NBC News reported, “Pakistan may be one of the world’s three remaining polio-stricken countries but Sartaj Khan has decided that the government-sponsored vaccination campaign is much more sinister than it appears. “These vaccines are meant to destroy our nation,” said Khan, a 42-year-old lawyer in the city of Peshawar. “The [polio] drops make men less manly, and make women more excited and less bashful. Our enemies want to wipe us out.” The belief has turned deadly: Nine anti-polio workers have been killed by gunmen on motorcycles this week. Some of those killed were teenage girls.” (I postpone until some future post my thoughts on why making women less bashful would be tantamount to destroying their nation. I also postpone any concern that the United States is a victim of the same plot; God knows our own men are less manly than they used to be and our women less bashful.) I’ll be curious to see if Pakistan arrests these murderers.
The separation of church and state is a foundational idea for the American way of life, enshrined in the First Amendment along with freedom of speech. As fundamentalists of all religions recognize, for example in Egypt, it is a doctrine that really says that one’s religious beliefs are at best suspect and at worst incorrect. If the beliefs of any religion were definitely true, then the first and only obligation of government would be to ensure that citizens followed those rules. So right-wing historians can talk until they’re red in the face about the Founding Fathers being Christians, but if they were, they were the sort of Christians who simply aren’t sure, or else they would have imposed a religious state. The Declaration of Independence mentions a Creator, but unlike the monarchies of Europe, which claimed to derive authority from God, our founding document says that governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed.” That is not a religion-inspired idea. Our Founding Fathers were revolutionaries, not authorities.
Many religions, especially in their infancy and adolescence, like most dictatorships, forbid any speech—or thought—that questions authority. Criminalizing blasphemy and heresy makes sense if one is absolutely certain that the religious creed is correct. If you believe that slurring the Holy Spirit is a sure path to hell, you owe it to your children and to your community and even to heretics to crucify anyone who does this. It makes an example of heretics and offers them absolution. Theocracy and totalitarianism have so much in common that, as our Founding Fathers knew, any theocracy is bound to become a dictatorship, and any dictatorship is bound to become a theocracy. Even atheist Russia fetishized Lenin’s remains, and Nazi iconography is indistinguishable from religious iconography—think swastikas atop Christmas trees. You can identify this sort of iconography by examining what happens to people who desecrate the symbols of authority.
Certainty has been called faith, but it is better referred to as rage, because its linkage to suppression, torture, and killing over the centuries is not accidental. On a very small scale, I have been complaining about the totalitarian instincts in diversity discussions. Look to Pakistan, or any theocracy, to see what happens when certainty rears its ugly head and contrary speech is not tolerated.
The diversity agenda laudably tries to protect scientific truth from idiosyncratic perspectives and political rights from prejudice. When it tries to protect people’s feelings, it’s just wrong. Only offensive speech needs protection, and all offensive speech deserves protection (from political, not social, reprisals). If you don’t like it, say something in reply. If it comes from inside you, say something welcoming and curious. Never shut yourself up unless you are certain that the image of yourself you are trying to portray is divine. If you work for the government, take the opportunity to remind people that freedom of speech is what separates us from dictatorships. Only shut people up if you are certain that your view of what is acceptable is divinely inspired, but then prepare to go to war against people who disagree with you.
Your faith may comfort you, but it’s your doubt that comforts me.
Michael Karson, Ph.D. 
Doubt comforts me too. How about I share some of my criticism blanket with you, because its cold out there these days and its always nice to share! Now I’m so tempted to invoke the well known spirit of the times, but that wouldn’t be fair to some folk, plus I stopped believing in Santa (and Co.) long time ago. Must have been around 6 or 7 when I noticed his fake beard (keep in mind Greek props in the mid 80’s didn’t help the cause, but I was an inquisitive little pr!ck too). Santa also had quite the olive skin tone compared to the movies pale version of himself. It was a moment of true Piagetian accommodation. It also coincided with a time the Orthodox church in Greece was losing ground fast to the new ways of MTV, Eurosport and private network television. I somehow realized the fishiness of my parents’ story about the gifts under the tree. Damn you secular capitalists for taking away my childhood innocence! Thank you though for giving me the first experience of calling BS (and winning the pot) with a mom and dad who often amused themselves at the bewilderment of their toddler’s ignorance. Shame on them both. But I digress.
Fret all you want about Pakistanis complaining over polio vaccines or other ways of generating antibodies to the “virulent” ways of organized religion and theocracy, hegemony, etc. If they want to be like Skinner’s pigeons with their silly little superstitions, then be my guest! Who are we to say? As long as they are not hurting anyone in the process. And even if they are, I would argue who nominated anyone the judge (and executioner) for all the Popes and Ayatollahs of the world? Or maybe they are one and the same, holders of both the pie and the knife as my peeps say back home.
