unpatriotic and in league with foreign powers.

24 FREE INQUIRY In the Soviet Union, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim reli- But the authentically biblical character of political concern is gious leaders remain in prison, unable to teach their religious rendered problematical when its ecclesiastical champions convictions in their own country. The Free World agency approve violence and fund and promote revolutionary means CREED has a caseload of almost one hundred persecuted for achieving social change, or where they tie their call for Russian Christians for whom it intercedes. Only after living justice to Marxist analysis and solutions. An essentially almost five years in the basement of the American Embassy, politico-economic program, one that lacks sound biblical sup- where they sought refuge after serving discriminatory sentences ports at that, is then advanced under the banner of religious in prison and labor camps, Siberian Pentecostals obtained per- liberty despite the fact that sociohistorical implementation of Marxist ideology has notably impeded religious freedom and made human rights contingent on the will of the ruling class. "Biblical theism alone provides adequate intel- Religious freedom does indeed include, as the World Council of Churches Fifth Assembly in Nairobi put it, "the right and lectual support for a meaningful doctrine of duty of religious bodies to criticize the ruling powers when religious liberty and other human rights, while necessary" on the basis of religious principles. But politicization nontheistic views render such rights merely of the church's message should not be sanctified as indispensable to the preservation of religious liberty. postulatory and problematical." Ecumenical leaders acknowledge subtle and important shifts in the World Council's orientation of religious liberty as mission to emigrate to Israel. Observance of prescribed rituals proposals for economic change and altered social structures has been impeded, religious teaching curtailed, church proper- were advanced under this canopy. As national sociopolitical ties taken over or restricted in use, publication and distribution changes were comprehended as aspects of the Gospel, a proof religious literature hindered or prohibited. Soviet KGB offi- gram that had earlier been assimilated to human rights discus- cials have disguised themselves as secret carriers of scarce reli- sion generally was now linked expressly to religious liberty. gious literature to gain entry into Christian homes, and once Political activities were thereby declared religious; coercive and literature has been accepted and stored police have conducted revolutionary overthrow of social structures in a Marxist direc- house searches and placed the occupants under arrest. Wives, tion became biblical rebellion and was promoted as the imple- mothers, and friends of imprisoned Christian workers have mentation of human rights and more expressly as a matter of been arrested and fined for gathering to pray for the release of religious freedom. The discussion of individual rights was prisoners. transmuted into a question of collective rights with the objec- In Romania restrictions on trained pastors are such that tive of implementing new social structures, and criticism was some Baptist clergy serve a dozen churches; not only printing concentrated more on the deficiencies of the Western democra- of religious literature, but even its duplication by typewriter, is cies than on repression-laden totalitarian lands. Clearly, not all impeded. Recently three hundred Baptists had to place them- politico-economic criticism that rises from religious conviction selves between their local church and bulldozers to keep city should be taken uncritically as an authentic expression of reli- officials in Iasi from leveling it. After the church had been gious freedom concerns. damaged in a 1977 earthquake, government officials for the My observation is not intended to excuse or to gloss over next five years refused to grant permission for needed repairs human rights violations in dictatorial societies hostile to com- and then tried to demolish it. munism or in democratic societies that need to defend and The right of religious freedom clearly has immense political promote the rights they affirm. Human rights infractions should significance. For it affirms a fundamental sphere of life in be protested wherever they occur; indeed, no earthly paradise which civil government has neither divine authority nor human of fully realized human duties and rights exists anywhere. competence to act. In the last analysis political liberty and The fact that the United States has economic ties to Saudi restraints on government alike rest on the sovereign God who Arabia, military pacts with Turkey, and deep links to Israel in has published His will in conscience and Scripture. Duties to the interest of stabilizing the Near East is no reason for ignor- God are not to be invoked to undermine the state's legitimate ing vital religious liberty concerns in those countries. Most authority, nor are the state's political powers to be deployed Muslim lands provide little or no freedom to change one's either to prohibit or to propagate religion. Not on grounds of religion. In Saudi Arabia and Turkey it is almost impossible to race, color, religion, culture, or political conviction are human establish a church, even for expatriates. In Indonesia, where beings to be deprived of religious liberty or of the other human many Muslims become Christians, the legislature has banned rights it shelters. the works of a Christian author who responds to publications In recent years, social revolutionaries have confused and that distort and attack Christianity. clouded the understanding of religious liberty by invoking it The Israeli Knesset currently is formulating a human rights against government hostility to churchmen who demand swift policy. The proclamation of Israel's independence in 1948 gave and radical political alternatives. Special concern for the assurance that the state of Israel "will guarantee freedom of exploited and oppressed was indeed a hallmark of the biblical religion, conscience, education and culture, will safeguard the prophets; nowhere does the passion for individual worth and Holy Places of all religions, and will loyally uphold the prin- social justice run deeper than in the Judeo-Christian Scriptures. ciples of the United Nations Charter." Unlike Islamic countries

Spring 1984 25 in the Middle East that declare Islam to be the state religion, non-Islamic religion; Jonestown approved mass murder; others Israel does not make Judaism the religion of the state; Israeli found violence as a means of social improvement. There is leaders characterize the state as Jewish only in an ethnic or legitimacy in the requirement that leaders of religious move- national sense. Israel proportions its approval of missionaries ments respect crime laws, that essentially political activity be to the size of their ecclesiastical constituencies and encourages excluded from nontaxable religious ministry, and that churches the displacement of missionary effort by dialogue. The govern- be taxed on business income. When Jonestown became a base ment, in fact, pays a portion of the salaries of Christian and for Marxism it became susceptible to government investigation; Islamic clergy. its murder-suicide of over nine hundred members of Jim Jones's In 1977 the Knesset, after some clamor for anti-missionary Peoples Temple church was evidence that investigation came law, adopted an anti-enticement law with steep penalties for too late. any donor or recipient. The minister of justice, defending the 3. We must earnestly protect the religious freedom of all law on the ground that the Holocaust has precipitated "a natu- who come to our shores, be they Christian, Jewish, Muslim, ral desire to see to it that no people will be lost in the Jewish Buddhist, Hindu, Confucian, or whatever—even while we pas- faith in an undue and unjustified process," denies that its inten- sionately proclaim to all the Gospel of Christ. Religion that tion was to impede "normal educational and philanthropic can perpetuate itself only by depriving others of liberty is not activities." worth having. An evangelical faith is truly strong if and when Ugly, sporadic incidents, mainly touched off by Orthodox it becomes a symbol of freedom of religious belief to those Israelis, who also protest the secular character of the state, who face death because of human rights violations even in this exhibit religious hostility to Christians. Such incidents have twentieth century or who rot in prison because they would live included damage to church properties, destruction of the First in good conscience. Voluntary religion, unaligned with a con- Baptist Church of Jerusalem by arson, and disruption of a fessional state and unsupported by public taxation, has enabled performance of Handel's Messiah, in this case by a Mormon American evangelicals to grow to number fifty-five million and choir. Outbursts by extremists must be distinguished from to help extend Christianity worldwide as the first living faith government policy, but unless they are boldly challenged by with a global presence. We must assure those who come with those who make government policy, that policy is easily weak- other faiths, even those that disallow their adherents to change ened. American Jewish leaders quickly and commendably their religion, that we have nothing to fear from a society in joined Christians in expressing dismay to the Israeli ministry which all are free to worship God as they will, and that we of religion. shall help to preserve for all who come to America the right in I have five brief observations to make on religious liberty good conscience to change their religion if they aspire to do so concerns in an evangelical perspective. or to worship if they so prefer in the tradition of their fathers. I. We must be alert to government encroachment upon "Choose you this day whom you will serve" (Josh. 24:15) is as religious freedom in America. Critical issues include public appropriate and indispensable to evangelical proclamation as school exclusion of a major emphasis of the nation's charter is "you must be born again" (John 3:3). political documents, the supernatural creation of man as a 4. We face a specially opportune moment, I think, for creature divinely endowed with inalienable rights; discrimina- American Jews and evangelical Christians to forge an exem- tion against religious speech in voluntary meetings on public plary alliance that puts principle above propaganda, makes a school campuses; the state's redefinition of the legitimate scope common stand against religious intolerance at home and of church ministry so that religious schools, orphanages, and abroad, and yet fully sustains the freedom to promulgate reli- nursing homes (establishments that churches administered long gious beliefs and to evangelize. European Jews were once great before government did) must comply to government require- believers in the tolerant pluralistic state; America as a pluralistic ments not merely in matters of health and safety but philo- nation has been a land of religious freedom for Jew and Chris- sophically; and, finally, a denigration of meaning and value of tian alike. Instead of silence when Christians misread the vio- human life through legalization of abortion by choice. lence of fanatics as official attempts to eliminate a Christian 2. At the same time religious movements must not misuse presence in Israel, or when Jews brand American evangelistic or exploit public institutions for religious ends. Religious liberty efforts as expressions of anti-Semitism, let us be counted on involves specific responsibilities of the churches and other reli- the side of truth and liberty, knowing that the Messiah at His gious movements not only to society but also to the state. coming judges us all by the light we have had and that in the Church bodies are obliged to keep the civil laws unless the present darkness of civilization freedom of religion is a bright governing regime is notoriously corrupt and itself subverts the beacon of promise. norms of civilized society or unless those laws contravene con- 5. In that same spirit, I also extend a hand to humanists science, in which case dissenters should inform the authorities and others who, even if their alien and contrabiblical philo- and be ready to suffer the consequences rather than to try to sophies seem to many of us unpromising, nonetheless would circumvent them. share in the defense and promotion of authentic human rights The courts properly investigate the sincerity with which in a bleak age of totalitarian tyranny. It is not the role of beliefs are held and the propriety with which they are applied. government to judge between rival systems of metaphysics and In the name of Islamic religion Muslims put to death members to legislate one over others; rather its role is to protect and of their own family if they defect to atheism or convert to a preserve a free course for its constitutional guarantees. •

26 FREE INQUIRY Democracy Without Theology

Paul Kurtz

wish to applaud the Institute on Religion and Democracy There is much in Carl Henry's paper with which I agree. But I 1. for its courageous stand in defense of liberty and democracy question the view he defends that human rights and religious and its forthright criticism of the double standard of the liberty must have a "transcendent" basis, or that God is the National Council of Churches and the World Council of source of human rights. He says that "Biblical theism alone Churches. Unfortunately, there are many churches today that provides adequate intellectual support" and that there is a are quick to castigate Western democracies and their allies for necessary link "between Judeo-Christian faith and human free- their inadequacies (one can agree with some of their indict- dom." Religious liberty, he believes, "shelters all other rights." ments) but are remiss in applying similar criticisms to totali- Dr. Henry is evidently fearful that otherwise no convincing tarian communist countries and so-called liberation movements. case can be made for a doctrine of universal rights. To provide The paradox is that Marxist states have grossly violated a a naturalistic, empirical, or pragmatic justification, he main- wide spectrum of human rights, including religious liberty, but tains, is to render them "postulatory and problematical." they are often immune to criticism by so-called leftists and progressives. Perhaps it should be pointed out that a similar indictment "There is no clear-cut historical case that belief applies to other institutions in democratic societies. Many in democracy and freedom can be justified on humanist organizations are not immune to the double-standard syndrome: They condemn the shortcomings of capitalist coun- biblical grounds or that there is a necessary or tries and reject their foreign policies, but often overlook or logical connnection between the two." excuse all but the most egregious violations of human rights in communist or third world countries. A similar myopic outlook is held by some members of university faculties who are so On the contrary, I wish to suggest that, were we to seek to enamored with left-wing thinking that anti-communism is still base our belief in democratic liberty and human rights on not considered to be intellectually respectable, whereas anti- theological foundations alone, they would be imperiled. My capitalism is freely accepted. argument is as follows: First, there is no clear-cut historical I submit that the basic conflict of our time is not between evidence that belief in democracy and freedom can be justified capitalism and socialism, or atheism and theism, or humanism on biblical grounds or that there is a necessary or logical and Christianity, as some argue today. It is between democracy connection between the two. Biblically based religions— and freedom on the one hand and totalitarianism on the other. Christianity, Judaism, and even Muhammadanism—have The intellectual case for freedom has not yet been adequately coexisted with virtually every form of political order, whether made in this struggle, and it is not at all certain that the demo- it be dictatorship, autocracy, monarchy, oligarchy, or democ- cratic cause will win in the long run. Indeed, if we were to racy, as Father Fortin points out in his paper. Indeed, the count the number of societies in which human rights and liber- Bible supports patriarchy, and the New Testament admonishes ties are respected, they would add up to a minority; and the us to "render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's." All too cause of freedom is usually outvoted today in the United many theologians were historically indifferent—until recent Nations and its agencies. times at least—to the battle for civil and political liberties. To the degree to which world public opinion is important, Pluralistic democracy developed in part as a response to the we need to enunciate and justify the ethic of freedom. It would emergence of competing denominations and sects and also be a grave error in strategy, however, to rest the defense of our because of the development of secular, scientific, and naturalis- democratic values primarily on religious foundations. Religious tic influences. The Bible can be and has been used to support liberty is a vital cornerstone of democracy and human rights, virtually all political and social ideologies. It is surely difficult but I do not believe that it is necessarily the cornerstone or the to find explicit textual bases for democratic freedom. Granted, mainspring of freedom, as many associated with the Institute a key idea of Western religion is the dignity and worth of of Religion and Democracy seem to believe. every human person, but that is an idea central to humanism

Spring 1984 27

abortion, and euthanasia, and there are different economic

Library

conceptions of the ideal society and how to bring it about. It is

lic

b all too simple for us to read God's order into our fondest

Pu hopes and desires. Many fundamentalists read the Bible and

ty n come out strongly for nuclear defense; the Catholic bishops in

Cou the United States read it and support a nuclear freeze, while

Eri the French bishops reach an opposite conclusion.

n To rest the case for belief in democracy on theology is to

lo rest it in the last analysis on faith, and to do so might endanger ffa our constitutional and political system. Religious faith is often Bu not a question of reason or evidence but a function of ethnic

f t background or social heritage. To base the political order on o diverse religious faiths may unleash religious intolerance. Some

tesy r have claimed that democracy is based upon our Judeo-

Cou Christian heritage. To so argue raises many questions. There are only one billion Christians and Jews in the world, more or less. Do we hope to convert others in the world to the Judeo- Christian religion in order to convince them of democracy? Or should we not say, rather, to the Buddhist or Confucian in Asia, or the Hindu Muslim in India or the Middle East, or the nonbeliever elsewhere that a free society has its own merits and that these transcend our religious differences. Surely the history of the religious landscape, even in so- Thomas Jefferson called Judeo-Christian countries, is sullied by bloody confron- as well. The principle is open to many interpretations. tations: the casting of the Christians to the lions; the cruelties The Bible was written by men whose experience was with of the Crusades, inquisitions, and pogroms; the massacre of either monarchical or oligarchical governments or an imposed Protestant Huguenots in France, the Waldenses in Italy, and Roman imperial order; it had little to do with the ideas of an Catholics in Protestant countries; the burning of witches; and open, pluralistic, and free society, which was alien to the Medi- today the battles in Northern Ireland between Protestants and terranean world that they knew. Leaving aside the difficulty of Catholics and in Lebanon between Jews, Muslims, and Chris- locating biblical references to support democracy, the question tians. These events testify to the fact that intense religious can be raised as to whether, from the Fatherhood of God or loyalties can inspire equally intense animosities and hatreds. the doctrine of the Trinity, one can find a basis for a parlia- mentary system, civil liberties, and human rights. Earlier mil- Ill lennia found none; some sought to derive the concept of "the divine right of Kings" from biblical foundations, while others The genius of our Founding Fathers was that our Constitution looked to the Bible for a basis for slavery. Men are all too was framed to avoid the establishment of a religion, and it was prone to read into their sacred texts the political and social predicated on the separation of church and state. It is the use values of their own day. In the twentieth century, fascist Italy, of state powers to enforce a set of religious beliefs that is the Spain, and Portugal were Christian countries; Franco and main danger to liberty. The First Amendment to the Consti- Salazar were devout Catholics, yet they suppressed human tution guarantees the right of religious belief and the right to rights. The same circumstances exist in many Latin American have none it is entirely neutral in this regard. And this made dictatorships today. As a case in point, Rios Montt, former possible the existence of the plurality of beliefs that we have president of Guatemala and a Protestant fundamentalist, main- since enjoyed in our republic. tained that his military government had "divine sanction." Still, some insist that America is basically a Judeo- Although Martin Luther, whose five-hundredth anniver- Christian republic. As I have argued in FREE INQUIRY before, sary has recently been widely celebrated, insisted upon the this is mistaken on historical grounds. We cannot simply trace supremacy of individual conscience in religious matters and our roots to the Puritan religious dissenters of the Massachu- defied the pope, he did not believe in applying the same prin- setts Bay colonies who arrived in 1620 on the Mayflower to ciples to political matters. In politics, he was a conservative, build the "City on the Hill." Why not trace them even further even a reactionary. He defended the role of the secular govern- back to the first Dutch explorers who sailed up the Hudson in ment of his day in God's scheme of things and advocated the 1609 and 1614, or to the Spanish conquerors who settled in duty of civil obedience to its authority and the sinfulness of Florida and in the West a century earlier, or even to the pagan opposition to that authority. Vikings from Iceland, who came in the tenth century and The point is that, from the same theological foundations, settled in Greenland and Newfoundland. No doubt our deepest opposing moral and political systems have been derived. Thus heritage may be traced back to the first settlers who crossed there are radically differing views of sexual morality, marriage, the Bering Straits from Mongolia twenty-five thousand years

28 FREE INQUIRY ago and moved southward to become the indigenous Indians even more basic freedom, of which religious freedom is a part, of North and South America. They did not establish a Judeo- and that is liberty of thought and conscience. To argue that Christian civilization. Nor did the Eskimos of Alaska or the freedom flows from belief in God, as conservative theists now Polynesian Hawaiians, who today are American citizens, nor insist, is highly questionable. Surely the freethinker or dissenter the millions of black Africans, who were not Christians and does not accept this premise. Yet he is entitled to his own were brought here in slave ships against their will. The Anglo- beliefs, however religionists may disagree with them. Saxon Protestant cannot claim that this land was his origi- But also important to a free society is not simply the nally—this is a form of inverted colonial imperialism. Nor can inward domain of thought and conscience, but their outward Catholics or Jews. who came later in large numbers. expression: freedom of speech and of the press, and the right The truth is that America has been open to countless to combine with others in associations, churches, and groups. waves of immigration. It has been the refuge of the dispos- And still beyond these is the entire framework of political sessed from all corners of the globe who sought a land of liberties: free elections, a multiparty system, the legal right of liberty. This includes Protestants. Catholics, and Jews, but opposition, legal due process, and so on. also Muslims. Buddhists, Mormons, dissenters, atheists, agnostics, and humanists. No doubt the strongest influences have been the Christian and Judaic, yet even today only 60 percent of Americans are formally identified with religious denominations or sects, and millions of these are nominal, indifferent, or unchurched. In any case, in the United States today the equal right of different religious, ethnic, and racial groups to exist is guaranteed under the law, and the legal framework under which we have pursued our political existence is protected by the Consti- tution and the Bill of Rights. This was established in the late eighteenth century. not in 1620. more specifically in 1789, when the Constitution was ratified by the states, and has continued ever since as the various amendments have been adopted and interpreted as the law of the land. Although many of the Founding Fathers were Christians, a considerable number were deists and freethinkers. James Madison. a principal author of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, said that it was "the equal right of every citizen to the free exercise of his religion according to the dictates of conscience." He explicitly argued: "Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity in exclusion of all other sects may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christianity in exclusion of all other sects?" Freedom of conscience also applied to nonbelievers: "While we assert for ourselves a freedom to embrace, to profess and to observe the religion which we believe to be of divine origin, we cannot deny any equal freedom to those whose minds have not yet yielded to the evidence which has convinced us."

Religious liberty is an essential right: to worship, or not, the Madison Memorial Committee God of one's choice in the way one chooses.* But it is not the to Meet only right guaranteed by the Constitution and the political The James Madison Memorial Committee, which system that we have evolved. Equally vital are other liberties: was inaugurated by FREE INQUIRY at its "Religion scientific, philosophical, moral, artistic, and political. Censors in American Politics" conference in March 1983. have sought to suppress ideas, theories, and values that they will meet in Washington, D.C., on March 16, 1984. find strange. distasteful, or threatening. There is, I submit, an for a special reception at the Smithsonian Institu- *Religious liberty. I might add. in response to the articles by Rita tion. The gathering will commemorate the birthday Sean and Lowell Streiker that appear earlier in this issue. should he of the fourth president of the United States, the respected. The right of free conscience is inalienable. But religious liberty does not and should not extend to the right of parents to neglect the health principal author of the Constitution and the Bill of of or endanger the lives of their children. Here. the community has an Rights. obligation to protect innocent minors.

