The Choice Is between Freedom and Coercion

There are some things we think are self-evident, such as that we our endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights, such as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (which includes owning property).

But a whole lot of what was obvious, or self-evident, up until recently may not be so obvious today.

Here at the Spherical Model, we make the assumption that the good things we’re going for are freedom, prosperity, and civilization—rather than the alternatives of tyranny, poverty, and savagery. The choice seems obvious.

And yet there are many people who literally do not value freedom. It may be that they’ve had it redefined out of existence, like so many other truths. But I thought we might do a bit of awareness raising on freedom today.

Here’s how I define terms, using my 1980 Webster’s Dictionary combined with my words: 

Freedom: absence of hindrance, restraint, confinement, repression. In the political sense, it is ownership of one’s own life and the production of wealth and property that results from one’s use of life and effort. A government should protect the freedoms of life, liberty, and property; it does not grant these things, but protects them from infringement. A government that takes life, liberty, or property unjustly—when the person has not unlawfully infringed on those rights of another person—that is a tyrannical government, which is the opposite of freedom.

Political freedom means living in a society in which our God-given rights are protected rather than infringed. These would include freedoms of belief and expression, such as freedom of religion and freedom of the press, as well as freedoms of property and security, such as freedom from illegal searches and seizures and the right to bear arms.

Liberty: synonym of freedom. It is ownership of one’s own life, to pursue as one chooses, and to enjoy the fruits of one’s efforts. No person or government or other entity owns a person or controls how the person pursues happiness.

And yet, in today’s world, we have a rising generation that favors a change from our system of freedom to a tyranny they might call socialism, without knowing what that means either.

There’s another term that is useful here: Agency. Sometimes we combine it with the word free, as in free agency. You’ve probably encountered it when sports professionals leave a team and become free agents, open to a contract with another team. That might be the limit of how you've used it. But it implies the ability to choose. So you can see that agency is related to liberty.

There are various words we use as opposites to the ability to choose: coercion, oppression, tyranny.

When you look at a political ideology, you can simplify the search for the good and true by looking at its closeness to freedom, liberty, ability to choose—or by how dangerously close it is to coercion, oppression, tyranny.

·         Do you get to believe what you choose to believe?

·         Do you get to choose your profession and way of life?

·         Do you get to speak your opinions freely?

·         Do you get to associate with people you choose to associate with?

·         Do you get to enjoy the fruits of your own labors?

It wouldn’t be very convincing to offer you a truthful opposite, such as: “Wouldn’t you rather believe what we the powerful tell you to believe?” Or “Wouldn’t it be better for you if we the powerful decided what work you were allowed to do and for what pay?” Or “Wouldn’t it be better if you were allowed to speak only the words we the powerful told you to?” Or, “Wouldn’t it be better for all of us if you gave us all your earnings and we the powerful dole them out to those we favor?”

No, it has to be done more subtly than that:

·       Let’s stop others from believing things that we believe are just wrong—shut down churches, political groups, nonprofits, businesses, schools, or any individual or organization that does or says things we don’t like.

·       Let’s stop others from making a living in ways we don’t like—like using fossil fuels, or maybe just because the business owners believe things we don’t like.

·       Let’s cancel or coerce others to make them stop hurting us by saying things we don't believe—because their words are violence.

·       Let’s take the money from the rich and give it to the poor, like us, who are more deserving.

You get the idea. To someone with some enlightenment, the “progressive” or “woke” or “socially just” way is pretty dark. It takes away individual choice. It oppresses individuals. It rules over people tyrannically. If that’s OK with you as long as they’re on your side, not only is that evil of you, but it’s also just a matter of time until the powers-that-be come after you for some perceived infraction.

It’s a continuation of a very old war—a war that predates earth history. It’s a war between good and evil, between light and dark. I told this story here.   

Let me tell another old story that maybe we can apply. Versions of it show up in fantasy literature all the time. It’s from the Book of Revelation, the last book in the Bible, chapter 13 mostly. But I’ll be retelling it in a slightly more narrative form.

"La Bete de la Mer" tapestry in France, depicting
John the Revelator observing the dragon and the sea beast
image from Wikipedia

There is an evil force, in the form of a dragon, who is a scourge to all the earth. He is an enemy to light, goodness. He doesn’t build; he destroys. Chaos and coercion are his right- and left-hand weapons. He controls two monsters, hideous in form and function, who do his bidding. One monster comes up from the depths of the waters over all the earth. She is filthiness and all the worldly evils, and she rides and controls the powers of rulers and organizations over all the earth. She seduces them with power, and brings them together in secret oaths, so that they simultaneously threaten and support one another in their schemes to amass greater and greater power, buying and selling the souls of men.

The other monster comes up from the earth. Its form appears much less dangerous than the dragon, but it speaks with the tongue of the dragon. It voices the dragon’s words, which are lies. Some call it the false prophet. Another interpretation might be propaganda. It can be found flowing out of ivory and other towers, in and through the airways—redefining in the dragon’s lying lexicon what is “good” and persuading people to worship the dragon, along with his beasts.

