One of my embarrassing addictions is to true crime. For years, I was fascinated by Ted Bundy. Now, I am fascinated by the case of Leo Frank. Leo Frank was a Jewish man who was accused of raping and murdering a thirteen-year-old girl in Atlanta in 1913. The case is noteworthy because it was the first time a white man had been convicted in a Southern court on the testimony of a black man. He was convicted and sentenced to death. His sentence was commuted to life in prison by a governor who believed him to be innocent and feared to release him because he would be lynched. An enraged mob broke into the prison, kidnapped him, and lynched him. His case led to the founding of the Anti-Defamation League as well as the resurgence of the Klu Klux Klan.
There were two other possible suspects, a night watchman named Newt Lee, who found the body and called the police, and a janitor named Jim Conley. Both were African-American. Conley testified against Frank at the trial. Conley's own lawyer later declared that he believed Frank innocent and Conley guilty.
Conley had had three years of schooling and was a chronic alcoholic who had served time on chain gangs because of drunken brawling.
A key piece of evidence was two notes in Conley's handwriting that were found near the body. The notes purported to be notes written by the victim, Mary Phagan, saying that the night watchman was raping her. Of course, it defies common sense that a rapist would let his victim write during the attack or that the victim would even think to do so. There was no possible way that she could have written the notes after the attack because of the nature of her injuries.
It is also important to note that the physical evidence was grossly mishandled. Many of the witnesses against Frank were African-American and thus had reasons to fear the legal system and succumb to any pressure placed on them to lie. Some witnesses, both white and black, gave statements to the police, later recanted their statements, and some eventually recanted their recantations. In other words, none of the evidence was particularly good.
Decades later, a man named Alonzo Mann came forward and said he saw Conley carrying the body. Mann was 14 at the time and Conley threatened to kill him if he said anything. He kept the secret for decades and told his story only shortly before his death. This evidence is assumed to mean that Conley was almost certainly guilty.
A few points about this case stand out.
1. Frank should never have been convicted. Conley changed his story significantly three times. He was an alcoholic and alcoholics tend to be liars. AA has a saying: How do you know when an alcoholic is lying? Whenever he opens his mouth. An alcoholic who repeatedly changes his story is not credible and the jury should have disregarded his testimony. Without this testimony, the state had no case.
2. Frank seems to have been what we today would call a sexual harasser. After the murder, a number of women came forward claiming to have been harassed by him. This does not make him guilty of murder but it does explain why the police began to consider him a possible suspect.
3. Although Conley was probably guilty, there are aspects of the stories about him that seem counter intuitive to me. Allegedly, Conley raped and murdered a thirteen-year-old white girl. Instead of fleeing as quickly as he could, he stayed at the murder scene and wrote TWO notes. Conley had only three years of schooling--and probably low-quality schooling at that. Writing was no doubt difficult for him. We are asked to believe that a man with a limited education would stay around the crime scene and risk being caught and lynched, in order to write a note? Would the most logical course of action not be to flee? And yet, the notes are clearly in his handwriting. Either Frank urged him to write the notes, as he claimed, or the police pressured him to do it and somehow planted the evidence.
It is rare for murderers to write notes and leave them at the scene. I have heard of this but only in cases of family violence.
Conley was uneducated but he was bright enough to be cross-examined for sixteen hours by the best legal minds in the South and his story held up. He was clearly not stupid and yet we are to believe that he did something impossibly stupid. If you had sexually assaulted and killed a young girl at work, would YOU say around to write TWO notes?
My own suspicion is that someone on the police force, who had perhaps been pressured by a politician, planted evidence, destroyed evidence or leaned on Conley heavily and helped him concoct a story.
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Friday, October 22, 2010
Another Post on Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins prides himself on his rationality but it seems that even he is unable to escape the need to believe that man is more than the sum of his genes and his environment. He has argued that man is able to transcend his biology although he really doesn't specify how this would happen. (I doubt that memes explain this.)
He offers as an example of transcending biology the fact that humans practice birth control,which he describes as contrary to his hypothesis that life's goal is to inject as many genes into the next generation as possible. It is scarcely believable, I think, that he would offer such a flimsy "proof."
Surely he realizes that the goal of evolution is not to have the most offspring but to have the most surviving offspring. The two are not necessarily the same. There are two basic reproductive strategies. One is to have many children. This will mean that each child gets a smaller share of the "pie" of resources like money, food, health care, parental teaching, etc. The other strategy is to have fewer children but to invest more in each child.
