Family-assisted suicide

Dr. Kevorkian was pilloried and branded "Dr. Death" because he was willing to help terminally ill people who had come to a decision to end their lives voluntarily. "Physician-assisted suicide" became synonymous with the macabre, the unprofessional, the criminal.

And yet, when religious beliefs enable people to do the same thing by withholding essential medical or nutritional aid, we chalk it up to religious "freedom" and "patient rights."

I'm brought to these considerations because a dear woman in our family circle was allowed to starve to death because she had instructed her family not to intervene when a physical condition made it impossible for her to take food. I don't know what the physical condition was, but from all appearances she had a very large growth in her abdomen. It might have been a fibroid or some other kind of tumor that had grown so large it could have compressed her digestive system to the point where she could not take food normally. We will never know because she was a Christian Scientist and was sequestered in a Christian Science "care" facility where no medical diagnosis is allowed, much less medical treatment.

So I am presented with the stunning picture of a starving woman insisting that her children in attendance not allow her to take nutritional sustenance. After about two weeks of starvation, the woman died. No surprise there. Yes, she was elderly and frail and who knows if something else was eating up her innards, but to die from starvation when food in some ingestible form is available seems like a macabre tragedy. But what makes it outrageous is that her children took turns watching her die that way. As far as I know, none of them even suggested that a medical diagnosis be given, simply to see if some natural means might be used to keep her alive.

I was a deeply committed Christian Scientist for over 35 years, an advanced student who had been elevated to the position of "teacher," so that others might learn how to "heal" through prayer alone. I eventually (after far, far too long) realized the lunacy of this belief system and severed all ties both official and psychological with Christian Science. But my deep knowledge of the intricacies of that system reveal several "outs" with which these children could have probably prolonged their mother's life. Specifically, there are passages in the "sacred literature" that allow for consultation with medical experts on "the anatomy of the case." Meaning, that they could have at least known the physical situation that was causing their mother distress. Perhaps in that "anatomy" there could have been a workaround that would have allowed the poor woman to receive essential nutrition. And continue living.

However the four children of this dear woman had been raised from birth in this belief system, which probably explains why they found it at least tolerable to sit mutely by and watch their mother starve to death. I've found that "lifers" like this are firmly imprisoned in their ways and despite all rational explanations to the contrary just cannot let go of a reverence for a system that believes there is a "spiritual" power available to the faithful that can reverse natural processes of life and death. There isn't. Plain and simple. There isn't. And those of us who did not get programmed at an early age to believe the lunacy find it a little easier to let go. But brain pathways so deeply imbedded are very, very difficult to reroute toward the reasonable.

There will be a memorial service for her at a Christian Science church in her area, and I have been asked to not attend if I cannot celebrate her life instead of being swayed by the tragedy of her death. Her death is not the tragedy. It is the manner of her death that is so odious. That her children, her church members and friends are asking reasonable people to come to "celebrate her life," is almost too preposterous to contemplate. Perhaps I can be removed from the mawkish "celebration" by helping to park cars, babysitting or something.

My dear son, whose mother-in-law was the victim of this Family-Assisted Suicide, knows better. But he is a more gentle and tolerant man than I will ever be. I know that he would not want his family to let him die from neglect. And neither would I! Yes, the medical establishment is not perfect. Insurance companies, political pressure groups and the huge industries that profit from the physical frailties of humans make caring for each other a difficult choice. But I would hope that reason, sweet reason, might prevail should he -or I- be the victim of some malady that gave my family the power to facilitate my life or death.

Why I am no longer polite to god

One kind of wisdom says to forget the past and move forward. Another kind, like that espoused by HL Mencken in 1925, says it's noble to contend with stupidity. I might not be so motivated by the latter if I hadn't spent most of my life as a believer. I consider those days a waste, and painfully embarrassing to even contemplate. This is my way of coping.

The way to deal with superstition is not to be polite to it, but to tackle it with all arms, and so rout it, cripple it, and make it forever infamous and ridiculous. Is it, perchance, cherished by persons who should no better? Then their folly should be brought out into the light of day, and exhibited there in all its hideousness until they flee from it, hiding their heads in shame.