Spring 1984 29 I think that we need to roundly criticize those atheistic genuine democratic reform where we can though this may be a societies and secular gulags of the human spirit that have com- slow process in some countries whose traditions are different promised religious liberty, freedom of thought and conscience from ours. whether scientific, philosophic, moral, or artistic and have Totalitarian communism needs to be opposed by all who denied political and civil liberties. For religious bodies to con- believe in the values of democracy. Fundamentalists and evan- done this in Marxist countries is inexcusable. In one sense, it is gelicals should ally themselves with democratic secularists and Marxist dictatorships that have most violated the principle of humanists —1 welcome Carl Henry's support on this- to defend separation of church and state; for they view ideology as their freedom and democracy. In shouldering this burden we need monopoly and they have established in essence a state church, to seek common ground among ourselves. But I reiterate that namely, the Party, with which they seek to indoctrinate and we endanger our cause by insisting that the contest between impose their dogmas on all others. Dissident views are not the forces of good and evil in the world is basically a religious allowed public expression. There is little or no room for one, as President Reagan implied in his famous Orlando, pluralism in belief and values. Florida, speech before the National Association of Evangelicals last year, or that what is at stake is a kind of holy crusade. "The test of democracy is in its fruits, what it If we were to rest our defense of democracy primarily on theological foundations, would we first have to convert or accomplishes for the ordinary person, and this persuade the whole of mankind to a specific theological view- rests upon the freely given consent of the point? What an insuperable task this would be. No one has yet governed." succeeded in creating a universal religion. Moreover, it is not at all certain that some religious movements and churches would not seek an accommodation with totalitarian rulers if Although in no sense can they be equated I am appre- they were guaranteed a privileged status. The National and hensive that certain so-called right-wing religious forces in our World Council of Churches have been prone to seduction society will seek to suppress dissident views in religion and by anti-democratic left-wing causes. But an equal danger morality. Today they attack secular humanists, and they seek today---perhaps more ominious—is the rapid shift of the to obtrude their own theological-moral vision of the universe Roman Catholic church leftward. Historically, the church has on everyone: A "moral majority" can become a major tyranny. allied itself with oligarchical and authoritarian social and poli- There is an authoritarian stamp to their outlook: their convic- tical institutions. Earlier in this century, the Vatican framed a tion that they alone have a corner on absolute truth and virtue Concordat with Mussolini. Today is there some possibility, no and all others are morally pernicious and wicked. For the longer beyond the range of imagination, that Rome and War- secular humanist, the first principle is free inquiry—the free saw, or Rome and Havana, or even Rome and Moscow, might mind, the free person—and the second, moral growth and reach a modus vivendi? In Italy the Christian Democratic Party development; yet humanists have suffered the slings of calumny and the Communist Party are nearly neck and neck in popular at the hands of religionists who think they have betrayed support. and in France and Spain the communist parties have America. I personally share their belief in a strong national considerable popular support. How shrewd it would be for the defense and their critique of communism, but I wonder at communist leaders to seek an agreement with powerful reli- times if many conservative religionists genuinely believe in a gious figures, all in the name of peace and social justice. It is free society as the cornerstone of our way of life; not simply clear that the communists have not been able to extinguish economic freedom, but liberty of thought and conscience and religious belief in Poland and Eastern Europe. What if they its public expression. The definition of a pluralistic society should decide to ally themselves with the churches by cooper- means the tolerance of a diversity of belief and values, as John ating rather than opposing them? Would some of the churches Stuart Mill pointed out. The contrary implies an authoritarian agree to go along and abandon the battle for democracy? and closed society. However, the major threat that democracy faces today is V the growth of totalitarian dictatorships. Although authoritarian societies are highly restricted they may at least allow some The question arises: How can we secure commitment to human room for individual freedom and diversity. They do not totally rights and liberties if we dispute their foundations? Many honest suppress liberty. Totalitarian societies are far more dangerous democrats no doubt are convinced that these principles require than authoritarian ones; one may at times support the latter in a Judeo-Christian basis. I submit that we need not reach a order to defend democracy against the former. Those who consensus about the philosophical and or metaphysical condoned the rape of Indochina and now do the same in El grounds of human rights, but that we should allow for a diver- Salvador or Nicaragua fail to understand this. Totalitarianism sity of validations. To demand a theological foundation is permits no dissent; at least authoritarian or quasi-democratic unnecessary in the American system of separation of church societies leave open the possibility of the development of demo- and state, perhaps even alien to it. Let each person justify cratic institutions. Witness the remarkable democratic changes democracy as he will. Perhaps he wishes to derive it from his that have occurred in Portugal and Spain in recent years and belief in God. If that inspires him, well be it. Or perhaps, along may be beginning in Argentina today. We need to support with the deists, he grounds it in the natural law or some doc-

30 FREE INQUIRY trine of natural rights, if that convinces him. There have been serious epistemological objections raised about an appeal to "The civic virtues of democracy transcend our "self-evidence." Some have sought to ground democracy in a belief in the religious or theological commitments. And inevitability of human progress, thinking that the development they have their own rationale. They are justi- of freedom is part of the course of history. Others may object fied in the practice of living and working to this as an unverifiable assertion. The point is that there is an epistemological debate, and perhaps it is wise not to seek to together with others in the community." rest the case for democracy on such questionable or arguable grounds. Thus, our foundations may and do vary. Does this mean that we can't justify the democratic way of life? On the contrary, the test of democracy, I would suggest, is in its fruits succeed in feeding the hungry or eliminating pestilence or and in what it accomplishes for the ordinary person, and this illiteracy. But there is no reason why democratic societies can- rests upon the freely given consent of the governed. It is the not identify social problems and help to find long-term solu- observable consequences of the democratic way that best pro- tions. vide our evidential vindication. Any justification in the last Fifth, the merits of a free society, as Mill pointed out, are analysis. as humanist philosopher Sidney Hook has argued, that it leaves room for cultural diversity and uniqueness, and it should be pragmatic and empirical, not ideological or theologi- allows individuality, creativity, and genius to emerge. And this cal. There are abundant considerations that we may appeal to best enables us to solve our problems. in order to support our belief in democracy. Sixth, because honest men often disagree, we have estab- First, a free democratic society entails fewer risks than a lished certain rules of the game. Basic to our idea of freedom is closed one. There is apt to be less cruelty. duplicity, and terror tolerance. No one man or group can claim to be infallible or if there is a free press, if there is the right to criticize and to to have a monopoly on truth or virtue. A free society allows a dissent from or disapprove of the policies of the government wide range of religious. philosophical, scientific, moral, and and of its political leaders. political points of view to contend in the free marketplace of Second, power tends to corrupt. No ruling group can be ideas. It recognizes that truth is often the product of the free taken as infallible. To entrust political and economic power in give and take of conflicting opinions. Working together, the hands of a small elite is thus dangerous. To attempt to sharing some dreams and values, and differing on others, we sanctify the ideological, theological, philosophical, or moral can see the merits of the free society. We can appreciate its viewpoint of a self-appointed elite and to define this as the utility, both instrumentally for what it leads to. and intrinsically official doctrine is to narrow the options within a society. for its own sake. Third. most people. when given the chance, will prefer This implies that democracy is rooted in certain civic vir- their own liberty and resist terror and fear. Personal freedoms tues that need to be cultivated: respect for the rights of others, are cherished. They do not need an ultimate justification: Indi- the spirit of compromise, and the willingness to negotiate dif- viduals want to choose their careers and professions, to marry ferences. In so far as we learn to appreciate the views of others, and raise their children as they see fit, to practice their religion their conceptions of reality and of values, we may enlarge our or not, to read, hear, and see what they want, to be able to own ability to discover wider dimensions of truth, beauty, and travel freely. Why do these liberties need "foundations"? It is virtue. The civic virtues of democracy transcend our religious true that there is always the enticement of those who promise or theological commitments. And they have their own rationale. a better tomorrow and ask us to entrust our destiny to charis- They are justified in the practice of living and working together matic leaders or political parties. There is always the possi- with others in the community. They need not be grounded in bility that some will choose to abandon freedom and respon- theology or ideology, only in the hearts and minds of men and sibility and barter their autonomy to authoritarian prophets or women who live in a free, open, and democratic society, and totalitarian leaders. That is why we always need to be alert to enjoy its benefits, recognize its value, and cherish its moral the dangers of those who are willing to escape from freedom. worth. Fourth, those free societies in which human rights are Accordingly. 1 think that it is a serious mistake to root respected are more likely to enjoy a higher standard of living. Western forms of political democracy and the ideals of liberty There is less likelihood that widespread poverty, disease, or that it expresses on any religious grounds or to insist that we cultural deprivation will go unchallenged or uncorrected. This do so. Those of us who are committed to the idea of America is true of most of the Western democracies. It is not true of a should especially resist this oversimplification. America is large country like India. which came under British influence and and bountiful enough to accommodate both the believer and is quasi-democratic. There are no doubt other factors, including the nonbeliever and the theist and secularist who, in sharing cultural attitudes and traditions, that are essential for economic the fruits of a free society, are willing to work cooperatively to well-being. But, by and large, there is some correlation between defend it against those who would deny or destroy it. The freedom and incentive, on the one hand, and affluence, on the precious experiment that is ours needs all partisans who, while other. It is true that totalitarian societies offer immediate reme- recognizing their differences, are willing to work together in dies for age-old social illnesses. And they may temporarily unison and in their commitment to freedom. •

Spring 1984 31 Is Liberal Democracy Really Christian?

Ernest Fortin

he complex problem of the relationship between Chris- The scheme was a clever one and all the more so as it was Ttianity and civil society has not been solved but only fur- no longer necessary to acquire any of the moral or Christian ther complicated by the rise of modern liberal democracy and virtues in order to reap their benefits. Justice played no role its more recent competitor, socialist democracy or democratic whatever in it and, contrary to what is sometimes asserted, socialism. There are good reasons for preferring democracy to occupied no place in the literature on it. It is interesting to other possible and possibly legitimate regimes, and I doubt note that the references to John Locke under the heading of whether, in our Western countries at least, a plausible case "Justice" in Mortimer Adler's SI•niopicon have nothing to do could be made for any alternative form of governance. This is with that virtue and were inserted along with the others on the not to say that democracy as we know it is self-evidently Chris- misleading assumption that a writer of such preeminent stature tian or more Christian than its now discarded predecessors. If had to have a theory of justice. (I am told by persons close to anything, the opposite would seem to be true. the project that the graduate assistant initially charged with The widely held view that democracy was summoned into supplying the mandatory references was fired when she failed existence or decisively shaped by Christianity is of relatively to come up with any.) The "spirit of capitalism." as it was later recent vintage and is open to serious question. From the first, called, would more than compensate for the loss of virtue by liberal democracy was marked by a latent but profound hosti- providing material blessings far in excess of anything that had lity to the Christian faith. Its earliest and perhaps still greatest previously been thought possible or even desirable. The greatest theorists did not draw their inspiration from the works of their benefactors of humanity, the true heroes of the coming age, Christian mentors, for which they had little use even if they were not the dedicated parish priests or the saintly Christians occasionally quoted from them, and they knew better than to toiling selflessly for the benefit of others, but the new captains try to ground their principles in the religious tradition, which of commerce and industry, who by enriching themselves would offered little support for them. One probes their theory of enrich everyone else as well. As Locke wrote, day-laborers in society in vain for anything that cannot be explained without England would henceforth enjoy a standard of living that was recourse to that tradition. Even the notion of the state of denied to kings elsewhere and ten acres of well-tilled land in nature, for all its theological antecedents, is more of a denial Devonshire would yield more than a thousand acres in the than an adaptation of the biblical teaching. The state to which wild and uncultivated wastes of America. it refers was meant to replace the Garden of Eden and reflects Nor was this all, for in the process humanity would at a totally different understanding of the origins of human life. long last be rid of the scourges of war and religious fanaticism. It is not an ideal state to which one aspires to return but a The trick was to divert everyone's energies into more productive state of utter misery from which one seeks to escape. Human channels. People who were busy making money might take the beginnings were not perfect but harsh and threatening. One duties of religion less seriously, but by the same token they had no choice but to leave them as far behind as possible. This were less apt to go off on crusades. could best be done, not by invoking divine grace, but by This being the case, it is hardly surprising that for ever so entering into a civil society, a society founded on the desire for long— centuries in fact liberal democracy was viewed with self-preservation, which no one is likely to forget under any suspicion and only grudgingly accepted. if accepted at all, by circumstances, rather than on principles of justice and morality, thoughtful Christians. As far as 1 know, the first attempts to which people are too often tempted to disregard when they effect a reconciliation between modern democracy and Chris- come into conflict with their private interests. tianity date back to the early years of the nineteenth century

32 FREE INQUIRY and form part of the different outlook on religion that was tions: they are expressions of the will of a personal and loving typical of the writers of that generation. Christianity, which God who expects- nay, demands -the same kind of response throughout most of the eighteenth century had been blamed from his creatures. for the evils of contemporary society, was suddenly hailed as The only maxim proper to the Gospel that might be con- the source of all that was supposed to be good in it, science strued as a principle of justice is the Golden Rule: Do unto and democracy included. The modern world was indebted to it others as you would have them do unto you. This is as good a for everything— le monde moderne lui doit tout, as Chateau- rule of thumb as any' when in doubt, place yourself on the briand proudly announced in the Introduction to the first part receiving end of the action but it does not specify any content of the Genius of Christianity, one of the most influential books and has about as much practical value as the recommendation of the century and the fountainhead of so many of the ideas to be "as sweet as pie" in our dealings with others. Besides, it is later to be expounded with all sorts of new twists by de not without its ambiguity, as Augustine was careful to point Tocqueville, Nietzsche, and countless others who likewise came out. Suppose that I am in love with your wife and you are in to the conclusion that the origins of modern political and love with mine. Does that mean that a swap is permissible as scientific thought were to be sought in the ancient or the medie- long as we both consent to it? The old bishop hardly thought val Christian tradition. (I shall not mention Hegel, who restated so. the problem with a philosophical depth to which Chateaubriand could not and did not aspire.) Far from opposing Christianity "If the history of the Western tradition demon- and modernity, it became fashionable to proclaim their fundamental agreement and stress the links that bound them to- strates anything, it is the utter futility of any gether. and all attempts to derive a coherent political The fly in the ointment is that, quite apart from the ques- doctrine from the pages of the New Testament tion of historical accuracy, the new argument was a pure and simple inversion of the old one. It pulled the bag inside out, so alone." to speak, but did nothing to alter the terms in which the problem was posed. Accordingly, its leading proponents were If the history of the Western tradition demonstrates any- largely unaware of the extent to which they adopted the per- thing, it is the utter futility of any and all attempts to derive a spective of their erstwhile adversaries. They, too, had come to coherent political doctrine from the pages of the New Testa- look upon Christianity as a political or cultural phenomenon, ment alone. Any such attempt is bound to end in madness for and they proceeded to defend it on those grounds. In retrospect, the simple reason that there is no way of harmonizing the their account of it is barely more than a mirror image of the conflicting aspirations to which the love enjoined upon us is one they rejected. At no point does one sense that a real likely to give rise. One can read the New Testament and decide breakthrough had occurred and that the issue had been raised to go into the wilderness, as Antony did, or set out to conquer to a level on which it could be, if not completely settled, at the world for Christ, as Don Quixote and the Spaniards whose least more profitably debated. The basic question, which was spirit he embodied tried to do. The early Christian writers rarely addressed, is whether one does full justice to the knew this only too well, and that is why they turned either to Christian faith by politicizing it, secularizing it, or reducing it the Hebrew Scriptures or to Greek philosophy for the practical to a moralism and a culturalism that are foreign to its native guidance that the Gospel failed to provide. impulse. In brief, Christian agapism is neutral in regard to all legiti- Christianity may be politically useful in some ways and mate regimes and gives as little or as much encouragement to politically dangerous in others, but the least that can be said is any one of them as it does to the others. None of its teachings that it was not originally conceived as a political religion. How- translates directly into a program of political action that would ever valuable it may be as a complement to the political life, automatically bear its stamp of approval. To put it bluntly, the Christianity does not offer itself as a replacement for it or as a God of the New Testament is not a very political animal. He prescription for its improvement. Anyone who reads the New does not vouch for the worth or the success of our little schemes Testament attentively soon discovers that it has virtually noth- but is apparently willing to let us try our hand at any number ing to say about the organization of civil society, its proper of them and decide, on the basis of reflection and experience, functioning, or the manner in which power ought to be distrib- which one is best suited to the needs of the hour, which may uted. It does not tell us who should rule, which is the political be more pressing than ever, or to the possibilities of the hour, question par excellence, but only hoer, in general, human which may be more limited than ever. beings, whether rulers or subjects, should conduct themselves, The only way to determine whether a particular regime is which is something else altogether. The New Testament's guid- acceptable from a Christian point of view is to examine its ing theme is not justice but love, and love as a political principle goals and see to what degree they are compatible with those of is at best a pretty fuzzy concept. Neither does it promulgate the New Testament. This is not an easy task for a variety of any universal laws to which we could appeal in order to solve reasons, not the least important of which is that liberal democ- our problems. The commandments that it issues are not laws racy is far from being as clear as it once was (and as its of nature, possessing an intrinsic intelligibility that would give opponents still are) about its aims and purposes. The ones us. an inkling of how they might be applied to concrete situa- with which it is most commonly associated are freedom on the

Spring 1984 33 one hand and the relief of man's estate on the other. While one versa. should be grateful for both of these precious commodities, one Differently stated, the New Testament is more preoccupied cannot help feeling uneasy about the uses to which they are with what happens to the perpetrator of an unjust or unkind being put. There are some prominent people. John Paul II deed than with the plight of his victim. The nuance, and it may among them, who think that the Western democracies are in be more than just a nuance, is not insignificant. Nobody in our danger of being devoured by their consumerism (if that meta- time has understood this better than the great Hercule Poirot, phor is not too offensive) and who rightly wonder whether the who, when asked whether he did not think that some people spiritual interests of the human race are always best served by "ought" to be murdered, had the good sense to reply: "Quite the type of regime that is most conducive to the production of possibly. madam, but you do not comprehend. It is not the wealth and material goods. victim who concerns me so much; it is the effect on the charac- As for our much vaunted freedom, it seems to have ter of the slayer." For better or for worse, the New Testament become practically indistinguishable from a permissive egali- is completely silent on the subject of rights and of what is now tarianism that guarantees everyone the right to think and called "social justice," most often championed by people who choose as he pleases. Democracy has always tolerated and have given little thought to the philosophical implications of even encouraged differences of opinion, but these were for- that popular nineteenth-century notion. This silence is not merly looked upon as an incentive to seek the truth. Today inconsistent with the rest of its teaching. If the poor are really they are interpreted as a sign of the futility of that quest. The closer to God, 1 suppose one should think twice before robbing new wisdom is that there is no wisdom. Since all absolutes are them of their poverty. That does not mean they should be left ruled out, only freedom is left absolute freedom, of course. to starve. As the main character in a recent play said so well, in defense Problems of a different and less specifically religious nature of suicide no less: Personal choice is the only thing one owns. come to the fore when we turn our attention to some of the The obvious objection to this critique is that liberal other difficulties inherent in liberal democracy. The prospect democracy has acquired a new radiance over the years and of a large group of reasonable beings freely subjecting them- that, whatever one may think of its tainted origins, its decency selves to the rule of law is attractive in many ways and has and moral integrity are now amply attested to by its dedication about it an air of universality that renders it particularly to the cause of human rights. This alone would suffice to appealing to Christians. Like Christianity, liberal democracy invest it with a religious aura of sorts and recommend its takes the whole world as its stage. but it sees that world in the endorsement by Christians everywhere. The hitch in this case context of production and consumption rather than in the is that the "rights" approach to the problem of justice is not context of love. Whether this narrow and highly unerotic view necessarily the one that best fits the philosophy of the New of life is good enough to satisfy most people is another matter. Testament. The sacred writers might have had some sympathy Human beings do not live by rational calculation alone. for the language of "duties" but the language of "rights" proba- and all recent efforts to temper the harshness of economic bly would not have made much sense to them. Their own society by such misty sentiments as humanity, compassion. emphasis was on what one owes to others rather than on what and philanthropy, or else to embellish it with the aid of such one can claim from them. Odd as it may seem, the Good lofty but artificial notions as culture and aesthetics not to Samaritan was the one who was indebted to the man who had mention the other playthings of a bored and boring bourgeois fallen among thieves for the opportunity to serve him, not vice world-- have been at most only partially successful. Compas- sion is not the same thing as charity and hardly qualifies as a Moving? substitute for it. As its name indicates. it is not a virtue but a passion - more likable than a lot of other passions perhaps. Make sure FREE INQUIRY follows you! but not any less self-regarding. And an art that is as completely r divorced from the rest of life as ours has become will not do the trick, either. Its end result is not a new integration of our Please attach old mailing label here fragmented and disoriented selves but the emergence of the aesthetic state as a state capable of determining one's existential attitude, alongside other possible states, such as the scientific New Address state or the political state. One is merely concerned with bringing about a harmony of the feelings on the basis of which one's sentiment of life and one's view of the world is formed. Name Where that leaves us, nobody knows or even bothers to ask. Culture is taken for granted as a requirement of human prog- Address ress. but the crucial question of the goal of that progress receives no answer. All of this, as Heidegger notes, is still only City State Zip a facade, behind which lurks the metaphysical despair so per- Free i spicaciously unmasked and so powerfully analyzed by P.O. Box 5, Central Park Station • Buffalo, NY 14215 Nietzsche. Little wonder that our society should be dividing more and more of its time between the office or the assembly