It is ridiculously easy to see why one's genetic fitness might be served by having fewer children but investing more in each one. For example, let's compare a midde class family with two children and an impoverished rural family with five children The two children live in a gated community, have first-rate medical care, and go to private schools and four-year colleges. The poor children go to inferior schools, and have limited options. They do not go to college but work in a convenience store, go into the army, or turn to crime. Let's create a hypthetical scenario for the poor family. One child goes into the military and survives but with post-traumatic stress disorder. He becomes depressed and a substance abuser. This removes him from the gene pool. Family resources that could have gone into the next generation are used to care for him. Another child gets addicted to Hillbilly Heroin and goes to prison for a long time, thus removing him from the gene pool. A daughter has an out-of-wedlock child, reducing her chances for education and for finding a suitable husband because many men don't want to deal with other men's children. These children are at greater risk for crime, dropping out of school, sexual abuse, depression, and a whole host of other problems.
Even if more of the poor family's children survive for a few generations, if there is some kind of catastrophe, like a war, a depression, or a plague, these children are far more vulnerable. Poor kids die in wars more than rich kids do. This is a fact of life. They also die of illnesses that rich people don't die of.
Note, too, that the children from the middle class family have far more control over their lives in terms of education, employment, medical care, and the ability to influence government policy. If, perish the thought, some kind of war or famine breaks out, these kids are more likely to be able to emigrate and find safety.
During the Holocaust, who was more likely to survive--and survive with the least amount of trauma? The poor Chassidic family with 11 kids or the upper-middle class family with three? The family with three kids is far more likely to have the skills needed to get a coveted visa in a safe country. Something similar no doubt applies in Iraq.
In short, Dawkins wants to believe that we transcend biology. The religious do too. The religious do this through God. Dawkins does it through wishful thinking and poor examples.
He offers as an example of transcending biology the fact that humans practice birth control,which he describes as contrary to his hypothesis that life's goal is to inject as many genes into the next generation as possible. It is scarcely believable, I think, that he would offer such a flimsy "proof."
Surely he realizes that the goal of evolution is not to have the most offspring but to have the most surviving offspring. The two are not necessarily the same. There are two basic reproductive strategies. One is to have many children. This will mean that each child gets a smaller share of the "pie" of resources like money, food, health care, parental teaching, etc. The other strategy is to have fewer children but to invest more in each child.
It is ridiculously easy to see why one's genetic fitness might be served by having fewer children but investing more in each one. For example, let's compare a midde class family with two children and an impoverished rural family with five children The two children live in a gated community, have first-rate medical care, and go to private schools and four-year colleges. The poor children go to inferior schools, and have limited options. They do not go to college but work in a convenience store, go into the army, or turn to crime. Let's create a hypthetical scenario for the poor family. One child goes into the military and survives but with post-traumatic stress disorder. He becomes depressed and a substance abuser. This removes him from the gene pool. Family resources that could have gone into the next generation are used to care for him. Another child gets addicted to Hillbilly Heroin and goes to prison for a long time, thus removing him from the gene pool. A daughter has an out-of-wedlock child, reducing her chances for education and for finding a suitable husband because many men don't want to deal with other men's children. These children are at greater risk for crime, dropping out of school, sexual abuse, depression, and a whole host of other problems.
Even if more of the poor family's children survive for a few generations, if there is some kind of catastrophe, like a war, a depression, or a plague, these children are far more vulnerable. Poor kids die in wars more than rich kids do. This is a fact of life. They also die of illnesses that rich people don't die of.
Note, too, that the children from the middle class family have far more control over their lives in terms of education, employment, medical care, and the ability to influence government policy. If, perish the thought, some kind of war or famine breaks out, these kids are more likely to be able to emigrate and find safety.
During the Holocaust, who was more likely to survive--and survive with the least amount of trauma? The poor Chassidic family with 11 kids or the upper-middle class family with three? The family with three kids is far more likely to have the skills needed to get a coveted visa in a safe country. Something similar no doubt applies in Iraq.
In short, Dawkins wants to believe that we transcend biology. The religious do too. The religious do this through God. Dawkins does it through wishful thinking and poor examples.
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Richard Dawkins and the God Delusion
Yesterday, I read part of Richard Dawkin's The God Delusion. The idea of a transcendant God who is both all-powerful and all-loving often seems indefensible. Cruelty is inherent in nature, as even a child who watches nature programs realizes, and it is impossible not to wonder why an omnipotent God made a universe that is not only cruel but inherently and necessarily cruel--and of course, we humans far outstrip the lower animals in a capacity for cruelty. These considerations cause me to doubt the traditional, theistic concepts of God; nevertheless, there are many aspects of Dawkin's ideas that I find untenable.
The first, to which this post is devoted, is his belief that evil done in the name of religion is in fact caused by religion. To bolster his point, he cites a study performed by an Israeli psychologist. In this study, he presented Israeli school children with the passage about Joshua capturing the town of Jericho. After conquering the town, the Bible records that Joshua slew all of the inhabitants, including women and children, and also killed the animals. This psychologist asked whether Joshua had acted correctly and gave the children a choice of three answers: that Joshua was entirely correct, that he was partially correct, and that he was totally incorrect. Around 60% of the children answered that Joshua's actions had been totally correct, while 6% responded that he had been partially correct. The remaining third of the children answered that Joshua had been totally incorrect.
