Absolutes and Intolerance

I am always amused and often feel a bit abused when people who know me tell me I am being intolerant. Of course, I am being intolerant. That does not make me Intolerant. God requires us to be intolerant of some things and he requires us to be tolerant of others. With people, I am tolerant, with behavior I am not tolerant.

I got an email from a member of a Christian group I attend. It is below:

WALK NAKED IN AMERICA DAY

Don't forget to mark your calendars. As you may already know, it is a sin for a Muslim male to see any woman other than his wife naked. He must commit suicide if he does. So next Saturday at 4 PM Eastern Time, all American women are asked to walk out of their house completely naked to help weed out any neighborhood terrorists. Circling your block for one hour is recommended for this anti-terrorist effort. All patriotic men are to position themselves in lawn chairs in front of their house to prove they are not Muslims and to demonstrate they think its okay to see nude women other than their wife and to show support for all American women. Since Islam also does not approve of alcohol, a cold 6-pack at your side is further proof of your anti-Muslim sentiment. The American government appreciates your efforts to root out terrorists and applauds your participation in this anti-terrorist activity.

God bless America!

It is your patriotic duty to pass this on. If you don't send this to at least 5 people, you're a terrorist-sympathizing, lily-livered coward and are in the position of posing as a national threat.

A good joke? No. The number of things that are wrong with this are many. First of all today these emails are frequent and are propaganda. They have decreased dramatically since the change of administrations, but clearly they are still there. All this technique requires is for otherwise well meaning people to pass them on as a joke, and they do. But it is not a joke. False impressions are established and perpetuated by these emails. Impressions that are later used to sway public opinion toward support of policies that would otherwise find little support.

First, Muslims are not the enemy of the United States. At best, all we can say is that some people who are Muslim are enemies of the United States. A classic form of Propaganda - formal and informal - is the glittering generality. It is basically generalizing a trait of one member of a group to the whole group. Osama Bin Laden is nominally a Muslin, Osama is our enemy, so all Muslims are our enemy. This is also a false analogy - another Propaganda technique.

Next, the sender of the email to me is a Christian and knows I am a Christian. Jesus taught that we Love our enemy. So sending an email saying we want to make our enemies commit suicide is contrary to Christ's teachings. If we say such thing without disclaiming them then we endorse them.

Last, this was intended to be a Patriotic message for the 4th of July. It thus violates not only tenets of Faith, it violates principles we hold dear in our political Faith as well. Muslims are natural citizens of the United States and also patriotically celebrate our Independence and freedom as well. In fact, they should be all the more appreciative of their Country because on of the basic tenets of the United States is Freedom of Worship if all religions no matter how many or few follow a religion. Too suggest behavior in our country that would offend our fellow citizens and force then to kill themselves of unacceptable.

So yes, I am intolerant of such emails, I will not pass them on and will respond to the person sending it my feelings about the email. It is then up to the person who sent the email to me to act accordingly to their views.

Intolerance is not an absolute. Intolerance is not universally Good or Bad. It requires discernment. The German people tolerated Hitler and soon found themselves in an intolerable situation. When we tolerate the intolerable we always end up in an intolerable situation. The difficulty is know what is tolerable and what is not. But that is another post for another day.

Freedom and Moral Absolutes

picture above ©David Sacks
This post is written in response to a comment left anonymously to my last post. I rarely get comments and welcome the exchange of ideas. It is important that there actually be an exchange. In a short post it is near to impossible to cover all facets of an issue.

This is not so much a rebuttal as an expansion. The post "Post-Birth Abortions" was in response to a killing of a Doctor who provided abortions, legally. My post was cased in language that the Killer used to justify the killing. Anonymous gathered due my post that I am also a moral absolutist. I am not and the whole post is against Moral Absolutism. The world is not Black and White, it far more complex than that and requires a more complex reasoning.

Part 1

"To say that falsifying your income tax is as immoral as murder is incredibly wrong."

First that is not what I said. You use immoral, I used "sin". Sin is a very specific word. The Killer mentioned above was a Christian and was acting in what they wrongly perceived as Christian justice.

The Killer's thinking is wrong in so many ways that one could write a small book about it, but I addressed the Christian concept that there is no "greatest sin". I stand on solid ground there. Morality is more fluid and generally a secular concept. Even in the discussion of sin there is no suggestion that the consequences of an act of sin are equal.



In our secular world there are levels of acceptability in killing. That is a moral discussion. We say when you put on a uniform and go to war that killing is "moral". I fully support that as a secular morality. For me personally, my faith informs me that all killing is "sin". There is an important distinction there that is critical to having an Free Society. That distinction is between my faith, which is between me and God as absolute Law, or societies Law which is between me and Society.

