Atheism and social entitlement

There is a great post over at Filibuster Cartoons called Those awful atheists wherein the author asks the question: “All things considered, if given the choice, would you prefer to have less of them [atheists] in your life?” This question comes from the revelation that theists generally distrust atheists.

Read that post and the comments. The comments from the atheists are very intriguing. They seem to have great difficulty accepting the free choice of theists to peacefully disassociate themselves from atheists when given the choice.

I have a question of my own for the atheists: Do you feel entitled to socialize with people who freely choose to avoid you?

Moral Sanity: Speaking Clearly about Russell Williams

Re Russell Williams Final Victim: His Wife

I get annoyed when individual motivations are routinely reduced to some quack popular culture psychology. People are intelligent and do what they do for their own reasons.

The Russell Williams case, however, is a fascinating example of feigned moral sanity; a highly organized and respected Colonel who clearly had a lot of demons lurking in his closet.

How are we to speak of such individuals without laxing into the default rhetoric of some personality disorder or simply swearing them off as “monsters”?

Unfortunately for his victims, let alone the trajectory of his own life, Williams, like so many, allowed his pride to stand in the way of his repentence. And by that I mean we can readily assume he made compromises, compromises throughout his life he shouldn’t have made. He stood on the pretense of his ambition and ability when he should have been facing the darkness and taking out the trash.

It’s one thing to attribute individual behaviour to some psychiatric disorder, its quite another to speak to how individuals are capable of intelligently counteracting the pathology or onset of it.

A significant part of the tragedy here is that someone with so much promise could become such a monster. An important lesson, I suppose, that having a lot of ambition is not always a good thing, especially in the absense of a firm foundation of humility.

Why he did what he did is between Russell Williams and God, but in doing it he managed to hide who he was actually becoming from those who knew him best.

Now, granted, Russell Williams seems the text book definition of a sociopath; not too many can claim to have known him all that well, especially given what we now know. But what about his marriage?

From Macleans we learn that Williams confessed to make his wife’s life a little easier. As Friscolanti writes:

It was way too late, of course. His wife’s life was already shattered—solely because of him—and a belated burst of honesty wasn’t going to soften the shock. Her entire world was suddenly a lie. The man in her bed was someone else.

Later that night, the confessed killer wrote a note to his devastated spouse. “Dearest Mary Elizabeth,” it began. “I love you, Sweet [illegible]. I am so very sorry for having hurt you like this. I know you’ll take good care of sweet Rosie. I love you, Russ.”

Did he truly love her? Does he still? Can someone so absolutely evil—a man who sticks duct tape over a woman’s face, and films her last breath—be capable of love? A man who loves his wife doesn’t spend their wedding anniversary breaking into another woman’s house. A man who loves his wife doesn’t celebrate Valentine’s Day by trying to pry open a neighbour’s basement window.

And a man who loves his wife doesn’t sit at their home computer and watch video footage of Jessica Lloyd’s final few hours—knowing her heartbroken family is praying she walks through the door. “He would have absolutely no idea what the word love really means,” Debra Lloyd, Jessica’s aunt, said during Williams’s sentencing hearing last October. “He certainly couldn’t have loved any of his own family members, because now they have to live with his crimes and shame.”

No one more than Mary Elizabeth Harriman.

This raises an observation worth considering with repect to marriage and Williams relationship with his wife: is there love in the absense of an abiding responsibility for WHO YOU ARE and HOW who you are will effect WHO THE ONE YOU ARE WITH will become themselves?

The text book definition of eros, if there is one, is no. Love demands that we be genuine, that we do not hide who we are for the sake of using another toward some fraudulent end.

By his own admission, Williams felt some responsibility to make his wife’s life “a little easier,” but that amounts to very little by way of love given the enormity of his betrayal and deception.

I’m glad Friscolanti points this out because a large part of speaking clearly about moral sanity has to do with speaking clearly about love.