Letter from a former fundie to Sarah Palin

That god-fearers are toxic to liberty has been made plain the past 8 years. With god on your side you can turn on your fellow-humans with impunity. Here's an excerpt of an open letter from a former fundamentalist, Marlene Winell, PhD. Read the full text here.

As a former fundamentalist, I'd like to call you on what you are doing.

The media has found you "opaque" about your religion. Why? You have not been honest about the most important thing about you: the fact that you are a born-again charismatic on a mission from God. Most people who have never been entrenched in the subculture of fundamentalist Christianity may not understand what this really means, but I do. Like you, I was raised in the Assemblies of God and I was a zealous part of the Jesus Movement. Like you, my life was consumed with seeking God's will for my life and awaiting the imminent return of Jesus.

Former fundamentalists like me know that your worldview is so encompassing, authoritarian, and powerful that it defines who you think you are, the way you view the world, history, other people, the future, and your place in the world. It defines you far more than hockey mom, wife, woman, hunter, governor, or VP candidate.

Ridiculous religionists - too easy

There are many funny moments in Bill Maher's "Religulous." And that's part of the problem. Freaks, nut-cases, extremists in outrageous costumes and inarticulate people can all be easily set up for a laugh. They are ridiculous religionists. There are a number of these in "Religulous," a film that Maher says is intended to raise doubts about the claims of religion. A laudable, even important, goal. But the toxins of religion also worm deep into the psyches of mostly ordinary people, not just the flamboyant crazies. Stand at the door of most churches prior to a service and you don't see freaks walking in. You see the hoi polloi, the intensely average mass of society. Some, if not many, of these people are awake enough to know that the claims of religion are ridiculous, but they choose to go along to get along. Many more just don't think about the claims, they just accept it as part of their cultural identity. They wear their religion like an occasional badge (or flag pin), a set-it-and-forget-it accoutrement to be displayed at the door of social acceptance.

Where the Great Average goes horribly wrong is when it has to make decisions that affect the world as a whole. In a political contest every candidate has to flash that badge because if they don't then Joe Average gets suspicious. And so dolts like Bush garner praise because they say they make foreign policy decisions based on messages they receive from a heavenly Father. An airhead like Sarah Palin can espouse freakish beliefs in End Times, fear of witchcraft, and messages from the divine and the religious “right” say amen to the possibility (probability) that she could become President. Even Barack Obama has to steer through the treacherous shoals of perception that he is either a Muslim terrorist or a Christian anarchist – so he just goes bland.

While it's true that the claims of religion are ultimately ridiculous, I wish Maher had shown (or had been able to find) more ordinary people. I would have recommended most of my family, who are good-hearted and generally likeable, even while they shamelessly take comfort in ridiculous, unprovable assumptions.

But owing to the hypnotic nature of these beliefs, I doubt that they, and most ordinary religionists, could be persuaded to doubt. But it would have been interesting for Maher to try anyway.

Don't bother reasoning with most conservatives - it's their brain, stupid.

http://www.alternet.org/election08/98902/what_makes_people_vote_republican/

Recent research suggests that reasonable, fact-based arguments don't reach the core of the conservative mind.

But now that we can map the brains, genes, and unconscious attitudes of conservatives, we have refined our diagnosis: conservatism is a partially heritable personality trait that predisposes some people to be cognitively inflexible, fond of hierarchy, and inordinately afraid of uncertainty, change, and death.

If I could keep this clearly in view I wouldn't risk souring relationships with my mostly conservative family.

Makes me wonder if the blatant disasters of the past 8 years will register with enough voters to make them vote for Obama/change. And doubts about it make be very depressed.

Addendum about that half-baked Alaskan

Sam Harris responds to criticisms of his article in the LAT about Sarah Palin:

Sam Harris: Sexist Pig and Liberal Shill

I've received more than the usual amount of criticism for my recent opinion piece on Sarah Palin, most of it alleging sexism and/or an unseemly infatuation with Barack Obama. For those who care, I'd like to briefly respond:

My alleged sexism: It is true that I used some hackneyed, gender-slanted language in the piece ("get sassy," "girl-next-door," etc.). This was deliberate. Clearly, I played this game at my peril. I can say that if Sarah Palin were a man of similar qualifications, I would have used equally slanted language to describe him. I might have called Mr. Palin a "frat-boy" or a "lumberjack." I would have invoked some silly macho phrasing like,"Watch Cousin Jim flip Putin the bird." My concern is not that Mrs. Palin is a woman. My concern is that she is a totally unqualified and poorly educated woman who was added to the Republican ticket as a token woman (and Creationist wacko). For what it's worth, the article was vetted by the two women closest to me (wife and mother) and by two female editors at the LA Times. If anything, the editing at the Times made the piece even more "sexist."