It is fitting that today is the day we celebrate our independence from England and our dependence upon other people of the United States. We did not fully formalize that dependence until 1789. It is that formalizing of our dependence in the Constitution of the United States that established the rule of Man's Law.

Unique to that document was the recognition that there was a higher Law than Man's and all people in the United States had the right to exercise their belief and allegiance to that Higher Law. Implicit in that Right was that the Constitution was the Highest Worldly Law and that an individual's Right to believe and adhere to a Higher Law was limited when it came to interfering with another person's Rights.

So when Anonymous talks about morality and the fact that in Civil Society Murder and Tax evasion are not equal, I have nothing but agreement with that. The Killer however was not following Civil Law, he was following his perception of the Higher Law. I think it is a misconceived perception and that was what I was addressing in my post.

The Killer was not using Civil Logic so there was no need for me in this post to address those concepts.

Part 2

Your Christian view of Morality is seriously flawed. I would be afraid to be around you because of some other crazy Moral absolute you would come to based on a narrow reading of an ancient middle eastern religious book.

This just seems to be an attack on Christians, and I have nothing to say. You are free to think that all Christians think alike, which they do not. You are free to think that I adhere to some crazy Moral absolute, which I do not. You are free to think that I read the Bible, which actually is not some Middle Eastern Religious Book as it was compiled in Europe by the Catholic Church and based in part on Middle Eastern texts, in a narrow way.

You are also free to be wrong. Nothing in this paragraph is borne out by anything I wrote in the post it addressed. I was discussing someone who does seem have a very narrow reading of the Bible. My reading and the Killers reading are two very different things.


Part 3

Also I find it funny that you decry people for reaching back to the old Testament and yet your post talks about Abraham, Sarah, Adam, Eve... Pot meet Kettle.

I did not decry people for reaching back to the Old Testament. The statement was "These "men of god" reach back into the Old Testament so often to justify things that are not justifiable in the New Testament ". I decry the use of teh Old Testament by Christians to justify things that are not justifiable in the New Testament. Again very different things. The Pot and I are good friends, and I have not to my memory ever called him Black.

My quotes from the Old Testament are not for justification of any Theological point, but as an example, in the language of the people whose actions I am addressing, of how they repeating behavior similar to that "documented" in their Sacred Texts. Adam and Eve in the Story in Genesis did know that they had sinned, just as these justifiers of the Killer seem to know that they are justifying sin. These men do, in my opinion, hold their opinion higher than God just as Abraham and Sarah held their desire for a son above God's Promise to them. These are examples from stories in the Old Testaments that are there to describe man's interaction with an unseen God.

I do believe in Jesus's teachings, I do believe that Jesus was speaking as God's representative on earth. I believe that God is a God of Love and is in fact Love. That narrowly makes me a Christian. It does not make me a Moral Absolutist and I do think that you can find anything in my writing in the last post or anywhere else that justifies that classification.

Post-Birth Abortions

When a life is ended it is aborted. For the record I am an anti-abortion, pro-life, pro-choice person. That is very possible and is the only rational position to hold. I believe simply that Life is given by God and God alone can take it. Period.

Those who seek Governemnt to act against killing one class of human life while asking it to take another class of human life are irrational and hypocritical. That twisted logic gives way to actions like killing Doctors who perform abortions, such as George Tiller. It is God's provence and only God's provence to pass judgment upon those who sin.



Those who put themselves above God face a very uncomfortable Judgement. It does not just mean the person who pulled the trigger, but also those who spoke hatred against a fellow man when God, through Jesus Christ, calls for Love. John tells us that God is Love. If God is Love, then who is hate?

The Evangelicals that have focused with a narrowness of vision on the aborted fetuses while turning a blind eye on all the other ways that man chooses to abort life after conception.

God gives us Himself, in the form of Jesus and in the form of Love. All we have to do is accept that Love and allow it to live in us. We do not need PACs and Foundations and all the other devices of earthly political action to work God's will. We just need to keep Him as our focus.

The self-righteous like Rev. Rick Scarborough who I single out because I know and have talked to the man. On this issue we talked, and I asked him if he was not acting outside of God's will and he replied that sometimes it is OK to Push God's will. He placed himself above God and was blinded by his own self-righteousness. He knew better than God.

Abraham and Sarah new better and begat Ishmael and the Middle East Conflict that still rages today. When man takes the position that he knows better than God bad things happen.

"Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. But the LORD God called to the man, 'Where are you?'

"He answered, 'I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.'

"And he said, 'Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?'

"The man said, 'The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.'"

So the fall of man is reenacted. Men who claim the Mantle of God like Richard Land, Tony Perkins, Troy Newman, and Randall Terry among many others are hiding among the trees in the Garden, but their concern seems to be more for political cover than fear of God.