Children often cited religious justifications for their approval of Joshua's actions. Fewer children who disapproved of the action cited religious justifications but among those who did, they tended to criticize Joshua for destroying animals and property that the Israelites could have used themselves.
When the psychologist gave children copies of a text that was identical to the first except that "Joshua" had been changed to "General Lin" and the "Israelites" had been changed to the Chinese, 75% of the children disapproved of slaughtering them. In other words, the rates of approval and disapproval were totally reversed. Dawkins cites this as proof that religious attitudes lead people to at least condone, if not promote, cruelty.
At this point, I confess to being astonished that a biologist of Dawkin's stature could have ignored a painfully obvious issue: this experiment has confounded religion and ethnicity. In the first text, children are asked to evaluate the actions of someone who is a member both of their own ethnic group and of their own religion. In the second text, children are asked to evaluate the actions of someone who is a member of both a different ethnic group and a different religion.
If Dawkins had wanted to assess the effects of religion alone, he would not have cited this study. Instead, he would have looked for research in which people were asked to judge the morality of actions committed against people of their own ethnic group but of a different religion or against their co-religionists who have a different ethnicity.
In the Israeli context, perhaps an experiment should have compared attitudes toward Israeli Jews who have abandoned Judaism to embrace Buddhism and, let's say, a group of African-America converts to Judaism. In this way, the effects of religion and ethnicity would be considered separately.
The American experience of slavery provides a case study of this point. The majority of American slaveholders were probably Protestant Christians, as were the majority of slaves. Yes, slaveholders often quoted the Bible to justify slavery, yet seemingly no one thought of permanently enslaving Catholics of English ancestry who lived in the U.S. Indeed, the idea seems incomprehensible. In other words, slaveholders preferred to enslave ethnically different co-religionists rather than enslave ethnically similar people who held a different religion--in spite of the fact that anti-Catholic feelings among Protestants was quite strong and remains strong among many Fundamentalist Christians to this day.
As an additional example, one need only look at the treatment of Jews in America. Yes, there has been real discrimination--think of all those "restricted clientele" hotels and the plethora of anti-Semitic websites today--but Jews have been far better treated in the U.S. than blacks, in spite of the fact that Jews by definition reject Jesus while blacks are among the most Christian people in the nation.
I propose a theory: that when given a choice of two or more groups to oppress, the powerful group will always choose to oppress the group that is the most genetically different from its own, regardless of what religion that genetically different group has. Furthermore, I suggest that enduring religious conflicts exist primarily when there are also ethnic differences. In Northern Ireland, the two warring groups possess not only different religions but different ethnicities: the Protestants are Scots-Irish and the Catholics are Irish. One might also point out that in the Republic of Ireland, Catholics and Protestants usually get along rather well and Protestants have played an important role in Irish political movements.
One need only recall the genocide in the Ukraine, led by self-proclaimed atheists who were of non-Ukrainian ethnic groups, to understand the point I am making. When critics of Dawkins point out that tens of millions have been killed by atheistic systems of government, Dawkins claims that this proves his point: that blind obedience to an ideology is always evil. In fact, this is not the point he has been making. He has merely shifted his point in response to this very valid criticism and he knows it. Most of his arguments have not been about irrationality per se but about belief in a deity. If evil can occur in the absence of religion, it shows that belief in an external God is in fact NOT the essential cause.
I cannot help but think of the Iraq war--a war that so far has resulted in over one million excess Iraqi deaths, in addition to all the previous deaths caused by more than a decade of sanctions. Yes, Bush is a fundamentalist Christian but many of the strongest proponents of the war are not noticably religious people. The Washington Post, a bastion of secularism, editorialized in favor of the war, as did the Wall Street Journal. In fact, the WSJ was so pro-war that critics nicknamed it the War Street Journal. The New York Times, a paper with a distinctly non-religious slant, published those disgraceful WMD stories. Both senators from New York at the time--Clinton and Schumer--and both senators from Connecticut--Dodd and Lieberman--voted for the war. Connecticut, of course, is one of the most liberal states in the nation and New England has one of the lowest rates of church attendance in the country. With the exception of Lieberman, none of the senators was considered over-devout.
On the other hand, senators in the Great Lakes States, a place far more traditional than NY or Connecticut--voted against the war. Remember that the major proponents of war in the Department of Defense--Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Feith--are apparently totally secular.
