"Judge" Roy Moore on going back to school

Too bad he's not going back to school -- he still needs to learn a few things.

In a new post over at the WorldNutDaily, he writes:

Most of the public school students will return to a world without prayer or the Bible and where God is mentioned in some schools only in the Pledge of Allegiance (for now). For those of us who can remember, however, we know that it has not always been so.

He's wrong about the basic facts: kids can have a Bible in school (and even study from it). Kids can pray too. They just can't pray during class (unless they do so silently; unless teachers develop ESP or the student advertises the fact, I doubt anyone will know, not that it matters) or in a disruptive manner. In other words, if kids want to pray before eating lunch in the cafeteria, they can. If they want to pray in the hallway between classes, they probably can (maybe if they block the hallway or access to a room, they would have to move, but the problem wouldn't be the prayer itself, though some school officials may not know that).

So what is "Judge" Moore upset about? (As far as I can tell, he is not a judge anymore).


Part of it is his childhood:

In 1952, President Harry Truman declared a National Day of Prayer so that annually the people of the United States would turn to God. In 1954, when I was just 7 years old and in the second grade, Congress added the phrase "Under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance so that "the children of our land, in the daily recitation of the Pledge in school, will be daily impressed with a true understanding of our way of life and its origins." By 1955, "In God We Trust" was placed on all our currency and coins because our government wanted to reflect "the spiritual basis of our way of life." By the time I was in the fourth grade, "In God We Trust" had become our National Motto by joint resolution of Congress.

Obviously, things were much different in schools in the 1950s. We began each day with a prayer and a Bible verse or two. Then we stood facing the flag and, with our hand over our heart, pledged our allegiance as "one nation under God." Nobody was ashamed or embarrassed to acknowledge a belief in God – and the ACLU was not lurking near every schoolhouse and courthouse to be offended and file suit at the slightest mention of God.

Because we were taught that we were created in the image of God and that He alone was the judge of our hearts and minds, we had respect for our teachers and they seemed to care about us. Of course, there were student fights, gossip and rivalry, but we never heard of students killing each other or their teachers.

Note that he remembers when "one nation under God" was added to a pledge written by a socialist (!). And when "In God we trust" was adopted.

That's right -- they weren't there before. If there weren't there, then how does that support Moore's contention that associates this "acknowledgment of God" with "hav[ing] respect for our teachers and the[ir] seem[ing] to care about us"? Did teachers suddenly care about students because an acknowledgment of God was added to the pledge? or because "In God we trust" was added to our coins?

And if these acknowledgments weren't present before the 1950s, wouldn't the US have suffered some dreadful consequences -- perhaps losing a war? Against a religious country -- like Mexico or Spain -- just to teach us a lesson. Hard to see then his slippery slope fallacy:

I am very concerned for our future and believe that unless we restore the foundations of faith, family, freedom and law, we will continue to suffer the consequences of turning from God.

If God governs all, then perhaps we're losing not because we're turning away from God (no evidence of this happening, unfortunately), but because we're not a Muslim nation. I wonder...

Anyway, he also has quite an idyllic vision of schools: "we never heard of students killing each other or their teachers." While kids coming to school and shooting several kids or teachers may be a recent phenomenon, Richard Rothstein notes in The Way We Were? that there were violent incidents with students rioting -- in the early 20th century!

My classrooms were always relatively tranquil too. At least no one was shot or physically attacked (well, not with weapons anyway). There were fights. Rumors. Gossip. Girls probably developed eating disorders. Boys got high. Some girls probably got high too. Hmmm. Maybe not very idyllic....

Anyway, Moore is dead wrong when he writes:

No one ever imagined that the courts or our government had any intention of banishing the acknowledgment of God from us

because "the acknowledgment of God" has not been "banished" "from us" or anyone. You are free to do what you want. What is forbidden is the imposition to acknowledge God from anyone in authority.