34 FREE INQUIRY line and the couch. The scheme is not totally bad as long as do so. Having lived through centuries of sacred kingship, the economists make enough money to pay for our psychiatrist. almost to its undoing, the last thing the Western world needs is but it does leave something to be desired. a few more centuries of sacred democracy. The overall situation is neither reassuring nor particularly If I have insisted so much on the transcendent nature of edifying. Its consequences may be observed on any university the Christian faith, it is only because it is the point that is most campus these days, where, next to a few "idealists" and a few easily misunderstood by contemporary religious and political "cynics," one encounters an ever-growing number of students thinkers. By "transcendent" I do not mean "otherworldly," as whose attitude can only be described as one of indifference or is so often said since Nietzsche, but "apolitical" or, better still, skepticism. My experience is that it is usually among this third "transpolitical." This transpolitical character is precisely what group that the best and most gifted minds are to be found. enables Christianity to become effective in the midst of the Unfortunately, they are seldom given an intellectual fare cap- changing configurations and innumerable contingencies of able of satisfying their natural curiosity and of generating some human existence; it is also, and for the same reason, what clarity about fundamental issues, which happen to be the only makes it impossible to give any final or universally valid answer ones they really care about. The graduate counterparts, to the vexed question of its relationship to the political order. although more sophisticated, do not fare much better. From The churches of America have never been more visible them one can expect to hear all about "values," "lifestyles," than they are at the present moment and have never had a "authenticity," "creativity," "culture," "fulfillment." "conscious- greater opportunity to contribute to the enhancement of the ness raising," and a host of other abstractions by means of spiritual life of the nation. The irony is that they are more which philosophers have been trying for over a century to confused than ever about their own mission and goals. The restore some meaning to human life on the basis of the modern situation is not one that can be remedied overnight, but, if a scientific understanding of the universe. The whole structure is start is to be made anywhere, 1 would venture to say that it is amazingly fragile, as the students themselves soon realize when with our theological schools and seminaries, the prime incu- they are made to see the foundation on which it rests. bators of the political fantasies that are currently being propa- The purpose of these remarks, as you may have guessed, gated under the banner of the Gospel by church leaders, jour- is not to denigrate liberal democracy—enough people are doing nalists, and religious educators on all levels from the highest to that as it is but to suggest that all is not well with it and that the lowest. The task will take at least two generations, for, as Christians ought to be as eager to improve it as they sometimes John Stuart Mill reminded us long ago, the teachers themselves are to praise it. Since the Christian God does not have a have to be trained before they can train others. political platform, let alone a set of recipes for its implementa- One would like to think that the Christian tradition still tion, the burden is on us to devise our own solutions to the has enough strength and vitality to renew itself from within. problems at hand and come up with ways of making them Instead of aping the worst features of modernity, its present- work better. Christianity has made its peace with stranger day spokesmen could take a leaf from that important segment regimes in the past. It would be astonishing if. without for- of the nonreligious academic community that in recent years feiting its identity, it were not able to enter into a marriage of has brought to light the hidden roots of our modern conscious- convenience or, short of that, some kind of liaison with this ness and taught us how the wisdom of the past can he made to one as well. Happily, it does not have to baptize it in order to serve the needs of the present. • Father Fortin's Protestant Politics

Lee Nisbet

ather Fortin's conclusion that Christianity has had little justice but love. and love as a political principle is at best a For no influence on modern liberal democracy, on either a pretty fuzzy concept." Fortin notes that historically "liberal theoretical or a practical level, is correct. He points out that democracy was marked by a latent but profound hostility to the New Testament "has virtually nothing to say about the the Christian faith ... its theorists did not draw their inspira- organizing of civil society. its proper functioning, or the manner tion from the works of their Christian mentors ... they knew in which power ought to be distributed within it." He argues better than to try to ground their principles in the religious further that the "guiding theme" of the New Testament "is not tradition, which offered little support for them . [therefore]

Spring 1984 35

"Christian doctrine can and has been made to to connect this essential Christianity to the "little schemes" of justify divine-right monarchies, fascist dictator- political theory, political arrangements, and especially the actual political struggles of human beings only sullies the purity of its ships, and now communist insurrections—all timeless spiritual message. This reasoning leads to Father For- mortal enemies of liberal democracy." tin's declaration that "Christianity has made peace with stranger regimes in the past. It would be astonishing if, without for- feiting its identity, it were not able to enter into a marriage of "If religion were to give up its pretentious claim convenience or, short of that, some kind of liaison with this to divine sanction for its ideas there would be one ]liberal democracy] as well." Reminiscent of Martin Luther, this Catholic thinker has no need to separate religion from politics. It is reached a very Protestant solution to the relationship of religion the dogmatism that is the problem." to political thought and action! His two-realms idea the realm of the political separate from the religious realm—derives from it is hardly surprising that for ever so long centuries in fact— his concept of essential Christianity being an eternal "some- liberal democracy was viewed with suspicion and only grud- thing" that alone remains unchanged throughout all historical gingly accepted. if accepted at all, by thoughtful Christians." change. Students of philosophy recognize this as the theologized Father Fortin's analysis here is indistinguishable from that version of the time-worn classical doctrine of form, the of humanist thinkers like Sidney Hook and Paul Kurtz. They medieval concept of essence, and the empiricist concept of have long been making the same points and, like Fortin, are substance. These dualistic concepts, the separation of the painfully aware that Christian doctrine can and has been used unchanging "real" from the historical world of change. offer to justify divine-right monarchies, fascist dictatorships. and no solution at all. Thought (or contemplation) cut off from the now. communist insurrections all mortal enemies of liberal world of change is impotent, cut off from effective action. To democracy. save the "purity" of religion by separating it from political and What is profoundly disturbing. however, are some of the social action is to render religion sterile. When Fortin correctly other reasons he gives to separate Christian doctrine from points out that the "churches in America ... are more confused liberal democratic theory and practice. First, his conception of than ever about their mission and goals" he fails to realize liberal democracy is inadequate. He applauds democratic sup- that, ironically. the very dualism that he advocates is a major port of human rights and rule by law, but in Fortin's view, reason for this being so. Intellectual and moral detachment liberal democracy "sees the world in the context of production from the political and social affairs of men may make it seem and consumption . . . land] whether this narrow and highly intellectually respectable to enter into all sorts of "marriage(s) unerotic view of life is good enough to satisfy most people is of convenience" with Nazis, Communists, etc., but all it actually another matter." Fortin's reduction of liberal democracy to signifies is stoic helplessness. The flip side of helplessness is the only economics or consumerism is strawman-making in the urge to dominate, to completely control. This is the other role extreme. This essay is not the place for a discussion of what that Christianity historically played when it sought to incor- democracy is. but 1 would suggest that Father Fortin start porate politics into the absolute certainties of dogma. The reacquainting himself with the writings of the Founding Fathers horrible consequences of this religious totalitarianism are well and work his way up to philosophers of liberal democracy, known. Father Fortin is well aware of the destructive impact such as John Dewey. 1 suggest that there is more than eco- such totalitarianism has had on religion itself. He sees the nomics that separates democracy from a totalitarian regime. Moral Majority on the right and Catholic liberation theology Political freedom and civil rights, deliberate social support of on the left as moves toward the dangerous (for religion) mix of opportunities for individual economic security, individual crea- dogma and politics. His concern is justified. but the impotence tivity and growth. and moral responsibility go far beyond mere of dualism is no solution to the relationship of religion to consumerism. These opportunities for free and informed political and social action. thought and action are essential characteristics of democracy The answer to the "problem" lies in another direction. If which was conceived and is carried out as a way of life. Unfor- religion were to give up its pretentious claim to divine sanction tunately. Father Fortin's banal conception of democracy is for its ideas, there would be no need to separate religion from necessary to accommodate his view of the role and nature of politics. It is the dogmatism in religion that is the problem. Christianity in a modern democratic culture. Moving from dogmatic certitude to a position of dealing with Fortin divorces Christianity from all political systems by the blooming confusions of a complex. changing world in the assigning it a "transpolitical character." He claims that it is same way that we must all deal with these problems--the way precisely this "transpolitical character" that "enables Chris- of inquiry- would provide the intellectual modesty so sadly tianity to be effective in the midst of the changing configura- lacking in traditional religion. Until theologians are willing to tions and innumerable contingencies of human existence." He step down from the divine pedestal and play by democratic believes that there is a pure, essential Christianity that is rules they have open to them only the same two sorry traps- detached from historical time and place but that somehow either contemplative impotence or the very undemocratic urge manages to speak to the supposedly unchanging deeper, to impose upon the rest of us their newest unchanging spiritual needs of people of all times and all places. Any attempt "truth." •

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Spring 1984 37 Biblical Views of Sex Blessing or Handicap?

Jeffrey J. W. Baker

he idea for an essay of this sort came to me while reading ful, religion or science? Now, in a way, that is a foolish ques- Tan article in a sex research journal. It was written by a sex tion, because one must then immediately ask: In what context therapist and dealt with his attempts to help a couple, both is the question framed? And, what are the criteria for cali- Hassidic Jews, to overcome the sexual problems that this brating "power"? Politically, for example, religion is much more extremely orthodox form of Judaism was causing in their mar- powerful than science. Jerry Falwell and the "Right to Lifers" riage. As I read the article. I was suddenly struck by the are far more effective as lobbyists than Garrett Hardin or the realization that, wherever the couple's religious faith's teachings Society for Developmental Biology. Historically, in thirteenth- were mentioned, one could almost have substituted the words century western Europe, religion held virtually all the political paraplegic or cerebral palsy. In other words, in the case of the power: whether or not the average peasant was personally very development of a healthy and natural sexual life together. for religious, there was no way to escape the pervasive power of this couple, their religion was a handicap. the Christian church. If you were epileptic, for example, you I had read before, of course, of reports by sex counselors were given an exorcism by a priest and, when that failed, and therapists that certain kinds of religious training, inflicted burned to death for the good of your eternal soul. A sneeze early in childhood, were the number one cause of sexual dys- meant a devil was trying to escape. a belief to which we still function or pathology. But it was this article that really brought pay homage with our "God bless you's" and "Gezundheits." the message home to me. Yet, also historically, we can say that, whenever religious Now, so as to lay all of my cards on the table from the and scientific "truths" have clashed, science has always proven start, let me state that my own bias is against any sort of victorious. The trial of Galileo in 1633 eventually led to an religious training for children, although I strongly support the intellectual humiliation of the Roman Catholic church, cul- teaching of the history of all the major religious mythologies at minating in the final official admission by Pope John Paul II a much later stage. My personal background is of one who in 1979 that Galileo was right. Later, in 1859, with Charles was raised an Episcopalian, and who, although trained almost Darwin, it was the Protestants' turn to make fools of themselves exclusively in science (biology), has studied extensively the and, regrettably. a few are still doing so. In this sense, then. history and development of Judeo-Christian religious myths. science is far more powerful than religion. Though for personal. ethical reasons 1 have chosen to reject I'd like to suggest, however. that we must not get too Christianity. I understand the position of those who have made carried away with this. With the rise of modern science, espe- an alternative decision and attempt to fight for change from cially in this, the twentieth century, it is true that science and within. the technology it generates pervades the lives of scientists and To begin, we can pose the question: Which is more power- nonscientists alike just as extensively as did the medieval church of the thirteenth century. But it is not true that this science has

Jeffrey J. W. Baker is a lecturer eradicated the influence of cultural and religious myths, even in science and a senior fellow among the highly educated. of the College of Science in To illustrate this, it is interesting to ask an audience the Society at Wesleyan University. question: "How many of you wash your hands after you go to He is a prolific author of educa- the bathroom?" If you do so, you will first notice a pause tional books and articles on sci- before people raise their hands. Despite the fact that each entific subjects. persons knows, intellectually, that everyone urinates and defe- cates (though some Catholics have confessed that they did not

38 FREE INQUIRY believe nuns and priests did so!), the question is interpreted as "How many of you wash your hands after you go to a highly personal one. More important, biologically speaking, the bathroom? ... Biologically speaking, it makes it makes very little sense to wash one's hands after going to the bathroom. With reasonable hygiene, the genitals are among very little sense to wash one's hands after going to the the cleanest areas of the body; it's the hands that are filthy! bathroom. With reasonable hygiene, the genitals are But the idea that one is somehow dirty "down there" conquers among the cleanest areas of the body; it's the hands intellectual convictions- and the basis for that "dirty-down- that are filthy!" there" belief has been, essentially, a religious one. I'd like, further, to suggest that Galileo-like clashes between scientific evidence, as we have seen it in our research and in our practice, knowledge and value systems based upon religious teachings indicates that such precepts about masturbation as are advo- still occur and that it is perhaps not surprising that it is in the cated in the Vatican statement and by some not all Pro- area of sexuality, for centuries (and still today) the biggest testant and Jewish religious communities, have not served to bugaboo of the Christian church, that many of these clashes enhance the quality of human life, but actually to damage it occur. from generation to generation. One example that of self-pleasuring, or "masturbation"—will suffice here. The following is a statement concerning As if to echo these thoughts. in his book Sex and Human this practice put out by a group of sex researchers, therapists, Li%e, Stanford University biologist Eric Pengelley writes: counselors, and educators on behalf of the Sex Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS): When the atmosphere of the formative years equates sex with "Masturbation is a normal, natural, and benign pleasure-giving sin and or insists that the only reason for sexual intercourse is mechanism with which all human beings are endowed ... it is to procreate. the female is likely to become so inhibited sexually an intrinsically innocent and personal act." she may be unable to achieve orgasm. Now contrast that statement, if you will, with the following one concerning masturbation put out the same year (1976) by And later: the Vatican: "Masturbation constitutes a grave moral disorder . .. Masturbation is an intrinsically and seriously disordered The serious damage done by various religious indoctrinations act." to any form of natural sexual behavior seems too obvious to Clearly, those two statements are as diametrically opposed warrant elaboration. The time is past when religions can escape as were the church-approved concept of the earth and human- responsibility for such disasters simply on the grounds that kind at the center of the universe and the scientific view of the their teaching is a religious belief. universe just beginning to emerge in the sixteenth century and universally accepted today. In a speech I heard him give in Boston, William Masters Interestingly, the SIECUS statement quoted first was actu- stated: "Sex and sexuality are a natural and normal part of the ally put out in response to the Vatican statement. This fact development of every human being, from the earliest stages alone is quite significant. For, while historically religion has until death." After a moment's pause, he then went on to state: attacked science whenever its discoveries did not jibe with "Not one of us here will live out our lives in a world that really Christian dogma and, when it had the power, tortured, impri- accepts that as true." Dr. Masters may have been a bit pessi- soned, or executed those who did not recant, for the most mistic, but most certainly that Vatican statement about mastur- part, science ignores religion and quite properly so. Why, then, bation, coming as it did not in the thirteenth century, but late did SIECUS elect not to ignore the Vatican, but strongly and in the twentieth, tends to support him. firmly respond? The answer to that question is found further While I have chosen to deal with masturbation as my one on in their statement. example. there are many others that might have sufficed. The picture of the homosexual man and woman painted by more In our various specialized capacities as sex researchers, educa- than enough empirical evidence, contrasted with that put forth tors, counselors and therapists. we are daily confronted by by many, if not most of our religious denominations, are clearly sexual problems that beset individuals, and that influence their unrecognizable as the same thing. The rampant sexual discrimi- most precious relationships of intimacy. We have seen mar- nation that permeates Judeo-Christian mythology as well, jus- riages saddened and distorted by a sexual dysfunction in one tified theologically but most certainly not scientifically, provides or both members of the couple, difficulties that may have yet another example. These two cases alone are more than existed for years, but that, for the most part, we believe need sufficient to cause concern. never have existed in the first place. Therefore, because our What, then, does this mean to those couples who wish concern and professional skills are exercised on behalf of the their children to have early religious training, yet at the same marital. family. and individual welfare of the Catholics and time grow up with nonhomophobic, nonsexist attitudes as well non-Catholics alike. we must state our conviction that much of this sexual misery can be traced to repressive attitudes about as develop their own sexuality in natural, positive, and healthy sex inflicted in early childhood, often in the name of religion. ways? It constantly amazes me that the same parents who will What has been found especially and widely damaging to later take inordinate amounts of care to protect their children from adult sexual life are guilt and fear about masturbation. The possible physical or bodily harm will, without question, turn

Spring 1984 39 them over to individuals wearing the identifying collar of a In such books one can read that touching oneself for minister or priest or the habit of the nun, where their minds pleasure or thinking "impure thoughts" blackens the soul, may be as raped and abused as might their bodies in other offends Jesus and the blessed virgin, and will result in terribly situations, in both eases leaving sears that may last a lifetime. painful punishment after death. Sex, the child is told, is given What are we to say, for example. to sexist statements such as by God to man for the production of children, and any frustra- the following taken from a once widely used book in Christian tion of that purpose is a grave sin. And so the destructive seeds sex education: of guilt—that negative controlling force—are sown and ger- minate; masturbation is followed by self-hatred and shame. and bigotry against homosexuals, too, finds fertile ground in The husband is the wage earner who works hard in order to which to grow. earn the money that is necessary to support his wife and chil- Now it is only fair to recognize that Christianity has come dren in a fitting way. The wife considers the home her palace a long way in the past four decades and, indeed, one of the and workshop and ordinarily stays at home in order to make Christian sex education books from which I just quoted has. it as beautiful and happy a place for her husband and children as possible. Both of them respect each other and try to get mercifully, gone out of print (though others, equally bad, are along without trouble or disagreement. When any point comes still around). While I myself see little reason to praise Chris- up to be settled, they talk it over quietly. But when the final tianity for this, any more than I would praise a man for decision has to be made, the husband has the highest authority. informing me that he has stopped beating his wife, I do think for St. Paul says: "A husband is head of the wife, just as it must be recognized and affirmed, if only in the spirit of the Christ is head of the Church." (Eph. 5, 23) parables of the lost sheep or prodigal son. This liberalization also means that the phenomenon of "priest shopping," well Or, from another such book that boldly states: known to liberal Catholics after Vatican I1, can and should be applied across the board by parents of whatever religious A woman can become fully a woman only through a man. denomination in selecting the sort of clergy who will instruct their children. By so doing. they will not only be affirming (I suspect it was this latter statement that led to the feminist their own intellectual and ethical integrity—they will also, in bumper sticker reading: "A woman without a man is like a fish the richest and most meaningful sense, be expressing their without a bicycle!") sense of log img care and responsibility to their children. •

Sex and the Bible Sex Gerald Larue and the There is far more sex talk in the Bible than most people realize, and in many ways what the Bible says about sex and human sexuality continues to have a Bible strong influence on our contemporary attitudes. No other ancient document affects our individual and group lives with the direct and subtle force of the Bible. In this book, a distinguished professor of religion aid I:rcw critically examines the ideas about human sexuality found in the Bible, using methods and insights from literary, historical, and cultural studies. Professor Larue analyzes these biblical passages in the context Please send me Sex and the Bible by Gerald Larue. of the belief systems they grew out of, those of the Cloth at $17.95 Paper at $9.95 ancient Near East and the surrounding nations during 1 enclose $ Charge my VISA ❑ or MasterCard D. the period from 1100 B.c.E. to 150 C.E., the years in (Add $2.00 for postage and handling; 50 cents for each addi- which the biblical materials were recorded. He bril- tional copy. New York State residents please add sales tax.) liantly discusses the connection between the biblical Name writings and our present understanding of human sexuality. Address City State Zip "Larue ... surveys everything you wanted to know about sex and the Bible.... This very readable book Account # Exp. ... show[s] how the Bible continues to impinge on Signature our culture." —Phoenix Republic Cloth $17.95 Paper $9.95 PROMETHEUS BOOKS 700 East Amherst Street Buffalo, New York 14215

40 FREE INQUIRY A Naturalistic Basis for Morality

John Kekes

uring the past few hundred years a significant shift has My life will not be bad just because I want the waiter to hurry Doccurred in views of morality. Before the shift, the frame- up with my lunch and he does not. Some wants are important work for morality was the Judeo-Christian tradition. As a and others are not. So, perhaps we can say that if someone result of the shift, the framework is now science. The change is satisfies all his important wants then his life will be good. from a supernatural to a naturalistic context for human values. The difficulty with this statement is that important wants I think that this is progress, and 1 assume a naturalistic outlook. are frequently incompatible. The satisfaction of one involves I mean by that that there is no reason to suppose that anything the frustration of others. Long-term goals can be achieved supernatural exists and, more positively, that the best informa- only if many present ones are left unsatisfied, and long-term tion we have about whatever exists is provided by the various goals often exclude each other. These difficulties can be avoided sciences. by adding the qualification that important wants should be I take it as obvious that just about everyone wants to ranked. Thus we obtain the amendment that if someone satis- have a life that combines moral and nonmoral goods, one in fies the most important of his hierarchically ranked wants then which both humanly and nonhumanly produced benefits are his life is good. maximized and harm minimized. However, this amounts to But this still will not do. One aims to satisfy his wants very little, unless we know what things are good and bad. My because he believes that the result would in some way be an view is that good and bad are connected with the satisfaction improvement over his present condition. As we know, however, of wants. To put it bluntly: I think that if someone wants to he may be mistaken. The marriage, career, or position someone have a good life, he should do what he wants to do, unless seeks may turn out to be a disappointment. The satisfaction of there are convincing reasons against it. Let me now explain the most important wants is compatible with the failure to this claim, beginning with the word wants. have a good life. This shows that, in addition to the satisfaction I use the word quite generally to refer to all the various of important wants, the goodness of a life also depends on the kinds of physiological and psychological promptings to act or ends one pursues. 1 shall call such ends "ideals." And so we to refrain from acting. Needs, drives, motives, decisions, desires, come to the final statement of the requirements of a good life: inclinations, intentions, and the like are all wants. The satisfac- The satisfaction of the most important wants must occur in tion of a want need not involve pleasure. A person may want accordance with correct ideals. to do his duty, commit suicide, impose discipline on himself, I accept this as a recipe for a good life. It sounds simple, or make a sacrifice for someone he loves, and none of these but it is not. The pursuit of a good life is limited by genetic are normally pleasurable. So, by the satisfaction of a want, I and acquired handicaps, by social, legal, and political restric- mean that its object is achieved and not that the person gets a tions, by one's own weakness and fallibility. Much needs to be thrill out of it. He may, of course, but then he may not. The said about these, but I shall concentrate only on one aspect of beneficiary of a satisfied want may be another person. the pursuit of a good life: the choice of ideals. Now, one view is that if someone satisfies all his wants, he One of the main themes in Mark Twain's The Adventures has a good life. To begin with, the goodness of a life cannot of Huckleberry Finn is the relationship between Jim, the run- depend on the satisfaction of all wants, since some are trivial. away slave, and Huck, the young white southern boy. At the beginning of their many adventures together, Huck's attitude John Kekes is professor of philosopha and public polit_• at the State toward Jim is not much different from an affectionate regard University of New York at Albany. He is the author of A Justification for a large friendly dog. When asked, for instance, whether of Rationality and The Nature of Philosophy and is now working on anyone was hurt in an accident, he says "No'm, killed a nigger." a hook on morality. and he finds the response, "Well, it's lucky because sometimes people do get hurt," natural. On the other hand, as they spend

