Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

"I know I'll be criticized here [...], but Jindal is right [about the wastefulness of goverment spending on volcano monitoring]! As a matter of fact I also have additional savings I can highlight. What about the dollars spent on monitoring hurricanes. They happen a lot more often than volcanos erupting and I bet everyone knows about where they're going to happen so why spend all that money? We even know pretty much when they're going to happen. I'm sure Bobby would agree with me." -- Talking Points Memo reader Brian M, 2009-03-23

[For folks with short memories: in the Republican response to President Obama's address to Congress 2009-02-24, Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal disparaged volcano monitoring as wasteful. Mount Redoubt in Alaska erupted 2009-03-22, and the monitoring that Jindal had mocked gave folks in the area time to prepare. I figured I'd save this quote for the official start of hurricane season.]

A Christian, active in his church as evidenced by the fact that he was an usher there, was murdered in cold blood yesterday right in his house of worship. A patently un-Christian act on the part of the terrorist who killed him.

So this isn't a "Christians are evil" thing (not that I'd stand for that anyhow, being a born-again Christian myself). The victim, portrayed as a good man by those who knew him and countless others thankful for the services he provided to those in need despite years of harassement and threats of violence, was a Christian. But since the killer appeared to have a religious motivation to use violence to intimidate others to further a political and/or religious agenda (hence terrorist), it is a "fundamentalists are dangerous" thing.

Oh yeah, and this was American-on-American violence. Domestic terrorism. Which are you more likely to be killed or wounded by, or lose a loved one to -- the domestic kind or imported?

And for all the right-wing rhetoric for the past nearly-nine-years about radical Muslim fundamentalists, this terrorist was a Christian, like his victim. We're going to have to take him at his word despite his act of sacrilege, as only he and the Lord know for sure, so this was Christian-on-Christian violence. Among religiously-motivated terrorists (or ones who have used religion as their excuse), who has killed more Americans, Christian terrorists or Muslim terrorists? (N.b.: I really don't know. Anybody have the answer within easy reach?) Which group has killed more Americans on American soil?

Oh, and the victim was a doctor. A doctor who performed abortions. "Late-term" abortions, the kind that, AFAICT, nobody ever wants to be in the position of needing, nor gets if there's any reasonable alternative, nor decides upon lightly. Wait, did I say "nobody", all generic-like? I mean no woman, since men doon't get abortions at all, and never have to face these decisions in this way (with the presumed exception of a very few really, really, really unlucky transmen, mentioned only in the interest of being as mathematically-correct as I can manage here).

One of a vanishingly small number of doctors performing such procedures, apparently (AFAICT) because decades of violence-or-threat-thereof -- terrorism -- had been effective in discouraging other doctors from offering the same service. A service that was already an ordeal to obtain on top of the pain and grief of having to make such a decision in the first place, will now be even more difficult? The amount of suffering in this world has been increased by more than just the death of that church usher and the grief of his family and friends; in addition to that suffering, unknown (but estimable) numbers of women who might have suffered a little less with this doctor's help, will instead suffer more.

"But what of the 'children'?" I can comprehend the moral calculus that says, "If I take this one life, many more will be saved, so even though murder is a sin it'll be a net gain for the world." I don't agree with it, but I comprehend it. But in the circumstances that lead to late-term abortions, is taking that option off the table actually going to save any babies-to-be? It doesn't sound like it will -- it'll just increase the risk of the mother's dying alongside the foetus, or suffering injury that'll make her unable to try again later for a healthy child, or just suffering more physical, emotional, financial, and spiritual pain and having to watch a doomed child suffer as well; not save any children's lives. "Convincing" someone not to terminate a pregnancy gone that far wrong -- be it by rhetoric or by making the procedure unattainable through legislation or fear -- doesn't magically repair all the medical problems that made the pregnancy unsafe or non-viable in the first place.

So the moral calculus is broken because it starts off with a faulty assumption. No good can come of this. Even from a utilitarian perspective, this murder was wrong.

The only way this act makes any sense is to start off by saying, "Suffering doesn't matter; even death doesn't matter; all that matters is how often one particular act that I believe to be a sin occurs, regardless of any outcomes, and repercussions, any consequences." Or maybe, though I hate to think this is it, "Life and death don't matter; only this one sin, and that women suffer."

(Which ties into something I'd been meaning to write for quite a while...)

Why does, "Women must suffer because my religious belief allows no shades of grey, no examination of outcomes, and no possibility that I've somehow gotten it wrong, and everyone around me must act in accordance with my beliefs whether they believe the same things or not," sound familiar? Some other religious fundamentalists somewhere?

Here's my question: when it comes to religiously motivated (or religiously justified/rationalized) terrorism, regardless of which major faith is involved, have there been any non-fundamentalist religiously motivated terrorists? Any in the XXth and XXIst Centuries? (And no, I'm not limiting this question to the US. Do non-fundamentalists do these things?)

I dare say, while waiting for an answer to that, that the Problem -- the danger -- is not from Christianity as a whole, or Islam as a whole, or any other religion; nor is it religion itself (though I know at least two of my atheist friends will disagree there); rather, the problem is fundamentalism. Not that every fundamentalist is violent, and maybe not even that fundamentalism always eventually produces violence, but that fundamentalism is a precondition for this sort of thing -- or if it turns out not to be an absolute requirement, that it at least greatly increases the likelihood of violence (and on a larger scale, the abandonment of problem-solving and useful communication in favour of entrenched ideological positions and lots of, "la la la I can't hear you").

And not just religious fundamentalism. Folks who insist, against all evidence, that unadulterated communism, or socialism, or capitalism, is The Only Way, and shut out any possibility of taking the most effective aspects of each and applying them in different combinations to different types of problems ... folks who insist that if only we adhered to the stripped down, untainted form of direct democracy, libertarianism, anarchy, etc., we'd have a paradise with no funky cracks or corner cases or abuses of the system ... that government is Always [more | less] efficient than private enterprise, in all things ... even (though as far as I know this one doesn't lead to gunfire) folks who insist on an Absolute Adherence to goto-less programming, pretending that the handful of cases where a labelled jump makes things more maintainable will never ever arise, or that their One True Pedagogy is the only way that any student should be taught regardless of different students' different ways of absorbing knowledge and skills, or that the law and morality are the same and neither has any grey areas, or that banjos and bagpipes can absolutely never be used in rock and roll.

(Okay, I can see that last one maybe leading to a stabbing...)

That combination of absolute faith, a stripped-down, simplified model, and militant inflexibility, seems to be at best unhealthy and maladaptive and at worst a route to terrorism, civil war, genocide, and holy wars. I think the biggest human problem we have right now is fundamentalism in its various incarnations in various fields of thought. I suspect that fundamentalism is inherently harmful. Whether it's religious, political, economic, or whatever.

But I think I can see what makes fundamentalism seductive. So I'm not sure how to get rid of it.