Comparing support for the war in various communities, one notes that according to a poll commissioned by the American Jewish Committee shortly before the war started, 59% of the Jewish community--a largely secular, intellectual, and culturally sophisticated group--supported the war in the same proportion as Americans generally, while African-Americans, a deeply religious community--opposed the war by 80%. (As an aside, let me note that Jews were no more likely to support the war than Americans in general. In this context, the dividing line was not religion but ethnicity, as white and African-Americans have similar theological views but vastly different social experiences. The war was also opposed by the US Council of Catholic Bishops and nearly all mainline, non-fundamentalist Protestant denominations. Taken as a whole, religiosity itself was not always connected to support for this war crime.
Still, in spite of the fact that I find Dawkins arguments about religion to be hopelessly muddled, I have to concede that he has a point. Many of the cruelest, most brutal activities in history are carried out by people who call themselves religious. Church goers are more likely to support torture than the secular. Still,the fact that support for war and torture correlate with religious belief does not mean that religious belief causes these proclivities.
There is research showing that traditionalism--a belief in strict rules and harsh punishments for violators of them--is at least partly genetic. These studies indicate that 50% of the difference among people on this measure is due to genetics. What remains to be seen is whether or not people who rank high on measures of traditionalism are the same people to be attracted to fundamentalist religions. If so, the evils linked to religion are not caused by religion itself but merely co-occur with it. One can assume that tradionalists could be attracted to any sort of regimented system like communism as well.
Since there is no ethical research on human beings that could ever establish this point--or its contrary--we are left with conjecture. Still, I believe that Dawkin's arguments about the evil of religion are less nuanced than they would have to be to adequately explain the very real link between religion and human cruelty.
I
The first, to which this post is devoted, is his belief that evil done in the name of religion is in fact caused by religion. To bolster his point, he cites a study performed by an Israeli psychologist. In this study, he presented Israeli school children with the passage about Joshua capturing the town of Jericho. After conquering the town, the Bible records that Joshua slew all of the inhabitants, including women and children, and also killed the animals. This psychologist asked whether Joshua had acted correctly and gave the children a choice of three answers: that Joshua was entirely correct, that he was partially correct, and that he was totally incorrect. Around 60% of the children answered that Joshua's actions had been totally correct, while 6% responded that he had been partially correct. The remaining third of the children answered that Joshua had been totally incorrect.
Children often cited religious justifications for their approval of Joshua's actions. Fewer children who disapproved of the action cited religious justifications but among those who did, they tended to criticize Joshua for destroying animals and property that the Israelites could have used themselves.
When the psychologist gave children copies of a text that was identical to the first except that "Joshua" had been changed to "General Lin" and the "Israelites" had been changed to the Chinese, 75% of the children disapproved of slaughtering them. In other words, the rates of approval and disapproval were totally reversed. Dawkins cites this as proof that religious attitudes lead people to at least condone, if not promote, cruelty.
At this point, I confess to being astonished that a biologist of Dawkin's stature could have ignored a painfully obvious issue: this experiment has confounded religion and ethnicity. In the first text, children are asked to evaluate the actions of someone who is a member both of their own ethnic group and of their own religion. In the second text, children are asked to evaluate the actions of someone who is a member of both a different ethnic group and a different religion.
If Dawkins had wanted to assess the effects of religion alone, he would not have cited this study. Instead, he would have looked for research in which people were asked to judge the morality of actions committed against people of their own ethnic group but of a different religion or against their co-religionists who have a different ethnicity.
In the Israeli context, perhaps an experiment should have compared attitudes toward Israeli Jews who have abandoned Judaism to embrace Buddhism and, let's say, a group of African-America converts to Judaism. In this way, the effects of religion and ethnicity would be considered separately.
The American experience of slavery provides a case study of this point. The majority of American slaveholders were probably Protestant Christians, as were the majority of slaves. Yes, slaveholders often quoted the Bible to justify slavery, yet seemingly no one thought of permanently enslaving Catholics of English ancestry who lived in the U.S. Indeed, the idea seems incomprehensible. In other words, slaveholders preferred to enslave ethnically different co-religionists rather than enslave ethnically similar people who held a different religion--in spite of the fact that anti-Catholic feelings among Protestants was quite strong and remains strong among many Fundamentalist Christians to this day.
As an additional example, one need only look at the treatment of Jews in America. Yes, there has been real discrimination--think of all those "restricted clientele" hotels and the plethora of anti-Semitic websites today--but Jews have been far better treated in the U.S. than blacks, in spite of the fact that Jews by definition reject Jesus while blacks are among the most Christian people in the nation.
I propose a theory: that when given a choice of two or more groups to oppress, the powerful group will always choose to oppress the group that is the most genetically different from its own, regardless of what religion that genetically different group has. Furthermore, I suggest that enduring religious conflicts exist primarily when there are also ethnic differences. In Northern Ireland, the two warring groups possess not only different religions but different ethnicities: the Protestants are Scots-Irish and the Catholics are Irish. One might also point out that in the Republic of Ireland, Catholics and Protestants usually get along rather well and Protestants have played an important role in Irish political movements.