Spring 1984 41 more time together. and Huck hurts Jim's feelings, he apolo- with the morality of their tradition. Of course they can reject gizes, although "It was fifteen minutes before I could work their tradition and its ideals. But nobody starts with a choice myself up to go and humble myself to a nigger." Huck is to accept or reject them, and if someone does come to reject confused: Friendship pulls him one way: his upbringing, of them eventually, it is, short of suicide, for another tradition. which slavery is an essential part, pulls him in the other. He One does not stop being committed to ideals, for the simple does not know it yet, but his ideals are conflicting. Most of the reason that they are the ends toward which human conduct time the conflict does not matter because he and Jim are alone aims. The view that the choice of ideals lies at the foundation and have great fun. But society intrudes, the conflict cannot be of morality and a good life is superficial, because it ignores the ignored, and Huck has to choose. It comes about that Huck fundamental role of tradition and education. must either save Jim or give him up to cruel punishment. He Take Huck, for instance. The mere fact that he finds says: "I was trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever. himself having to choose between friendship and social alle- betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studies a minute. sort of giance shows that he has a prior commitment to both. Huck's holding my breath, and then says to myself: 'All right, then, I'll problem is not to decide which ideal to choose, but to weigh go to hell.' " and Huck chooses friendship and Jim and repu- the hold that the commitments he has already made to his diates his upbringing. ideals have on him. Morality and what he thinks of as a good According to a superficial but popular view, morality con- life entered into his situation long before his choice was made. sists of making such choices as Huck did. He pitted himself So choices cannot be at the foundation of morality and a good against his religion and society. knowingly chose to be damned, life, for what calls for a choice is a prior moral commitment to and committed himself to Jim. whom he now sees as his friend. two incompatible ideals. At the foundation of morality, this superficial view suggests. In the usual course of events, various wants, commitments, there lies a radical choice of ideals. If one chooses well, his life and ideals are mixed, and a person is not aware of all the will be good: otherwise it will not. Freedom and dignity require forces yanking him one way and another. To a very large that one should face this choice without evasion. Thus only do extent, morality involves trying to become aware of the con- we establish both the foundation of morality and a good life. siderations that incline one in different directions and trying to This is romantic nonsense. Almost everybody is a moral sort out one's mixed motives. The moral task facing Huck is agent. and nobody has made such a choice. The fact is that not to choose an ideal but to reflect and come to understand people are born into a tradition and shortly after birth their what reasons he has for the commitments he has already made. moral education begins. By adolescence, they are saturated If someone achieves this understanding. what he ought to do becomes much clearer. My suggestion is that morality and a good life have pri- Free marily to do with understanding oneself. The first moral task is to put one's house in order, to know what one is and what a quarterly one wants to become. Actions follow from one's character. If someone wants to act morally well, he should concentrate on devoted to the ideals of developing a character from which such actions naturally fol- secularism and freedom low. Moral progress is toward a good life, and it consists in improving one's character so as to make action in accordance with one's ideals effortless and spontaneous. rather than a We invite you to subscribe struggle involving grim self-denial and stern discipline. For a 1 year $14.00 morally good person, morality and a good life are identical. 2 years $25.00 o But how can this be achieved? 3 years $32.00 Imagine a composer setting down the score of a symphony. He writes note after note. Each note acquires significance from New ❑ Renew ❑ its place in the symphony. The symphony itself is the public Payment enclosed ❑ Bill me ❑ result of a private creative effort. This effort is a long, imaginative process involving the selection of variations, melodies, and instruments. It is informed by musical tradition, the composer's Name own precepts. his more or less clear conception of what the (print c learl~ 1 finished product should be. practical considerations about Street orchestration, the skill of the musicians, the receptivity of the audience, and so on. The symphony, of course, City State Zip is made up of notes. But it is the symphony. not the notes, that matters. Outside U.S. add 53.00 for surface mail. $8.00 for airmail. A moral action is like a note. The life of a person is the (U.S. funds on U.S. bank). symphony from which the action acquires significance. Like a FREE INQUIRY. Box 5 Central Park Station symphony. a life can be appreciated only by understanding the Buffalo, New York 14215 tradition forming its background, the practical options available to the person living it. and the private world of which the

42 FREE INQUIRY

actions are manifestations. The same actions have vastly dif- of morality. He came to see that, underlying the obvious different moral significance. To concentrate on the action is to ferences between Jim and the white folk he knew, there were miss its significance. more important similarities. The composer can be said to choose each note: No one Huck made moral progress toward a good life because he forces him, and he could always use one rather than another. transformed himself. A kind of friendship that was impossible But to say this is to emphasize the wrong thing. For if the before became possible. This benefited Jim. but it also benefited composing goes well, the choice of notes is dictated by the Huck, for it made his life better. What is true of Huck to some tradition, by the creator's precepts and conception. and by extent is true of morally good people to a great extent. Breadth practical considerations. The emphasis on choice in morality is and depth improve them. They make moral progress by having similarly misleading. Most actions most of the time follow a better life, and they act better toward others because what from the character of the agent. People normally do just the they do follows from what they are. sort of thing they would be expected to do. Choosing an action Of course I have merely scratched the surface of these is rarely and only exceptionally a conscious process of selection. difficult matters. But I hope I have said enough to show that One acts as a matter of course, given the past, his ideals, his morality and living a good life need not be at war with each perception of the situation, and the practical exigencies. This is other and, in wanting one, a reasonable person also wants the why concentration on choice obscures the real texture of moral other. • life. To appreciate that texture one must start with how a person sees the situation in which he is to act. Sensitive perception is the crux of the matter. Good-looking, sturdy files Initially, sensitivity to moral situations depends on the to protect your copies of conventional morality of one's upbringing. Moral education is the inculcation of this sensitivity in a child. It consists in teaching him to make the moral judgments of his tradition in appro- ` a priate circumstances. If he learns that the judgments apply to F~QQ ~ISn himself as well, one phase of his moral education is complete. He is now immersed in the conventional morality of his tradition. Many people stop here, but others go on to acquire moral depth and breadth. Breadth involves understanding that conventional morality is only the form of morality one happens to be born into. What counts as courage, honor, modesty, or generosity in one way of life need not so count in another. Appreciating the endless variations possible in moral judgments is to have breadth of moral understanding. Courage may be physical bravery, the willingness to incur unpopularity, the quiet determination to continue as one has in a world gone mad, opposition to misguided authority, or risking one's well-being for principle. To be alive to these possibilities requires disciplined imagination and intelligence. This discipline is what liberal education should impart and thus better its recipients. Choose either, red, yellow, blue, green or black vinyl Conventional morality will instill habits, and breadth of with gold ornamentation and convenient label- understanding will open up new possibilities. Depth is also holders front and back. needed. Breadth without depth leads to a facile relativism that many social scientists put in the way of moral understanding. Each file holds 20 issues (5 years) of FREE INQUIRY Its purveyors are so impressed by the apparent diversity of S5.95 each, plus $ 1.50 for postage and handling options that they fail to perceive their common ground in a shared humanity. Depth requires the reflective transformation Please send me files in of personal experience from its immediacy. It involves an red yellov, blue green black imaginative identification that can be achieved by sympatheti- I enclose my check or money order for S cally thinking and feeling as one supposes another to do. This is what Huck finally achieved in regard to Jim. He Name Street began by seeing Jim as scarcely different from a nice dog, and State Zip he ended up by seeing him as his friend. This, of course, changed Huck's actions. Abandoning Jim became unthinkable. But Huck's deepening sensitivity changed Huck himself. He came to act differently because he outgrew the conventional Box 5. Central Park Station. Buffalo. NY 1421 5 morality of his upbringing and acquired a deeper understanding

Spring 1984 43 first suggests the notion that Yahweh is a Biblical Criticism universal god. This idea is not really clear in Amos; he never manages a forthrightly monotheistic statement. That honor was reserved for the anonymous writer we now call the Second Isaiah. who lived in the On Miracles second half of the sixth century B.C. and who declared, in Yahweh's name:

Before me there was no god fashioned. nor ever shall be after me. I am the LORD, I myself.... There is no god but me: There is no god other than I. . I am God, there is no other, I am God, and there is no one like me; I reveal the end from the beginning, from ancient times I reveal what is to be. Randel Helms lisa. 43:10; 45:21; 46:101 Monotheism is the next stage in out- lJesu.sl.spoke of miracles: for he felt that But I base this essay not on Voltaire growing the idea of miracles. The Hebrew mart's life was a miracle, and all that man but on the Hebrew prophets and the Book prophets entered a world that was seen as cloth. and he knelt' that this daily Miracle of Ecclesiastes, the originators of ideas yet arbitrary and capricious: the Greek idea of shines as the character ascends. But the word Miracle. as pronounced hr Christian to have their full effect in our tradition and kosnms the orderly, unified processes we churches. gives a false impression: it is one of the most profound works of thought call nature— had not yet been invented in Monster. It i.s not one with the blowing in the ancient world. It requires theological their end of the Mediterranean world. One clover and the falling rain. maturity to outgrow the idea of miracles-- got whatever one's deity decided to give, or a truly adult outlook to accept that the pro- whatever one could wheedle out of that Ralph Waldo Emerson. cesses of the world are sufficient and suffi- deity. And anyone caught between two "Divinity School Address" ciently blessed, that the laws of nature never squabbling deities faced disaster. For exam- have and never will be set aside. ple. according to the Book of First Samuel. s Emerson saw clearly, the concept of Amos began the growth by denying. in a border dispute between Yahweh the god Amiracles denigrates and cheapens the eighth century B.C.. that the population of Israel and Dagon the god of the Phili- reality and is in the end no advantage to migration we now know as the Exodus was stines resulted in the affliction of the inhabi- religion. A miracle is extra-ordinary; in face in any way unique. The Exodus was no tants of Ashdod with painful (and doubtless of such, all else pales and loses blessedness. miracle, he implied, it was merely part of a embarrassing) hemorrhoids (I Sam. 6:1 1). 1 want to trace the origins of the process large-scale movement of Semitic peoples Border disputes and their resolution were in that culminated in Emerson's classic state- during the millennium before his time: the hands of the gods. according to Jeph- ment before the Harvard Divinity School thah, who told the Ammonites in the twelfth in 1838, a process. beginning with the Are not you Israelites like Cushites to me'! century B,c: Hebrew prophets in the eighth century B.c, says the LORD. Did I not bring Israel up that is still fermenting and may someday from Egypt. the Philistines from Caphtor. It is for you to possess whatever Kemosh allow the Judeo-Christian tradition to out- Aramaeans from Kir? (Amos 9:7 NEBI your god gives you: and all that the grow the idea of miracles. LORD our God gave us as we advanced A miracle is an arbitrary interruption, I hese may be the most shocking words in is ours. [Judges 11:241 by a deity, of the ordinary sequences of the Old Testament. Yahweh was no less natural law. a temporary suspension of nor- responsible for the migration of Israel's But Amos. in the eighth century, out- mal processes. As Voltaire long ago pointed implacable enemies, the Philistines. than for grew this idea. It was Yahweh, not Kemosh out, to hope for a miracle is implicitly to the Exodus from Egypt (remember that the (or even Dagon). who gave all the land. argue the nonexistence of God's omniscience hated Philistines had nearly destroyed the And Second Isaiah went further: Yahweh is and omnipotence. implicitly to argue that Hebrew confederacy in the twelfth century the only deity. The Hebrew prophets emp- God was unable to create a world in which B.c ). tied the universe of gods: After Second He does not have to intervene miraculously There are two aspects to Amos's rhe- Isaiah, the gods are no more. One single in order to make things go as He wishes. A torical questions here. One is that the will pervades the cosmos; caprice is stripped proper God would never need a miracle. Exodus was not unique, and thus the from the universe. Yahweh may still be arbi- miraculous tales in the Book of Exodus (the trary. but his arbitrary will is at least one Rande! Helms is associate professor of parting of the Red Sea, the giving of manna. will, not a squabbling babble of wills. English at Arizona State University. He is the promulgation of the Law from Mount The next step was taken by Jeremiah, on the Steering Committee of FREE INQUIRY'S Sinai) are reduced in stature. The other who proposed the shocking concept of Religion and Biblical Criticism Research aspect, and even more theologically impor- natural order. Before Jeremiah's time (in Project. tant, is Amos's perception that Yahweh is the late seventh century B u.), there was no the god of all population migrations. Amos notion of a permanent natural order. Chaos

44 FREE INQUIRY was liable to return at any moment; priests else in the form of the impersonal causal Consider God's handiwork: who can regularly had to sacrifice scores of animals sequences we call "chance." straighten what he has made crooked. and eldest sons in order to coerce the gods This development had to await the When things go well. he glad: but when to preserve the cycles of nature and keep death of Hebrew prophecy as a cultural things go ill, consider this: God has set the chaos dragon at bay. Semitic myth- phenomenon, which happened by 400 is the one alongside the other in such a w in ology taught that the dragon of chaos, Ecclesiastes dates probably from the fourth that no one can find what is to happen named Leviathan (Isa. 27:1) or Rahab (Isa. or third century B.U. and presents the most nest. [Fcc. 7:13-14] 51:9), dwelt in the sea and might return at profound theology in the Old Testament: any time and overwhelm the land: only the One of joy in the face of the weariness of Apparently not even God knows the future: power of a nation's god might hold the life's labors and the utter finality of death. "no one can find out"; in a world in which dragon back. The Hebrews had a share in It is one of the few religious books not to "time and chance govern all" not even God this mythology as part of their creation story tell pious lies: can predict what will happen. Here is a fact of life, says Ecclesiastes: "Man is greatly (Isa. 51:9-10). Second Isaiah alludes to a myth in which Yahweh awoke from sleep. troubled by ignorance of the future: who For a man who is counted among the killed the chaos monster (Rahab), and thus can tell him what it will bring? It is not in living there is hope: remember, a live dog quelled the sea so that dry land could man's power to restrain the wirtd, and no is better than a dead lion. True. the living one has power over the day of death" (Fee. appear. But in other Semitic mythologies, know that they will die; but the dead know 8:7-8). Ecclesiastes knew the grandiose claim the chaos monster was not killed: he was nothing. There are no more rewards for of the prophets to predict the future, and he only imprisoned and could escape if the god them: they are utterly forgotten. For them went to sleep again. The Hebrews outgrew love, hate, ambition. all are over. Never "There is no divine intervention in this notion with the idea of a permanently again will they have any part in what is favor of the good; each person done here under the sun. achieved order made possible by Yahweh's makes part of his own destiny and victory over Rahab. Now Jeremiah gives Go to it then, eat your food and enjoy it, and drink your wine with a cheerful the concept a new kind of language: chance controls the rest." heart: for already God has accepted what knew it had turned out to be a fraud. The you have done. Always he dressed in white basis of his knowledge was a clear-eyed These are the words of the LORD: If I had and never fail to anoint your head. Enjoy understanding of contingency. Nothing can not made my law for day and night nor life with a woman you love all the days of established a fixed order in heaven and your allotted span here under the sun. be foreknown when time and chance govern earth. then I would spurn the descendants empty as they are, for that is your lot all: "For man is a creature of chance, and of Jacob and of my serram David. 1.1er. while you live and labor here under the the beasts are creatures of chance" (Eec. 33:25-26] sun. Whatever task lies to your hand. do 3:19). it with all your might: because in Sheol. But the majesty of Ecclesiastes's vision Of course Jeremiah and this is typical of for which you are bound. there is neither is not just its perception that time and doing nor thinking, neither understanding the Hebrew prophets hacks into his asser- chance govern all, but that the totality of nor wisdom. One more thing I have tion of natural law and fixed order. His the random sequences called "chance" is the observed here under the sun: speed does order of nature: "For everything its season, point is not to assert natural law but to not win the race nor strength the battle. assure Israel that just as surely as day fol- Bread does not belong to the wise. nor and for every activity under heaven its time: lows night (though it need not always, in wealth to the intelligent, nor success to a time to be born and a time to die" (Fee. the old cosmology). Yahweh will never the skillful: time and chance govern all. 3:1-2). Not the local and extraordinary abandon his people. Nonetheless, the asser- IEcc.9:4-121 divine intervention (for there are none of tion of a fixed natural order working these) but the total process itself is miracu- according to a law that is the will of Yahweh This is the wisest paragraph in the entire lous. divinely given, outside our comprehen- is there in Jeremiah. though weak and off- Old Testament; not only does Ecclesiastes sion: "I perceived that God has so ordered handed. Jeremiah never really thought it not tell pious lies about death, it does not it that man should not be able to discover through. although the germ of the profound teach the pious illusion that the divine will what is happening here under the sun" (Eec. idea of a permanently achieved natural order governs the fall of every sparrow. Indeed. 8:17). It is the fact of the orderly sequence already stood in the Hebrew myth of the the Book of Ecclesiastes seems almost deli- itself that should cause religious awe, not death of the chaos monster. berately intended to flout and upend some any breaking of it: Jeremiah probably uttered the verses of the major ideas of the prophets. The sun rises and the sun goes down: hack above about 588 s r, just before Babylon Isaiah had bitterly denounced those it returns to its place and rises there again. fell to the Persians. So by the sixth century who said. "Let us eat and drink; for tomor- The wind blows south, the wind blows Rt., the Hebrew prophets had reached this row we die" (Isa. 22:13). Ecclesiastes forth- north. round and round it goes and point: There are no gods; the universe is rightly commends this very view: ". . .it is returns full circle. All streams run into pervaded by a single will; that will achieves good and proper for a man to eat and drink the sea. yet the sea neser oserfloa s: hack expression in the natural world in the form and enjoy himself in return for his labors to the place I rom which the streams ran of ordered processes. the "fixed order in here under the sun, throughout the brief they return to run again. (Fcc. 1:5-7) heaven and earth." Jeremiah and Isaiah span of life" (Ecc. 5:18). And whereas would have been shocked by the next Second Isaiah feels convinced that Yahweh There are no breaks in the orderly sequence development in Hebrew thought. found in both knows the future and reveals it to men. of things: "Whatever is has been already. the Book of Ecclesiastes--that Yahweh's will Ecclesiastes knows perfectly well that God and whatever is to come has been already, does not govern the world, that natural law does not reveal the future; the world is so and God summons each event back in its works both in human life and everywhere made that anything like this is impossible: turn" (Ecc. 3:15).

Spring 1984 45 This eternal cycle of random but orderly and impersonal sequences is of course what the Greeks called "kosmos." The Hebrews came to the idea later, but in the Book of Ecclesiastes. they transcended ancient thought with a notion that Western theology Humanist Self-Portraits has even yet to digest: The random but orderly sequence by which the universe functions is utterly indifferent to human standards of justice:

I have seen it all_ from a righteous man perishing in his righteousness, to a wicked man grossing old in his wickedness... There is an empty thing found on the earth: when the just man gets what is due to the unjust, and the unjust what is due A Humanist to the just. I maintain that this too is emptiness. So I commend enjoyment. since there is nothing good for a man to do Credo here under the sun but to eat and drink and enjoy himself; this is all that will remain with him to reward his toil throughout the span of life which God grants him here under the sun.... Good man and sinner fare alike. 1Eec. 7:15: 8:14-15: 9:21 Photo by Emanuel Redfield There is no divine intervention in favor of the good: each person makes part of his Matthew Ies Spetter own destiny and chance controls the rest. o affirm life, to hold back the dark, is by a practical ethic that counteracts the This being the case, since God does not T to me the core of the humanist com- desacralization of so many of our social and intervene. we must make our own justice mitment. We emerge from the infinity of political mechanisms. 1 admit that this posi- and happiness within the rather extreme time and space: we find ourselves as unique tion is based upon an axiom: namely, the limitations of this life: persons amidst the fragility of existence: we axiom of the worth of the person. It poses raise our children in an age in which prepa- this expectation: that by the fashion in which Do not be over-righteous and do not be over-wise. Why make yourself a laughing- ration for the mass destruction of uncounted 1 address myself to the dignity and worth of stock? Do not be over-wicked. and do millions has become the supposedly legiti- another person 1 also stimulate moral and not be a fool. Why should you die before mate business of governments—and still we emotional development in myself. We do your time? 1 Eee. 7:16-171 nurture a faith that sanity and reciprocity not live in a vacuum. Ethical growth is as are not beyond human capacity. A humanist natural to each of us as the functioning of Ecclesiastes brought biblical theology to a position is one that insists upon "and yet." our bodies. From it follows our ability to point not reached again until the nineteenth because, without this, despair would lame love, not some vague love of humanity or a century (in Emerson) and not yet fully us and the dark would overwhelm us. universal exclamatory "God loves you" but grasped by the religious even in the twen- As a religious humanist. I believe in rather the promotion, in our day-to-day tieth: The order of nature is random and the spiritual sufficiency of men and women relationships, of that which makes a dif- impersonal. righteousness and justice are who, notwithstanding the tragic in the ference to those with whom we share our human inventions neither favored nor human situation, find enough encourage- work. our smiles, and our tears. rewarded by the order of things: there is, in ment in reciprocal caring to nurture hope. In my concept of humanism, Sartre's other words, no divine intervention. But Whatever our darker side, the quest for homtne engage is not enough. We have seen Ecclesiastes's conclusion in the face of these more humane norms in our families and in our time the ruination that messianistic profound insights is anything but gloomy. our communities—the quality of how we ideologies of a quasi-religious character (fas- Since we make our own joy. then let us pro- actually deal with one another— may _vet cism and bolshevism) have brought upon ceed to make it: "If a man lives for many lead us to a vital fullness of life. the world. Nazis and fascists wanted to years. he should rejoice in all of them" (Ecc. Human beings are not passing symbols. cleanse the world of the so-called inferior 11:8). Their brief time here on earth can be infused races in order to usher in the salvation of a This is a mature theology, rejoicing that purified millennium. Their policies resulted all of life is "the gift of God" (Ecc. 3:13). in the death of more than forty million souls. yet refusing the childish desire of divine Matthew les Spetter is associate professor In the name of proletarian purity. uncounted intervention to change the given. Western at the Peace Studies Institute of Manhattan millions died in Stalin's concentration religion will someday have to come to terms College in weir York and leader of the camps. Even today those offending the with it, and might begin by looking in the Riverdale Society for Ethical Culture. Soviet "friends of the people" are cruelly Bible. • incarcerated in "psychiatric" institutions.