He wouldn't want to be forced to worship a different God. Why should Baptists be forced to pray Catholic prayers? Or Jews forced to pray Christian prayers? Or Muslims...? Why should non-religious people (even those who believe but don't pray or don't want to pray) be forced to be religious? Is that something in the "Christian" spirit of things?

Or is being Christian forcing your neighbors to be like you?

Especially if you're a hypocrite.
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Catholic church strives to remain relevant; no speeches for you

This news reports notes that the Wilmington, Delaware, archbishop says

will not permit the Senator even if elected Vice President of the United States of America to speak at Catholic schools.

The Catholic church has tried to remain relevant in recent years, hardening its position on politicians who don't support church positions, most notably on abortion.

The article continues:

When asked for the Bishop's take on Senator Biden and his stand in favor of abortion, Krebs directed LifeSiteNews.com to Bishop Michael Saltarelli's 2004 statement on 'Catholics in Political Life' which, said Krebs, "very plainly states Bishop's position in this matter."

In that document Bishop Saltarelli notes that, in line with the US Bishops Conference policy, "Our Catholic institutions will not honor Catholic politicians who take pro-abortion legislative positions or invite them to speak at our functions or schools."

I'm curious why Catholic bishops and archbishops emphasize the abortion issue as opposed to the death penalty (which the church opposes) or even capitalism (the church nominally opposes this as it derides materialism).

In making these statements against pro-choice candidates, the Catholic leaders unwittingly seek to ally with Republicans who support the sort of unregulated capitalism that has frequently shown the world the worst side of capitalism and materialism, as well as allies Catholics with protestants and Christians -- many of whom hate Catholics (are you Catholic or Christian?, for example). Not all Christians feel this way, of course, but at least two universities associated with evangelical groups do not allow Catholic faculty (Wheaton College in Illinois fired a couple professors for converting to Catholicism and at Liberty University, the late Jerry Falwell's university, faculty reportedly sign a statement accepting that the Pope is the Antichrist).

The position of the church privileges one issue (while a hotly contested one, far from the most important issue in the US) at the expense of its general platform (at least of what they pay lip service to). Furthermore, their position of allying Catholics with a large and motivated group that despises them -- one that opposes many tenets of what the Catholic faith is supposed to represent.

I suspect that one of their main motivations is to remain relevant in the lives of individuals who live in an increasingly secular world. It's probably a losing battle -- especially in light of what happened in Europe, where church attendance is practically non-existent and where even Catholic Spain has legalized marriage for gays and lesbians --, especially should Catholics have to coexist with those who despise them and realize that they were simply pawns in the bid of the so-called Moral Majority to establish a theocracy in the US.

In light of this, a few lines from the Dead Kennedys' song "Moral Majority":

Circus tent con-men and Southern belle bunnies
Milk your emotions and then they steal your money
It's the new dark ages with the fascists toting bibles
Cheap nostalgia for the Salem Witch Trials

Stodgy ayatollahs in their double-knit ties
Burn lots of books so they can feed you their lies
Masturbating with a flag and bible
God must be dead if you're alive

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DaveScot and religion, again

DaveScot responds with a blog post to a comment made over at UncommonlyDense that argues that religious belief is the motor behind ID.

DaveScot replies:

Guilt by association is a logical fallacy.

You can’t ask any ID proponents to give up their religious faith anymore than you can ask an atheist Darwinist to acquire some religious faith. That isn’t how science works.

However, since I’m not a religious person I can quite easily give up any notion that the designer of either the universe or of life itself is a deity. I have no data on the nature of the designer other than what I can determine through the nature of the design.

As far as criticizing ID based on the religious beliefs of a number of its proponents (nearly all of them, actually), DaveScot is correct, it is a logical fallacy. This doesn't mean that ID isn't some sort of religious belief (it is, as I argue below), but it means we shouldn't determine that based on the beliefs of its supporters.

