Are embryos more valuable than adults?

On Wednesday, President Bush for the second time vetoed legislation that would allow federal funding for new embryonic stem cell research.

"If this legislation became law, it would compel American taxpayers for the first time in our history to support the deliberate destruction of human embryos," Bush said. "I made it clear to Congress and to the American people that I will not allow our nation to cross this moral line."

This seems very hypocritical to me. As long as Americans have been required to pay taxes, they have been compelled to support the deliberate destruction of human adults in warfare.

Toto and thinking critically about religion

One of the thickest walls that defend religious beliefs is the taboo against thinking about them objectively.

I didn’t discard my religious views after a deliberate evaluation in which I came to the conclusion that they were all false. Rather I left them behind one by one in a trail of litter as I found that I no longer believed them.

I want to help people who have difficulties with faith to find a way past the walls that hold them in, to think outside their religious boxes, and to live a life of freedom. It seems likely that in many cases such escapes will be gradual, as mine was.

When I left religion, I began asking myself questions that I would never have dared to ask before. I wondered how I could have failed to consider those issues over the years. I concluded that the inertia of my worldview and my lack of exposure to other ideas simply hid those issues from me. I was so distracted by the vision of Oz the great and terrible that I never even noticed the curtain, and no Toto pulled it down for me.

I want to be a Toto for other people. I want to raise the questions that I had never noticed before, and reveal possibilities that I had never before considered. I want to learn more about how the world really works, and help other people to do the same.

My curtain didn’t fall all at once, and I can understand how traumatic it could be for that to happen to a person. I guess I want to be a Toto who tugs persistently at the curtain, opening it little by little, until the true frailty of Oz finally becomes apparent.

Always reading

I’ve been an avid reader since I was in the second grade. Every two weeks during the years I was in elementary school, my family drove the 10 miles to the public library, and each of us would check out as many books as we were allowed. Reading is very important to me, because I think I’ve learned more from my reading than from all my years in school.

During the 40+ years I was a Christian, I guess I read close to a hundred books on Christian living and various aspects of Christianity, along with some Christian fiction and many other books, mostly non-fiction. I read a fair amount of science, primarily astronomy and physics, but very little biology. I accepted the theory of evolution, but had little interest in it because it seemed to have little relevance to my life. I was more interested in learning about God, the real force in control of life and nature.

Over the last few years since I went free of religion, I’ve turned the focus of my reading from Christian literature to books on science. Feeling that I had paid little attention to how the world actually works, I’ve tried to catch up a little bit. I’ve added geology, biology, paleontology, psychology, and social history to my list of reading interests.

As I look down the list of what I’ve been reading, I find a focus on books that contribute to an understanding of human nature. Having discovered that my theological concepts of myself and humanity were groundless, I want to gain a more accurate picture of what we are and what I am. Three subjects have been particularly helpful in building this perspective:

1) Two books on human nature by Steven Pinker and Paul Ehrlich, and two on physiological psychology by Antonio Damasio and Gerald Edelman have given me a glimpse of how the complex and extremely sophisticated behaviors of people can be generated by a physical body and brain, without resorting to vague concepts like “soul” or “spirit.”

2) A few books on sociobiology have helped me put together at least a rough image of the origins of moral values and their subsequent adoption by religions.

3) The most fascinating and enlightening books I’ve read are Jared Diamond’s two major works: Guns, Germs & Steel: The Fates of Human Societies and Collapse: Why Societies Choose to Succeed or Fail. Diamond’s sweeping panoramas of social change from prehistoric times to today powerfully depict the forces that molded our history and that will shape our future.

My recommended reading list has more details on these and the other books I’ve read in the last few years.

Time to go to the library…

Blame for the Virginia Tech Massacre

A friend forwarded Del Tacket's editorial on the Virginia Tech massacre to me today. Tacket blames this tragedy on "an inherently sinful nature," and claims that "Evil lurks in the heart of man and it will erupt when it is allowed to act unconstrained."

Like Tacket, I'm disgusted by the callous adoption of this tragedy to promote political agendas without first taking time to mourn it. And I agree that blaming various social problems for it obscures the fact that Cho was responsible for his own actions.

But I see no benefit to placing blame at all. I think attempts to do so are oversimplifications of the many interacting influences on events. It seems to me that people who try to pin blame on one person's character, weak gun control laws, inadequate mental health care, or whatever, are hoping to find a simple way to prevent such events. I think it's much more beneficial to try to understand as much as we can about the various contributing factors that led to this event, and take steps to mitigate the problems that led up to it. This was a highly visible tragedy, but many less obvious ones happen every day becase of the same problems that caused this one.

I think Tacket would have presented a stronger case if he had avoided judging people as "wicked" or "sinful," which simply condemns them according to his moral standards; I don't think doing so is helpful in understanding their thinking. He apparently believes that there are only two possible judgements of human nature: tragically flawed or basically good. I see people as natural. Some are better than others by my moral standards, but each is different.

I don't see evil lurking in the hearts of the people I know. My impression is that the vast majority of people are motivated primarily by good will toward other people. Some commit heinous crimes in misguided attempts to improve their own lives or those of others. I've heard very little about Cho's manifesto, but the fact that he wrote one seems to indicate that he hoped society would benefit from his murders.

I sympathize with the families and friends of those who were murdered, including the family of the murderer. I grieve especially for those people who, like Cho, feel desperately lonely and angry with the "wicked" people who fail to welcome him into their society.