My alleged Obamamania: Many McCain supporters have written to say that (1) Obama is also unqualified (or even less qualified than Palin) and (2) I have shown myself to be a hypocrite by not objecting to Obama's religiosity. Briefly: My criticism of Palin should not be construed as uncritical acceptance of Obama. Needless to say, I find Obama's religious pandering repulsive. The suspicion that he is pandering, out of obvious necessity, and not quite as religious as he makes out, is somewhat comforting, however. But even if Obama were precisely as religious as he appears, he is not a Creationist, Rapture-Ready blockhead. Palin, by all appearances, seems to be one. This is a difference worth noting. Whatever you may think of his politics, Obama is very intelligent and reasonably well educated. Palin thinks the universe is 6000 years old. Unfortunately, I wrote my article before some of the most disturbing signs of her religious extremism came to light.

So, let me simply declare that I would be overjoyed to have a qualified woman in the White House. I would, likewise, be overjoyed to have a qualified African American in the White House. In fact, I would be overjoyed to have a qualified WASP man in the White House. I will be guardedly optimistic to have a very smart (and somewhat qualified) Barack Obama in the White House. And I would be frankly terrified to have a religious bumpkin like Sarah Palin in the White House. I think you should share this last conviction. Hence my latest opinion piece.

Best,
Sam

Fave quotes

Over at Debunking Christianity there's a flash movie showing several quotes about theology and religion. It's embedded here, but these are my favorites because they comment on my own experience:

No man is convinced the Bible means exactly what it says. He is convinced it says exactly what he means. -Mark Twain

One man's religion is another man's belly laugh" -R.A. Heinlein

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. ~Philip K. Dick

The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike. - Delos McKown

Everyone starts our being an atheist. No one is born with belief in anything. - Andy Rooney

Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned. - Unknown

I prayed for freedom for twenty years, but received no answer until I prayed with my legs. -Frederick Douglass

You can't convince a believer of anything; their belief is not based on evidence but on a deep-seated need to believe. -Carl Sagan

Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from the fact that it falls in with our instinctual desires. - Sigmund Freud

It is better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however reassuring. - Carl Sagan

Stenger's reply to WL Craig

Over on Debunking Christianity is a long piece quoting Victor Stenger in a debate with William Lane Craig. I find these arguments crisp and persuasive. They address just about all the arguments theists advance for the existence of a spiritual world and a supreme being.

Here's the summary of his points:

1. The traditional attributes of God are self-contradictory. Such a God cannot exist.

2. The traditional attributes of God are incompatible with objective facts about the world. Such a God cannot exist.

3. Natural explanations are superior to supernatural explanations. No basis exists for anything supernatural.

4. The traditional attributes of God imply actions that should be objectively observed, but are not.

It is possible to hypothesize a God whose attributes are logically compatible with each other. But, it does not follow that such a God exists unless it has objectively observable consequences. No such consequences have been observed.

If God exists, where is he?

Why I rejected Christian Science

It was 1976 when I found out about Christian Science, a religion I soon adopted and practiced for over thirty years. I did much, much more than "sign up," I studied it deeply, thought about it deeply and jumped on the escalator of prestige within the CS community: I became a "practitioner" of its healing method, a public lecturer on the subject, and an authorized teacher of its doctrine, method and metaphysics. I eventually wound up at the headquarters of the movement, in Boston at the "Mother Church." I was brought on as one of the developers of a new website, spirituality.com, and became its Senior Editor for the last five years of my identity as a Christian Scientist. For over 25 years, the Church's various publications published around 150 articles of mine that explained and defended the religion. Prior to moving to Boston I was a defendant in one of the more notorious and protracted legal cases in the Church's 100-year history, concerning the death of an eleven-year old boy whom I had been hired to heal with CS.