The dragon and his forces will eventually lose in their efforts to harm and destroy all the people of the earth. Bur for now the dragon marshals his forces, stirring them up to larger and louder attacks, knowing his time is short.

What does it mean? Revelation, told in a sort of symbolic dream form, can be confusing. But suppose it does say that there will come a time when the organizations of the earth make secret agreements with one another in an effort to amass power? Is that happening? I don’t think it’s a conspiracy theory; it's not theory. You might try checking these out for a sample: here, here, here, here, and here.

And about that propaganda monster—that seems like a good explanation of how:

Rioters tear down statue of
Father Junipero Serra in CA
screenshot from here

·       Religion becomes “bad,” but lasciviousness and licentiousness become “good.”

·       Treating all lives as equally valuable becomes “racist,” but favoring a particular race above all others is “social justice.”

·       An elderly friend who suggests florists who could help service a same-sex “wedding” when her religion prevents her becomes “intolerant,” but taking away that woman’s business and savings for so doing is done in the name of “tolerance.”

·       Speaking reasoned opinions with data to back them up becomes “hate speech,” but shouting down a speaker for even holding different opinions is supporting “free speech.”

·       Honoring a free nation and its flag is “hateful,” but disrespecting the flag and tearing down monuments is understandable, considering the circumstances.

You get the idea. Look at the news. Almost every story will provide an example.

The lies appeal to a certain uncivilized human characteristic: selfishness. If they’re working on you, or on someone you know, selfishness is an underlying factor, often disguised as “this makes me feel virtuous,” so you won’t look carefully enough to notice the lies.

Whether or not these are the times described in Revelation, the description seems fitting for today. We may not know how each episode will turn out, but we do know how the story ends.

In the meantime, let’s see how much loving truth-telling we can do to rescue those who might want the light of freedom, prosperity, and civilization if only they could see it.

Imagine This and That

In my online feed earlier this week, someone had posted a cartoon illustration of The Beatles’ “Imagine.” I won’t argue the musical value of the iconic Beatles. But I do take issue with looking to them for civilization wisdom.

The cartoon illustrations, by Pablo Stanley, are charming, cute, and feel-good. But they portray a lie—because that’s what the song is.

from Pablo Stanley's illustration of "Imagine"
screenshot from here

Here are the words that are illustrated:

Imagine there’s no heaven

It’s easy if you try

No hell below us,

Above us only sky.

Imagine all the people

Living for today

Imagine there’s no countries

It isn’t hard to do.

Nothing to kill or die for.

And no religion too.

Imagine all the people

Living life in peace.

Yoo hoo ooh ooh ooh

You may say I’m a dreamer

But I’m not the only one.

I hope some day you’ll join us.

And the world will be one.

What does life look like without heaven? Or without hell? Only the here and now?

It’s a philosophical and religious question. If we have no conception of right and wrong—or whether it matters whether you do right or wrong—what matters? Does it matter what you do? How you affect others? Whether you accomplish anything or treat others fairly? Can you even conceive of anything beyond satisfying your current desires?

There’s a picture of an angel realizing it isn’t an angel, or even a representative of good, since there’s no arbiter of “good,” and there’s a devil realizing it isn’t a devil, or even a representative of evil, since there’s no judgment to identify anything as bad, or even worse than anything else.

In the depiction, the devil offers up a burning heart, which cools in the hands of the erstwhile angel, who, at the point of “living for today,” kisses the devil. Without any identification of good and evil, there’s only love.

Is that what there would be? Why? Why would we even want love, if we can’t identify love as good, or better than any other feeling or attitude? It’s a pretty huge leap of logic to claim that, if we threw out all conceptions of good and bad, we would randomly all happen upon ultimate good.

Humans naturally seek for meaning. And we can’t help but identify what we see as good, better, best, or bad, worse, worst. We can’t function if we don’t value doing one thing more than doing another. If you missed Victor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, now would be a good time to take a break and read that. Also, go pick up Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life.

Jordan Peterson often talks about doing what gives life meaning. There’s a video from last February that came up for me on YouTube yesterday, “Jordan Peterson on Masculinity, Meaning, God And Fatherhood (with Gadi Taub),” in which he spoke those truths again. Here’s a bit from that:

Jordan Peterson (right) with Gadi Taub
screenshot from here

What I’m trying to suggest to people is that the pathway to meaning—meaning is the antidote to suffering, as far as I can tell. The question is, where is meaning to be found? And my sense is that it’s to be found in responsibility

The next section is about archetypes, and he talks about what the devil is:

Let’s think about the great figure of evil, the figure of Satan. Well, what is that? Well, it’s cultural; it’s a cultural construct. It’s something that has its autonomous existence in some sense, as a meme—to use Dawkins’ terms—that’s extended over thousands and thousands of years. It’s a personality that occupies a transpersonal space. And this is independent of your religious beliefs. It’s something you interact with, whether you’re a believer or not.

People naturally believe in the personification of evil, I think he’s saying, because people experience evil and there has to be a way to conceptualize that.

