Carv's Thinky Blog I'm an author with a focus on satirical science fiction.

20Sep/100

I Am an Ethical Christian

You may have noticed some changes to this site. The name has officially changed, for one thing; Carv's Thinky Blog is back to being more about my day-to-day meditations than it is about selling books. I missed that less mercenary version, and I know some of you did, too.

Among the changes: I've added old blog entries and will add more this week. I'm adding screenplays as I have a chance to reread them. I'm finding work on old CDs that I haven't looked at it in ten years. If I find old poems or song lyrics worth revisiting, I'll post those, with the warning that despite having been published as a poet, I consider my skills in that regard unimpressive at best. I've added feature articles for the Weekly Volcano, and later this week, I'll add my cover story from this week's edition. It's about the so-called New Atheists--folks like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, who consider all religion toxic and openly seek its demise. That will lead to a follow-up entry here on the subject of my own hopes for the Christian religion. Those of you who feel I have an ongoing axe to grind may approach that entry with particular interest.

In the meantime, this:

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I think if Jesus was the Son of God, then so are we. I do not believe the man had any magical divine superpowers, nor am I persuaded by the anecdotal evidence, written decades after his death, that he returned to life and ascended to Heaven three days later. Maybe it happened; probably not. It's certainly never happened to anyone in my experience or documented history, and the evidence presented for it wouldn't stand up in a secular court. As Carl Sagan was wont to observe, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and the resurrection simply doesn't have that. All the same, I consider myself a Christian, in that I admire Jesus's views and principles as they've been passed down to us. If you've read Lightfall, you know I consider Jesus superhuman in at least one sense: His ability to empathize with people outside his tribe, gender, experience and moral code was vastly superior to anyone else in his time and place, and maybe to anyone in ours. Moreover, he was able to spread his enlightened worldview to others in a way that speaks to us halfway around the world, two thousand years later. Even Dr. Sagan would have to admit that was and is extraordinary.

If all Jesus ever did was walk on water or cater a wedding, would people live and die in his name? Criss Angel can walk on water (supposedly), and I don't see anyone building him shrines. What made Jesus special wasn't his supposed miracles, it was the actual miracle of his ethics. He thought outside his tribe and was able to see "Them" as "Us." We all struggle with that. Some might say it's only human. Others will admit it's built into our genes, an outdated evolutionary strategy.

Consider. My stepdad was almost universally regarded as a good man. Yet I heard him use racist language on several occasions. Even worse, he held and voiced dismissive opinions about blacks, Mexicans, poor people--pretty much anyone from a culture outside his own. I often heard him use patently, demonstrably untrue generalizations like "They don't value life the way we do" and "They just want everything to be handed to them." So how do we reconcile these two facts about his nature? Was he really a good man? Of course he was. Once he'd actually met a person of another culture, be that person black, gay, handicapped, poor--you name it--he'd give that person the shirt off his back, sometimes literally. My stepfather wasn't a bad man at all. He was simply bound by a limitation we all share: a preference for the familiar. Biologists refer to it as "kin selection," with the proviso that we often consider ourselves "related" to people who aren't in fact part of our family.

If you'll pardon a longer-than-usual quote, primatologist Frans de Waal had this to say about altruism (specifically the ability to be generous to people outside our kin) among primates:

"Empathy and solidarity have held human groups together for ages. Admittedly, these groups were small. In both animals and humans empathy is biased. It is always stronger for the in-group than the out-group, stronger for one's own family than for nonrelatives. These biases are not hard to explain in evolutionary terms and have also been found in animal studies.

"For example, we conducted an experiment with capuchin monkeys in which they could choose between an option that rewarded themselves or one that rewarded themselves plus a neighbor sitting next to them. Guess which option they preferred? They went with the prosocial option even though it gave them no extra food: they were just happy to see another get food, we assume. But in the same study we also found that if they were paired with a monkey they didn’t know, their prosocial tendencies vanished, and they became quite selfish.