46 FREE INQUIRY FREE INQUIRY is pleased to continue to present statements hr well-known humanists of what humanism means to them. —E n. The Distinctions of Humanism

The Homo Religiosis of a humanist persuasion is not just filled with indignation about this trampling of humanity but makes Richard Kostelanetz a concrete decision to attempt to be effective and militant in building its very opposite. Humanism is immediately concerned with decisive answers to Maybe to speak of the need for a Homo questions that will not wait for the resolution of pu::les and Militans is not too prideful. the settlement of age-old disputes— H.J. Blackham, Humanism Each of us knows evil, but we also know the hope and the fearlessness that (1968). liberates us from stagnation. It requires a restructuring of personal and social life. freedom control Robert Frost wrote: decentralization hierarchy option necessity We dance around in a ring responsibility excuses and suppose ... But the secret sits in the middle autonomy dependency And knows ... skepticism dogmatism inquiry assumption For humanists, that "secret in the middle" universal parochial is revealed through the determination to tolerance obstinacy nourish hope and compassion justified by knowledge innocence labor. We can learn to know and conquer man gods the causes that prevent humane growth. As self-realization obedience we conquer that which warps and distorts, democratic authoritarian we will discover a measure of happiness and choice acceptance will with Camus be "neither victims nor executioners." Our deepest need is not for social individual more explanation. We know that we can fulfillment deprivation organize numbers; we know that with great verification presupposition rationality we can pursue causes that are reasonableness faithfulness utterly irrational. What are needed are social clarification mystification institutions geared to solve problems rather life afterlife than ideology. What is needed is to shelter life and so to counteract cynicism and deception. That will mean fostering a pas- sionate respect for the acts of decency and Intellectual issues so rarely divide into clear contraries; but solidarity that hase moved humankind for- when precise columns of distinctions can be drawn, it is more ward. When we learn not to withhold our- appropriate to graph them than write an exposition. selves—hut to liberate the richness of our emotional and intellectual resources we will build an appetite for life. It is this, in Richard Kostelanetz is a noted critic and author based in New York the end, that saves us from isolation and so City. His hooks include Metamorphosis in the Arts and the Old makes possible partnership, the co- Poetries and the New. humanization that helps to see life as a gift beyond destructive obsessions. I think this is what Isaiah meant when he said, "A man shall be as a hiding place from the wind." •

Spring 1984 47

this resourceful capability, on what Rollo May has called the "courage to create," is the bedrock assumption of any humanism worthy of the name. In its simplest and irre- ducible form it is the commitment to human freedom. But it is no longer the prevailing wisdom of the post-atomic age; the belief in Humane-ism human possibility and responsibility has become an embattled hypothesis. widely viewed as anachronistic (the vestigial appendix of a collapsed liberalism), scientifically disreputable and hopelessly romantic. Other persuasions. grounded in determinism and issuing in pessimism, seem more consistent with the contemporary public mood of spreading disillusion, disbelief, and distrac- tion. Thus the biological determinists. having added the new sociobiology to the old Lorenzian ethology. proclaim more confi- dently than ever that our fate (collective and individual) is written in our genes. The Floyd Matson "Humanism is to be defined he essential quality of humanism, as us the Cartesian divorce of mind and body not by what it is against or Tunderstand it. becomes apparent with (in which the body was found at fault and the addition of a single letter to the word. all the property of value was settled upon `where it is coming from,' but Its real name. if it were not quite so awk- the mind), the exaltation of reason in the by its intentions, its actions, ward sounding, should be "humane-ism." Western world has been matched by the dis- For humanism is either that or it is nothing. trust of emotion. It is time for a reconcilia- and its moral consequences." To be humane, according to my dictionary, tion of the partners: for apart from each is to have or to strive for "what are con- other they are equally dangerous, equally environmental determinists of behaviorism. sidered the best qualities of mankind; kind. capable of running amok. We know well the oldest and most obdurate of foes, con- tender, merciful. etc." Other synonyms given the perils of unchecked passion; we are only tinue to berate whatever is left of the for humane are "cis iliuing, refining. beginning to apprehend, with the approach ancestral values of freedom and dignity and humanising." These simple, old-fashioned of our own fin de siècle, the damage caused to lend their auspices to infamous experi- terms place the accent where it should be by unmoderated reason -with its spurious ments in behavior warping. Sociologists not upon repudiation but upon rehumaniza- posture of "value-neutrality." its deadly enamored of the metaphors of game and tion, not upon the abandonment of faith or logic, and its technological imperative. The drama show us images of the presentation the departure from dogma but upon the further advance of the race will not be of self in everyday life that turn out to be prospective act of human becoming. of the measured by its cranial capacity but by its all presentation and no self. And our unfolding of "the best qualities of mankind." human potential. Intellect alone does not a imaginative literature itself. in the persons Therefore humanism is to be defined not by humanist make; indeed it is more likely of the postmodern novelists and their critical what it is against or "where it is coming nowadays to make a technocrat, a war- entourage. retreat en masse from the harsh from" but by its intentions, its actions. and games strategist. a dealer in final solutions. reality of a world they never made and its moral consequences. And as for those The authentic humanist is not to be identi- invent alternative absurdist worlds closer to who would he humanists, it is "by their fied as one who has a great deal of mind; their hearts' desire. fruits, not their roots, that ye shall know the humanist is one who minds a great deal. Against this intellectual failure of nerve. them." What the dictionary rightly calls the "best this general paralysis of love and will in This rather elementary and pragmatic qualities" of the human being are all of those contemporary culture, humanism may seem approach to the idea of humanism also has qualities of feeling-- or more precisely of a thin reed and a very still, small voice. But the virtue of drawing attention to the heart caring. In a time when we have passed from it has a peculiar advantage in the great of the matter. as distinguished from the the pleasant discussion of alternative futures debate over human nature and destiny: It head. Ever since the revolution of reason in to the unpleasant consideration of no future can call up human spirits from the vasty the seventeenth century. which bequeathed at all. when the fate of the earth has become deep. Because humanism summons what the a dominant concern, the old maxim that dictionary calls the "best qualities of man- Floyd Matson is professor of American once seemed merely sentimental has become kind" rather than lamenting its basest Studies at the University of Hawaii. He is a practical mandate: We must learn to love impulses because it prefers to light a candle the author of The Idea of Man and one another, or die. rather than curse the dark—it will always Without Within: Behaviorism and It is the singular faith of the humanist find a resonant echo in the hearts and minds H umanism. that we are capable of that learning and of those who remain determined to be self- that supreme act of love. The emphasis on determining. •

48 FREE INQUIRY For them, the adherence to timeless and Viewpoints contextless norms takes precedence over the very existence and defense of the traditional values of the United States. Perhaps we Moral Absolutes and Foreign Policy should insist that such individuals register themselves as agents of a supernatural power. The United States does not have a foreign policy, argues Nicholas The second group of inhibitors are Capaldi, because it does not see itself as one sovereign nation among those who subscribe to a futuristic absolute others, existing in a pluralistic context. Instead, it is weighed down by Where the progress of history is taking us. moral absolutes that limit its sphere of action. Both doctrinaire liberals and self-styled Western Marxists belong here. These tele- ological perspectives are exemplified in the convergence thesis. They see a pluralistic political world as a temporary stage, and Nicholas Capaldi they see as well any foreign policy that does not subscribe to the inevitable futuristic per- n order for the United States to have a There arc several perspectives in United spective as Neanderthal. Given this final Icoherent foreign policy, it must first have States culture that inhibit the development timeless space at the end of the historical a foreign policy. This may seem to be a of both a political sense and a pluralistic process and given those individuals who logical truism, but I shall argue that the sense. First and foremost arc those perspec- have miraculously arrived at it ahead of the United States as a culture does not have a tives that deny the existence of the realm of rest of us. we can well understand their lack foreign policy. The nonexistence of a United the political or that assert the preeminence of sympathy for a foreign policy that is States foreign policy is neither a state of of the moral over the political. No doubt rooted both in a respect for the past and in affairs endemic to democracies nor the reflec- the point 1 shall make in this brief context the defense of traditional United States tion of ineptness on the part of any admini- will be deliberately misunderstood and values. We can understand as well their dis- stration or political party or individual. On distorted, but it is a philosophical point that dain for bargaining from a position of the contrary. many individuals and groups must be made. There are those who believe strength. ( hey cannot accept the distinction labor tirelessly to formulate, promote, and in timeless and contextless absolute moral between authoritarian and totalitarian states implement a foreign policy. Rather, the standards, in terms of which everything, since the former are anachronistic by their incapacity to think in terms of a foreign including foreign policy, should be judged. timetable and the latter might just be closer policy reflects deeply entrenched myths and Armed with this perspective, and in the to the futuristic absolute. ideologies that have from the very beginning belief that they personally have direct access Those who adhere to the convergence of our nation's history created almost insu- to these standards, an unimpeachable access thesis believe that technological progress will perable harriers to grasping what a foreign which comes from inside one's conscience. inevitably bring all industrial nations to the policy is. such individuals are able in their own mind sane path and that such progress is invari- In order for a nation to have a foreign to stand outside the United States and to ably followed by spiritual liberation. It is a policy, it must see itself as existing in a judge its actions not as participants who form of optimistic determinism with which pluralistic context, as one sovereign nation have a stake or an alternative view but as we have been plagued since the Enlighten- among others with whom it must inescap- moralists above and beyond the conflict. ment. It leads people to believe that seeing ably interact. The United States must see Who are these emissaries of the moral the film "The Day After" will produce the itself as dealing with those other sovereign absolutes? Certainly many but not all reli- sane effect on the Soviet power structure states, many of whom do not share its views. gious denominations and individuals see that it does within the United States. It is a concerns, or traditions. We must recognize, themselves in this way. Certainly consistent view that cannot recognise the existence of in short, that we are involved in a game pacifists fall into this category. Certainly evil in the world save as a form of ignorance. where others do not share our conception those who maintain that the existence of and it repeatedly excuses the powerful in of how the game does or should operate. life is an absolute to which everything else. the U.S.S.R. by suggesting that. like chil- This requires that we deal with them in a all other values whatsoever, must be subor- dren. they are immature and still suffering way that is different from or not necessarily dinated or sacrificed qualify for inclusion. from earlier hostility and oppression (a the same as the way in which political insti- To tell such groups and individuals that it direct analogue to liberal views on domestic tutions within one nation deal with and is only in a handful of countries like the problems). It is as if some people can play interact with one another. A foreign policy United States where their different and the detached analyst with foreign affairs. requires a sense of politics in a pluralistic sometimes conflicting beliefs are respected What they prescribe is patience and conces- world. and tolerated is to waste one's breath. They sions, not hard bargaining. This is but a do not see themselves as the beneficiaries of short step to unilateral capitulation. the not-so-absolute values of the United Until such time as these timeless inter- .1icholas Capaldi is professor of philosophy States culture and the defense of those nationalist perspectives are exposed and at Queens College of the C'irr University of values against alien cultures. Such groups refuted on an intellectual level, they will .Viii York. His hooks include Clear and and individuals are part of the polite moral continue to inhibit rational and coherent Present Danger, The Art of Deception. and fanaticism that is a historical constituent of foreign policy. While I cannot in this space his forthcoming Out of Order. our culture, except that they do not recog- provide a full-scale refutation, a few com- nize themselves as a part of any culture. ments are in order. The belief in absolutes.

Spring 1984 49 whether they be supernaturally or naturally based (such as those held by social scientists who believe that they know man's ultimate nature or that he has a nature) is not empirically verifiable but mythical. These myths The Vatican Ambassador generate a form of modernist moral fanaticism and their devotees seek to remake the world from that perspective. All of the great atrocities of the modern world have been perpetrated by moral fanatics. not the skeptics. Skeptics only get themselves into trouble. The alternative to a futuristic or timeless monism is a profound acceptance of Edd Doerr pluralism, a pluralism that sees itself as the product of traditions. Since we must con- n .lanuary 10. 1984, Americans Hitler a measure of international respecta- stantly reintegrate our own past with the O learned. from a foreign source, that bility by signing the first treaty with him in present, it is still possible to imagine and President Reagan had established diplomatic 1933. It supported Mussolini's adventures conceive a negotiated integration of different relations with the Vatican. The White House and the German-Italian intrusion into the traditions. But that integration is something reportedly preferred that the Vatican break Spanish Civil War. Its position on birth to be achieved, not something from which the story in order to help deflect domestic control has contributed significantly to over- we can take off. We must begin from where criticism. population and poverty in many countries. we are. The move was not unexpected because It has been justly criticized for not doing I.et us take a homely example. Imagine Congress without notice, hearings, or debate - enough to help Jews and others persecuted a husband and wife wanting to purchase a voted in 1983 to repeal an 1867 law that by the Nazis and for not opposing anti- samovar in the Istanbul bazaar. The mer- barred appropriations for a United States democratic governments in predominantly chant begins the bargaining by asking for legation at the papal headquarters. Catholic countries. (It is interesting to note SI00. and one of the spouses offers $10. Supporters of Vatican relations assert that while the Vatican has sought universal Imagine now that the second spouse suggests that the White House move merely restored diplomatic recognition it has refused to out loud to the first spouse that the samovar relations that existed from 1797 to 1867. recognize the state of Israel.) is really wort h $40. the threshold of nego- But these were first consular and later mini- It is because the Vatican is primarily tiation has now been lifted to the advantage sterial relations of a secular nature with a the headquarters of a church that many of the merchant and beyond what looked real though rather badly governed state, the Americans of all religious persuasions initially fair. Those who force the govern- now defunct Papal States. oppose diplomatic recognition. Our government to prenegotiate with the absolute To regard the Vatican as a state today ment's establishment of such relations vio- norms are like the second spouse who does is to exalt form over substance, to accept a lates both the spirit and the letter of the not recognize the dialectic of the nego- legal fiction. though 106 nations, lacking our First Amendment because it elevates one tiating process. One imagines the merchant constitutional tradition of separation of religion over all others and entangles our keeping his spouse well hidden. We do well church and state, accept that fiction. The government and the Catholic church in each to remember that a negotiation may mean Vatican's 108 acres and population of less other's affairs. Even the "personal presiden- something altogether different to those who than one thousand make it a mere dot on a tial envoy" subterfuge employed by presi- subscribe to a futuristic absolute in which map. even when compared with such micro- dents Roosevelt. Truman. Nixon. Ford. the end justifies the means. states as Andorra or Liechtenstein. It exists Carter. and Reagan violates the church-state And what else might we keep in mind as a "sovereign state" only because Mussolini separation principle. when negotiating with the U.S.S.R.? 1 sug- found it expedient in 1929 to curry favor President Reagan's move supports the gest that the U.S.S.R. is a superpower only with the ostensible leader of 99 percent of present pope's view, expressed in his address so long as it maintains a threatening military Italy's population. to the United Nations in 1979. that Vatican posture. and in no other respect. It cannot The Vatican is important solely because political sovereignty is necessary for "the compete on any other plane. It either it is the headquarters of a large. wealthy. papacy to exercise its mission in full free- destroys or drives out its most creative peo- powerful religious body. The pope is impor- dom. and to be able to deal with any inter- ple. Without an artificial and self-imposed tant not as a head of state but as the leader locutor. whether a government or an inter- state of siege the leaders of the U.S.S.R. of a large. influential church. This is not to national organization. without dependence could never justify to their followers and ignore the fact that the Vatican. even after on other sovereignties." Does Mr. Reagan citizens either their absolute power or their ceasing to be the capital of a real state in belies e that only one church has a mission domestic policies. Ask yourself then what 1870. has been deeply involved in inter- that requires state sovereignty and therefore the Soviet leadership has to gain from nego- national politics as well as the domestic poli- deserves preference over religious bodies that tiating in good faith. Of course those who tics of man countries. The Vatican gave neither need nor want their own sovereign are too holy to negotiate are above this sort states? of thing. Edd Doerr is executive director of Ameri- It is argued that the Vatican is an The United States is a world power. cans for Religious Liberty and a member important "listening post" since it has mem- but until it wakes up to that point and for- of the national American Civil Liberties bers and representatives in most countries mulates a coherent foreign policy. it will Unions Church-State Committee. and can be of use to our government. How- not know how to act like one. • ever, I have yet to see evidence of any useful

50 FREE INQUIRY information the Vatican has sent our govern- Poetry ment that could not have been obtained without diplomatic relations with the Vati- The Shape of Desiring can. Further, those who make the argument imply that the Vatican might withhold from "Yes, why shouldn't I be happy," cried a man in shabby green slumped over coffee in a dark part of town. "Diplomatic recognition of the And so it was. His life was changed. Catholic church violates both The remarkable conversion thus begun, the spirit and the letter of the the street into which he walked First Amendment." brimmed pert and brilliant; men in holes, women in flashing carts,

miraculous dogs leaping at winter, our government information important to the baker man crisp at his clanging trays, our national interest because of a lack of all trades alive to the hour, diplomatic relations. The Vatican was not particularly helpful flushed by subterranean sound. in the recent Grenada affair, although 70 percent of its people are Catholic. The The green man took up the watch dominant church was unable to influence at the corner where all the past flashes. that government toward democratic. How delicate the motion by his new light moderate government and apparently sup- where a girl glides soundlessly by. plied no useful information to Washington that might have contributed to resolving the —David Zucker situation without force. According to a report in Mother Jones in 1983, the Central Intelligence Agency The Photograph supported factions within the Catholic church that promoted the election of John Paul II and has employed operatives to Winter sun sifts white light lobby the Vatican and to spy on liberal touches crayons, dust, papal staff. Diplomatic relations can only crumbs of cheese from last night's meal. further entangle our government with the In this light last year machinery of the largest church in the coun- Thomas composed his photograph. try. liberal Catholics in the United States fear that the muse could lead to govern- My hair, pale against a floor mental interference in the workings of their colored with fingerpaints and clay; church. the children sprawled, their eyes caught In any event, the "upgrading" of rela- by bright sun glare; tions is surely a blunder. It will turn off we smiled and played his game. many non-Catholics while angering many Catholics who will regard the move as a At night winds plunge around this house, cheap trick to buy votes, as was Richard branches break, ice cracks Nixon's reinvention of the "personal presi- in the backyard pool; dential envoy" gimmick in 1970. and on my desk, the photograph Finally, Mr. Reagan's playing of the still lies. Vatican card is another token of his disdain for the First Amendment and church-state Light filters separation, which is of a piece with his in broken strands strong advocacy of federal aid for Catholic over us, and other sectarian schools and constitu- the wrong lens tional amendments to authorise school blurs our images. prayer and outlaw abortion. My children stand apart; The framers of our limited government we all hold hands, wisely divided executive. legislative, and obedient, judicial powers. separated church and state. and devised a Bill of Rights to protect indi- we do not move. vidual liberties. We need an administration —Barbara Amy Jester that respects that arrangement. •

Spring 1984 51 claimed that, at long last, the astronomers Books had laboriously arrived at the same peak of wisdom on which the theologians had been sitting for centuries. Now Paul Davies, professor of theoretical physics at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne and science popu- larizer. repeats the message. Natural the- God and the Physicists ology raises its head every so often, is beaten down, and gets up again for a while. This is a propitious moment: We live at a time when Paul Davies, a British physicist, has recently published a controversial book and a growing number of people have become several articles in science journals on whether the new cosmology of present-day disillusioned with science as well as with physics leaves some room for the creation of the universe "ex nihilo" by God. We traditional religion. Anybody who manages have invited a philosopher and a physicist to review his work and we have given to present science as closer to mysticism than Davies the chance to respond.—ED. to materialism, and religion as intellectually more respectable than humanism, is bound to cash in on that disillusion. Like Jeans and Eddington half a century ago, Davis has two aims in this book. One is to debunk materialism and replace it with a spiritualistic and holistic philosophy God and the New Physics, by Paul Davies evolution. of nature. The other is to show that the (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1983), x + However, natural theology was revived new astronomy points to a supernatural 255 pp. cloth, $16.95. one century later again in Great Britain beginning of the world, and perhaps even when the famous physicist Sir James Jeans to its supernatural end—if God decides that Mario Bunge undertook to prove religion from the new His purpose in creating the world has been physics and astronomy. He was particularly fulfilled. he main thesis of God and the New persuasive in arguing that the new physics TPhysics by Paul Davies is that God's had shown that there is no matter, that all nature can he read off His creation: that the there is left is a system of mathematical " . religion and science are study of nature confirms the monotheistic equations. The creator of the universe was not just different; they are religions and that "science offers a surer path obviously a mathematician. And there was to God than religion" (p. ix). This is of no doubt that creation had taken place. The mutually incompatible. Any course the central tenet of natural theology. present universe had expanded from the attempt to reconcile them is particularly its British variant. It was popu- "primitive atom" postulated by the Belgian lar at the time of Newton and Boyle_ who astronomer Abbot Lamaitre. The famous bound to fail." advocated the study of nature as a way of astronomer Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington knowing God. Natural theology was dis- concurred and added that. because the uni- I o attain his first goal. Davies reheats credited in the eighteenth century by such verse had been created by an intelligent the old semisubjectivistic theses of the philosophers as H ume. Voltaire. and mathematician, we could get to know it a Copenhagen interpretation of quantum Diderot, but it was revived at the beginning priori. i.e., without the help of observation theory. According to this view things do of the nineteenth century. It culminated in or experiments. I remember vividly the not exist by themselves but are the creation the 1830s with the publication of the famous impression that the beautiful popular science of the experimenter. (Leo Rosenfeld. Niels Bridgewater Treatises, written by distin- hooks by Jeans and Eddington made on Bohr's favorite disciple. once put it bluntly: guished geologists and naturalists. Darwin's my adolescent brain. I found them at the "The observer conjures up the quantum theory of evolution by variation and natural same time fascinating and mistaken but, not phenomena.") Davies contributes no new selection killed natural theology. How could knowing any physics. 1 was unable to pin- arguments in favor of that view. which can an intelligent supernatural being have point the mistakes. This is why 1 decided to he shown in technical detail to be utterly designed so many species that had become study theoretical physics: in order to be able untenable. Suffice it here to recall that the extinct'? How could a losing deity hase to refute the natural theology of Jeans and events occurring on a star are far beyond wanted organisms to engage in a ferocious Eddington. as well as the a priori physics of the reach of any experimenter. The latter struggle for life'? The dogma of divine crea- the latter. But by the time 1 graduated in can only record some of the results of such tion was replaced with the theory of 1952 everybody had forgotten them. events. and the theorist can only hope to Hardly anybody remembers nowadays understand them. Mario Bunge is Frothinghanr Professor of the arguments of Jeans and Eddington What is true is that quantum mechanics logic and metaphysics at ¡lie Foundations against materialism and in favor of natural pictures matter differently from the way and Philosophy of Science Unit at McGill theology. However, their ideas have been classical mechanics does. We now know that University in Montreal. He has written independently revived after half a century. the ultimate components of bodies are not nearly three hundred scientific articles and They are found in Science and Creation solid pellets but rather hazy and fieldlike many hooks, including Exploring the World (1974) by the theologian Stanley Jaki and entities- yet these entities are out there, and Understanding the World. in God and the Astronomers (1978) by the whether we observe them or not. Contem- astronomer Robert Jastrow. The latter porary physics has not dematerialized mat-