There is no perfect tree

One of the major changes in my perspective on life was the realization that differences from norms aren't defects.  The idea of personal perfection is nonsense, and there is no particular way things "ought" to be.

One day when I was out in our back yard thinking about the audacity of some people who were trying to tell me that some things were wrong with my life, it occurred to me that there is no perfect tree.  We don't judge a tree by whether or not its branches and leaves have exactly the shape we think they should have; we look at the whole tree and admire its beauty.

I was taught that sin is a failure to live up to the perfection that God requires for a relationship with him.  The concept of a perfect person makes no more sense than that of a perfect tree.  Each is different and each is good.  I feel uniquely valuable and enjoy being myself.  I look for ways in which my particular abilities can be useful to other people.  I take pleasure in who I am, apart from my accomplishments.

It seems that we increase our discontent with life by comparing it to the way things are "supposed to be."  We set up an unattainably high standard for what we want from our friends, our jobs, and every aspect of life, and then feel disappointed because the reality isn't what we think it ought to be.  Realizing that there is no "ought" has mellowed me.  I can enjoy my job even if it isn't what I've always dreamed of doing.  I can be disappointed with my friend's decision not to go hiking with me without being angry that he isn't doing what a friend "should" do.

Many quarrels in the world arise from moral judgements.  We classify people as good and evil based on their apparent motives.  It seems to me that we all have one fundamental motivation for everything we do: to improve our own well-being.  The people we think of as supremely evil—serial murderers or terrorists, perhaps—are distinguished by their disregard for the well-being of other people.  They apparently believe that the well-being of others is incompatible with their own.  It seems likely that in the vast majority of cases they are mistaken in this belief, but that doesn't make them any less human or less deserving of life than the rest of us.  By accepting the fact that other people have different values, it's easier to address issues more compassionately and negotiate arrangements that are mutually beneficial.

People make moral judgements as a way of attempting to control other people's actions.  At the bottom of all control issues, there seems to be fear—fear that people will do things that will harm me or other people.  Maybe they will.  If they do, I will do whatever I can to protect myself and others.  But I will try to limit myself to defensive actions that don't unnecessarily limit the offender's choices, because that's how I would want to be treated.

Nothing is all-important

My beliefs and actions are cosmically insignificant—important only to me and the people around me.

One of the first books I read as I was beginning to look for a new goal in life was Gregg Levoy's, Callings: Finding and Following an Authentic Life.   Levoy tells of an experience that put his calling as a writer into perspective.  Looking out at a mesa and realizing that our entire culture would eventually be a thin layer of sediment on the side of a mountain, he acknowledged that his life's work would have very little impact in the long run.  He concluded, "Yet precisely because it makes a flyspeck of difference whether I write my essays or not, somehow this frees me up to write, to follow the calling, to do whatever I want, because there is no failure."


This was a profound statement to me.   What I do with my life is not likely to change the world for good or ill, so from a cosmic standpoint it hardly matters what I do.   I am free to fail.  On the other hand, my life has a substantial impact on my family and friends, and of course it is extremely important to me.   I want to do what I can to make our life good, so I do my best to find ways to do that.  I'm free to be creative.

I have to live my own life

I am responsible for myself, and not for anyone else. I have to make my own decisions and accept the consequences of those decisions, but I don't punish myself when I make mistakes.

I have free will. My authority over myself is not dependent on what anyone else says or does, or on any other aspect of my circumstances. Nobody else lives inside my body, experiencing what I experience. I have to live my life the best I can with my own limited understanding. I can't depend on someone else to know what my best interests are, and nobody else could make my decisions for me even if I wanted them to, so I am the final authority for myself.

The fact that my understanding of reality is inaccurate doesn't mean I can legitimately base my actions on something I believe to be false—even if everyone else says it's true. If I did that, I would be forfeiting my life—giving up my own thoughts in favor of someone else's and living as an extension of them rather than as myself. Some cultures value this kind of self-effacement, but I don't. It seems to me that doing so deprives the world of my unique contribution to its store of experience.

My responsibility extends only to the boundaries of what I can control, which is myself. I can try to affect my environment, and I often can exert considerable influence over it, but I usually can't control it as completely as I'd like.

In particular, I can't control other people, and if I tried to do so, I would be attempting to usurp their responsibility for themselves. I now consider respect to be a fundamental aspect of love. Jesus told people to treat others the way they would want to be treated, and I still think that's the best way to get along. I don't want other people to try to control my life, so I want to respectfully allow them the freedom to live as they want as well.

Since people and other aspects of my environment aren't under my control, I have to base my decisions on my predictions of the effects of possible actions. I'm now more careful about making major decisions because I can't expect God to rescue me from my failures. I take more initiative to do things I want done, rather than waiting for God to do them for me. I more carefully consider the long-term effects of my actions because I no longer expect Jesus to come back and make everything right.

I used to spend hours berating myself after making a particularly poor decision. I no longer regard myself as flawed for having made a mistake, so I see wallowing in guilt as a waste of time. I constantly re-evaluate my decisions based on their outcomes, and when I conclude that a decision was not a good one, I think about it enough to try to avoid making the same mistake again, but I don't dwell on it because I know I can't undo it. I see no benefit in punishing myself beyond accepting the consequences of my actions and doing what I can to ameliorate the situation.