What the song is saying, then, is, “Imagine there’s no evil.” OK. But if you do, and then you’re hit with it—well, that’s what causes PTSD—facing a malevolence that you weren’t prepared for and have a hard time recovering from. Elsewhere Dr. Peterson has said (and I've mentioned before) that the best known therapy for PTSD is understanding good and evil—religiously speaking: 

If you have PTSD, it’s because you’ve been touched by malevolence in one way or another. You need to reorganize your thinking along lines that are fundamentally religious. You need to start seeing the world as a battleground between good and evil—which is what it is, in the most real sense.

Maybe the song means to imagine a world where there is no evil. OK. I can do that. That’s heaven. But the song also says not to allow yourself to imagine heaven.

In other words, the song is not helping you imagine a better world. It is making a not-so-hidden claim that religion is to blame for evil in the world. If people stopped having religious beliefs, they’d stop hating one another—even though it is religious beliefs that change humans from hating one another to having a reason to consider even your enemies as human so there is a chance of finding common ground on which to build peace between you.

from Pablo Stanley's illustration of "Imagine,"
screenshot from here

The next section of the song in the cartoon talks about countries. The claim is that because countries exist, people are willing to kill for them and die for them. If we only got rid of countries, we’d have no killing. Is that true?

What is the purpose of a country? It’s a group of people, larger than a tribe, larger than a local entity, that live together under a form of government. In our country, that’s a form of government our ancestors set up in a way that would give us control over the government, rather than the government ruling over us. Not all countries have governments set up that way. Still, governments have a purpose, which they may or may not do well.

There’s a purpose in government: to protect the lives, liberty, and property of its people.

If there were no government, each individual—or each family, possibly—would spend their time defending their own life, liberty, and property. They would either subsist so that no one would want their stuff or care about them, or they would have to protect themselves from someone trying to take from them or use them. Government at its basic level allows us to thrive at pursuing our happiness, rather than spend our energies defending ourselves from the thieves, murderers, and enslavers.

What’s the quickest way to peace? Surrender.

But if you’re surrendering your life, liberty, or property, is peace under those circumstances really the outcome you want?

Smiley faces don’t really replace reality. Here’s what we know, here at the Spherical Model will lead to freedom, prosperity, and civilization:

Freedom requires government limited to its proper role of protecting life, liberty, and property. Anything beyond that will cause harm—usually more of the very harm the overreach claims to be ameliorating. Government must be limited to protecting our God-given rights.

Prosperity comes from free markets—with the addition of philanthropy to deal with the problems of those truly unable to provide for themselves. Monopolies are not a free market. Cronyism is not a free market. Government subsidizing its chosen winners and punishing its chosen losers is not a free market. The freer the market, the more prosperous the entire population.

Civilization requires a religious people. As we say at the Spherical Model,

Not all religious societies are civilized (according to my definition), but every civilized society is a religious society. This absolutely does not mean state-sponsored religion or lack of religious freedom; in fact, the opposite is true. Freedom of religion is essential, and the flourishing of religion in general must be encouraged.

Civilization also requires supporting the family as the basic unit of society. Whatever threatens the family threatens civilization. Preserving and protecting the family is paramount in laws and social expectations.

So, about the song. Those of us who promote freedom, prosperity, and civilization—and act in ways that will lead us away from tyranny, poverty, and savagery—are better dreamers of peace than those who lie about blaming all religious believers and all freedom-seeking nations for the lack of peace in our world.

We want peace. And we have a way to get there.

But since we live in a world in which people actually believe different things, hating religion and freedom will not get us the tolerance we would like to see in our world. With all due respect to The Beatles for their music, they're not my source for civilization. And with respect to that artist, whose work I would like if he were portraying truth, I'm just not with you on this one.

In a world where we face actual good and evil, you need to think deeper than a smiley cartoon.

The Face of Evil

There’s a separation going on in our country, between good and evil. There’s less gray, more black and white, more clarity. I think this may be a trend that continues for some time.

It was a sad day for the state of New York this week. Nominally Catholic Governor Andrew Cuomo got his way; the state legislature voted to allow abortion on demand, pretty much unhindered up to natural birth.

NY Governor Andrew Cuomo
image from here

The bill was ironically called the Reproductive Health Act; it limits, or tries to eliminate, reproduction. It kills human life, rather than increasing the health of human life. And it endangers women by lowering health standards of service providers. Add to that, every late-term abortion endangers the woman more than natural birth or Cesarean would do.

The Governor spoke on the “victory”:

The Reproductive Health Act is a historic victory for New Yorkers and for our progressive values. In the face of a federal government intent on rolling back Roe v. Wade and women's reproductive rights, I promised that we would enact this critical legislation within the first 30 days of the new session—and we got it done.

Cuomo ordered landmarks including the spire at One World Trade Center, the Governor Mario M. Cuomo Bridge, the Kosciuszko Bridge, and the Alfred E. Smith Building in Albany to be lit up pink on Tuesday night as a celebration.