"I think humans act the same, so that it is a real challenge to build societies of the size that we have. We still have the psychology of a primate that evolved in smaller groups, even though now we live among millions of strangers. In order to do so successfully we need to rely on a blend of old psychology that makes us empathize with others and an appeal to what is good for all of us. We need to consider the common good insofar as it helps ourselves. Certain goals are better achieved together than alone. For example, in the health-care debate, instead of appealing to empathy and morality, we also need to bring up selfish considerations. Which system brings the greatest service to the greatest number of people? If the quality of care that we receive ranks below that of dozens of other nations, and if these other nations spend less per capita than we do, there is an obvious argument that we’re not getting our money’s worth. This is a simple capitalist calculation, which has little to do with empathy."

I include that entire three-paragraph quote because it shows how kin preference and gene-selfishness bear on the more ubiquitous topics of ethics, government, law and political strategy. I think it behooves each of us to examine our political and ethical views carefully and see whether any of them derive from unreasonable restrictions on who's one-of-us and who's not.

My stepdad, for example, said and believed unkind things about people overseas because, without realizing it, he saw them as less-than-him. He and his kin were family, Americans who looked and thought like him were Us, and everyone else was the distrusted, less-than-people Them. But please understand, I'm not analyzing my stepfather's behavior just because he's dead and can't defend himself. I'm doing it, not simply because I loved him and wish I could mitigate his less laudable opinions, but because I see some of his behavior in my own.

The truth is, there are people and other similar organisms I consider less-than-me. When I see a welfare parasite leaching off the noble intentions of others, I immediately shift that person into a mental folder called those-who-don't-deserve-it. I may even be right, but I need to know where my opinions are coming from before I can evaluate them rationally.

When I say I don't believe all abortion is murder, it's because for the first trimester of an embryo's life, I consider that organism less-than-human. An embryo in its first few months of life lacks a nervous system; it cannot think or feel pain. Its parents, on the other hand, can, so I afford them greater considerations and privileges in my thinking. If an abortion in the first trimester will prevent enormous hardship to the parents, then I can't really argue that it should be illegal. In fact, I'm considering whether that embryo, once it matures into an "actual person," will stand a high chance of happiness. If circumstances render that improbable, that gets weighed into my decision.

I know my mathematical analysis of that particular scenario will seem harsh, even heartless, to many. I know some of you believe an embryo is a "baby" from day one, therefore a person, worthy of privileges and considerations equal to those we enjoy. To you, the Golden Rule extends to that embryo. To you, anyone who chooses abortion is choosing to murder a baby--a person. I understand why you're so adamantly opposed to that. All I can say in my defense is that when I look at an organism more closely resembling a goldfish than an adult human or even a baby, I'm more worried about the life and relative happiness of the mother.

When liberals say things like, "I don't understand how conservatives can be anti-choice but pro-war and pro-death penalty," they miss the essential point. To a conservative, an embryo is Us. They're not anti-choice or even pro-life, they're anti-the-murdering-of-babies--and geez, why isn't everyone, right? Conversely, to such conservatives a convicted murderer is no longer a Person, same-as-us. To them, neither are the people who live in countries on which we declare and wage war. To them, bombs falling on civilians--even women and children--are as offensive as tossing a grenade into a chicken coop. It's messy, sure, but not exactly murder. Besides, "people over there don't value life the way we do."

We all have clear dividers in our head between those who are family, whom we defend whether right or wrong; kin, meaning people who remind us of us; and the rest: those who are less-than-us. For my stepfather, Hispanics were less-than-him until the moment he actually talked to them. Same went for gay people, black people, Muslim people, poor people, and Democratic Senators from the great state of California. But what about me? Where do my dividers lie?

I've already stated my preference for adults over first-trimester embryos. I can defend that on biological grounds but will understand if you consider it liberal b.s. I consider convicted murderers less-than-me, too, but I've seen DNA evidence overturn too many "solid" convictions to be sure of my beliefs. I'm pro-death penalty but only under absolutely certain conditions of proof. I opposed the war in Iraq because I don't consider Iraqi citizens less-than-me; same goes for the people of Afghanistan. On the other hand, I was and still am heavily in favor of putting Osama bin Laden's head on a pike in the middle of the World Trade Center Memorial. Why? I don't care what your politics are, you kill three thousand of my kin as they arrive in their office on a Tuesday morning, and I will see you in Hell.