52 FREE INQUIRY ter. It has only shown that it is far more the universe was "born" when the "fireball" Second, whereas religionists rely on the complex and therefore more interesting than exploded. If it did it would not be a branch authority of a few supposedly illuminated had been thought at the time classical of science, for science abides by the prin- men (seldom women), scientists keep mechanics reigned supreme. (Still, even this ciples that nothing comes out of nothing. checking even the most authoritative infor- is not new, for we have known since about and everything happens according to law, mation and hypotheses. They are critical, 1840 that there are nonmechanical entities, not miracle. not dogmatic. (Surely there are dogmatic namely electromagnetic fields.) In sum, it is simply not true that current scientists, but being dogmatic they betray As for the allegedly holistic nature of astronomy confirms the creation myth. the scientific method.) Finally, whereas the quantum theory, it boils down to the fol- What is true is that the standard hot big goal of religion is personal salvation, that lowing: According to classical physics, if a bang model of the evolution (not creation) of science is to understand the world. system breaks down into two fragments that of the universe is chock-full of speculative There are of course several other dif- fly apart, after a while these components hypotheses, many of which are likely to be ferences between religion and science, but may become so widely separated that they refuted in the coming years. This being so, the ones just noted should suffice to show cease to interact. By contrast, according to it is very imprudent to rest any important that religion and science are not just dif- quantum theory they continue to be con- argument on it. ferent; they are mutually incompatible. stituents of a system even after they have Regrettably. Davies does not discuss the Hence, any attempt to reconcile them is moved far apart from one another. This is nature of science in this book: His only con- bound to fail. If you want to find God, do counterintuitive, but there is nothing holistic, cern is proposing theological interpretations not look for him in science, which gives us let alone mystic, about it. The wholeness in of certain results of scientific research— some an utterly godless image of reality. Indeed, question is inherent in the mathematical of which, as just noted, are only untested not even the most zealous natural theologian formalism of quantum theory, and it has speculations. Therefore not only the com- can exhibit in good faith even one firm been confirmed experimentally, not by monalities, systematic or accidental, between observational or experimental datum in sup- Transcendental Meditation. Systemism, not two fields of thought but also their dif- port of any of the characteristic dogmas of holism, is the victor in this case. (The differences must be examined in any attempt religion. (This is why they are called ference is this: Systemism asserts, whereas to bring them closer together. Since Davies "dogmas" rather than either "data" or holism denies the possibility of under- has not done this job, let us sketch it. Let "hypotheses.") standing wholes or systems with the help of us note some of the differences between sci- The problem today is not to explain conceptual and empirical analysis.) ence and religion. the world in religious terms. This attempt As for Davies's use of the new astro- To begin with, whereas religion and failed centuries ago. The problem is to nomy in support of the theological dogma theology are bodies of belief, science is a explain religion in scientific terms. In parti- that the universe was created by a super- research field. Equivalently, whereas a cular, psychologists and sociologists should natural being, it rests on a peculiar misinter- church is a community of believers in certain explain how religion and science, though at pretation of the so-called standard hot big dogmas, a scientific community is a system odds with one another, can coexist in certain bang model. According to that theory: (a) of investigators intent on making discoveries brains in the midst of the Age of Science The universe was initially concentrated in a and inventions. (Surely theologians may and Technology • comparatively small "fireball" at a tempera- argue endlessly among themselves, but they ture of about one trillion degrees centigrade. do not bow to experience: They only bow (h) The ball exploded about twenty billion ultimately to authority.) Second, scientific years ago, and the universe has been research presupposes a philosophy that is expanding ever since. (e) At the present time perpendicular to religion: It is naturalistic Mendel Sachs matter and radiation are distributed homo- rather than supernaturalistic, so it assumes geneously throughout the universe. (and discovers) laws rather than miracles. he word cosmology is made up of the Hypothesis (a) implies that the universe is Further. the philosophy inherent in scien- Ttwo Greek words cosmos, meaning spatially finite and, together with hypothesis tific research admits only normal modes of "universe," and logos, meaning "reason." (h). that its present radius is about twenty cognition. It rejects paranormal modes such Thus, the science of cosmology is aimed at billion light-years. as revelation. Finally, that philosophy a rational understanding of the substance Davies and other natural theologians embraces the ethos of the free search for of the universe as a whole in a scientific before him have interpreted the initial big truth, rather than that of the staunch defense context. bang as creation out of nothing—which, of of dogma. In recent years, cosmologists and physi- course, could only be the work of a super- There are several further important dif- cists have expressed (allegedly) scientific natural being. However, the standard hot ferences between religion and science. First. opinions on the subject of cosmology that big bang model does not say anything about whereas religions do not presuppose any sci- border on the domain of theology. Of course such creation, much less about a creator. ence, every science except logic presupposes any person who is concerned with ideas of Creation is the wrong word, for all the one or more other sciences. (For example, science is entitled to an opinion based on model assumes is that the universe exploded biology presupposes chemistry, which in subjective, personal feelings. But there are about twenty billion years ago. Moreover turn presupposes physics, which presupposes certain objective notions, according to the the model assumes explicitly that the uni- mathematics.) Consequently, the set of all philosophy of science, that are commonly verse existed prior to that time, although in the sciences is a closely knit (yet changeable) an entirely different state, namely as a "fire- system, every member of which can control Mendel Sachs is professor of physics and ball." Hence it is a gross distortion to hold some other members. (That is. every science astronomy at the State University of ,Aiesr relies on some other science instead of that the new astronomy confirms crea- York at Buffalo. tionism. Astronomy does not assume that relying on authority or on raw experience.)

Spring 1984 53 It is in you. O my mind. that I measure accepted by scholars in defining science. the meanings of plus and equal according time. I do not measure the things them- That is to say. there are generally accepted to a particular logic—it follows that it is selves whose passage produced the definitions and rules regarding science, just analytically true that 2 plus 3 is equal to 5. impress: it is the impress that I measure as there are generally accepted definitions The conclusion cannot be anything other when I measure time. Thus either that is and rules regarding theology. It is my con- than 5. This answer does not have to relate what time is. or l am not measuring time tention that the respective sets of rules and in any way to religious truth (faith) or to at all. definitions of science and theology are the alleged truths of a real, observable world mutually exclusive. It then follows that to (science). St. Augustine then argued that "before" the make theological claims, couched in scien- Scientific truth is contingent on nature matter of the universe existed there was no tific terms, could be misleading to scholars irrespective of our particular probing in sci- time to talk about—just as the wetness of a in both disciplines and could be regressive entific investigations. If we guess at some liquid is a meaningless concept apart from in both fields of intellectual endeavor. underlying hypotheses as axioms of nature. the existence of a liquid (as a material reality A case in point is a recent article by in order to understand a particular pheno- or as an idea). Thus, in St. Augustine's view Paul Davies.' Davies expands his thesis in menon, and then use the rules of deductive of time, per se, one may not say that it is an his new book God and the New Physics. In and mathematical logic to predict some entity "separate from" matter, even though this essay 1 should like to illustrate my con- empirical consequence. and then if experi- it exists simultaneously. tention by discussing several of his claims mentation yields results that agree with the Several centuries after St. Augustine. about cosmology, showing that they are theoretical prediction, it may be said that Moses Maimonides, the theologian and phi- indeed theological rather than scientific. thus. far the original hypotheses are "scien- losopher of the Middle Ages, gave an expli- although they are expressed in the name of tifically true." But this is clearly a provi- cit interpretation of the creation, ex nihilo science. Before commencing. however, it sional truth, subject to refutation as soon as in the sense of time, as a quality of matter. should be helpful to discuss a problem of a single occurrence of nature is not in agree- In his treatise. The Guide for the Perplexed. language that arises wherein the same words ment with the corresponding prediction. he said: are used in theological and scientific con- Thus, scientific truth is only meant in the texts but are based on entirely different con- context of being provisional regarding our ... time is a created and generated thing. cepts. It is partly for this reason that scien- understanding of the natural world, in any ... Hence God's bringing the world into tists and theologians sometimes become of its manifestations. existence does not have a temporal begin- confused when discussing ideas that overlap The proof of an analytic truth is based ning. for time is one of the created things. the two disciplines. An example of a word on the testing of the consistency of given with different meanings in the different fields axioms and their logical consequences. The This new meaning of time, in St. is truth. proof of a scientific truth is based on using Augustine's and Maimonides's view, does the analytical methods and demonstrating not imply that there could not have been a Three Meanings of Truth the correspondence of the alleged truth and First Cause preceding the creation of the facts of nature. But one cannot prove a reli- universe (effect), because "cause must pre- As I see it. there are three kinds of truth gious truth the way that scientific and analy- cede effect" and there was no time preceding that could be distinguished for the purpose tic truths are demonstrated because it is not the effect of the creation because First of this essay: religious truth, analytic truth. defined in their context. Thus, if one does Cause, in the theological view, is not at all and scientific truth. not (or does) have faith in the truth of any defined temporarily. This is because "time" Religious truth is based on faith. A reli- particular system of religious assertions, he per se, is defined in the context of matter gious person claims to know that God exists would deny (or affirm) that there is such a (physics) while "First Cause" is meant only because he has faith in the truth of this thing as a "religious truth" and "religious in the context of theological concepts. For assertion. Or. an atheist claims to know that knowledge." But he cannot prove this denial example, in terms of theologically inherent God does not exist, similarly having faith in (or affirmation) with any scientific method. qualities, First Cause is timeless—there is this negative assertion. In both cases, there since the two types of knowledge are logi- no past, present. or future with regard to it! is no way of providing a "scientific" or cally out of context. Even though the word first does seem to "analytic" proof for these assertions-- they imply a temporal sequence, it is meant in are based on faith. The opposite of this Confusing Scientific with the sense of being fundamental and under- "true" is "false." associated with the knowl- Theological Terms lying, in theological writings. edge of an agnostic he does not know if Another source of confusion in Davies's God exists because he does not have faith Paul Davies confuses theological concepts discussion. coming from current ideas in in any assertions about the existence or lack with scientific concepts. For example. when cosmology. concerns the claim of the crea- of existence of God. Of course there is a he refers to St. Augustine's assertion that tion of matter. ex nihilo, allegedly predicted whole body of other assertions in theology, "the world was made, not in time, but by laws of physics. The physics that is drawn in addition to the one about the existence simultaneously with time." 1 believe that from is a combination of ideas from the of God. that could be considered in terms rather than meaning that time and world quantum and relativity theories. The way of being true or false—but in the context of are separate. though simultaneous. entities. that this speculation was reached is based truth (or falsity) based on faith. St. Augustine meant that time is a mani- on an erroneous understanding of the An analytic truth is a logical conclusion festation of matter, referring to its evolu- underlying ideas of both these theories. that follows from a set of given axioms in tionary feature. In the (necessary) extension of quantum accordance with a set of invented rules. For To demonstrate this interpretation. mechanics to "relativistic quantum field example. in accordance with the rules of recall that in his treatise. The Confessions. theory." it is no longer claimed. as in the arithmetic—the definition of numbers and Book 11, St. Augustine said: earlier physical theories of matter, that the

54 FREE INQUIRY numbers of elementary particles are pre- There is no reason, based on science, sive use of a special sort of probability cal- served in time. This theory in modern to declare the violation of the law of culus, arc tied to the asserted nature of the physics says that there is a finite probability energy-momentum conservation, as would measurement of micromatter by macro- that a particle-antiparticle pair such as an be necessary to believe the speculation that instruments; the solutions of the equations interacting electron-positron- can be created of this theory then relate to the way in which from a vacuum. But the word vacuum in the apparatuses would report the results of this context is not meant as a total absence such measurements, in terms of the words ".... the cosmological claim of matter! The vacuum in quantum field of a statistical language. The philosophical theory is rather what is called a "physical that the creation of the uni- claim (of the Copenhagen school) is the vacuum" a sea (noncountable) of parti- verse in the big bang ... is a positivistic view that this particular sort of cle-antiparticle pairs and radiation, in which probability theory of measurement is all that the matter pairs are continually being trans- matter of creation ex nihilo may ever be said about micromatter- elec- formed into radiation and vice versa. In [that] entails `religious truth' trons, nuclei, mesons, etc. Such a philosophy modern physics, this assumed constant is reflected in the formal expression of quan- background of "observed" matter does based on faith; it does not tum mechanics, such as the homogeneity indeed have physical consequences that are entail `scientific truth.' " and the linearity of its equations. Whatever detectable in terms of properly interpreting the validity of this particular theory of the data of high-energy particle physics micromatter may be, it is certainly out of experimentation. For example. the physical matter is created ex nihilo from a "bubble context to apply it to the theory of the uni- vacuum model implies that the bound elec- of space." As I see it, such speculation is in verse as a whole cosmology or to the tron of an observed atom will polarize this the same category as the assertion of the properties of a star as it collapses to its vacuum in its vicinity that is, the particle- miracle of creation, according to theological maximum density (called a "black hole"). antiparticle pairs in the vicinity of the hound teachings. My statement is not meant so For example, the fundamental dynamical electron will align themselves with the posi- much to disclaim the idea of miracles as it laws of the universe as a whole, or the laws tive particle of the pair pointing toward the is to separate religious knowledge from sci- of the mutual interactions of the matter of negative electron. This "vacuum polariza- entific knowledge. That is, the "truth" of a single star, can he shown (in terms of all tion." in turn, causes a change in the energy the cosmological claim that the creation of of our knowledge at the present stage of level spectrum of the atom, which has been the universe in the big hang was due to the theoretical physics) to relate to inhomoge- seen (in the so-called Iamb shift). creation of particle-antiparticle pairs from neous, nonlinear laws, and they are not laws Another effect of this physical vacuum "bubbles of space" is a matter of creation of measurement by macro-apparatuses on results from its participation in the ex nihilo and, as such, it entails "religious micromatter! Thus, the latter laws do not "creation" of a particle-antiparticle pair. truth" based on faith; it does not entail obey the general rules of a probability Since the rest energy of an electron is on "scientific truth." calculus. the order of 0.5 million electron-volts, On the other hand, cosmology, per se, I believe that the main error made by around 1.0 million electron-volts must he is a science. As such, it deals with the many contemporary cosmologists and astro- supplied in order to create an electron- cause-effect relations, the dynamics, that physicists in this regard is to disregard quan- positron pair, in accordance with the law of underlie the physics of the constituents of tum mechanics as a theory of measurement. conservation of energy. This energy cannot the universe as a whole its galaxies, and then to interpret it as a theory of ele- come from "nothingness," such as a "bubble planets, their formations, etc., and the mentary particles of matter, per se, indepen- of space"! In modern physics, it would be explanation of all observable manifestations dent of measurements, as one would treat said to come from the pairs and radiation in terms of first principles that entail logi- matter in Newton's particle view or in Ein- of the physical vacuum background of the cally self-consistent scientific analyses- that stein's field view. The trouble is that if the observed matter that is supposedly created. is, analyses based on scientific knowledge latter interpretation of the formal expression Thus. the event in physics of "pair- rather than religious knowledge. Thus, I do of quantum mechanics were true, it could creation" entails a transformation from the not see that current cosmological claims not have the mathematical structure it has energy-momentum content of matter and based on the creation of matter. e.v nihilo, (such as homogeneity and linearity of the radiation (that make up the physical are scientific claims, since these speculations basic equations). For one reason, cosmology vacuum) to the matter of the observed pair. do not entail any of the rules and definitions and the science of a star arc taken to be It does not entail the creation of matter e.v that underlie the meaning of "scientific closed .systems at the outset. while the theory nihilo. If the latter was claimed, then the knowledge." This will be explicated further. of measurement of quantum mechanics physicist would have to say that the law of regarding the example in cosmology dis- relates to open systems at the outset. Thus, energy-momentum conservation is violated. cussed above, in the next section. it is out of context and therefore philosoph- But if this would be true, many other impli- ically indefensible in applying ideas of quan- cations in physics would follow, including a Quantum Theory Versus Cosmology tum mechanics to conclude the notion of violation of the theory of relativity itself creation of matter ex nihilo in cosmology, since the laws of conservation in physics are To use the quantum theory in cosmology is as Davies has done. logical consequences of the invariance of to use a theory of measurement expressly the laws of nature (covariance) with respect constructed to represent the (asserted Note to arbitrary continuous shifts of the origin acausal) coupling of a macro-apparatus to of space and time coordinate systems, which micro-matter in the description of the uni- I. Paul Davies. "The Inflationar Universe." is a part of the covariance requirement of verse as a whole! All of the formal features The Sciences, col. 23 no. 2. March April 1983. the theory of relativity. of quantum mechanics, including the exclu- pp. 32-33. •

Spring 1984 55 will, but it is a God who lies behind physical tation. And as for the universe being "spa- reality: he does not cause it in the temporal tially finite." cosmologists have for years sense, for time is part of the natural world. generally supported the "open" (i.e., infinite) Paul Davies Responds Bunge also challenges my account of model on the basis of the astronomical quantum mechanics at a technical level, evidence. Again, an inspection of the litera- although he does not say what is wrong. ture will readily confirm this. save for the comment that it "can be shown Mendel Sachs attacks my thesis from a in technical detail to be utterly untenable." rather different standpoint. Alas, he too ario Bunge's claim that 1 attempt in As my position on quantum physics is the seems to have got the wrong end of the Mmy hook to replace materialism with conventional (Copenhagen) one, suffice it stick. Modern cosmology can°now explain "a spiritualistic and holistic philosophy of to say that the majority of theoretical physi- the origin of matter, brought about by the nature" is somewhat misleading. True. cists have yet to be convinced by Bunge's creation of particles from energy in the big reject materialism and emphasise the impor- claim. His quibble with the use of the word bang. 1 agree entirely, and state explicitly in tance of mind in nature, but not "mind" in holism in connection with two-particle my book, that this is not creation ex nihilo, the old dualistic sense that is usually asso- experiments is surely a matter of semantics. because it requires energy as an input. ciated with the word spirit. I have tried to The point is that the state of a quantum then go on to explain how a recent advance demonstrate how modern developments in particle is not well defined except in the in cosmological theory, known as the infla- physical science expose the inadequacy of context of a specified macroscopic situation. tionary universe scenario, demonstrates how purely reductionist thinking (successful which ultimately means that we have to nongravitational energy is not conversed in though this is for most current problems in specify the state of the universe before we the expanding universe, and how the exis- physics). Increasingly, the "holistic" concepts can sensibly talk about the state of an atom. tence of a negative vacuum pressure brought of information and organization are Quantum physics thus alters the traditional about by quantum field effects causes the attracting the attention of scientists. 1 would Western view of the relationship between universe to "bootstrap" energy into exis- not myself describe my account of "mind" the whole and its parts. However, there is tence. 1 then articulate the currently popular in terms of nonreducible information as nothing terribly new or contentious in this, idea among cosmologists that quantum tun- "spiritualistic." it having been part of conventional quan- neling allows this inherently unstable, self- Second. Bunge's interpretation of my tum physics for a half-century. generating universe to come into existence discussion of cosmology is quite wrong. 1 uncaused. "from nothing." There has been do not attempt to show there was a super- much discussion in recent literature about natural beginning of the world. Quite the "Very recent advances in cos- the meaning of "nothing" in this context. contrary. I take pains to develop the theme mology have raised the possibility but suffice it to say that the "nothingness" that very recent advances in cosmology have of a `self-creating universe' in which involved is nothing so crude as empty space. raised the possibility of a "self-creating uni- Sachs's essential misunderstanding. then, verse" in which the entire physical world of the entire physical world of space, stems from his overlooking the fact that the space. time, and matter come into existence time, and matter come into exis- law of energy conservation is violated. first. spontaneously and uncaused in accordance tence spontaneously and uncaused in quantum physics (via the famous Heisen- with the laws of physics. Indeed. this is a in accordance with the laws of berg uncertainty principle), second, in cos- central theme of the book and merits a mology. when we restrict attention to the special chapter explicitly entitled "Is the physics." nongravitational energy that went to create Universe a Free Lunch?" Because quantum all the matter, heat. and other energy that physics breaks the traditionally perceived When Bunge turns to the subject of the we now see. The first violation permits the link between cause and effect, the nascent big bang he seems to be badly misinformed appearance of an initial "blob" of spacetime subject of quantum cosmology permits the about the standard cosmological model. out of "nothing." the second permits the universe to come into being without prior Professional cosmologists do not suppose "free lunch" of modern parlance. wherein cause. A creator God is not needed. Most the universe was initially concentrated in a the universe spontaneously self-generates all reviewers of my book have picked up this spatially finite "ball" that existed prior to its free energy via the inflationary mecha- central theme clearly enough. the big bang. This naive misrepresentation nism. This the latest thinking in the trade. The message of God and the New is often repeated. regrettably, in popular and 1 do not think it reprehensible that 1 Physics is. then, that science can explain accounts of cosmology. One of the reasons haie presented this account in my book. the world in its entirety but we still have to I took such trouble in writing my book was Sachs's anxiety about the philosophical explain science. 1 believe the beauty, ingenu- to dispel this misconception. status of quantum cosmology is legitimate ity. and simplicity of the laws of physics Indeed. 1 find it astonishing that some- and has been well aired over recent years. that permit the universe to come into being one of Bunge's high scientific standing For that reason 1 devote much of the book and, unaided, develop complex structures. should assert that the standard cosmological to that very problem. describing the Everett points irrefutably to an element of design, model explicitly assumes that "the universe "many-universes" interpretation of quantum and therefore meaning, behind physical existed prior to that time" (i.e.. the big bang) physics in some detail, this being the favorite existence. Call this meaning "God" if you when any modern textbook on cosmology among professional quantum cosmologists will explain that the standard model pos- as a means of avoiding the problems that Paul Davies is professor of theoretical sesses a spacetime singularity at a finite time Sachs elucidates. 1 don't believe Everett's physics at the University of Newcastle Upon in the past. Of course Bunge is free to dis- interpretation is the last word on this (as do Tyne in England. sent from the standard view, but 1 fear it is some of my colleagues). and 1 hope 1 do he, not I, who is a victim of misinterpre- not give this impression in my book. •