Can I add the irony here about the color pink being used, to honor feminism, which is only a thing if you believe in the two sexes (genders), which progressives say you’re not supposed to believe in. And they do it with a broad pink brushstroke, for all women, supposedly—as if it is a natural good for women to kill their babies.

Cuomo also said, “It's bittersweet. There is a bitterness because we shouldn't be here in the first place. We should not have a federal government that is trying to roll back women's rights,” and added, “This administration defies American evolution.”

This is how differently we think. There’s no sweetness; only bitterness. We shouldn’t be here in the first place; it ought to be self-evident that killing innocent offspring—particularly for the self-centered reason of avoiding inconvenient consequences following illicit sex, which is overwhelmingly the most common reason—is inhuman, ugly, savage, and evil.

He’s also wrong about rights. It is not, and never was, a right of women to kill their babies. It is not the right of humans to kill other humans except in self-defense, and as the lawful consequence of capital crimes. (Another irony: NY prohibits lethal injection of serial murderers, but celebrates it as a means of killing the unborn.)

The vast majority of Americans agree that women do not have the unfettered right to kill the unborn. The court that ruled in Roe v. Wade was incorrect. The decision was badly done. The court has been granted no constitutional power to make law. And the test cases of Roe and Doe, in the Roe v. Wade decision were based on lies; the evidence given was made up.

That decision has caused a third of a generation to die before birth.

And what does Cuomo mean by “American evolution”? He probably believes, and means, that there is “progress” of changing views toward agreement with his radical views. But that isn’t actually the case.

Results of a Marist poll came out last week, concerning American’s views on abortion, which they have been measuring for eleven years. The surprise is that “an overwhelming majority of Americans want to limit and restrict abortion and enact protection for children.” 75% overall hold this view. 96% of those who call themselves pro-life. And a surprising 61% of those who call themselves pro-choice. This desire for greater restrictions seems to coincide with improved ultrasound and other technologies that show the living child in the womb. Clearly this is a human life, with its own separate DNA, that has senses and can feel pain, and can be viable outside the womb at earlier stages than ever. To cling to the “it’s just a mass of cells” claim is anti-science.

Marist poll results page 3

Cuomo is also wrong about this being something this administration is inflicting coercively on the country. He is out of touch with the American people, because of the bubble he keeps himself in. If you’re looking at parties, 92% of Republicans, 60% of Democrats (way over half of his own party), and 78% of Independents believe abortion should be allowed AT MOST during the first trimester. 

Marist poll results page 2

Only a small percentage, about 15%, believe in Cuomo’s dastardly view of abortion on demand throughout pregnancy for any reason. In other words, he’s an extremist.

His claim of anything positive rings false when you look at the outcome. Back in 2001, we all thought of ourselves as New Yorkers, but I can’t abide this: 78% of abortions in that city are on performed on the 26% that are black. More black babies are killed through abortion than are born in NYC. If journalists called on him to defend those numbers while he’s rejoicing about raising them, we might all recognize the indefensible.

As for health, it’s ironic that nearly all the things Hermit Gosnell was prosecuted for—including the unclean circumstances and the lack of medical personnel in a clinic performing procedures—New York has now made legal. So far, the only thing they haven’t officially legalized is killing a baby after birth—except that the law did repeal protections for babies that survive abortion. In other words, they can be left to die even though born alive.

Republicans in the NY Senate pointed out that the changes moving abortion law from the penal code to the health code could mean that a woman who loses her preborn child as the result of an assault will have no means to prosecute her assailant for that loss.

Sadly, the day after the New York bill passed, Vermont announced it would push for a state constitutional amendment to recognize abortion as a “fundamental human right.” I don’t think they understand what that means. 

There’s worry that Roe v. Wade may be overturned with a more conservative court. I don’t know how likely that is. But that would not make abortion illegal; that would put the power to decide back in the hands of the states, where it was before the court made its untimely intervention. New York and Vermont would have no threat to their pro-baby-killing policy by the elimination of Roe v. Wade. The difference would come for states like Florida and Texas, where legislators are pushing for more restrictions on abortions, which would have been a state decision all along, except for Roe v. Wade. 

Florida recently legislated to disallow abortion after the fetal heartbeat is detected—which could happen between 6-8 weeks gestation. 

A similar fetal heartbeat law was rejected by a judge in Iowa Tuesday, claiming it was unconstitutional—evidence that it is states affirming life that have been deprived of their constitutional rights by the bad SCOTUS ruling.

The Republican Party of Texas has as a legislative priority this session, going further than ever before: 

Pass legislation to abolish abortion; including, but not limited to, enacting legislation that would ignore and refuse to enforce any and all federal statues, regulations, executive orders, and court rulings, which would deprive an unborn child of the right to life, as well as enacting life-saving legislation such as PreNDA or a “heartbeat bill.”

So it’s a two-pronged approach: total, and incremental progress. I haven’t identified a bill number yet, but I’m looking forward to seeing this debate play out. It’s about time a state asserted its Tenth Amendment rights, and the killing of babies might just be the issue to stand on.