The above should blunt the usual charges against critics, that they’re lightweight, inexperienced and misinformed. I also have no animosity toward the Church, and, with few exceptions, still have a high regard for the sincerity, humility and good intentions of the Christian Scientists with whom I have associated for over thirty years. As a deep and thorough student of the literature – including the Bible, several biographies of Mary Baker Eddy (founder of the religion) and historical accounts – and as an experienced defender of criticism of the religion, I know exactly what I eventually rejected, and why. I have been more or less silent about my experiences the past couple of years, preferring to establish myself in a new life while lying low against attacks on me personally as some kind of traitor, and free from the tyranny of the absurd worldview I had adopted, practiced and promoted.

One of the claims that could be made against me is that I had not grown up as a Christian Scientist, having come into it in my mid-thirties, and therefore had not witnessed its power and practicality while an impressionable youth. This is true, and I have found that among most of the people with whom I became friends, the "lifers" were the ones most unable to forgo its teachings, even when life experiences posed serious challenges to the sanity of their convictions. (To me this is one of the most persuasive arguments against religious training and upbringing of children. I agree with Daniel Dennett that children should be taught about the varieties of religious theories that abound in the world, but not identified with and indoctrinated into the religion of their parents.) The effect on these holdouts is to create a form of schizophrenia, where they live one life but proclaim another, with rationales for the ensuing cognitive dissonance.

Which brings me to the reason for this post, a kind of "outing," of myself as an apostate. The Washington Post's "On Faith" website has published several accounts by Christian Scientists explaining and defending their adherence to the faith. As is common in online articles there is the option to add comments to articles. A recent comment struck me as the most eloquent and correct refutation of Christian Science I had ever seen. It made me exclaim: I wish I'd written that! It is so well done that I include the full text of it here, along with a link to it for as long as it will be available. The writer is identified only as "Mike." Mike is a 'lifer," having been raised as a Christian Scientist, and is living proof that even deeply indoctrinated persons can break free of its spell and not go crazy in the process. More power to him and to others, particularly boomers, who are concerned that their good luck behind the wall of denial is running out.

As someone who was raised in Christian Science, and survived, I want people to know exactly what kind of religion it is.

While Christian Scientists are genuinely kind and well-intentioned, the worldview they choose to embrace can and does do great harm.

That worldview is this: that what we think of as reality simply isn't real. Because in this reality, people get sick, have problems, and so on. If God is all good and all powerful, they say, how could he permit disease to exist?

The answer is that he cannot and does not. Instead, the only reason such bad things exist in the world is because we humans mistakenly *believe* they exist. Once we eliminate this belief in ourselves (called "error" or "mortal mind" in Christian Science), the appearance of disease or discord simply disappears. This is the method of Christian Science "healing" in a nutshell.

For example, I never had a cold as a child. Not once. I had the *belief* of a cold many times, sometimes even the "claim" of a cold, but becuase there's no sickness in God's kingdom, I never had a real, actual cold, because colds simply aren't real.

This way of thinking is so simplistic that it raises hopes of healing, and when healing doesn't happen, you have practitioners like the person profiled here saying, "Well, Christian Science is very complex." Yet if you read the church's publications, you'd think that "knowing the Truth," as Christian Scientists put it, is as easy as falling off a log, and as reliable as a Japanese car.

And what the Christian Scientists call "healings" -- when they do happen -- can almost always be attributed to the body's ability to heal itself. Think of it -- we haven't had modern medicine for very long, maybe just around 100 years, and before then doctors were pretty much quacks. This is why Christian Science proved so popular at first when it debuted shortly after the Civil War.

So if you don't have competent medical treatment, you basically suffer through things until they pass (or *you* pass!). And a lot of the so-called healings I've read about or been told that I experienced are nothing more than that.

Christian Scientists will point to the testimonies of healing in their publications, but the church's guidelines for publishing them do not demand any sort of verification. Other Christian Scientists who have witnessed the "healing" (and who are predisposed to believe the religion's worldview anyway) are certainly accepted as witnesses, but in the absence of those, a person who can vouch for the testifier's character suffices as "verification" of the "healing." Hardly rigorous or objective, certainly not enough to merit the word "testimony."