To borrow a quote from C.S. Lewis:

St Augustine defines virtue as ordo amoris, the ordinate condition of the affections in which every object is accorded that kind of degree of love which is appropriate to it. Aristotle says that the aim of education is to make the pupil like and dislike what he ought. When the age for reflective thought comes, the pupil who has been thus trained in ‘ordinate affections’ or ‘just sentiments’ will easily find the first principles in Ethics; but to the corrupt man they will never be visible at all and he can make no progress in that science. Plato before him had said the same. The little human animal will not at first have the right responses. It must be trained to feel pleasure, liking, disgust, and hatred at those things which really are pleasant, likeable, disgusting and hateful.

Speaking clearly about Russell Williams requires that we identify how a man with the pretense of great virtue is lacking where it matters most. It’s one thing to typecast him as a sociopath or a monster (monikers he deserves!), but we should not neglect how his great undoing could have been avoided by better choices to override his pride and ambition with some humility, by learning what it means to love.

Murdering the disabled and “defective”

The specter of a couple urging a surrogate to abort an unborn child likely to be born with Down’s Syndrome is causing a bit of a stir. Of course, children are aborted every day due to anticipated “defects,” but now that a contract is involved we have a problem.

Meanwhile, British pro-abort columnist Virginia Ironside has taken the issue of compassionate murder by loving mothers to a whole new level. If you love your disabled unborn child, you’ll abort it. If you love your suffering ex utero child, you’ll smother it.

And then there’s Gianna Jessen.

Out of the woodwork the apologists come

Pointed and timely questions from Lorne Gunter, National Post.

There was little wrong with the original 12 cartoons to Western eyes; we see cartoons of our leaders and idols on a daily basis that are as bad or worse. [...]

On top of that, Muslim extremists poured gasoline on the fire for their own ends by adding blasphemous images of the Muslim prophet–one, for example, showed Muhammad having sex with a dog — and claiming these bogus portrayals were part of the original content.

No matter what the truth is, there will be those in the Muslim world who will seek to find offence, or will manufacture it where no offence is intended. When Gen. Petraeus says of Pastor Jones’ planned desecration that “it is precisely the kind of action the Taliban uses and could cause significant problems,” he is probably correct. But he is also beside the point.

Also in 2005, there were deadly riots across the Muslim world over a Newsweek report that Korans had been flushed down the toilet at the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay. The report later turned out to be untrue. The Pentagon found seven instances in which “Korans had been improperly handled,” but no instances in which one had been torn or flushed. [...]

But why are these outrages always just one-way streets?

According to the Middle East Media Research Institute, on Aug. 25, a cartoon on Hamas-run Al-Aqsa TV in Gaza and the West Bank aired cartoons showing Jews transforming into apes (who are seen as vile and unclean), and claiming that the transformation was sanctioned by the Koran. [...]

Where are the Western apologists of radical Islam when these outrages against the West are being perpetrated? Why is it only Western slights to Islam that trouble them?

Indeed, the fact that it WAS this fringey pastor who set this international incident off is the most disturbing aspect of all. Unlike the flag burners and bible burners and crucifix defilers that number in the tens of thousands, he did nothing but state an intention. And look at the force they brought down on him to prevent it.

Regarding Abortion and Slavery

Rarely do I tread into the weeds of the abortion debate.  I’m pretty mushy on it; I doubt too many minds will be changed; and I find many people, on both sides of the debate, routinely argue in bad faith.  All these things make me disinclined to broach the subject.  However, I’ll make an exception right now.

I agree completely and wholeheartedly with Erik Kain’s post.  Here’s the crux:

I’m not sure why Andrew thinks likening abortion to slaveryqualifies as a Malkin award nominee. I certainly understand that it’s likely to bog down an already heavily loaded subject – but is it really so far off base on the merits?

If you believe in your heart of hearts that an unborn child is nevertheless a child – a living, growing, human being – and yet the law of the land dictates that said living, growing human being is not in possession of even the most basic right – the right to life – then how different is this from slavery?

I know I’m poking a lot of bears with this; comments are open, so have at it!