Several states have limited abortion to 20 weeks, including Texas; twenty weeks is considered to be the time at which it is certain the baby in the womb can feel pain. Many states have also passed legislation against dismemberment abortion (Texas did this last legislative session), a procedure that crushes and breaks up the fetus, purportedly for ease of removal, but which is not only particularly horrendous to the fetus; the sharp broken bones endanger the woman.

As technology improves, fetuses on ultrasound can be seen trying to avoid a needle or instruments meant to kill them. Facial expressions can show fear. The more people who see the reality of the growing baby in the womb, the more they are likely to oppose abortion.

ultrasound image from here

In fact, the procedure of abortion, even when shown only with graphics, rather than actual imagery, is so violent that it persuades people to change their opinion about allowing it once they’ve seen the truth.

That means that a large majority of people are not basically evil. Only those who see the truth, know that this is an innocent human life, and yet promote killing that life anyway. As a sacrament to the worship of their evil.

We’re polarized because there must be no compromising with evil. We’re sifting ourselves, somewhat geographically, but philosophically everywhere, as we are faced with clearer choices between good and evil.

We learned this week, by looking at New York’s governor—and anyone celebrating with him—what the savage face of evil looks like.

Good Is Real

In the last post, “Evil Is Real,” I linked to a video about Operation Underground Railroad, the organization founded by Tim Ballard that rescues children from human trafficking. If you followed that link, you found that there are several additional connected documentaries. In the second one, "Finding Light in the Darkness," Ballard recounts the story of finding two young children in Haiti, a brother and sister, and his story of adopting them.

Tim Ballard, of Operation Underground Railroad
screen shot from "Finding Light in the Darkness"

I heard him tell this story in person a couple of years ago, in a setting where he was fully able to express his religious beliefs, and how that is key to the story. Much of that also comes through in this documentary.

He met the two children, and they were on his mind the following night, when he was coming down from the adrenaline rush, after the arrests of the perpetrators were made and the children were safe. Usually when he would feel these strong emotions, he would pray to have relief from them, so that he would be able to carry on with the work. If you get too emotionally attached to every child in every raid, you can’t move on and focus on the job that needs to be done. This time, however, the prayers didn’t bring relief. The feelings intensified. He ended up calling his wife in the middle of the night, and telling her what he was going through.

She said, “You want to adopt those children!” which was beyond any thought he had formed. They had six kids of their own already. Adopting children was a crazy idea. No, he just wanted relief, but he couldn’t get it. Would she come and help him? She said, no, she didn’t need to come. She also felt like they should adopt the children, and he just needed to start the paperwork.

It took four years to accomplish that task. Most of the first year was spent trying to locate them. Because he was a foreigner, not from Haiti, he was not allowed to know where they had been sent; he was just assured that they were safe.

There were many trips back to Haiti, preparing for and performing other missions. Each time he continued his search for these children, but he couldn’t find them. There was one person in the government who could override the rule preventing him from getting the information he needed, and he had tried unsuccessfully several times to meet with her. There was one last day. He asked his wife to gather the children to be on their knees praying for him at an exact hour, when he would enter the government building hoping to get the information he needed.

The part of the Ballard family that went to Haiti to pick up
the adopted brother and sister are about to introduce them
to the rest of the family.
screen shot from "Finding Light in Darkness"

He and a friend arrived slightly early. Tim waited before entering, because he wanted to be sure his timing coincided with the family’s prayer. Then he went through the gate and bumped into a woman on her way out. Because of the timing, he said, “Who are you?” It turned out she was one of the rare English speakers he could have bumped into. When he told her what he was trying to do, she asked the name of the children. He told her, and she started jumping up and down and saying, “Praise Jesus!” over and over. So he joined her in that. And then he asked what she was praising Jesus for.

She ran an orphanage; it was one of several that the children from the raid so many months before had been sent to. The brother and sister had been sent to her orphanage; she had them. It was well across town. She was only in this government building to handle some paperwork that day. And if he had come in a minute earlier or later, they would not have run into each other.

To Tim Ballard, this was a direct and obvious answer to prayer. That’s a much more reasonable explanation than that it was just an odd coincidence.

I’m telling this story, because I’ve been listening to the debate between Jordan Peterson and atheist Sam Harris, from this past June. Jordan Peterson’s view of religion comes at it from an evolutionary psychologist’s point of view. It’s interesting, but it’s cerebral in its approach to what is transcendent of the intellect and reason. Sam Harris’s view is that religion is actually harmful, and the better approach to finding the best way to live a life would be to use pure reason.

Jordan Peterson and Sam Harris debate, Bret Weinstein moderates
screen shot from here

Peterson is often reticent to give a direct answer to whether he believes in God, because he doesn’t like all the attachments to the answer that other people make. But he does say he lives his life as though there is a God, and that he has evidences that lead him to believe that is the right way. But as a scientist, more so in this discussion than in some others I’ve heard, he talks about religion as the metaphorical stories making up religion that lead us to lead better lives.

