Moral freedom

Multitudes, multitudes, in the valley of decision!
For the day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision.
  - Joel 3:14 [RSV]

... therefore choose life, that you and your descendants may live.
  - Deut. 30:19b [RSV]

Continuing from previous posts... The importance of conscience is intimately connected with the notion of moral freedom. Moral freedom simply means an unhindered ability to exercise one's conscience, to make moral choices.

As was observed with fasting, this is a uniquely human attribute. As amoral beings, animals can only behave as their appetites, instincts and conditioned behavior dictate. They lack the ability to deliberately choose right vs. wrong, whereas we humans are constantly making moral choices, choosing whether to go this way or that, right or left, good or evil.

Reason teaches us that freedom is not absolute. In any sane society, one's freedom to do this or that is contingent upon whether another person's basic human rights would be infringed upon. One person can not be "free" to deliberately harm another. Such would not be true freedom, but a crime.

Sound religion goes further, teaching us that true freedom consists in seeking and choosing that which is good. Moral slavery involves being bound by one's appetites, instincts, and conditioned behavior, just as an animal. If you are constantly doing whatever you have an itch to do, you are not really free, but a slave to your own desires, no better than a dumb animal. To become fully human involves deliberately rising above merely animal appetites, and exercising volition in willing and doing good.

God is "pro-choice" in the truest sense of the term. He has endowed us humans with a moral nature. He gives us the faculty of volition, of free will, and he sets before us two paths, allowing us to choose which we will follow. He pleads with us to choose life, which leads to true freedom, as opposed to death and enslavement. But God will not force us to take the right path; we must each freely choose life over death, good over evil.

If you are constantly doing whatever you have an itch to do, you are not really free, but a slave to your own desires.

In this light, the politics of "choice" is seen to be a misnomer and a lie. The "right" to commit abortion is not a movement towards freedom, but a crime - the crime of murder. Moreover, it is an act of enslavement. Thus, advocates for abortion are true to their agenda when they seek to coerce doctors and nurses to violate their consciences in committing abortion. The so-called "pro-choice" ideology was never about moral freedom, but about trying to justify murder, and about contradicting the voice of conscience.

It is not legitimate for government to force health care workers to violate their consciences. And it is not right for these workers to abdicate their moral freedom in this matter. If a human authority seeks to strangle the voice of conscience, that human authority must be ignored or disobeyed.

Likewise - to issue my drum beat theme - it is not legitimate for government to force taxpayers against their consciences to pay for abortions, embryonic stem cell research, or other forms of murder. And taxpayers must not abdicate their consciences. We must not cooperate with the tax-funded slaughter of the innocents.

Related: A citizens' movement to refuse abortion taxes

When pro-lifers choose death

"Father forgive them; for they know not what they do."
  - Lk. 23:34

The sober and troubling reality is that, even as I write this, millions of U.S. citizens are casting their votes for Barack Obama. Many of these voters are Christian, and many identify themselves as pro-life Catholics.

How can this be? Is it because they have an uncritical loyalty to the Democratic Party, an unthinking herd instinct reaching back to early childhood? Are they disgusted with the Republicans' pathetic failures, and suppose there is only one other option? Is it a matter of "white guilt", of feeling obliged to support the African-American candidate? Do they not recognize the intrinsic evil of abortion? Are they therefore intimidated into seeking a "balance" between this and lesser evils? Have they been duped by media bias, and actually believe the euphemism that it's about "choice"? Do they believe the over-population myth, and secretly fear human propagation?

The plain truth is that Barack Hussein Obama is the most rabidly pro-abortion candidate to ever seek the U.S. Presidency. Whether or not he wins it today is not the main issue. Folks who say they are pro-life Christians are voting for him. Followers of Jesus are choosing death. I wish I could find a reasonable explanation for this.

Reason and volition

Pseudo-atheism and pseudo-intellectualism aside, the possibility of true, rational atheism should be allowed as well. Since my last blog post, I have spent some time in perusing and cogitating and writing about the relative merits of atheistic vs. Christian/theistic systems of thought from within the discipline of logic. But the writing part, while still just the hint of an insignificant beginning, soon became much too long and involved for a blog post. If you are so inclined, you may read and judge for yourself at http://www.bmi.net/~dogpatchnorth/atheism1.php. This may be a work in progress, as I think of more to say, or respond to critical review.

Cutting to the chase here on the blog, I believe that a key point in favor of theism is the issue of free will, or volition. In the atheistic paradigm, man is composed solely of physical stuff; there is no spiritual component. This means he is driven by a combination of genetics and environment, determinism is the rule, and free will cannot exist. The theistic system allows for free will, and the Christian system positively affirms it.

Ironically, this rational point reveals the relative unimportance of rational argumentation. Sound reason may lead to faith, but if we have free will, each individual has the ability to choose whether or not to believe, whether for rational reasons or otherwise.