One need only recall the genocide in the Ukraine, led by self-proclaimed atheists who were of non-Ukrainian ethnic groups, to understand the point I am making. When critics of Dawkins point out that tens of millions have been killed by atheistic systems of government, Dawkins claims that this proves his point: that blind obedience to an ideology is always evil. In fact, this is not the point he has been making. He has merely shifted his point in response to this very valid criticism and he knows it. Most of his arguments have not been about irrationality per se but about belief in a deity. If evil can occur in the absence of religion, it shows that belief in an external God is in fact NOT the essential cause.
I cannot help but think of the Iraq war--a war that so far has resulted in over one million excess Iraqi deaths, in addition to all the previous deaths caused by more than a decade of sanctions. Yes, Bush is a fundamentalist Christian but many of the strongest proponents of the war are not noticably religious people. The Washington Post, a bastion of secularism, editorialized in favor of the war, as did the Wall Street Journal. In fact, the WSJ was so pro-war that critics nicknamed it the War Street Journal. The New York Times, a paper with a distinctly non-religious slant, published those disgraceful WMD stories. Both senators from New York at the time--Clinton and Schumer--and both senators from Connecticut--Dodd and Lieberman--voted for the war. Connecticut, of course, is one of the most liberal states in the nation and New England has one of the lowest rates of church attendance in the country. With the exception of Lieberman, none of the senators was considered over-devout.
On the other hand, senators in the Great Lakes States, a place far more traditional than NY or Connecticut--voted against the war. Remember that the major proponents of war in the Department of Defense--Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Feith--are apparently totally secular.
Comparing support for the war in various communities, one notes that according to a poll commissioned by the American Jewish Committee shortly before the war started, 59% of the Jewish community--a largely secular, intellectual, and culturally sophisticated group--supported the war in the same proportion as Americans generally, while African-Americans, a deeply religious community--opposed the war by 80%. (As an aside, let me note that Jews were no more likely to support the war than Americans in general. In this context, the dividing line was not religion but ethnicity, as white and African-Americans have similar theological views but vastly different social experiences. The war was also opposed by the US Council of Catholic Bishops and nearly all mainline, non-fundamentalist Protestant denominations. Taken as a whole, religiosity itself was not always connected to support for this war crime.
Still, in spite of the fact that I find Dawkins arguments about religion to be hopelessly muddled, I have to concede that he has a point. Many of the cruelest, most brutal activities in history are carried out by people who call themselves religious. Church goers are more likely to support torture than the secular. Still,the fact that support for war and torture correlate with religious belief does not mean that religious belief causes these proclivities.
There is research showing that traditionalism--a belief in strict rules and harsh punishments for violators of them--is at least partly genetic. These studies indicate that 50% of the difference among people on this measure is due to genetics. What remains to be seen is whether or not people who rank high on measures of traditionalism are the same people to be attracted to fundamentalist religions. If so, the evils linked to religion are not caused by religion itself but merely co-occur with it. One can assume that tradionalists could be attracted to any sort of regimented system like communism as well.
Since there is no ethical research on human beings that could ever establish this point--or its contrary--we are left with conjecture. Still, I believe that Dawkin's arguments about the evil of religion are less nuanced than they would have to be to adequately explain the very real link between religion and human cruelty.
I
Sunday, July 25, 2010
An Unwanted Pregnancy is More than "Inconvenience"
Those opposed to abortion rightly condemn the callousness of pro-choicers referring to the fetus as "tissue" or the "product of conception." On the other hand, I wince every time I hear a pro-lifer talk about an unplanned pregnancy as nine months of "inconvenience."
For many woman, an unplanned pregnancy ushers in a lifetime of grief. If she gives the baby up for adoption, she will spend the rest of her life aching for her child. As much as pro-life propaganda likes to paint glowing portraits of women who surrender their babies for adoption and are glad they did, there are countless other women who endure a lifetime of sadness, regret, and clinical depression from which they never recover.
If she keeps the baby, she diminishes her chances of getting married because many men don't want to raise another man's child. The results of this are poverty, loneliness, and a diminished chance of ever having a normal family life.
Pro-lifers will sometimes publish articles about women who kept their children and regard them as blessings. They never publish the articles about women whose children turn out to be learning disabled or handicapped. A woman I am very close to had an unplanned pregnancy almost fifty years ago. She had the child and kept him. She was married at the time but her husband was an alcoholic, severely depressed, and drank all the food money. She divorced him and raised three kids on her own until she married a successful businessman a decade later.