What Harris takes from that is that metaphors, or stories, are just fiction, even if sometimes they are useful; you can’t trust a fiction for guidance to truth, because you know it's fiction. Also, he believes the dogma that surround religions are harmful and evil.

Harris’s view negates the religious point of view because of an a priori premise that religion is about belief in something pretend, an invisible being who doesn’t exist.

But he fails utterly to grasp the experiential evidence such as Tim Ballard’s story. Ballard’s story is dramatic, and clearly shows God’s hand. And he has a number of other stories—many involving his wife and her uncanny ability to follow promptings that she knows are from God, and that lead to important good outcomes for the children and the family and others. My personal stories may be less dramatic or convincing for others, but they are no less real for me.

I’m also not satisfied with Peterson’s explanation. It starts with an assumption about evolutionary science that I don’t totally buy into. In fact, I start with my belief in God, which is a truth that I believe I have received enough evidence for. And while I do not know how God went about creating us as the fully formed intelligent, self-aware beings that we are, I use the evolutionary science more as a metaphor to describe that some things, and some creatures, are simple and others complex—rather than as a map of how one thing progressed from another, which we don’t actually know.

I do think there’s something to the idea that archetypal stories are metaphors we use to understand things that are true. But my religious experience leads me to believe that God often uses metaphor and symbolism in stories that are also factually true. It would have been a stronger response to Harris’s arguments to say that God is not only metaphorically factual, but actually factual, and Harris' personal lack of evidence does not negate the personal evidence of billions of other humans.

Harris uses the most heinous elements of some religions to claim that religions in general are bad: human sacrifice, genocide of infidels, execution of apostates. My hypothesis is that these are corruptions of religion. They do not honor a God who created us and loves and cares for us. Nor do they honor life, family, truth, or property. Such religions lack the necessities of civilization.

So what Harris is referring to isn’t religious truth; it’s a distortion, a corruption—which implies that there was something whole that they are distortions and corruptions from.

Moreover, he looks at reason as the source for truth and goodness. This fails to notice a couple of things. For one thing, reasoning, or logic, only works if you start with the right assumption. One example provided in the PragerU video "Where Do Good and Evil Come From?" (included below) is that criminals plan a heist using reason. Reason helps them carry out a successful theft without it causing them to realize the wrongness of the theft. So, in order for reason to lead to moral truth, it needs to start with a moral assumption.

From the PragerU video
"Where Do Good and Evil Come From?"
presented by Peter Kreet,
Professor of Philosophy at Boston College

Where can reason get that? It gets it from a milieu of morality. It’s logical to see that dealing honestly and truthfully with others is morally good, if you live in a society where that is normal. If you live in a society where master have their slaves serve them, and that is all you’ve known, it is logically reasonable to see that as the right way, and perfectly moral—which most of the societies on earth have done. That reasoning doesn’t make it morally true. But true religion—which tells us humans are created by God and have a divine nature—tells us that enslaving a human being is morally wrong.

In other words, Harris believes he gets to moral truth through reason, when he’s really benefiting from living in a civilization with a religious moral legacy.

Peter Kreet lists and refutes the various sources for
moral truth proposed by atheists,

There’s a hypothetical question Peterson and Harris consider: If you were to do an experiment in which you take a religious people to settle one isolated frontier, and reasoning atheists to settle another completely separate isolated frontier, which society would more likely become a thriving civilization? Harris believes it’s obvious the reasoning one will do better.

But it isn’t obvious. And history tells us that atheistic societies (which all the socialist/communist ones are) are much more likely to savagely massacre huge portions of the population. What he’s assuming is that he’ll take the reasoning of people who already benefit from the experience of living in civilized societies—which are based on moral principles—and carry on with everyone being moral simply because the good outcomes are rational.

Good doesn’t come from nothing. In fact, good itself is a moral judgment. If that judgment is based on current reasoning, it can change, depending on how individuals or groups think at a given time. There’s no moral absolute there, because there’s no source of absolute moral good, or moral truth.

You only get that if there is a transcendent source. As Professor Kreet says in the video:

Just as a design suggests a designer, moral commands suggest a moral commander. Moral Laws must come from a moral lawgiver.

Well, that sounds pretty much like what we know as God.

The consequence of this argument is that whenever you appeal to morality you are appealing to God whether you know it or not; you’re talking about something religious, even if you think you’re an atheist.

That’s similar to what I’ve heard Jordan Peterson say elsewhere, in a Q&A after a lecture:

Everything you act out is predicated on your implicit axioms. The system of implicit axioms that you hold as primary is your religious belief system. It doesn’t matter whether you’re an atheist or not. That’s just surface noise….

It doesn’t necessarily have to do with your voluntarily articulated statements about whether or not you believe in something like a transcendent deity. So, what you act out is much more what you are than what you say about yourself. And what the hell do you know about what you believe, anyways?

We know that evil is real, because we experience it. We also know that good exists, because we experience it. We know these things and act on them, even before we know how to identify and articulate our beliefs.

