Sunday Star Trek

The world wears you down simply to get what it wants out of you. That's why it's important to be obstinate in accepting, believing, and promulgating what is true. When you know what is true you must cling to it as though nothing else matters, because the world meanwhile will continually insist to you that what is false is in fact true. The world is a master at gaslighting.

How obstinate should you be? I would go so far as to say that even when you begin to doubt, review in your mind what the facts are and hold your ground tenaciously.

I am reminded of the famous scene from Chain of Command, an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Here it is: Picard's Lights Captain Picard is held captive and tortured, and his will is tested when his captor asks him how many lights he sees in the ceiling. Picard yells, "There are...FOUR...lights!" which was correct, even though he really believed by then there were five, as his captor pressured him to say. 

Picard stubbornly stuck with what he knew was true, even as the world, so to speak, almost made him bend.

I pray for such courage if I'm ever tested.

Blah Blah Right, Blah Blah Wrong

Believe me, I have heard far too many times in my life What gives you the right to call blah blah wrong? Well, the best retort I know to that came from a Dominican priest, Father Jim Murray. He said you throw the question right back at the accuser: What gives you the right to call blah blah right?

He's, ahem, right. If I don't have the right, to the best of my knowledge and understanding, to call something wrong, why do you have the right to call it right? Or even just to assert it doesn't matter or is none of my business? Why can you use your judgement but I can't use mine? 

We're talking about an issue (in this case blah blah) about which I have as much right to an opinion (right or wrong) as you do (right or wrong). You're essentially saying I'm wrong for no reason except that you apparently don't want me to be right.

It's really a form of the ad hominem argument, attacking the speaker instead of the speaker's points. It dodges the question at hand by trying to claim I have no right to express my position. And blah blah is, I assure you, a critical question.

A Sermon (though not on Religion)

One of the arguments made across the political and national spectrums in favor of vaccine mandates and vaccine passports is easily summed up as, the government makes us do other things, so why not those?

This is an intellectually dishonest argument; it is simplistic and ignores a great many things. To begin with, an awful lot of the things government compels us to do are in fact morally wrong. We can debate about the specifics, but suffice it to say (and I believe that in their hearts even my liberal and progressive friends would agree) that there are areas where existing government intrusion into our lives is wrong. Or are there actually folks out there willing to argue that an act or idea is right merely because a government thinks so? Let's hope not.

Yes, there are times and places where government does in fact have the right to cajole individuals into acting certain ways and in certain manners. But as a practical matter governments cannot dictate every move we make (though they may try). If government were to attempt to really make us do right rather than wrong in every conceivable instance (if we could actually conceive of every instance) I assure you that the amount of new regulations necessary would make the current tax code read like a children's book. The ifs, ands, and wherefores would require that much analysis. And they would still be incomplete.

Yet governments must act against the truly awful things which may occur in the world. I have to believe that, as a matter of right reason, there are guides and standards which we can appeal to in determining where and why they can act. Indeed anyone who argues for any public act at all must, in their hearts, believe this too. Aquinas taught that as government can't see to everything, it should only prohibit (or by logical argument encourage) only those things so vile and debased (or so good and and laudable) that without whose prohibition (or sanction) civil society could not exist. 

The question then becomes, is COVID so great a threat that it requires massive government intrusion into our lives?

Emphatically, no.

The need to legislate morals

It is often said, when discussing certain social issues, that we cannot legislate morals. Do you know the right response to that question?

In a word, poppycock. There is a better word, to be sure, but decorum will not allow its use here.

We can and we must legislate morals. Further, every decision ever made by every legislature, parliament, congress, diet, knesset, or whatever else you want to call it, was an action predicated on a moral decision. Making us drive on the right side of the street is based on the moral axiom that we require order. Forcing parents to send their kids to school, let alone feed and clothe them, is a moral choice that parents are obliged to do that for their progeny. Trying to force health care down our throats is a moral decision by the government that we need it, however erroneously felt.

We can and we must legislate morals. We do it all the time. The only real questions are which ones, and under what circumstances.

Having good feelings

This is an abbreviated response to an atheist friend. He believes that morality is essentially based on feelings of empathy.