(By the way, Erik has further thoughts here.)

Was John Tory Right?

Three years ago this month, Ontario Conservative leader John Tory pledged to extend public funding to all denominational schools across the province of Ontario. At the time, Tory was preparing to lead his party into a fall election campaign against the Ontario Liberal Party, led by then-Premier, and still-Premier, Dalton McGuinty.

For Tory, the larger issue was fairness. Insofar as Catholic denominational schools receive public funding to the exclusion of other denominational schools in Ontario, it made sense to Tory as a matter of equality, as it did to some others, that if one religion enjoyed the privilege of public funding, then so should all other religions.

We know how the story ends. The controversial denominational schools issue felled Tory’s campaign from the very beginning. McGuinty was reelected. And Tory ultimately resigned, ceding the party flag to the current Ontario Conservative leader, Tim Hudak.

The bottom line is this: Ontarians voted against Tory on this issue. And no one can gainsay the freely expressed choice of Ontarians. They, and only they, can choose their representatives in the Ontario legislature.

So according to Ontarians, the answer is clear: John Tory was wrong.

But according to the United Nations, John Tory was right.

In the case of Waldman v. Canada, the United Nations Human Rights Committee ruled that Ontario’s policy of extending public funding to one denominational school without funding all others is a violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which guarantees the right to “equal and effective protection against discrimination.” Here is the relevant passage from the full text of the ruling:

[T]he proclaimed aims of the system do not justify the exclusive funding of Roman Catholic religious schools. … In this context, the Committee observes that the Covenant does not oblige [Ontario] to fund schools which are established on a religious basis. However, if [Ontario] chooses to provide public funding to religious schools, it should make this funding available without discrimination. This means that providing funding for the schools of one religious group and not for another must be based on reasonable and objective criteria. In the instant case, the Committee concludes that the material before it does not show that the differential treatment between the Roman Catholic faith and the [Petitioner's] religious denomination is based on such criteria. Consequently, there has been a violation of the [Petitioner's] rights under article 26 of the Covenant to equal and effective protection against discrimination.

Perhaps John Tory can take solace in the knowledge that the United Nations thinks he was right after all.

Accommodating Honour Murder

With Aqsa Parvez finally resting peacefully, her murderers — her very own father and brother — sentenced to the Canadian-style “life in prison” with no chance of parole for 18 years, it’s time for the religious equivalence and multiculturalist types to step forward again and declare that “honour killing,” which I more accurately define as honour murder, is not just Islam’s problem.

Ujjal Dosanjh, Liberal MP – it’s the bloody patriarchy, stupid!

There is a huge misconception that these crimes occur because of certain religious beliefs. There is no religion that condones the murder of women. It’s the feudal/patriarchal culture of male dominance and control that’s the culprit.

Dr. Amin Muhammad, Professor of Psychiatry at Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador – it’s not just Islam, stupid!

While many recent cases in Western society involve Muslims, Dr. Muhammad said honour killings have also been committed in the name of Hinduism, Sikhism and Christianity.

To which I say: While it may be true that “honour killings have also been committed in the name of Hinduism, Sikhism and Christianity,” the numbers pale in comparison to the thousands of females murdered each year around the world in the name of Islam for the sake of family honour.

United Nations Population Fund:

Throughout the world, perhaps as many as 5,000 women and girls a year are murdered by members of their own families, many of them for the “dishonour” of having been raped, often as not by a member of their own extended family.

It is dishonest at best to survey the numbers of honour murders committed by Muslims, along with the allowances for honour murder within the legal structures of Islamic nations, such as Syria, Pakistan, Yemen and Afghanistan, which can be seen as a tacit endorsement of the practice, and then suggest equivalency among faiths when a handful of honour murders are committed by members of other faiths. Honour murder is a much greater problem for Islam than it is for other faiths and it is ludicrous to even suggest otherwise.