So good is real. And that means God is real—the source and definer of ultimate good. If that is so, then we are better off living our lives in search of God’s truth, gaining experience with Him, and from Him. You don’t get that by experimenting with living a life that excludes God; you get that by seeking Him, through study, faith, and practice at choosing good even when bad is easier and possibly appears more rational.

God has a better view. And civilizations thrive when enough people within them live God’s guiding principles, as articulated in the Ten Commandments: honor God, life, family, truth, and property.

Evil Is Real

I was planning a different post for today, about belief in God, and good and evil. But a couple of stories have come to my attention that seem to be asking me to write about them. So I will be talking about evil, but except for the good of combating evil, I’ll have to save talking about the good for another day.

The first thing is a news story from here in Houston. Governor Greg Abbott had posted the story, which I had missed elsewhere in the Houston Chronicle. The headline is “69 suspects arrested on sex trade charges by the Houston Police Department Vice Division.” The suspects, according to the news story, were arrested between the first of June and the end of July, charged with either compelling prostitution or soliciting prostitution. The photos are shown, in an effort to both raise awareness and shame the suspects, perhaps making another perpetrator think before getting involved in such an act.

Among the suspects were a community college professor and a former Baptist church director.

There’s a link to an additional story from last Friday, from even closer to home: “12 charged in north Harris County prostitution sting.” Eleven were arrested and one was still at large but expected to be arrested, following a two-day sting, timed for the beginning of the school year, near area schools and the Willowbrook mall.

Again, the photos are included to both raise awareness and warn off any potential future criminals. The officer giving the press conference said it’s an honor to serve the community in this way, getting these criminals off the streets.

Besides these local stories, I saw a video interview between Tony Robbins and Tim Ballard. Ballard is the founder of Operation Underground Railroad, which rescues children from human trafficking. He has a new book out, Slave Stealers, telling his story, and the story of the organization. I’ve written about him before. I’ve heard him speak in person. I know someone, a young man who was my daughter’s prom date about a decade ago, who has gone with Ballard on a rescue mission. Ballard’s work and his goodness are very real.

This video is about 36 minutes. But it’s worth it. It may be the most inspiring thing you see today.

If that wasn’t enough, there’s a documentary about O.U.R. worth seeing. At the end of the first part (Operation Toussaint, about an hour and a half long) Tim Ballard will let you know what you can do to help. 

It’s hard for me to grasp that this evil could exist among us. Raising awareness is a small step toward wiping out this evil. I thank God that good people have the ability and feel the calling to fight this savage evil.

How to Have a Good Life

There are certain facts of life that are true: Life is hard. Bad things happen, even to good people. And how we face what happens to us matters, if we’re going to have a good life.

But it is possible to have a good life. So the question is, how?

That’s a big question. It’s probably one of those simple but difficult things. But I thought we’d do a little exploring of that big question today.

Some years ago we had a discussion with a thinker, one of a few mentors we’ve known, who was talking about the younger work force these days. He said something surprising that stuck with me. Those game players, the somewhat geeky ones who play games—what they really want, our friend told us, was to be the hero. To do something meaningful. If they couldn’t find that in real life, at least they could live it in the pretend world of a game. And that made them rather impatient with work in the real world that didn’t seem heroic enough.

I was reminded of this, doing what has become a common evening pastime: listening to Jordan Peterson interviews. There are hundreds of hours’ worth, so I’m just scratching the surface, but I think I’ve watched/listened to enough to qualify as a student of his, informally. Anyway, he talks about mythology, and stories, quite often. In one interview, posted a couple of weeks ago, he and host Richard Fidler on ABC Radio (in Australia) were talking about stories and their purpose: 

Dr. Jordan Peterson
screen shot from the interview

Stories map out how to live. And the question then becomes, well, what’s the story that maps out the proper way to live. And that story would have to contain a description of the environment, right? Just like a map has to map out the territory. The story would have to contain a description of the environment. And then it would have to contain a description of your role in the environment.

And so, the mythological landscape is something like this: It’s good and evil at the level of the individual. That’s the hero and the adversary. Everyone has to contend with that. The darkness and goodness in yourself, and in other individuals. Everyone contends with that. So it’s a universal truth.

And then, how is that individual encompassed within society? And society is the wise king and the tyrant. And it’s always the wise king and the tyrant. It’s both. Now, some societies are almost all tyrant, and some societies tilt quite nicely towards wise king. But, even if you grow up in a relatively benevolent society like ours, you’re still crushed by the mob into a certain conformity. And there’s a lot of pain and wastage that goes along with that. Now there’s benefits.

And then the last element of the mythological landscape is the terror and creative potential of nature. Well, that’s the mythological landscape. And a meaningful story guides you through that.

And he adds a minute later,

Well, if you get in a car without a map, you don’t know where you are or where you’re going. What good is that? All there is then is confusion and pain. So, yeah, the story is life. The story is, well, it’s the story of Rule 1[i]: Stand up straight with your shoulders back. Stand up and confront the catastrophe of existence. Voluntarily. Move forward. Under your load. Discover new things. Share them with the people around you. Life is a call to adventure. And everything’s at stake. That’s the thing. It’s an all in game. So you might as well play it that way.