Christian Scientists will also point out that they are not *required* to rely on Christian Science for healing, and that is technically true according to the church Manual (kind of like the church's constitution).

However, the real-life social pressures to reject medicine is so strong as to be nearly irresistible. Contempt for medical science runs through every aspect of Christian Science teaching. Just open to any random page of Science and Health, the Christian Scientists' companion text to the Bible, to see Mary Baker Eddy's attacks on medicine as false and ineffective.

So the social pressure is great indeed. If, for example, Mr. Davis from this article chose to rely on medicine to treat an illness, his status as a practitioner (a prestigious status in the church) might be jeopardized. And if he were a church officer in his local branch church, he would almost certainly be asked to step down from his position (though his basic church membership would not be affected).

I could obviously go on forever about this. As someone raised in the religion by a very devout family, I know how well-meaning and how wrong Christian Scientists can be. I'm glad I survived the experience. But I reject their insistence that the world we perceive isn't real, that there's something better. The world *is* real, with all its imperfections and problems. Christian Scientists don't like imperfections or problems, and simply try to pray them away, convinced they're not real. I embrace the imperfections and the problems, because they *are* real. But so am I. So are we all. And our power lies not in our ability to deny them, but to fix them, one by one, together.

Tending to the planet's nervous system

** This was an article I wrote last September 11 that did not get published because it did not fit in with the orientation of the website - it was not spiritual enough. I'm publishing it now because I still believe in the ideas here and because writers abhor throwing away anything they've written.

911 + 5

A few days after 911, Jon Stewart, of “Daily Show” fame, addressed his audience in a way that is still inspiring today, five years later. His naked humanity and his vision of hope touch me more than some of the spiritual soarings that came out of that holocaust. Most of them tried to comfort us with a view from a spiritual dimension, where a universal "Law of Goodness" reigns supreme. And to the extent that this pulled our attention away from the horror and reduced the pain somewhat, spiritual thoughts could be deemed useful. But it is highly unlikely that they had any effect on those who courageously strove to give help in the days and months after. People did what is in the heart of everyone to do in such cases.

In contrast, Stewart faces the horror head on and lays his heart out on the desk for all to see. He mirrors our deepest humanity, its vulnerability as well as its aspiration after something better.

He tells how the view from his lower Manhattan apartment used to frame the World Trade Center towers. They are gone, so hideously, so swiftly, and so mysteriously even to this day. And yet he squeezes out a statement of hope: the view now presents the Statue of Liberty for him to contemplate. It is that faith in liberty that is stronger than the hate and religious delusion that struck out at America that day. And I find it stronger than abstractions about another world and another set of actors.

Liberty, or freedom, is not an ancient fact. Almost all of history has been a process of blind determinism, trial and error, accident and ruthless competition among the constituents of the universe. Freedom came with the rise of human consciousness, which is a relatively – in evolutionary terms – recent. But with this new tool, “the planet has finally grown a nervous system - us,” as Daniel Dennett notes in Freedom Evolves (2003). And with “us” lies the ability to destroy the planet, or to advance it to higher states of order and harmony. The latter is not a slam-dunk. The former is more likely, as was demonstrated five years ago when technologically equipped fear, superstition and religious conviction destroyed two buildings and their occupants. But so much more.

The restriction of personal freedoms that accompanied the paranoia after 9/11 is just one of the ripples of collateral damage that eats at the essence of America. Ideological imperialism under the guise of a “war on terror” is another.

A higher level of thinking is required now, more than ever. And “higher” doesn’t mean abstract and supernatural. Only a new respect for reason can prevent further escalation of high-tech-equipped ideological insanity. Appeals to an abstract supernatural force will just add one more bit of irrationality to the volatile chaos-cocktail that threatens us. See Sam Harris's eloquent and impassioned book, The End of Faith, for details on how "faith" is so easily hijacked for evil ends.
It is time to take control of our destiny and support causes and actions that can lead to peace. And not peace that is simply the quietude of zombies, but peace that allows freedom to ring loud and clear. If you believe in a God, don’t let that belief deaden your humanity. Let the planet’s nervous system receive support from your own heightened rationality, your own heightened humanity. Otherwise, there will be a new date that is shorthand for terror. And it may be the last date.