The son she never aborted is now forty-eight and a drug addict. He has ADHD, a back injury, and depression. He is unemployed. He lives with her. The woman is raising his son, which is why she can't really kick him out and hurt the grandson. He steals from her to get drug money. She sleeps in pants with pockets so he can't steal her money. Every few weeks, another cherished possession turns up missing.
The point of this post is that while I support the Church's position on abortion, I seethe when I hear pro-lifers talk about an unplanned pregnancy as a mere inconvenience.
Just as we expect pro-choicers to be honest and not hide behind phrases like "tissue" or "product of conception," I expect pro-lifers to admit that these types of pregnancies often result in a lifetime of suffering. Argue, if you want to, that life is so inherently good that it is worth the cost, but don't minimize what is too often a catastrophe for many women.
For many woman, an unplanned pregnancy ushers in a lifetime of grief. If she gives the baby up for adoption, she will spend the rest of her life aching for her child. As much as pro-life propaganda likes to paint glowing portraits of women who surrender their babies for adoption and are glad they did, there are countless other women who endure a lifetime of sadness, regret, and clinical depression from which they never recover.
If she keeps the baby, she diminishes her chances of getting married because many men don't want to raise another man's child. The results of this are poverty, loneliness, and a diminished chance of ever having a normal family life.
Pro-lifers will sometimes publish articles about women who kept their children and regard them as blessings. They never publish the articles about women whose children turn out to be learning disabled or handicapped. A woman I am very close to had an unplanned pregnancy almost fifty years ago. She had the child and kept him. She was married at the time but her husband was an alcoholic, severely depressed, and drank all the food money. She divorced him and raised three kids on her own until she married a successful businessman a decade later.
The son she never aborted is now forty-eight and a drug addict. He has ADHD, a back injury, and depression. He is unemployed. He lives with her. The woman is raising his son, which is why she can't really kick him out and hurt the grandson. He steals from her to get drug money. She sleeps in pants with pockets so he can't steal her money. Every few weeks, another cherished possession turns up missing.
The point of this post is that while I support the Church's position on abortion, I seethe when I hear pro-lifers talk about an unplanned pregnancy as a mere inconvenience.
Just as we expect pro-choicers to be honest and not hide behind phrases like "tissue" or "product of conception," I expect pro-lifers to admit that these types of pregnancies often result in a lifetime of suffering. Argue, if you want to, that life is so inherently good that it is worth the cost, but don't minimize what is too often a catastrophe for many women.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
An article by Derek Lin on Taoism
I read this years ago and liked it. I don't know if it is true but I intend to give it a try. I am uploading it here so that I can always find it because I liked it so much.
Tao Living
Turning Wish into Reality
by Derek Lin
December 1999
One important teaching in I-Kuan Tao, derived from its Zen tradition, states that the material world is illusory and only the realm of spirituality is real.
This concept may seem bizarre at first. I mean, come on! The chair I'm sitting on, the house I live in, the car I drive to work - how can you tell me these things are illusions? And how can intangibles like thoughts, feelings and relationships be more real than physical matter?
Even more bizarre, perhaps, is the fact that there are modern thinkers who are thinking along the same lines and leveraging these Tao principles to create success in life. Two examples are Mike Hernacki, author of The Ultimate Secret to Getting Absolutely Everything You Want and Scott Adams, cartoonist of the wildly popular Dilbert strip.
Hernacki's secret is that in order to achieve something, you must be absolutely willing to do everything it takes, and you must take action with total initiative. If you can do that, you will see your goal rushing to completion, and you end up not having to do all the things you thought you had to after all!
There are some wonderful implications to this principle, but what makes it really work is the fundamental belief that all thoughts have an objective reality and physical existence. This is in complete accordance with Zen and Tao teachings.
There is a chapter from The Dilbert Future, one of Scott Adams' best-selling books, where he discusses the same idea from a different angle. In a complete departure from his usual output of workplace humor, Adams gets serious and talks about his unconventional philosophy of life and the source of his uncommon success.
Adams asserts that existence is far more than the limited reality we can perceive with our limited vision. This is, again, in complete accordance with Zen and Tao teachings. He began suspecting this truth when he went through some personal paranormal experiences. Later on, he was able to prove it to himself via his use of affirmations.
By affirmations I don't mean the kind Stuart Smiley says to himself while looking into a mirror. ("I'm good enough, smart enough, and doggone it, people like me!") What I mean instead is a way to bend reality to your will. You simply decide on a specific goal that you can visualize, and write it down fifteen times a day in the following form: I, Joe Sixpack, get/do/become/whatever something/someone/whatever!
If you can do this consistently, your intangible desire will materialize. The difficult part is the consistency. Most people won't be able to last long enough to see it work, but I know there's some of you out there who have the fortitude to apply this technique successfully.