By the way, sometimes a disaster like 9/11 forces us to reassess who's in our kin group. Maybe that's why catastrophes bring out something special in so many people. I just came across this in a Manhattanite's blog:

"wednesday night [September 12, 2001] we came home from dinner, and someone had left little green post-its on the doors in our building that said 'i love you'."

What strikes me about the ethics of Christ is that it's all about expanding your kin. Suddenly it's not just male, ethnically Hebrew people of a certain Jewish denomination, it's about Roman tax collectors and Samaritan women and the morally fallen. As I pursue the goal of growing as a person, I'm taking a careful look at whom I consider less-than-me and whether or not I can really justify that.

My friend Eric recently noted that I've had a lifelong obsession with persuading people to believe what is "right" (I think he meant "true"). He's dead on. So why am I like that? What does it matter to me whether you believe Noah's flood really happened or not? Do I consider fundamentalist Christians gullible? Yes. Do I consider them stupid? Often, yes. Is that fair? Often, yes. Is it good?

The Jesus I believe in had a supernatural ability to include, even embrace others in his worldview. I pledge to follow his example to the best of my all-too-human ability. Of course I do think it's important to know that some things are true and some things are false, and that what is false has no business being wedged into our public education system. I still have trouble taking fundamentalists seriously as political candidates. But if I'm ever going to persuade people that it's worthwhile to separate the truth from the mythology, I also have to be kind enough to value the meaning in all that mythology. It does matter to people, and belief in a personal God--even Yahweh or Allah--doesn't make those people any less-than-me.

A reader pointed me to Frank Schaeffer, so I'm happily reading his thoughtful, emotional book Patience with God. I think this passage, from p. 63 in the hardcover edition, deserves consideration here:

"[Daniel] Dennett points out [in Breaking the Spell--Religion as a Natural Phenomenon] that religions evolve. Perhaps he means this as a criticism of religion, but for me it's a hopeful sign. I'm glad that religion changes as we do. Perhaps someday it--and we--will grow up. My quibble with Dennett's view, that somehow religious evolution is a problem for religion, is that individual religions aren't the point. What is the point is the question raised by the existence of any religion: in other words our longing for meaning.

"Because every plant, four-legged creature, and human, fish, and bird has evolved from single-celled organisms, our evolutionary journey is clearly toward complexity. And what religion is, is the expression of a dimension of complex consciousness...

"Dennett says, 'I look around and I'm so glad to be alive!' He 'gets' the spiritual wonder of life. I just think Dennett is using a needlessly limited vocabulary to express his spirituality. Nevertheless, Dennett comes up with one of the best definitions of what religion is. He writes of 'keeping that awestruck vision of the world ready to hand while dealing with the demands of daily living.'"

As I said above, we'll talk more about my hopes for the Christian religion later this week, but before I go I want to leave you with one last quote, which I also discovered through Schaeffer (and, it bears repeating, my readers). It was written by Søren Kierkegaard in Fear and Trembling almost 170 years ago:

"It is now high time to explain that the real reason why man is offended at Christianity is because it is too high, because its goal is not man's goal, because it would make of a man something so extraordinary that he is unable to get it into his head."

Amen, brother Christian. Preach it.

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  1. Brother Christian… Amen! Preach it? I have to say that the headier you get the better I like it… Messiah loves you anyway! I can only hope to be there when you come to the realization of absolute truth! Keep the Faith and Keep up the Search… You will find the answer!

  2. By the way .. I finished Carter Beats the Devil.. a truly Great Book.. only it ends too quickly!

  3. Cleary, I’ll need to re-read this when I’ve had fewer vodka gimlets.

  4. Another plug for Carter Beats the Devil by Glen David Gold, folks–I’ve been thinking of rereading it myself!

  5. Interesting post. I, for one, think you’re a lot closer to “the answer” than a lot of people out there.

  6. Oh, and another vote for the brilliance of Carter Beats the Devil. Wish I could say the same about Sunnyside, though.

  7. To deny Christ’s resurrection is to deny the truth and power of Jesus. He was God, He was resurrected, and He does live today. Also, He wants give us this new life and power, so we can shed that “old man,” and become a new creation. Thankfully God can handle all our questions! Keep asking them, and you will get the answers!

  8. Thank you for reading and your kind thoughts, Julie. Scott, I have to admit I couldn’t finish Sunnyside.


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