The opposite also applies. If we lack free will, rational disputation is pointless. The determinist says that everyone behaves in a determined way. He says to the Christian, "You believe because of your genetics, upbringing, and environment." The Christian replies, "You choose to disbelieve." It's a rational stalemate.

My earlier point still applies (see "Pseudo-atheism" below). Within the system of materialism and determinism, evangelism is absolutely pointless. Within the free will system, rational disputation may not sway many minds, but, together with other means of evangelistic outreach, it does at least make some sense.

I, for my part, have chosen to believe that I have the freedom to choose. Why? Because it's more reasonable.

Heresy

The words 'heresy' and 'heretic' may conjure up a sinister image for many, harking back to medieval times when there was much ado about such things. People willing to inflict injury, torture, and death, other folks willing to endure the same, all for the sake of some theological details. We tend to look disparagingly, or at least condescendingly, upon the primitive narrow-mindedness that would not esteem diversity of thought as we do today. Enlightened and educated, we now regard differences of opinion on such matters as a healthy thing, certainly not a cause for extreme reactions.

With that in mind, i recently looked into the etymology of the word 'heresy', and found that it was originally a quite innocuous term, even mundane. It comes directly from the Greek word αιρεσις (airesis or hairesis), which just means 'choice' or to 'choose' or 'select'. It's what the Greeks did at their market, and what you do at the mall or supermarket or video store. You pick and choose. You don't like that brand of peanut butter; you prefer this brand. That movie looks boring, but here's one that might be interesting. Certainly nothing evil or threatening in that. Choice is a good thing.

Well, i suppose it might be allowed that in some areas, a completely open-ended choosing might become problematic. We generally recognize, for instance, that in the military there needs to be a chain of command; it wouldn't work to have each individual soldier freely choosing what action to take. Likewise, in business, individual employees must sacrifice some autonomy and work to advance the collective success of the company, else the business will likely fail. Generally speaking, any human enterprise involving teamwork will necessarily also involve some curtailing of individual choice. Unity in religious faith is a special example of this. The bond of cohesiveness between believers assumes substantial agreement as to what beliefs they hold in common, else there is no bond.

But unity of faith goes beyond the teamwork priciple. The very pursuit of eternal truth presupposes that the truth is, in fact, attainable, and that other beliefs are therefore false and misleading. If truth exists at all, it must exist universally, and it must be singular. Pluralistic truth is an oxymoron. To speak of my truth is to speak of something that cannot be applied to others; i may as well speak of nothing at all. By contrast, the truth is worth speaking about, perhaps even arguing over.

The notion of pluralistic or relative truth carries with it the idea of the sovereignty of each individual self to decide what is and isn't true. So, besides being oxymoronic and intellectually untenable, this approach is essentially self-centered and arrogant, in that it vaunts the individual person's opinions above other considerations. Such intellectual myopia and self-centeredness would not seem to indicate a healthy faith. The more humble and honest approach would be to forget about pursuing my truth, and simply receive the truth as revealed and taught. Two examples:

The typical Evangelical proclaims the Bible to be the authoritative teacher of religious truth. But if that believer begins to 'pick and choose' which Scripture texts he will swear by, while ignoring, discounting, or explaining away the passages he doesn't like, that believer has ceased to be a true disciple and student of the Word, and has assumed the role of its critic and master instead.

In the same way, by claiming to be a Catholic, the Catholic believer implicitly accepts the Church as the authoritative teacher on matters of faith and morals. But if he freely selects which doctrines he will or will not hold, he is no longer a real Catholic. That is, his privately maintained beliefs cannot credibly be called 'catholic' or 'universal'.

So, to exercise airesis, to pick and choose what to believe, is incompatible with genuine faith. This is what the word heresy means.

And when you really think about it, these issues may be pretty important after all. Ideas do have consequences. What you believe will inevitably impact how you live your life, and will ultimately make our world either better or worse, depending upon whether your core values were good to start with. Those dusty theological details end up having enormous consequences.

Consider this: The Holocaust didn't just happen spontaneously. Early last century, a certain Margaret Sanger (founder of Planned Parenthood), and others, began to develop ideas about a master human race, the elimination of 'human weeds' (inferior races), and the deliberate undermining of Church authority to bring this about. Many leaders in the Third Reich acknowledged the writings of Sanger as the philosophical platform upon which they built their programs. If a strong resistance to heresy had been in place at that time, these racist and genocidal ideas would likely have remained the private thoughts of a few miserable souls, and would never have been admitted into matters of German policy.

This brings us back to the original questions. Is a concern over truth vs. heresy a dangerous attitude? Or merely rigid and antiquated? Or is heresy itself more dangerous and potentially fatal? Might those medieval folks actually have something to teach us today? Is 'agreeing to disagree' an enlightened attitude? Or a deadly one? Or, perhaps, merely a lazy and apathetic one?