-Charles Martin Cosgriff

Why, my friend, I'm glad we could find some common ground. I agree that humans are intuitive (dare I point out that the Ten Commandments are written on our hearts?), but not that morality is about empathy and compassion. For empathy and compassion are mere feelings, and we know that feelings can and do mislead. Alone, feelings may indeed inspire good moral action; proper empathy and compassion are good things. Unfortunately feelings may well lead to bad moral actions: it goes without saying that uncontrolled, instantaneous anger can cause much grief. It seems we must judge our feelings as to whether they are for well or for ill. We must look upon them rationally, acting upon them only when it is clear that they are properly driven towards good goals.

But by whose logic do we declare our feelings right or wrong, then? That's where we disagree. For Right Reason, objective morality, the Natural Law, indeed common sense, all of which are the names of one essential reality, are beyond any one person. As it is beyond us, and we must seek it in order to act within it.

That, in part, is where God comes in. For God is Right Reason, He is that objective morality. Among other ideals, He is the Natural Law. Without such a guide, even empathy and compassion may in fact lie to us: we've all heard of the Stockholm Syndrome. We may end up feeling compassion for the wrong person, cause, or reason. We must have a way to judge our feelings or they may do us a disservice rather than being a correct impetus to action.

Human action alone is sterile. Yet in concert with the Divine, it is a power above all other strengths. When we accept that, and live it, we become good people.

Unconditional Love not Virtuous

We are often told that we are expected to love others unconditionally. Understood properly, it is a good and charitable approach to our relationships with God and man. But what does it really mean? How are we expected to use such a doctrine in our daily lives?

For starters, it surely means that we are to love everyone without reservation. We are called to love everyone as though they were ourselves, to paraphrase a great moral teacher. It is a difficult ideal; loving our enemies is not easy, and sometimes loving our friends and family is a challenge that can be much harder. Still, we are expected to overcome this obstacle, and find a way to open our hearts to all.

But there is a great misunderstanding about unconditional love, an error in its application which is at least arguably worse than failing to love generally everyone around us. Many people believe that unconditional love means loving others up to and including their faults. We are, according to this, meant to love others including their faults, and indeed often embracing them.

This cannot be a good and true interpretation of the standard. It cannot be a useful approach towards dealing with others. We can accept that we must love racists and sexists and criminals; but to love their faults? This is insanity on its face. Do we not want to see people become better people? Do we not want to see our children grow into mature adults? Then we should be instructing and cajoling and beseeching those around us, as they should towards us, to do better than they do, and to be better than they are, no matter how they may happen to feel about this or that issue they find themselves battling.

When our children become drug addicts or alcoholics, we do what we can to change them. When our neighbors rob and injure others, we enforce laws to stop them. We can and should still love them, but that does not mean we are obliged to tolerate their errant thoughts and actions.

It is more correct to say that unconditional love calls us to love those around us despite their faults. Because real love does not embrace error. It understands it as a part of us which ought to be altered, and wants to see us move away from the lesser aspects of our being and into better men, women, and children. If it does not want that, it is not love. It is then something which facilitates bad behavior; it is in fact a cancer of character.

The World As I Know It

I don't know what to think for 2014. I don't know what to expect. It's all a mystery, really. I don't think I've ever been so uncertain in all my life.

I've committed my sins, and I'm truly sorry for them. Most were really stupid, so stupid in fact that I should have never fallen under their spell, and a moment of real thought would have made me avoid them. I allowed myself to be seduced by the future and fell prey to the unwritten. I would have seen what an idiot I was being, and with the least bit of thought I would have done the right thing in the end. I ignored the moment each time. Now I pay for those moments of nonthought. Quite frankly, that is as it should be. Know thyself, the philosopher says. I did not know myself well enough.

The future is actually quite bright for me. It is in detail unknown to me, but truly quite bright. But until recently it had seemed well written. Until the last year it seemed that I understood it. There is a trepidation about it that makes me uncomfortable even though I feel confident. I do not deserve what I may, by all what is good, merit. Perhaps I do not merit it; that is my fear.

There is fear and their is confidence. There is an irony which I do appreciate, and there is a lesson in that. The lesson is that we reap what we sow, and what we reap plays all ways. I do hope that what I have sown somehow plays for me. Even though I do not deserve that.

Even Men can Understand Women's Rights!