These men and others like them know, as did Adam and Eve that judgement was soon to be upon them. I do not, nor any man or press organization, have the power or right to Judge these men, but their actions broadcast their knowledge of their sin, even of they do not.




Land said. “If we’re pro-life, we’re first and foremost about saving babies, not punishing abortion providers.” That is wrong. If he is Pro-life he must first and foremost be about creating a Faith that embraces all phases of life so that man might have Life more abundantly in God's Love.

Abortion is horrible, but so is political War, sanctioned killing by the state, destruction of the spirit by Christians casting away people because of lifestyle rather than bringing them in and showering them with God's Love.

There is no greatest sin. Falsifying ones Income Tax is just as Bad in God's Judgement as Murder. The thing about killing is that it does not just violates God's Law, but it also stops a life for which God had other plans.

These "men of god" reach back into the Old Testament so often to justify things that are not justifiable in the New Testament that they now need to do as the fallen under the Old Covenant, put on sack cloth and sit in ashes in public view to show their humility before man and God. This can not be in some self-serving ritual, but on the sidewalk in true sackcloth only and covered in ashes.

The Beast is alive and well in all who place themselves above God. Pray that this Beast is never fully unleashed upon the United States. It roams now within the walls of man's Churches finding fertile places to grow in the hearts of those who think that God needs a little push sometimes.

Life, meet Logic; Logic, Life.

Huffington Post featured an article, "The 31-Year-Old in Charge of Dismantling G.M.", about Brian Deese who is 31 and in charge of, among other things, the Bankruptcy of GM.

The facts seem to warrant great hope because Mr. Deese is young, NOT an Economist nor a Business Grad. In this time of great financial disruption, the last people we need to get us out of the problem is Economist and People in the Financial industry. If you make a mistake, repeating the mistake rarely fixes anything.

There are several facts, I repeat Facts, that we need to get clear in our minds. Economics is not a Science.

1. When we drift in to the labyrinth of Financial instruments and try to mathematically find the Holy Grail of zero risk, we are no better than the alchemists who tried to turn lead into gold.



2. Money has no value on its own, it is only a representation of an undetermined value that fluctuates with no more rationality that the average human possesses.

3. There is a fixed amount of value at any given time and all money created in addition to that value either does not exist or devalues all money. Model may be fine a guessing what that actual value is, but like in Horse Racing a model can make fair predictions but it always the unknown that can wipe a gambler out.

4. Investment and Financial Manipulation are two very different things. When one puts money into a company directly that is an investment. That is capitalism. When one buys a financial instrument that is linked to the performance of a stock, that is not investment that is gambling. Such gambling clearly has some purpose in the market but never should be rewarded when the risk rubber band pops. Risk is risk and those who take it deserve the losses if they deserve the rewards.

5. Adam Smith talks about the Invisible Hand of the market, but as most hands that hand has a back to it. That is the normal swing in life, if you want the forehand lift you must deal with the backhand drag. The idea of no more recessions is an idea of fools and charlatans.

Good Luck Mr. Deese, maybe you might want to encourage Universities to change their text books in Economic. A lot is taught there that is just out wrong. Economics is more about Philosophy than about Science.

McDonalds, but Not Just McDonalds

I am officially off McDonald's. The have asked me if I want cheese with the only Breakfast Sandwich on their Menu that does not come with cheese for the last time. The "Cheese" they use is Kraft American Cheese and the FDA will not let Kraft call it Cheese. It has to be labeled Cheese Product because there is not enough real cheese. Yes, rather than "Would you like Fries with that" it is now "Would you like cheese with that?"



So Kraft can not sell their concoction that has some cheese in it as Cheese, but McDonald's can?

So some company can make a food product out the least amount of the actual food, add God knows what, and then run the end product by the FDA. The FDA shakes it finger at the company and allows them to sell it as "Food Product" but not as "Food".

Fine good the company just finds a food chain to sell it and they can sell it to unsuspecting customers are "Food" as long as they do it verbally. The American Consumer is so apathetic that it just goes along and never wonders why they get Heart Disease, Cancer, and all kinds of other illnesses.

You know you are what you eat. We have become swelled fat unhealthy People Products because we do not eat Food we eat Food Products.

Because we are People Products instead of People we have higher health issues and thus Higher health costs.


And then to top it off the way The Corporation Cabal which includes McDonalds uses completely inhumane methods to prepare all of the Meat Products that require real Meat. I as a rule do not like all of PETA's fanatical take on animals, but a lot of the time they are right.

This is one.


McCruelty: I'm Hatin' It--Learn More.

Go Home, cook for yourself. Get to know your family again. If you are single invite someone over to eat. Buy local when possible and when you eat meat try to know how they produce it. Take back your life and slowly take back control of it.