For the same reason, modern evolutionary theory shouldn't be criticized for being supported by a number of atheists (of course, not all supporters are: Ken Miller, Brown University professor and author of one of the most popular biology high school textbooks, is a Catholic -- as is Michael Behe, supporter of ID, to name but one example).

But DaveScot says "I’m not a religious person," a claim that rings hollow given his recent post that correlates ID as proof of God's existence and his claim that ID has a creator.


Here he supports that there was a designer and that designer, while he does not (he compulsively cannot) say it, is a stand in for God. It is an argument from ignorance as well (logical fallacy):

The counter-claim that chance & necessity is capable of the necessary tasks has not been demonstrated. It has not been shown that small mutations can ever accumulate into significant novel functional architectures that we observe in living things today. It has not been shown feasible by computer simulations of population genetics, in a laboratory, or in field observation.

Yes because something "has not been demonstrated" doesn't mean it didn't happen (he applies this rule to ID as well). Science does not work by giving up and suggesting that something supernatural (by definition, the designer is supernatural since there are no "natural" (naturalist is perhaps more appropriate) proofs of its existence) accounted for

directing or steering the course of organic evolution.

In accepting the concept of ID and the concomitant designer behind it, DaveScot is showing that he may not be religious (i.e., he doesn't go to church, pray, read the Bible, what have you), but he certainly believes in something.

In a previous post (commented here on this blog), he states,

So what exactly do they “see” that convinces them that God’s hand is all over the place? Obviously it isn’t rational evidence that can weighed, measured, or otherwise rationally evaulated because that would be science and furthermore it would be the science behind intelligent design.

Here he unequivocally connects "God's hand" with "the science behind intelligent design." If "the science behind intelligent design" shows its supporters "that God's hand is all over the place" -- then why doesn't he believe in God? He may say he doesn't believe in God and he may not even be lying (he may be confused; in order to lie one has to have awareness of an objective reality), but he is certainly confused, unless he doesn't really "believe" the science behind ID. If that's the case, he's just feeding off the money of Christians, just like the televangelists, et al.
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Humorless Christians?

Apparently Christians have a sense of humor. It's just not highly evolved. Stuart Shephard of Focus on the Family's political branch, Focus Action, posted a video July 30 asking people to pray for rain at the time of Obama's acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention. His video garnered numerous hits (over 20,000 page views -- that's 20,000 more than this blog has) and was briefly pulled from youtube and was removed from its site after a few days.


But besides being derided by non-evangelicals, not even everyone at Focus on the Family thought it was appropriate (at least ten Focus members complained about it) and it was removed from their website. What they're saying?

Minnery said the video was taken down because several Focus members complained that prayer shouldn't be used to bring harm on someone else.

"We are not about confusing people about prayer," Minnery said.

But the video is pretty humorless, although it has a light tone. Shephard claims it's hyperbole and it certainly does have that quality. It might be easier to distinguish it as humor though if all their positions were not hyperbolic.
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The Gospel According to the Boss

This story covers Jeffrey Symynkywicz, a preacher at a Universalist Unitarian church, and his new book, The Gospel According to Bruce Springsteen: Rock and Redemption from Asbury Park to Magic. Springsteen has long been noted for religious elements in his music -- songs about suffering, redemption, pregnant Marys, and other girls claiming "immaculate concpetion" abound.

The book includes a list of "Bruce's Ten Suggestions for Spiritual Living":

To avoid copyright issues, I'll just include the summary. You may get the list with some additional commentary at the link above.

1. The world has gone awry.

2. There is a power within the souls of men and women to transcend the world and to achieve real victories in spite of the world.

3. The world is as it is.

4. Life without connections is empty and dangerous.

5. Our stories symbolize something deeper.

6. Life is embodied.

7. It's all about change.

8. There is no guarantee of success.

9. Hope is resilient.

10. There is always something more. If Bruce is luminous in his work — shining a light of perception on the horizontal dimension of this earthly life — so he is numinous as well — casting this life we lead in the brilliance of an almost mystic glow; shedding the radiance of discernment on that vertical beam which crashes through the linear plane of existence and points it toward that which is higher, deeper, somehow transcendent.