It is often heard, from women who support birth control, that they don't see where a celibate clergyman ought to be judge to the issue because they can't really understand woman's rights. Yet those same women won't denounce a celibate clergyman who agrees with them on the grounds they're men.

Similarly, they say that men shouldn't legislate about banning abortion, because they can't really understand what that might mean to women. But they don't hold the same point with male lawmakers who vote for abortion rights, even though they presumably can't understand woman's needs either. Indeed, whenever a man supports a so-called woman's right in a way which women (or, should we say, liberal women) like, he is not condemned. But why should male affirmation mean any more than male denial if men cannot possibly understand a woman's position?

Two things come up here. One is that it is arrogant to assert that men cannot understand a woman's rights merely because they're men. Women sure don't mind respecting a man's opinion if it coincides with theirs; dismissing male opinion as automatically wrongheaded if it disagrees with a woman's is, simply, hubris.

Two, it is more likely that someone not directly involved in an issue would be more readily impartial than someone who wants a certain outcome. We have umpires and referees in sports precisely because, although they may not be the actual players, they are expected and indeed are more likely to be impartial than the players. An umpire says safe or out independent of the player, who would more likely rule his own way given the chance.

This isn't to say that all umpires are right and all players wrong each and every time. But it is to say that objective right is something anyone can grasp if they want it. Whether the rule maker or opinion giver is male or female means nothing to right and wrong about anyone or anything.

Free Will Doesn't make Actions Right

One of the most pervasive while also one of the most ridiculous arguments in favor of certain presumed freedoms is the one about consenting adults. Simply put, it makes moral a given action on the grounds that the folks involved are in agreement as to their joint participation. It is ultimately a wholly untenable position.

To begin with, if all that is required to make something ethically acceptable is the agreement of the parties involved, then we really ought to allow duels. The (presumably) two participants agreed to take shots at each other. So no matter how barbaric, as they freely entered into the contract we would have to let them fire away.

Absurd. Yet when applied to other moral questions, and prostitution for example is one key area where the adage is often used, it is something accepted as axiomatic. The truth is that you would be on stronger ground simply to argue that paying for sexual favors is not in itself wrong rather than to say it's okay because there was no coercion.

The mere fact that people are willing to sell themselves that way while there are also folks willing to buy the, ahem, product, in fact reeks of coercive effects on its own standing. One person wants money, the other wants something which money can buy. A certain coercive effect is in fact at work. Still, even setting that point aside begs the question. The best answer is that nothing is good solely because those involved want to to do it. The act in question must be good on its own stead lest those involved be acting on mere impulse or selfishness. Or, indeed, actual immorality.

This is not to say that a free will act without pressure isn't a factor in moral decision making. It goes without saying that for most personal acts to be moral they must be entered into with a reasonable amount of freedom. In marriage, for example, both the man and the woman involved must do so of their own consent. Yet a hypothetical marriage between a man and a woman both of whom are free to marry is itself already moral. We are in fact beyond the issue of the morality of the potential nuptials by the time the question of will enters the fray.

In short, when considering the rightness of something there are two questions at hand. The first and most important query is whether the act is morally right, seen objectively, on its own. The second is whether those involved are the proper parties to it. Their consent is never a point until after the moral correctness of the action is assured.

Legal Does Not Mean Moral

Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal. Never forget that everything the Founding Fathers did was not.

-Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Much hay is made over the idea that legality equals morality. Yet one moment's reflection by any person of serious thought can demonstrate that such is not necessarily the case.

We must be very careful with any premise which asserts that simply because the leaders of any given nation at any given time or in any given place say something is okay that it is in fact okay. The supporters of atrocities such as abortion regularly and flippantly assert that as it is legal it is moral. Well, as the old saw goes, slavery was once legal. Does that mean slavery, when legal, is moral?

Of course not. Only a fool would build a system of right and wrong on such an axiom. It would result in nothing short of an ethical house of cards, subject to the violence of the summer breeze and the whims of the short sighted and thoughtless soul.

Still, we have essentially done just that in the United States today. The issues involved are not even so heinous as abortion or national health care, either: it is patently immoral to take one man's money to give to another man so that that man can buy a car. Period.

The problem is that when we stray in one area it is too easy to stray in another. To avoid this, we must begin doing what is right because it is right and avoiding wrong because it is wrong. Until we can make that distinction and act properly, we are on the high road to political and social extinction.