56 FREE INQUIRY (Letters, continued from page J) Winter 1983; 84), 1 could not help asking an innate negative thrust in atheism. Associate Moor Gordon Stein replies: myself if he really expected academic free- 1 freely admit atheism is not a set of dom. or liberty of any kind. at a Falwellian ethical values. It is merely a rational answer G. Richard Bo_arth raises a good point. institution. One might also ask— and Dr. to the question about the existence or possi- namely that atheism need not be and most Ridenhour should have asked—what the bility of existence of gods and goddesses. often is not merely "naysaying." While there word liberty means at Liberty Baptist However, to accept that answer is to open may he a feu' atheists who can never :seem College. oneself to the positive potential of human to rise above their fixation on the nonexis- life. To quote McCabe again (in Would a tence of a god. most realize that the decision Thomas P. Franczyk Godless World Make for Social Progress not to believe in the existence of a god is Buffalo, N.Y. or Decline?): merely the first step toward the development of a free world-view. Indeed, atheism is a Atheism and Humanism The roots of conscious Atheism are a suf- way of getting to "yes" by first .saying "nor . ficient study of science to realize that no We personally know that atheism is a In the otherwise satisfactory article "The spiritual or supernatural powers can be liberating first step that "clears. the decks" discerned at work in nature, an extensive Future of Humanism," (FI, Fall 1983) Paul of a large amount of theological rubbish study of history and comparative religion, Kurtz takes pains to segregate humanism that has accumulated in most of our minds. and a frank consideration of those evils from atheism by asserting that, unlike athe- In order to make the humanist house habit- and stupidities of contemporary life which able, the fresh air of rationality and non- ism, humanism has a "positive thrust." Thus discredit the idea of a vigilant and sym- theism must first he admitted, and the foul humanists, unlike atheists, are not "simply pathetic deity. In other words. the making naysavers." Since 1 happen to be an atheist, of an Atheist implies a mental stimulation air of theism blown out and attar. While I consider that to be an insult. and training which brings into play the there may he a number of humanists who The basic position of the atheist is sim- primary factors of social progress. feel that they can profess a sincere human- ply this: There does not exist any natural ism without giving up theism, we feel that it reason or natural need to assume that gods If Paul Kurtz has proof that this is not is probably more a theoretical exercise that or goddesses exist, thus it is irrational to true and that atheism is a negative influence these humanist.. are not trilling to perform. speculate about the nature of these imagined producing simply naysayers, 1 and many While atheism may he well and good, beings and to attempt to structure society other atheists would be interested in seeing it rarely is sufficient by itself as a .system by or one's personal life in a way that sup- it. Since he says humanism is grounded which to live. Needed as stell i.s a system of posedly will please these imaginary beings. "upon rational methods of inquiry, not faith, ethics' morality and perhaps a "world view." i think all atheists would agree with me mysticism, revelation, authority, or custom" An example of .such a system i.s utilitarian- that this is the basic tenet of atheism that and is concerned with "evidence," surely his ism. The Golden Rule would he another. unites us all. conclusion is based upon evidence and not Humanism would qualify as an example of This is not merely naysaying. It is true upon faith, mysticism, revelation, authority, a world-view. Thus, few people are merely that the atheist states plainly that there are or custom. Very well. 1 ask to see the evi- atheists. They may be atheists and human- no gods or goddeses, but that is no more dence. If he has no evidence to support this ists, or atheists' and utilitarian... Some are dogmatic or negative than the scientists who assertion (and 1 know he does not, since atheists, yet still retain the so-called Judeo- respond to creationists' assertions that there atheism has been a study of mine for a num- Christian system of ethics. is no other scientific theory of the origins ber of years), then he should apologize as and processes of life today that competes publicly as he insulted assuming, of course, with the theory of evolution. It is a ques- apologizing has a place in the humanist ethi- Atheism and Madalyn 01-lair tion of evidence. As Joseph McCabe put it cal philosophy. in Does Atheism Rest Its Case on Logic?: I have noted two disturbing practices "A very large part of the genius of the race G. Richard Bozarth characteristic of FREE INot ikv's brief exis- has been absorbed in the search for traces Austin, Tex. tence. Most unsettling is an apparent con- of God and has found none." This is why spiracy of silence concerning Madalyn Mur- Bertrand Russell stated in Why I Am Not a ray O'Hair and the American Atheists. By Christian, "I see no reason, therefore, to Paul Kurtz replies: any taxonomic scheme, atheism must be believe in any sort of God, however vague classified as a species perhaps the largest and however attenuated." Regarding G. Richard Bozarth'c comments, species—of humanism, and 1 would chal- Does this result in atheism having a my single point was that merely being an lenge any humanist to find even one propo- negative thrust? No! By saying no to the atheist in my judgment is not enough, unless sition in that organization's official state- wholly imaginary supernatural beings, the one also builds a set of positive values. As ments of goals and purposes, or definitions atheist is saying yes to all natural beings. he points out, many or most atheists as a and principles of atheism, that could not be The atheist, free from wondering how to matter of fact do, but that generally is in enthusiastically supported. American please imaginary beings, can go on to the addition to their rejection of a god. Thus Atheists is at least as large as other humanist constructive work of creating the optimum only a positive value-oriented atheism, as groups, has local chapters throughout the conditions of life, liberty, and the pursuit of distinct from a negative atheism, seems to nation, constantly monitors First Amend- happiness in order to please himself or her- me to be necessary. That is the position in ment abuses, maintains a national center self and to please all other human beings as my judgment of democratic and secular that includes archives of classic humanist well. The atheist may fail, as have the athe- humanism. Perhaps ive ought to invent a literature, and publishes a noteworthy ists running communist societies, but that new term—democratic ethical atheism. / monthly journal. And, while charismatic failure is not an inevitable result caused by have no objection to that. may not be quite le mot juste for Dr. O'Hair,

Spring 1984 57 she has a large following, she has researched ages. who will? Who will address that fund phy that is negative in its refutation of theo- and published volumes on church-state of good common sense in a broad spectrum logical pretensions but is clearly positive in issues and the absurdity of religions, and of the American citizenry and unequivocally its expression of humanist values (a commit- she has secured her niche in history. Does demonstrate just who the bad guys really ment to freedom, human fulfillment, happi- anyone seriously doubt that her name will are? ness, etc.) and pluralistic democratic ideals. be inscribed in some humanist pantheon of I dare say that many humanists can Third, perhaps the term that ought to future times? (After all. Margaret Sanger almost taste that prime-time Sunday evening describe the position that Dr. Pasquarello was no sweetheart either!) special -•"The Secular Humanist Hour"-- could defend is atheistic humanism. / am Despite all this, neither the woman nor starring Sagan and Gould. written and pro- not unsympathetic to that terminology. It the organization merits any mention in Paul duced by Asimov. and Ayer, and Flew, and at least avoids the muddle that religious Kurti s otherwise excellent review of the past .. The talents and possibilities here truly humanism connotes. But it also will tend to and "the future of humanism." Is there not boggle the mind. and the resultant extrava- alienate religious liberals who accept some error of omission here? If Dr. O'Hair ganza could make the "700 Club" look like humanist values and a commitment to has been too aggressive or abrasive, if she the "$1.98 Beauty Show." For that brand of democratic society, but do not wish to aban- has alienated humanists, or if the traditional humanism, count on my contribution. don God entirely (even if he is naturalized nebulousness and timidity of humanistic and/ or rendered metaphysical and s ym- doctrine has alienated atheists—if there are Tony Pasquarello bolic). And many allies in the religious camp any barriers separating humanism and athe- Ohio State University constantly admonish us not to offend reli- ism. readers of FRFF INQUIRY surely would Mansfield, Ohio gious liberals in our common struggle with want to know what has happened. and what fundamentalists. can be done to bring about the reconciliation Paul Kurtz replies: Last, now that we have the Academy and cooperation vital to effectively challenge of Humanism launched. we would be grate- the massive onslaught of the New Right. Tony Pasquarello asks first whether there is ful for any suggestions as to future projects Humanism and atheism share identical a conspiracy of silence concerning Madalyn that it should undertake. Our resources are histories, heroes. and visions; indeed, an O'Hair and the American Atheists, and why slender in comparison with the established entire issue of FRI I l\QI iiss devoted to an there is not more cooperation between the religious orthodoxies, hence we need all the examination of contemporary atheism could atheists and the humanists. Good questions. help we can get, financial and intellectual. hardly be considered excessive. I am afraid that a large share of the Second, consider that, in just a few blame—indeed the lion's share--must he laid Gordon Stein replies: years, we have witnessed the creation of at the door of Madah'n O'Hair. ,t/any of us Fsi I I'. i ¡Rs; its distinguished editorial in the humanist and free-thought movement Tony Pasquarello questions why no mention hoard, something called the "Council for have repeatedly attempted to work coopera- is made of American Atheists or Mrs. Democratic and Secular Humanism." and tively with Mrs.. O'Hair. But the result is O'Hair in FREE Iv'QL/Rr. The reason is really something else called the "Secular Humanist always the .same: personal vilification of quite simple. FREE I.\QevRY is a humanist Declaration" endorsed by an impressive list those who attempt cooperation. If it were a magazine, and Mrs. O'Hair has repeatedly of signatories. And now comes the case of just one or two or three offended stated, both in print and verbally, that her "Academy of Humanism." consisting of individuals, that aright he explained by the organization is not a humanist organization "Humanist Laureates" who to be frank personality differences that arise in human and that she is not a humanist. All well and have a vaguely familiar ring about them. relations. Regretfully, Madalvn ()Hair has good, if she wishes to so identify herself The multiplication of these titular entities not only attacked believers and theists of all but that should be reason enough FREE does suggest the machinations of some neo- stripes, hut every sort of unbeliever in I5Qt /Rr does not mention her or her group Platonist gone berserk. America who does not fit into lier own camp when humanism or humanist groups are Seriously. what will these organizations or her own definition of what an atheist being discussed. do.' They will inquire and explore and pub- should he. Presumably humanists, agnostics, lish but this they do already. They will and skeptics are beyond the pale of her The Future of Humanism sponsor conferences and symposia—and talk redemptive powers. She has made similar to each other. Isn't it obvious that the enor- assaults within the atheist camp, and she Paul Kurtz ("the Future of Humanism." mous power of these illustrious names must has battled with the Freedom From Religion FI. Fall 1983) enunciates well the problems be utilized in more substantive. activistic Foundation (troll' over 1.200 strong) and facing humanism, although indirectly, by the ways'? Isn't it clear that they must respond "excommunicated" its members en masse. thirteen "salues and principles" for which in kind to the media monopoly of the radical The American Rationalists have received humanism stands. The first in numerical Religious Right by attempting to reach the similar treatment. order may actually be the first in impor- general public with full-page ads, television Second, it is clear to nie that merely to tance. because commitment to free inquiry specials, and frequent litigation? Will they he an atheist is not a sign of emancipation means by implication the willingness to have the integrity to put the collective weight from dogma. Moreover, a negative rejection accept the findings yielded by that inquiry of their prestige on the line and call a nut a of theological nonsense does not necessarily even if it means the sacrifice of some nut? For, if they do not tell the stories of mean a positive affirmation of ethical values cherished emotional or ideological values. the Founding Fathers' deism. document the or a commitment to democratic ideals. One Because ideological preferences are not the anti-Christianity of Edison. Mark Twain, can he an atheist and a totalitarian, for stuff of which sociopolitical dialogue is l.incoln. Henry Ford. and other American example, witness Stalin. Lenin. and assorted made. only the open mind can build the legends, and recount the horror roll of reli- despots. That is why I think that the term bridges leading to rational intercourse. Free gious torture and repression through the secular humanism better connotes a philoso- inquiry, by definition, is rather an individual

58 FREE INQUIRY endeavor not lending itself readily to shaping What 1 was trying to explain to the dren. Nor is it the responsibility of the state mass opinion or to serving as a tool of social good professor was the "editorial theory" of to subsidize consumption of one's favorite organizing. Genesis (see Henry M. Morris, The Genesis resources. The end result here may well be The eagerness with which new religious Record, San Diego. CLP, 1976, pp. 25-26). "population control," "consumption con- cults are joined points to the willingness of It states that Moses may have had access to trol." or some of Skinner's other desired many to abdicate responsibility for their own written documents covering early earth goals, but it will not occur through govern- lives. It is of course this human characteristic history when he wrote the Torah. Of course, ment mandate. It will be because individuals that contributes largely to the strength of the triune God was the only eyewitness to are both free to make choices about their organized religion. As humanists we are creation and, no doubt, explained the crea- lives and responsible for the consequences prone to demonstrate that religious dogma tion sequence to Adam in the Garden of of their actions. is an intellectual absurdity whose application Eden. It is probable that Adam, in the hun- to society can only hurt human well-being dreds of years of his lifetime, wrote this Susan Smeby precisely because of its refusal to acknowl- account down. These documents were passed Potsdam, N.Y. edge the biological and social reality that down to Noah, preserved on the ark, and makes the human animal what it is. Reli- so passed along until future scribes could gion, however, permits the construction of make this available to Moses. The Academy of Humanism a lowest-common-denominator framework 1 find in reading your magazine, as that encompasses at once the elements of found in talking to Professor Alley, that the I applaud your efforts to establish the Acad- social and emotional needs while being at humanistic community is far more interested emy of Humanism, but 1 am distressed that the same time impervious to rational argu- in monologue than dialogue. If Prof. Alley you have decided to exclude theists of any ment. It will be up to us to create a "rational had listened to me, this unfortunate mis- kind. Our humanist tradition was dominated framework" capable of competing with it. understanding might never have gotten into by the theistic humanists in your Humanist The cries for "relevance" in education print. Pantheon until the Enlightenment. You in the sixties ushered in the narrowly spe- honor such theists as Socrates, Plato, cialized. high-technology society inimical to David R. McQueen Spinoza, Paine, Jefferson, and Madison, but the humanities and-- in a way, complemen- Institute for Creation Research now you propose to exclude these types of tary to it—the organized unreason of funda- El Cajon, Calif. humanists from the Academy. mentalist militants. Both these phenomena Even among your Humanist Laureates, were aided by a declining economy. It is in Robert Aller replies: I know at least Richard Taylor has sup- the interest of a democratic society to redress ported theistic positions (see Chapter 10 of the imbalance between technical training, As an "eyewitness" to the aforementioned his Metaphysics) and has even dabbled in a passing itself off as education, and the argument I merely passed along what Mr. type of mysticism ( With Heart and Mind) teaching of the humanities. In the right McQueen said. ("Adam wrote an eyewitness that makes me uneasy. In that book, he environment, the love for learning can be account of creation.') Perhaps I should not essentially argued that personal identity dis- acquired. There is no reason, for instance, have been such a "literalist." However, if he solves into a primordial unity. 1 have not to limit interscholastic competition to the prefers the protracted nonsense of what he read Brand Blanshard in detail, but 1 know use of muscles when the human brain and terms the editorial theory, so he it. I do enough that his position is not unlike the human imagination, as expressed by the sci- wonder 's'hether this theory allows for natural theology of Spinoza. ences and the arts, have so much to con- alterations in the test, or does Mr. McQueen I believe that it is unwise for leaders of tribute to human life. We, as humanists, not mean to he taken literally here either? the Academy to draw such narrow criteria have a stake in the evolution of the inte- And since God explained creation to Adam for legitimate humanism. Those theistic grated individual. in the Garden of Eden, can we he sure that, humanists who eschew special revelation and when the old gentleman wrote it down hun- propose views of God that do not compro- Henry Darcy dreds of rears later, original sin did not mise human reason and freedom should not Houston, Tex. affect his memory? Maybe Eve is the victim be rejected outright. Such discrimination will of editorializing and the male ego. alienate many religious liberals who wish to Science and the Bible join you in your battle against fundamen- B. F. Skinner talism and religious irrationalism. I would like to point out an error in Robert S. Alley's article appearing in your special 1 disagree with B. F. Skinner's claim (FI, Nicholas F. Gier issue on science and the Bible (FI, Summer Winter 1983 84) that all people who are University of Idaho 1982). On page 5, Professor Alley quotes seeking increased personal liberties have no Moscow, Idaho me as saying that "Adam wrote Genesis and real concern for the "present and future was an eyewitness to creation." He calls this well-being of the human species." As a liber- Paul Kurt: replies: statement nonsense—and so it is.. He mis- tarian, I am just as concerned as he is, but understood a comment that 1 made to him believe that the best way to ensure the well- Nicholas' Gier raises an important issue con- during a ten-minute argument we had at being of humanity is to enhance both the cerning the meaning of theism. The Acad- lunch. That is not surprising, since from individual's freedom and responsibility. For emy used that tern to refer to belief in a reading his article it appears that he is not a example, one should have the freedom to personal God based upon revelation. We supernaturalist. philosophically, and have as many children as desired, but one are not necessarily objecting to a Spinozistic becomes angry when a conversation begins should recognize that it is one's own respon- naturalistic God as the order and structure with one. sibility, not the state's, to support those chil- of the universe.

Spring 1984 59 Supreme Court and School Prayer

Washington—The Reagan administration asked the Supreme Court to consider for ON THE BARRICADES the first time whether a "moment of silence" for prayer or meditation in America's public classrooms is constitutional. The Justice Department urged justices to review an Alabama state law allowing a period of silence at the start of school, and suggested in a friend-of-the-court brief that Sakharov on Science from the 4,000 broadcasters with a speech such a law is in "the spirit of the Bill of that extolled prayer in the schools and a Rights. ".. . / believe that the internationalization of sci- han on abortions... . The government told the Supreme ence and the comparative independence of Among those greeting the president Court that "moment of silence" statutes do scientists should enable them to maintain !was! the Rev. Jerry Falwe!(... . not clash with the Constitution. "They the common interests of mankind and to For the first time, Mr. Reagan appeared accommodate those who believe that prayer of rise above the narrow interests of "their" to side with a group fundamentalists in should he an integral part of life's activities government and nation and above the pre- their legal battle with Nebraska officials over and do so in the most neutral and non- judices of "their" particular social system the issue of whether the state can require coercive spirit possible. ".. . and ideology, whether socialism or capi- certified teachers in elementary schools [Dan C. Alexander!, who heads Save talism. (Andrei Sakharov, in a statement operated by religious groups. Our Schools, which claims 135,000 members sent to the meeting of the Nobel laureates He adhered to the administration's around the country, said of the government at the Sorbonne in Paris October 26-28, position that the case of the "Nebraska brief "It 's very disappointing. Silent medita- 1983) Seren" is a matter for the state courts to tion is not what we're fighting for." (News decide but noted that a panel appointed hr Wire Services, in The Buffalo News, Decem- The Power of Human Rights Gov. Bob Kerrey concluded that state regu- ber 14. 1983) lations "violate the religious liberties of Boston—/t was an extraordinary piece of Christian schools." (Associated Press, Jan- The Unchurched Millions unintended symbolism: the Soviet Union uary 31, 1984) paying tribute to the power of human rights Four in every 10 U.S. adults (41%) are cur- as an idea.... Officials called a press con- Pushing the Prayer Amendment rently "unchurched. ".. . ference to mark United Nations Human The latest figure, which projects to 70 Rights Dar. It turned into an attack on Special Assistant to the President Morton million adults, /8 and older, is statistically Andrei Sakharov, the great Soviet physicist Blackwell said ... that legislators are just the same as the figure (42%) recorded in a whose advocacy of human rights led to his now beginning to understand the positive survey conducted lbr the Gallup Organiza- exile in Gorky. Sakharov was "cuckoo, "an impact the Reagan Voluntary School Prayer tion! five years ago. official said, tapping his head; Sakharov had Amendment would have on this country if /The breakdown of the unchurched is asked the United States to carry out a it were adopted.. . as follows: Protestants, 55% Catholics, 22e. nuclear attack on the U.S.S.R. The President's assistant was carefic( to Jews, 3%; Eastern Orthodox, 19%; Other, So here is a frail worn than, isolated in point out that the amendment would do 3%; and None, /6(.4.j (Princeton Religion a closed Russian cur. hounded by secret much more than merely legalize voluntary Research Center's Emerging Trends. policemen, and he still worries the state— school prayer. December 1983) worries it enough to call for preposterous He said the proposal would legitimize official slander. What better testament could such practices as the giving of invocations Anti-Bible Ads there he to the power of a single individual, and benedictions at public school gradua- holding fast to the human ideal against all tions, a montent of silent prayer during The Freedom from Religion Foundation has the crushing apparatus of the modern .state' school hours, voluntary student prayer paid for advertisements to be posted in 80 (Anthony Lewis. in The New York Tites, groups on campuses: and it would confirm Madison Metro buses, starting today. calling December 12. 1983) the right of government institutions to have the Bible "a grim fairy tale." chaplains serving their people... . The advertisements are in response to Candidate Reagan Blackwell concluded, "Frankly, not too paid avertisements from the Catholic otanr Senators are going to scant to go ¡tonte Knights of Columbus during December Washington—In his.first public appearance and tell religious people, Bible believing asking riders to "keep Christ in Christmas." as a 1984 presidential candidate, President people who exist by the millions, that they . . . Anne Gaylor, president of the Reagan told !the National Religious Broad- voted against the right of little children to Madison-based foundation, said the signs casters convention! that he wears as a badge pray. / believe 1984 is going to he the rear claim the Bible is "a book that condones of honor the "indictment" he received for we return religious rights to our school chil- violence and sexism" and "should not be declaring 1983 as the Year of the Bible. dren by passing the president's Amend- revered." The president drew repeated cheering, ment." (Roy C. Jones. in The Moral "Obviously we know our signs will be standing ovations and shouts of "Amen!" Majority Report, Februrary 1984) objectionable to sonie people in the same