What's so supernatural about this, you ask? Wouldn't you succeed simply by continuously motivating yourself? That's psychology, not metaphysics!
You can decide on a goal that is just beyond your reach, something that you cannot accomplish by your efforts alone. That way, when your wish comes true you'll be able to tell that the affirmations have played an undeniable role.
Another convincer is that as you practice the affirmations, you will start noticing strange coincidences favorable to your cause. They will pile up to the point where you'll have no choice but to admit that they can't all be explained in terms of physical cause and effect.
When Scott Adams started doing affirmations, his goal was to get rich in the stock market. Because he was skeptical, he missed the boat a couple of times - the first time by not having a brokerage account set up in advance; the second time by selling too soon.
I, too, was skeptical when I started. My goal was to get a better job, since my position at the time really couldn't get me where I wanted to go. Because of the high level of position I sought, I had a feeling the job hunt would not be easy, and I wasn't sure the affirmations would help.
I needed to make my goal specific and just out of reach, so I named a very high salary. I also envisioned a short commute, a more professional setting, and fast Internet access.
Mindful of Hernacki's secret, I started sending out my resume and writing my affirmations diligently. I was committed to doing whatever it would take to land a great new job.
Nothing happened for a few weeks, and then out of the blue some corporate recruiters called. They didn't know I had just started my job hunt. They called because they contacted me a year ago about some possibilities and still remembered me from that occasion.
I did not think of this as an amazing coincidence, nor did I take them seriously, because nothing concrete ever came out of our previous dealings. I sent them my updated resume and thought no more of them.
Other things started happening too, faster than I thought possible. Before I went on vacation I had several interview opportunities. After I returned some offers came in. Soon I accepted one of the offers.
Did the affirmations work? The new employment featured a convenient commute, an excellent top-flight work environment and, yes, fast access to the Internet from my new office.
There's just one nagging detail. The offer I accepted was quite satisfactory, but the dollar amount was not the figure I named in my affirmations. Still, it was a decent increase and I wasn't complaining.
I sent e-mail to the recruiters thanking them for their efforts and letting them know I would not be needing their services in the foreseeable future. A couple of them responded to this by calling me. They said their clients really wanted to interview me. What were the chances that I would reconsider?
I told them that I did wait for them to come up with something, but eventually had to move forward. Now I was honor-bound by my commitment and could not entertain any other possibilities.
They expressed regrets but still persisted. Apparently my resume had been misplaced previously and was now at the right desk; the company was getting into the Internet in a big way; stock options were possible...
None of that made a difference; it was a matter of principle. Each recruiter gave up when he realized I meant what I said. In the last phone call, just before hanging up, I asked: "Just out of curiosity, what kind of salary is your client talking about?"
The gentleman named the exact figure in my affirmations. Chills went up and down my spine. What were the odds? Could it be that I, like Scott Adams, didn't wait long enough for the exact opportunity I envisioned to come true?
Maybe, but I like the job I chose and I believe the affirmations had something to do that too. My skepticism has vanished. I have to concede that the Zen notion about the illusory nature of the material world may not be so bizarre after all.
Sit back for a moment and think about the incredible implications we're talking about. Here is a spiritual concept that you do not need to accept on blind faith. It is something you can prove to your own satisfaction, as many times as you need to. And once you see the truth, it becomes a powerful tool you can use at will for the rest of your life.
This is a challenge to you. If you think this metaphysical stuff is too far-out, or if you think I-Kuan Tao offers nothing materially different from other belief systems, then here's the perfect opportunity to put your preconceptions to the test. It's your turn... to see for yourself just how bizarre reality really is!
Tao Living
Turning Wish into Reality
by Derek Lin
December 1999
One important teaching in I-Kuan Tao, derived from its Zen tradition, states that the material world is illusory and only the realm of spirituality is real.
This concept may seem bizarre at first. I mean, come on! The chair I'm sitting on, the house I live in, the car I drive to work - how can you tell me these things are illusions? And how can intangibles like thoughts, feelings and relationships be more real than physical matter?
Even more bizarre, perhaps, is the fact that there are modern thinkers who are thinking along the same lines and leveraging these Tao principles to create success in life. Two examples are Mike Hernacki, author of The Ultimate Secret to Getting Absolutely Everything You Want and Scott Adams, cartoonist of the wildly popular Dilbert strip.
Hernacki's secret is that in order to achieve something, you must be absolutely willing to do everything it takes, and you must take action with total initiative. If you can do that, you will see your goal rushing to completion, and you end up not having to do all the things you thought you had to after all!
There are some wonderful implications to this principle, but what makes it really work is the fundamental belief that all thoughts have an objective reality and physical existence. This is in complete accordance with Zen and Tao teachings.