OK, so, stories are going to help. We want to have meaning in our life: logos. Victor Frankl faced the horrors of the concentration camp by finding meaning. Logotherapy, he called it. He wrote in Man's Search for Meaning, that if you have meaning, a higher purpose for your life, then you’re more likely to survive, and be able to move on afterward.

There’s something about recognizing the dialectic of good and evil, realizing your potential to go either way, and then make the conscious choice to choose the good. That’s even necessary, Dr. Peterson says, when you face malevolence (evil). This is his approach to PTSD:

If you’re a naïve person, and you encounter [malevolence] in someone else, or in yourself, it will produce post-traumatic stress disorder. Because post-traumatic stress disorder occurs when people are touched by evil. That’s not how it’s normally described clinically, because academics—I would say people in general—don’t really like to grapple with that sort of reality. But if you talk to military personnel who have post-traumatic stress disorder, and you start talking to them about a dialectic between good and evil, they’re instantly on board for that. They need a dialectic of good and evil to recover from post-traumatic stress disorder.

Bad stuff does happen. Some people experience worse things than others. But there are things we can choose to do to improve the chances of living a good life.

In another Jordan Peterson interview, this one published this past Saturday, with Roaming Millennial, Peterson says the key is simply the truth: 

Dr. Jordan Peterson
screen shot from the interview

You have to speak the truth, and listen to the people that are criticizing you so that you can improve the manner in which you’re formulating your arguments.

That’s the way to live. And, look, here’s why: As the religious sages have insisted throughout the ages, life is suffering. There’s no way around it. Because human beings are limited and vulnerable, and the universe is a very large place. You’re destined to suffer.

And so, then, you might say, well, what defenses do you have against that? And one is the armor of ideology, and rightness. But the other is the shield of truth. You know, just like in Sleeping Beauty, when the prince goes off to have combat with the dragon. And truth elevates your life. And enriches it.

He suggests an exercise to find out whether you’re speaking the truth:

This is, I think, one of the most useful psychological exercises that anyone could ever do. So, start with the assumption that many of the things you say and think aren’t yours, and that you don’t believe them. They’re just things that you’ve picked up for one reason or another as you’ve walked through life, and you’ve brandished them like markers of your status. But they’re not really you. Because, what’s really you is hard to figure out. So you have to start from that assumption.

Then start listening to what you say. And feeling what you say as well. And here’s the rule; it’s a very simple thing to try: Pay attention to whether the thing you say makes you feel stronger or weaker. If it makes you feel stronger, then you can keep saying it, but if it makes you feel weaker, then you should stop saying it. Stop saying it right away. And see if you can reformulate your words so that when you restate them, that feeling of integrity and strength reappears. And you can feel it, really, down the middle of your body

And, because, what happens if you’re saying something that is untrue is that you dissociate to some degree. A part of you agrees with it, and a part of you doesn’t. It’s like you’re splitting your psyche.

That’s interesting. I’m thinking about that, and trying to reconcile whether someone insisting, forcefully, and certainly, that what they say is right when I know it’s wrong—are they feeling the strength, or the split? I’m going to have to observe that for a while, and maybe only ever know for myself. But I do know, for me, I understand what the wholeness of truth feels like, and that’s why I seek it.

He’s certainly right that it takes paying attention. And he goes on to offer ways for people to figure out what they want, what a “heavenly” life would look like, as opposed to a “hellish” life they could certainly create; as he puts it, “how horrible your life could be if you let all your bad habits and foolishnesses and deceits get out of hand.” The program is at a website called SelfAuthoring.com. That program is having good effect on people in universities, lowering dropout rates by as much as 40% in a semester. Pretty effective.

I haven’t used his program, but I’ve been doing similar exercises in a couple of books: Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life, by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans, and Find Your Why, by Simon Sinek, with David Mead and Peter Docker.

The point is, it’s possible to choose the best possible life, in a world where things go wrong and bad stuff happens—if you don’t give up, if you don’t give in to nihilism or cynicism—if you figure out what a good life means for you, as a person you really care about (because you have to care about yourself, and some people haven’t had much practice doing that).

Dr. Peterson is talking about living a life that builds your character:

That’s the problem with being a materialist. You know, you think that you collect all these things around you, and that that’s going to protect you from the suffering that’s intrinsic to life. That isn’t what protects you. It’s your character that protects you. If you have your character intact, you can sleep at night with a good conscience, and you can take on the burdens of the day the next morning. And you can live without recrimination or regret. There’s nothing better than that.

It's almost as if he’s saying, the way to have a good life is to choose good and fight evil, in yourself and all around you. Become the good guy, by choice. Become the hero, by consistent practice and effort.

Yes, it did turn out to be one of those simple but difficult things. But worth it.

It probably doesn’t hurt to add that religion has been leading us to develop character all along. As the Ten Commandments tell us, love God—the source and definition of good. And honor life, family, property ownership, and honesty. And a further step is to love others as you love yourself—which requires starting with loving care for yourself.

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[i] Referring to his book 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, here.