As for endorsement within religious texts, Dosanjh and Muhammed are correct that no religion condones honour murder per se, but they should have been more careful to point out the caveats under Islam that have led to the widespread acceptance of honour murder within Islamic tradition. As an example, Christianity, the faith I know best, provides no justification whatsoever to murder one’s own children or one’s wife, whereas the Qur’an Sura 18 arguably allows for the killing of children not even your own as long as you’ve accurately determined a child will grow up as a non-believer. (How that determination is made, I have no clue.)

Does honour murder occur in other faiths? Yes. Under which faith is it most prevalent, by far? Islam. Which nations tacitly endorse the practice through caveats of law? Islamic nations. That’s the point that must be accepted before reform can be realized, and it’s the critical point that Dosanjh and others prefer to gloss over to our collective detriment.

I credit Dosanjh in one respect, though; his reference to the role political correctness in shaping the response to honour murder.

… political correctness prevents us from demanding that the cultural norms that justify such heinous practices as honour killings have no place anywhere in the world. We must never be too sensitive to call a spade a spade.

As if on cue, some on the pro-dhimmi side are already suggesting Canadian judges should take “cultural practices,” such as honour killing, into consideration out of respect for (I say genuflection at the altar of) multiculturalism. Scaramouche, via Mark Steyn:

John Oakley is seriously entertaining the question of whether Canadian judges should give those who commit “honour” killings a break because they have different “cultural practices” and may not be aware of our norms and laws; defence attorney Lawrence Ben-Eliezer thinks judges should  take these differences into consideration because we have “multiculturalism”.

Canadians, of course, are already aware of what “taking these differences into consideration” means: preferential treatment of en vogue “victim” groups of the political left. What Canadians are less aware of, in my opinion, is the tangible threat posed to Western society by ardent multiculturalism, our Achilles heel.

Dead Babies

While the dumping of twenty-one babies in the Guangfu River, China, is appalling, I can’t help but wonder what people would think if 265 dead babies suddenly appeared on the shores of the St. Lawrence River, the approximate number of infants killed each and every day in Canada in the name of reproductive rights.

Yes, the disdain and contempt rising up toward the inhumane disposal of these children is laudable. But the improper disposal is not the problem; it’s merely evidence of the problem. The problem is these twenty-one Chinese infants are a minuscule portion of the thousands obliterated each day around the planet in the name of reproductive rights.

The world stands suddenly aghast when dead infants line the shores but pays little to no attention to the fact that thousands more like these are being buried in our landfills or flushed into our waterways each and every day of the year. Out of sight, out of mind, it seems.

Do we need any other illustration of the moral repugnance of abortion? What about the moral vacuity of a nation that seemingly prefers not to start an argument than to force its elected leaders to put limits on when and how infants are killed in utero? This even though 60% believe abortion is morally wrong.

Canada, can we start to talk about limits on abortion? And what might those limits be?

Tapping the international moral compass

… and finding it skewed.

Uganda.

Witch doctors in Uganda have admitted their part in human sacrifice amid concerns that the practice is spreading in the African country.

One man said he had clients who had captured children and taken their blood and body parts to his shrine, while another confessed to killing at least 70 people including his own son. [...]

“They go and capture other people’s children. They bring the heart and the blood directly here to take to the spirits,” he said. [...]

“We also have about 120 children and adults reported missing whose fate we have not traced,” he added. “From the experience of those whom we recovered, we cannot rule out that they may be victims of human sacrifice.”

Now what on earth could possibly elicit greater international outrage than blood-letting and heart extraction from children and adults?

Yes, of course. Silly me.

Questions of Conscience, etc.

A nurse in the US who is a practising Catholic was forced by her employer to participate in an abortion against her will on threat of losing her job and her license. I don’t really have a cogent analysis for this, so I’m putting out a series of unconnected ideas on the subject to spur further debate (if anyone has the urge to sink back into the infinite swamps of the abortion debate yet again, on this chilly December weekend.) Some of these ideas are kind of balled up, so feel free to take them apart at your leisure in our conveniently provided comments section (free of charge!). [Read more]

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