There is a chapter from The Dilbert Future, one of Scott Adams' best-selling books, where he discusses the same idea from a different angle. In a complete departure from his usual output of workplace humor, Adams gets serious and talks about his unconventional philosophy of life and the source of his uncommon success.
Adams asserts that existence is far more than the limited reality we can perceive with our limited vision. This is, again, in complete accordance with Zen and Tao teachings. He began suspecting this truth when he went through some personal paranormal experiences. Later on, he was able to prove it to himself via his use of affirmations.
By affirmations I don't mean the kind Stuart Smiley says to himself while looking into a mirror. ("I'm good enough, smart enough, and doggone it, people like me!") What I mean instead is a way to bend reality to your will. You simply decide on a specific goal that you can visualize, and write it down fifteen times a day in the following form: I, Joe Sixpack, get/do/become/whatever something/someone/whatever!
If you can do this consistently, your intangible desire will materialize. The difficult part is the consistency. Most people won't be able to last long enough to see it work, but I know there's some of you out there who have the fortitude to apply this technique successfully.
What's so supernatural about this, you ask? Wouldn't you succeed simply by continuously motivating yourself? That's psychology, not metaphysics!
You can decide on a goal that is just beyond your reach, something that you cannot accomplish by your efforts alone. That way, when your wish comes true you'll be able to tell that the affirmations have played an undeniable role.
Another convincer is that as you practice the affirmations, you will start noticing strange coincidences favorable to your cause. They will pile up to the point where you'll have no choice but to admit that they can't all be explained in terms of physical cause and effect.
When Scott Adams started doing affirmations, his goal was to get rich in the stock market. Because he was skeptical, he missed the boat a couple of times - the first time by not having a brokerage account set up in advance; the second time by selling too soon.
I, too, was skeptical when I started. My goal was to get a better job, since my position at the time really couldn't get me where I wanted to go. Because of the high level of position I sought, I had a feeling the job hunt would not be easy, and I wasn't sure the affirmations would help.
I needed to make my goal specific and just out of reach, so I named a very high salary. I also envisioned a short commute, a more professional setting, and fast Internet access.
Mindful of Hernacki's secret, I started sending out my resume and writing my affirmations diligently. I was committed to doing whatever it would take to land a great new job.
Nothing happened for a few weeks, and then out of the blue some corporate recruiters called. They didn't know I had just started my job hunt. They called because they contacted me a year ago about some possibilities and still remembered me from that occasion.
I did not think of this as an amazing coincidence, nor did I take them seriously, because nothing concrete ever came out of our previous dealings. I sent them my updated resume and thought no more of them.
Other things started happening too, faster than I thought possible. Before I went on vacation I had several interview opportunities. After I returned some offers came in. Soon I accepted one of the offers.
Did the affirmations work? The new employment featured a convenient commute, an excellent top-flight work environment and, yes, fast access to the Internet from my new office.
There's just one nagging detail. The offer I accepted was quite satisfactory, but the dollar amount was not the figure I named in my affirmations. Still, it was a decent increase and I wasn't complaining.
I sent e-mail to the recruiters thanking them for their efforts and letting them know I would not be needing their services in the foreseeable future. A couple of them responded to this by calling me. They said their clients really wanted to interview me. What were the chances that I would reconsider?
I told them that I did wait for them to come up with something, but eventually had to move forward. Now I was honor-bound by my commitment and could not entertain any other possibilities.
They expressed regrets but still persisted. Apparently my resume had been misplaced previously and was now at the right desk; the company was getting into the Internet in a big way; stock options were possible...
None of that made a difference; it was a matter of principle. Each recruiter gave up when he realized I meant what I said. In the last phone call, just before hanging up, I asked: "Just out of curiosity, what kind of salary is your client talking about?"
The gentleman named the exact figure in my affirmations. Chills went up and down my spine. What were the odds? Could it be that I, like Scott Adams, didn't wait long enough for the exact opportunity I envisioned to come true?
Maybe, but I like the job I chose and I believe the affirmations had something to do that too. My skepticism has vanished. I have to concede that the Zen notion about the illusory nature of the material world may not be so bizarre after all.
Sit back for a moment and think about the incredible implications we're talking about. Here is a spiritual concept that you do not need to accept on blind faith. It is something you can prove to your own satisfaction, as many times as you need to. And once you see the truth, it becomes a powerful tool you can use at will for the rest of your life.
This is a challenge to you. If you think this metaphysical stuff is too far-out, or if you think I-Kuan Tao offers nothing materially different from other belief systems, then here's the perfect opportunity to put your preconceptions to the test. It's your turn... to see for yourself just how bizarre reality really is!
Thanks to the person who commented on the post about my brother
I posted an article about my brother's struggle with addiction. Someone was kind enough to write a long comment offering helpful advice. Thank you. Thank you.
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