All I m saying is give people (and developing nations) the space and the choice to figure that sh!t out on their own. Germans did it (twice now) and I think we’ll see quite soon if they learned their lessons or not. Greeks did it many times, but after the fourth or fifth time it sort of gets in one’s head and creates other types of symptoms, so we are not a good example. Anyway, allowing the process to occur naturally is more noble and character building than serving some kind of prescribed therapy to what are quite common symptoms of growing pains. In lieu of therapy feel free to place democracy, secularism, capitalism (the euro maybe?), free speech, equal rights, tolerance for diversity, multiculturalism, whatever your thing is really. But remember you have to warm up to your illusions gradually and painstakingly, otherwise you ll see straight through them.
in that light, how is the United States’ beef with N. Korea and Iran that different from the simple Pakistani people complaining about their new vaccinations? Same pigeons different coop. And if I really want to be fair (and angry) about those nations which need “enlightenment” from the “enlightened” ones, I ask that we compare the first and second on their school safety records instead of their political regimes. Stray NATO bombs excluded of course.
I guess as good as Voltaire’s or the founding fathers’ ideas are, we have to keep in mind they were tailored for France and the Americas of the late 1700’s. Its a very different world we live in today. Same thing with the first and second amendments. Some ideas are better than others, but there will always be limitations. Sometimes even our best roadmaps can be get us lost, but that’s what makes us human I guess. I just have such a hard time with little children dying in a nation that wants to pride itself for being secular and progressive. It challenges what little faith I do have. All the doubt in the world can’t comfort me at all.
My criticism of the Islamic states is not a defense of the Christian state. But here, at least, the law is supposed to be on your side if you decide to get a free education or exercise free speech (although I can how that is cold comfort to people prosecuted by religious factions in the government). I disagree that the separation of church and state or the separation of powers was tailored for a different time just because it was implemented in a different time.
Bad things happen. A good place to start dealing with bad things happening would be to stop looking to God for solutions. Do you really think it’s just an illusion to say that people shouldn’t be killed or imprisoned for their ideas?
If potential school shooters, suicide bombers, and drone launchers had more doubt, I suspect you would in fact be more comforted.
The fact (not illusion) that people still are imprisoned and/or die for their beliefs, even in the most progressive and liberal of nations, proves my point that there can be no true democracy the way the founding fathers described it. It’s utopia. How can freedom of speech and the death penalty coexist at the same time? It’s a paradox to allow for the expression of an idea which silences ideas forever.
But to respond, of course of the options available I obviously pick the flawed democracy over totalitarianism every single time, but I also challenge myself and others to think how different is a public stoning in Iran from the cell in Guantanamo? A lot more people experience the first rather than the second, but wouldnt we also have a higher set of expectations for a modern secular nation (i.e., judging how it cares for its weakest, least wanted outliers)?
My honest opinion is the model you propose works until it doesn’t work, as it is based on the premise that we can create some freedoms for some people while standing on the shoulders of those less fortunate. As long as the less fortunate are ignorant of the dynamic everything is fine. When they realize what’s going on they no longer want to support these freedoms. Somebody is pumping the oil for the energy used by my computer to write you my thoughts here.
Education is not only a choice it is also a privilege. Do we have the resources to deliver knowledge fairly and to everyone? If we did I think religions (not faiths) would be obsolete.
Freedoms will continue to be sacrificed (as always). I agree with you that God is not the answer. Human problems deserve human solutions. We can do a little better is all I m saying, but not sure if separation of church and state is that magic pill. Maybe you and I can pump some oil and let those other guys use our computers for a change. What they do with their time is up to them.
I hope I didn’t imply that the First Amendment is a magic pill! But any system that depends on faith and its hatreds and doesn’t allow complaining and freedom of thought and speech is one we should not support. Churchill said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all those others that have been tried.
No, I don’t think you implied any of that. What (I assume) you are communicating is that fundamentalism, of the Islamic kind in particular, is not to be supported. I agree that it should open itself to criticism and examine its practices closely (as all things secure), but my argument is that it should not be vilified. It should be allowed to exist in whatever form until it figures itself out. Not to mention that radical is often reactionary. I guess I m trying to say that fundamentalism in my eyes feels very much like imperialism and that these two like the tango! The motor of evangelism can run on diesel and petrol (i.e., church and state, separated or fused).
The other area I disagree with you is my opinion that the philosophy of the Enlightenment era has an expiration date, mostly due to its linearity and Newtonian influences. It serves closed systems quite well but struggles to account for things outside of these systems. The world of the 1700’s had more of those (i.e., clearly delineated nation-states) and safeguards of information control that were shattered quite recently (i.e., TV, jet travel, internet). The philosophy of the Tao doesn’t buck there and can teach us Westerners a thing or two. Personally, the pacifism and calm it exudes is where I rest my hopes for the brave new world, but those are not with Voltaire, Rousseau and Montesquieu.
We should go watch that new movie Zero Dark Thirty! Should be relevant…