I had read Springsteen in more existential terms, guided in large part by Deena Weinstein's take in an essay called Serious Rock that addressed Springsteen, Pink Floyd, and Rush, though many of the observations therein apply here.

Considering the first point here, it is certainly fitting that Springsteen wrote an album in light of the terrorist attacks (The Rising) which also includes the "hope is resilient" theme that Symynkywicz notes. One of the clearest examples of these two points is his Nebraska song, "Reason to Believe." The song closes the bleak album (does my use of this term give away my age?), though it is certainly not the only "ray of light" on it (see also "Open All Night" with the urge to get "back to where my baby lives"). But "Reason to Believe" is about the need to have some sort of hope even when there doesn't seem to be any.

The first verse deals with "a man standin' over a dead dog lyin' by the highway in a ditch" who the narrator sees. After describing what he sees, he muses, "Struck me kind of funny seem kinda funny sir to me / Still at the end of every hard day people find some reason to believe." Of course here, the man looking at the dead dog (perhaps there's some symbolism in my dyslexic typing, leading me to frequently type 'god' instead of the correct 'dog') is poking it, hoping that "that dog'd get up and run." The dog doesn't, of course, but the desire is there.

Two other verses deal with failed relationships -- a husband leaves his adoring young wife and in the final verse, a groom waits for his bride to show up, wondering if the wedding is going to happen. The other verse is about baptism and death -- different ends of life. In the final verse, the "Groom stands alone and watches the river rush on so effortlessly," the river symbolizing (of course) the inevitable passage of time and events and the inability of the groom to harness the passing of events to his plans. But the song concludes with the search for a "reason to believe."

This "reason to believe" is also a way of finding the "power within the souls of men and women [that can] transcend the world and to achieve real victories in spite of the world." Suffering occurs with the loss of someone beloved, even if it's "just" a dog (or even a stray). Actually, this one song contains the ten "suggestions for spiritual living" that Symynkywicz describes.

Marcus Griel called Nebraska the quietest punk album made (though punk fans would tend to disagree; no way could Springsteen be punk by their standards). His concerns about the emptiness of modern life certainly agreed with them and he didn't take a stance against materialism (not a prerequisite for punks) per se (though he certainly lashed out against unfeeling corporate goons in songs like "Seeds" and "Born in the U.S.A.") while emphasizing the point of view of common people who had been dislodged or at least suffered in socio-economic terms.

What I find especially interesting is that different artists coincided in a message like this at about the same time -- The Police have the song "Invisible Sun" that, stripped of its specificity about Northern Ireland, is exactly the same thing -- the "reason to believe" that Springsteen's character is an "invisible sun" inside each of us. Springsteen was largely apolitical or even anti-political on his early albums -- that changes on Nebraska (1982) and continues with "Born in the USA" and "My Hometown" on the following album (you know the one). Pink Floyd also became directly political with The Final Cut (1983) and the Police's Synchronicity the same year (1983) also became their most political statement, with the aforementioned "Invisible Sun" and also the critique of modern live in "Synchronicity II" as well as "Walking in your Footsteps" (though the nuclear war paranoia was found on their first album with "Born in the 50s"). Likewise, Springsteen and Pink Floyd had already spelled out their view of the human condition on their earlier albums (see Weinstein's essay). Even as Springsteen and Pink Floyd embodied the 70s in different ways (one they had in common: punks hated both bands -- and many others), they also sensed that something had gone disastrously long as the 1980s band -- and that was something they shared with the punks and the Police (and let's not forget that the Police emerged in the punk climate of the late 1970s as a band that quickly embraced that more mainstream "new wave" label).


And here is the rest of it. Read more!