The first step in recognizing that is accepting that the best laws are in fact also moral. The first step away is thinking that the legal changes the moral. That is nothing less than Orwellian, and marks nothing less than our doom.

God

There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, in the end, 'Thy will be done.'

- C. S. Lewis

I have long believed that there is only one God. There can only be One; Plato eons ago rightly pointed out that perfection implies singularity, as multiplicity must infer defect. To wit, complexity must allow for great error because there are so many parts of it. There's more to go wrong. Conversely, One Whole Something must be essentially simple so that nothing can be wrong with it.

Ignore for the moment any pleas within your mind which may ask, so which God is God? I am merely establishing that there can only be one. Christ, Yahweh, Allah; Animism and Mother Earth: we can deal with all that another time. What I am concerned with here is how this truth affects us in our day to day actions.

When we discuss morality it often seems to devolve into an us against them rant. "Who made you God?", we may often be asked. The reply, "Who made you?", generally is left unasked, yet is just as fair. Be that as it may, the overall implication is that that other person doesn't have to listen to you because you aren't the final arbiter of right and wrong and, further, that maybe there isn't actually a God for us to bother about anyway.

That is dangerous on two fronts. The first is that you never, ever want to even broach the idea that you are God. The second is that it begs that question of who is. To the former, what kind of God would you be if you did in fact call the shots? Could you stay good with all the power that implies at your control? To the latter, if there is a God who can make those calls, hadn't we best find out who He is and what He wants? For surely our poor opinions and actions would pale next to His.

Still, God allows us some share of that power. He will, as Lewis says above, tell you 'thy will be done', and cast you off. He will allow you your choice on the ultimate matter: to be with Him or not. You can be the god of your own destiny.

But ask yourself whether you would like where the trail must lead.

Human Reason and Abortion

Pope Benedict XVI has said that human embryos are 'dynamic, autonomous individuals.' It is a good and clear statement of what seems a reasonable philosophic position: human beings have human babies.

It is high time that we state things clearly and emphatically where human life is at stake. We aren't talking about potential, we are talking about reality. The sooner we begin to emphasize that, the sooner we might begin to convince all but the hardest hearted that abortion is a great moral evil.

This is not a wholly, or even particularly, religious position, yet many will attempt to dismiss it as such. Concluding that, again, human beings have human children is no more inherently religious than asserting that rape, theft, or kidnapping is evil. Not that the religious aspect of this or any other moral question isn't important, but only that, when trying to convince someone not particularly or even openly hostile to religion that something is wrong we cannot use religion to defend it. We have to play the game on their field until such time as they come around to a more inclusive point of view.

Fortunately their field offers arguments not directly religious. We have defenses based on reason: if they are reasonable people, they will eventually begin to see these for themselves. If they are not reasonable people, well, they face a future of their making, either secular or religious, at their own peril.

Feelings aren't enough.

This is another response to an atheist. He believes that morality is essentially based on feelings of empathy.

-Charles Martin Cosgriff

Why, my friend, I'm glad we could find some common ground. I agree that humans are intuitive (the Ten Commandments are written on our hearts), but not that morality is about empathy and compassion. For empathy and compassion are mere feelings, and we know that feelings can and do mislead. Alone, feelings may indeed inspire good moral action. Yet they may well lead to bad moral action: it goes without saying that anger can cause much grief. We must judge our feelings as to whether they are for well or for ill. We must look upon them logically, acting upon them only when it is clear that they are properly driven.

But by whose logic do we declare our feelings right or wrong, then? That's where we disagree. For Right Reason, objective morality, the Natural Law, indeed common sense, all of which are the names of one essential reality, is beyond any one person. It is beyond us and we must seek it in order to act within it.

That, in part, is where God comes in. For God is Right Reason, He is that objective morality. He is the Natural Law and the spiritual embodiment of common sense. Without such a guide, even empathy and compassion may effectively lie to us. We may end up feeling compassion for the wrong person, cause, or reason. We must have a way to judge our feelings or they may do us a disservice rather than being an impetus to correct action.

Human action alone is sterile. Yet in concert with the Divine, it is a power above all other strengths. When we accept that, we become good people.