60 FREE INQUIRY manner that religious signs are objectionable While the proportion who sat' they Terminology to us," Ms. Gaylor said. "But if Madison would vote for an atheist has grown dra- Metro is going to bow to religion, then they matically since 1958, opposition continues had better he prepared to how to us." to prevail, with 51q currently saying they ... This concept of word changing is the (City transportation director Warren would not vote for an atheist compared to vehicle humanism must use to make its phi- Somerfeldl said the Knights of Columbus 42c;ß who say they would. losophy palatable. It is the culprit under- had asked for free advertising on city buses Sharp differences are found in the views mining the Christian roots of this country. during the holiday season. The group had of Protestants and Catholic's. The former, "Pluralism" historically recognized the right- received permission for free advertising last by a 2-to-1 margin, 64% to 31%, say they ness or wrongness of things, but now has year but the ads were taken down after Ms. would not vote for an atheist for president, been laundered to mean that every view has Gaylor protested, he said. but Catholic's lean heavily in the other direc- equal status and therefore, is legitimate and Because of a U.S. Supreme Court deci- tion, 54cä to 38%, (Princeton Religion acceptable. Though America was founded a sion about spending public money for a Research Center's Emerging Trends, Christian republic, this' view of pluralism Nativity scene, the city said the Knights of December 1983) would relegate Christian influence to he of Columbus would have to pay for the adver- no more value than, say, Buddhism.. . . tisements, /hel said. . Censorship (Letter to the Editor from Rev. Larry Aaron "If a person has right to advertise in of the Temple Baptist Church, in the Dan- the area of Christianity, svht' doesn't a per- . . . Attempts by ultra-fundamentalists to ville ¡Virginia! Register, January 7, 1984) son have a right to advertise ¡for! . . . ban textbooks and literature that probes atheism?" Somerfeld asked. "Who am I to past and present social problems are becom- Exorcisms on the Rise stifle the particular views or messages of ing increasing//' successful. The shibboleth people as long as it does not attack a person invented by the far right—"secular or a religion?"(Doug Mell, in the Wisconsin humanism "—has been used effectively to Exorcisms performed to "cast out demons" State Journal, December 29, 1983) label any hook or teaching material that from troubled individuals are on the rise in isn't God-centered as inevitably man- the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Year of Bible Challenged centered and, therefore, unacceptable. The "deliverance ministry, "a term .some The charge of "secular humanism" has Adventists prefer over "exorcisms, "surfaced Los Angeles President Reagan's proclama- been used to han books and courses that as a movement four tears ago in Oregon tion of 1983 as "The Year of the Bible" is explore the theory of evolution, the contro- and involved perhaps dozens of ministers unconstitutional because it exalts Chris- versy over Vietnam, the Watergate experi- and laymen, according to a study by Debra tianity and, in effect, tells non-Christians to ence and current national problems such as G. Nelson in Spectrum, a publication of the "go sit down in the hack of the bus," the poverty, teenage pregnancy, unemployment, Association of Adventist Forums. American Civil Liberties Union argues... . drug use, the arms race and shifting roles in The current issue cited two exorcisms Gaynor also argued that the presidential the American family. (Barbara Parker, conducted at the Adventist-run Loma Linda proclamation and a subsequent resolution director of the Freedom to Learn Project of University Medical Center in California, by Congress violated the rights of 16 indi- People for the American Way, in The New including a 48-hour session two tears ago vidual plaintiffs, including four Christian York Times, January 21, 1984) in which pastors, family members and clergy, even though they do not call for any friends joined in battling what they claimed action or require any expenditure of tax- Changing Textbooks were 43 demons' possessing a young woman payer funds... who had undergone tests for unexplained "The government has no business sating Austin, Texas—Because Texas is the largest seizures. that the beliefs of one religion are correct single purchaser of textbooks in the country, The Seventh-day Adventist Church, a or have God's imprimatur, "/ACLU attorney new biology hooks the state endorses de- conservative, tight-knit denomination, with Gilbert Gaynor! said... emphasizing the theory of evolution may 575,000 U.S. members known for its Satur- Mr. Gaynor said the Christian clergy- end up in classrooms across the nation, anti- day Sabbath, retains much of a sectarian men were damaged by the resolutions censorship groups say. manner front its 19th-century founding. But because it impaired their ability to engage And science educators say the refusal it also has extensive contact with main- in honest interfaith dialogue... . by the Texas Board of Education to rescind stream society through its hospitals, stop- Mr. Reagan and Congress are defen- a 1974 rule that bans the teaching of evolu- smoking clinic's, vegetarian food products dants in the suit, which seeks only a declaration as a scientific fact means a further and general emphasis on health. tion that the proclamation and resolution deterioration in overall sc'ienc'e education. . Despite the Adventist church's role in were unconstitutional. (United Press Inter- ... ¡People of the American Way Texas modern medicine, belief in the existence of national, November 24, 1984) director Michael Hudson/ said it is critical demons is widespread among Adventists— that the guidelines on the teaching of evolu- indeed among most Christians who consider An Atheist for President? tion he changed this year because Texas will New Testament accounts of evil spirits to select new biology and elementary science be reliable references to actual supernatural The percentage of Americans who .say they hooks to he used_ for the next eight tears. beings and not .simply first-century explana- would he willing to vote for an atheist for Texas Attorney General Jim Mattox is tions of what today are usually termed psy- president has more than doubled over the reviewing a request for an advisory opinion chological disorders. (John Dart, of the L.A. last quarter century. The figure today is' on the constitutionality of the Texas rule. Times—Washington Post News Service, 42%; in 1958 it suas 18%. (United Press International, January 1984) January 8, 1984)

Spring 1984 61

PERSONALS THE BIBLE—HUMBUG OR HORROR by CLASSIFIED CLASSICAL MUSIC LOVERS' Michael Glass has been reprinted and EXCHANGE—Nationwide link between is available from the Rationalist Associa- Rates unattached music lovers. Write: CMLE, tion of NSW, 58 Regent Street, Chippen- Per word (single insertion) Box 31, Pelham, NY 10803. dale, N. S. W. 2008 Australia. The price 10-word minimum 40 cents is $1.00 per copy plus postage, or $2.00 10070 discount for placement in 3 con- Friends—please write to one of the pri- for two copies, including postage. secutive issues soners who need friendship. Gus Owens, P.C. Box 45699-138775, Lucasville, OH THE NEOCONSERVATIVE OFFENSIVE: Box numbers available $1.00 45699 and Richard Jackson, P.O. Box U.S. CHURCHES AND THE STRUGGLE Payment for insertion must accom- 45699-144061, Lucasville, OH 45699. FOR LATIN AMERICA, Ana Maria pany copy. Ezcurra. 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Applicant must have demon- Christian involvement in struggles for archy, Box 273HE, Annapolis Jct., MD strated professional ability in academic liberation and others are examined. 20701. and/or liberal ministerial service and be $4.95 plus 75C postage. New York CIR- qualified to become future principal reli- CUS, P.O. Box 37, New York, NY 10108. Discover the Miracle of America gious leader of this socially active .A new idea associated with a new trend Society. Salary and benefits commen- INTELLIGENT INTROSPECTION IS 0ICJ in renevtal of America. the whole of surate with qualifications and experience. NOT ENOUGH! Share your philosophy ` cnili,ation to the making of a Specifics on request. Write: Paul S. Lip- with thousands monthly by publishing more perfect Society. Free copv. son, Chair, Leadership Recruitment your own newsletter. Earn up to Society for American Renewal 147 West 42nd St. (Room 603) New York. 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Is owned by of California at Los Angeles since DAVID STRY, atheist, agnostic, rationa- HUMANIST CENTURY brings stimulat- 1966 and was a strong opponent of list, freethinker, libertarian, vegetarian, ing Humanist ideas each month for $6 pseudoscience. Dr. Abell was also philosophical (non-violent) anarchist, yearly. Box 84116. San Diego. CA 92138. dedicated to secular humanism and and all other rational labels. FREE BRO- was elected to the Academy of CHURE AND TRAVEL DIRECTIONS! "136+ BIBLICAL CONTRADICTIONS." Humanism just before his death.— En. Dial Direct: 011-52-731-31044 from any- More! $3.00. Crusade Publications. Box where in U.S. 200, Redmond, WA 98052.

62 FREE INQUIRY The Academy of Humanism

the Academy of Humanism was established to recognize distinguished humanists and disseminate humanistic ideals and beliefs. The members of the Academy, listed below, are nontheists who are (I) devoted to free inquiry in all fields of human endeavor, (2) committed to a scientific outlook and the use of the scientific method in acquiring knowledge, and (3) upholders of humanist ethical values and principles. The Academy's goals include furthering respect for human rights and freedom and the dignity of the individual, tolerance of various viewpoints and willingness to compromise, commitment to social justice, a universalistic perspective that transcends national, ethnic, religious, sexual, and racial barriers, and belief in a free and open, pluralistic and democratic society.

Humanist Laureates.• Isaac Asimov, author; Sir Alfred J. Ayer, fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford University; Brand Blanshard, professor emeritus of philosophy, Yale University; Sir Hermann Bondi, professor of applied mathematics. King's College, University of London; Bernard Crick, professor of politics, Birkbeck College, University of London; Francis Crick, Nobel Laureate in Physiology, Salk Institute; Milovan Djilas, author, former vice-president of Yugo- slavia; Sir Raymond Firth, professor emeritus of anthropology, University of London; Joseph Fletcher, theologian. former professor of medical ethics, University of Virginia Medical School; Stephen Jay Gould, Museum of Com- parative Zoology, Harvard University; Donald Johanson, Institute of Human Origins; Paul MacCready, Kremer Prize winner for aeronautical achievements; Ernest Nagel, professor emeritus of philosophy, Columbia University; Jean-Claude Pecker, professor of astrophysics, College de France, Academie des Sciences; Chaim Perelman, professor of philosophy, University of Brussels; Sir Karl Popper, professor emeritus of logic and scientific method, University of London; W. V. Quine, professor of philosophy, Harvard University; Carl Sagan, astronomer, Cornell University; Andrei Sakharov, physicist, Nobel Peace Prize winner; V. M. Tarkunde, chairman. Indian Radical Humanist Association; Richard Taylor, professor of philosophy, University of Rochester; G. A. Wells, professor of German, Birkbeck College, University of London; Edward O. Wilson, professor of sociobiology, Harvard University; Lady Barbara Wootton, Deputy Speaker, House of Lords.

Secretariat: Vern Bullough, dean of natural sciences, State University of New York College at Buffalo; Antony Flew, professor of philosophy, Reading University, (England); Sidney Hook, professor emeritus of philosophy. New York University; Paul Kurtz, professor of philosophy, SUNY at Buffalo. Editor of FREI INQUIRY; Gerald Larue, professor emeritus of archaeology and biblical studies, University of Southern California at Los Angeles.

Religion and Biblical Criticism Research Project

The Religion and Biblical Criticism Research Project was founded to help disseminate the results of biblical scholarship— studies in comparative religion, folklore, scientific archaeology, and literary analysis. It investigates the claim that the Bible is divinely inspired, the historical evidence for Jesus and other Bible personalities, the role of religious myth, symbol, and ritual, and the possibility of basing morality upon reason and experience instead of biblical doctrine. The Research Project's goals include compiling bibliographies of the best sources of information about the Bible, publishing articles and monographs about different facets of biblical research, and convening seminars and conferences.

Steering Committee: Gerald Larue (Chairman), emeritus professor of biblical history and archaeology. University of Southern California; Robert Alley, professor of humanities, University of Richmond; Randel Helms, professor of English, Arizona State University; R. Joseph Hoffman, associate professor of biblical studies, University of Michigan; Paul Kurtz, professor of philosophy, SUNY at Buffalo; John F. Priest, professor and chairman. Department of Religion. Florida State University; James Robinson, director, Institute for Antiquity and Christianity, Claremont College.

Associates: Michael Arnheim, professor of ancient history, St. John's College, Cambridge; Paul Beattie, president, Fellowship of Religious Humanists; Fred Berg; H. James Birx, chairman of Anthroplogy¡Sociology Department, Canisius College; David B. Buehrens; Joseph Fletcher, theologian, former professor of medical ethics, University of Virginia Medical School; Sidney Hook, professor emeritus of philosophy, New York University; Robert Joly, professor of philosophy, Centre Interdisciplinaire d'Etudes Philosophiques de l'Universite de Mons (Belgium); William V. Mayer, director, Biological Sciences Curriculum Study, University of Colorado; Delos McKown, professor of philosophy. Auburn University; Carol Meyers, professor of religion, Duke University; Lee Nisbet, associate professor of philosophy, Medaille College; George Smith, president, Signature Books; Morton Smith, professor of history, Columbia University; A. T. Steegman, professor of anthropology, State University of New York at Buffalo; Richard Taylor, professor of philosophy, University of Rochester; G. A. Wells, professor of German, Birkbeck College, University of London.

Spring 1984 63

Back issues of FREE INQUIRY are available! Summary of major articles:

Winter 1980181 Spring 1982 Vol. I. po. I: A Secular Humanist Declaration. Also, Democratic Vol. 2, no. 2: A Call for the Critical Examination of the Bible and Humanism, Sidney Hook. Humanism: Secular or Religious?, Paul Religion. Also: Interview with Isaac Asimov on Science and the Bible, Beanie. Free Thought, Gordon Stein. The Fundamentalist Right, Paul Kurtz. The Continuing Monkey War, L. Sprague de Camp. The William Ryan. The Moral Majority. Sol Gordon. The Creation; Erosion of Evolution, Antony Flew. The Religion of Secular Humanism: Evolution Controversy. H. James Birx. Moral Education, Robert Hall. A Judicial Myth, Leo Pfeffer. Humanism as an American Heritage. Morality Without Religion, Marvin Kohl and Joseph Fletcher. Freedom Nicholas F. Gier. The Nativity Legends. Randel Helms. Norman Pod- Is Frightening, Roy P Fairfield. The Road to Freedom, Mihajlo horetz's Neo-Puritanism, Lee Nisbet. Mihajlov. Summer 1982—Special 72-page issue Vol. 2, no. 3: A Symposium on Science, the Bible, and Darwin: 1 he Spring 1981 Bible Re-examined. Robert S. Allez; Gerald Larue, John Priest, and Vol. I, no. 2: The Secular Humanist Declaration: Pro and Con, John Randel Helms. Darwin,. Evolution, and Creationism, Philip Appleman, Roche, Sidney Hook, Phyllis Schlaflr, Gina Allen, Roscoe Drummond, William V. Mayer, Charles Cazeau, H. James Birx, Garrett Hardin, Sol Lee Nisbet, Patrick Buchanan, and Paul Kurtz. New England Puritans Tax, and Antony Flew. Ethics and Religion, Joseph Fletcher, Richard and the Moral Majority. George Marshall. The Pope on Sex, Vern Taylor, Kai Nielsen, and Paul Beanie. Science and Religion, Michael Bullough. On the Way to Mecca, Thomas Szasz. The Blasphemy Laws, Novak and Joseph L. Blau. Gordon Stein. The Meaning of Life, Marvin Kohl. Does God Exist? Kai Nielsen. Prophets of the Procrustean Collective, Anton;' Flew. The Fall 1982 Madrid Conference, Stephen Fenichell. Natural Aristocracy. Lee Nisbet. Vol. 2. no. 4: An Interview with Sidney Hook at Eighty, Paul Kurtz. Sidney Hook: A Personal Portrait, Nicholas Capaldi. The Religion and Summer 1981 Biblical Criticism Research Project, Gerald Larue. Biblical Criticism Vol. I, no. 3: Sex Education, Peter Scales and Thomas Szasz. Moral and Its Discontents, R. Joseph Hoffmann. Boswell Confronts Hume: Education. Howard Radest. Teen-age Pregnancy. Vern Bullough. The An Encounter with the Great Infidel. Joy Frieman. Humanism and New Book-Burners. William Ryan. The Moral Majority, Gerald Larue. Politics. Jantes R. Simpson and Larry Briskman. Humanism and the Liberalism, Edward Ericson. Scientific Creationism, Delos McKown. Politics of Nostalgia. Paul Kurtz. Abortion and Morality, Richard New Evidence on the Shroud of Turin, Joe Nickell. Agnosticism, H. J. Taylor. Blackham. Science and Religion, George Tontashevich. Secular Winter 1982-83 Humanism in Israel. Vol. 3, no. I: 1983—The Year of the Bible. Special Feature: Academic Freedom Under Assault in California, Barry Singer, Nicholas P. Harde- Fall 1981 man and Vern Bullough, The Play Ethic. Robert Rimmer. An Interview Vol. I. no. 4: The Thunder of Doom. Edward P. Morgan. Secular with Corliss Lamont. Was Jesus a Magician? Morton Smith. Astronomy Humanists: Threat or Menace? Art Buchwald. Financing of the Repres- and the "Star of Bethlehem", Gerald l.arue. Living with Deep Truths in sive Right, Edward Roeder. Communism and American Intellectuals, a Divided World, Sidney Hook. Anti-Science: The Strange Case of Sidney Hook. A Symposium on the Future of Religion, articles by Paul Feyerabend, Martin Gardner. Daniel Bell, Joseph Fletcher, William Sims Bainbridge, and Paul Kurtz. Resurrection Fictions, Randel Helms. Spring 1983 Vol. 3, no. 2: The Founding Fathers and Religious Liberty, Robert S. Alles: Madison's Legacy Endangered. Edd Doerr. James Madison's Winter 1981 82 Dream: A Secular Republic, Robert A. Rutland. The Murder of Hypatia Vol. 2, no. I: The Importance of Critical Discussion, Karl Popper. of Alexandria. Robert E. Mohar. Hannah Arendt: The Modern Seer. Freedom and Civilization. Ernest Nagel. Humanism: The Conscience of Richard Kostelanetz. Was Karl Marx a Humanist? articles by Sidney Humanity. Konstantin Kolenda. Secularism in Islam, Nazih N. M. Hook, Jan Narveson, and Paul Kunz. 4iubi. Humanism in the 1980s, Paul Beanie. The Effect of Education on Religious Faith, Burnham P. Beckwith. Summer 1983—Special 68-page issue 1 Vol. 3. no. 3: Religion in American Politics Symposium: Is America a Judeo-Christian Republic? Paul Kurtz. The First Amendment and Reli- FREE INQUIRY gious"Liberty, articles by Sen. Lowell P. Weicker, Jr., Sam J. Ervin, Jr.. Box 5, Central Park Station, Buffalo, NY 14215 Leo Pfeffer. Secular Roots of the American Political System. Henri Please send me the following back issues: Steele Commager, Daniel J. Boorstin, Robert Rutland, Richard B. Mor- Vol. I, no. I no 2 , no. 3 no 4 ris, Michael Novak. The Bible in Politics. Gerald Larue, Robert S. Vol. 2, no. I no 2 . no. 3 ($5.00) no 4 Alley, James M. Robinson. Also. Bibliography for Biblical Study. Vol. 3, no. I , no. 2 , no. 3 ($5.00) , no. 4 Fall 1983 Vol. 4, no. Vol. 3 no. 4: Announcing the Academy of Humanism. The Future of Humanism. Paul Kurtz: Humanist Self-Portraits, 2Brand Blanshard. I enclose $3.50 plus $1.00 for postage and handling for each copy. Barbara Wootton, Joseph Fletcher. Sir Raymond Firth, Jean-Claude Amount enclosed $ (U.S. funds on U.S. bank) Pecker. An Interview with Paul MacCready. A Personal Humanist Manifesto. Vern Bulllough. The Enduring Humanist Legacy of Greece. Marvin Perry. The Age of Unreason: A Defense of the Rational Enter- Name (print clearly) prise. Thomas Vernon. Apocalypse Soon, Daniel Cohen. On the Ses- quicentennial of Robert G. Ingersoll. Frank Smith. The Historicity of Jesus. John Priest, D. R. Oppenheimer, G. A. Wells. Address Winter 1983 84 Vol. 4 no. I: Interview with B. F. Skinner. Was George Orwell a City State Zip Humanist? Antony F/etc. Population Control vs. Freedom in China. Vern and Bonnie Bullough. Academic Freedom at Liberty Baptist Col- lege. Lynn Ridenhour. Special Feature on the Mormon Church: Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. George D. Smith, and The History of Mormonism and Church Authorities: An Interview with Sterling M. McMurrin. Anti-Science: The irrationalist Vogue of the I970s, Lewis Feuer. The End of the Galilean Cease-Fire? James Hansen. Who Reall Killed Goliath? Gerald A. Larue. Humanism in Norway: Strategies for Growth, Levi Fraeell.