A Dark Shadow From Our Ancestral Past: Infanticide

Chef de Bedouins Pasteurs" (Head of Shepherd Bedouins),
by Félix Bonfil (c. 1880s)

They make for God daughters;- celebrated be His praise!- and for themselves they like them not. When any one of them has tidings of a female child, his face is overclouded and black, and he has to keep back his wrath. He skulks away from the people, for the evil tidings he has heard;- is he to keep it with its disgrace, or to bury it in the dust?- Aye! Evil is it that they judge!
-- Koran Sura 16:59-61 (The Bee), condemning the pre-Islamic Bedouin practice of burying infant daughters in the sand.

The fiend in his own shape is less hideous than when he rages in the breast of man…

``There,'' resumed the sable form, ``are all whom ye have reverenced from youth. Ye deemed them holier than yourselves, and shrank from your own sin, contrasting it with their lives of righteousness and prayerful aspirations heavenward. Yet here are they all in my worshipping assembly. This night it shall be granted you to know their secret deeds: how hoary-bearded elders of the church have whispered wanton words to the young maids of their households; how many a woman, eager for widows' weeds, has given her husband a drink at bedtime and let him sleep his last sleep in her bosom; how beardless youths have made haste to inherit their fathers' wealth; and how fair damsels -- blush not, sweet ones -- have dug little graves in the garden, and bidden me, the sole guest to an infant's funeral. By the sympathy of your human hearts for sin ye shall scent out all the places -- whether in church, bedchamber, street, field, or forest -- where crime has been committed, and shall exult to behold the whole earth one stain of guilt, one mighty blood spot.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne (in Young Goodman Brown)

One of the things that has always puzzled me about the abortion debate is how people of good will on both sides can see the basic fundamentals of the issue so differently. How is it that some compassionate and well-meaning people can put the reproductive rights of the mother over the right to life of the fetus developing within her body, while other equally compassionate and well-meaning people consider the very term "fetus" to be a euphemistic and rhetorical dodge for what is the destruction of a baby?

Also, having witnessed several births first-hand and up-close, I've also found it to be a curious thing how post-partum depression can set in, and that not all parents bond with their newborns right away. It seems counter-intuitive. If you looked at it strictly from an evolutionary perspective, you'd think that parents who were able to bond with their offspring immediately and without delay would more likely ensure their survival, and therefore, the survival of their own genes.

I'm wondering if it all has something to do with the psychology bequeathed to us by our ancestral past.


2008 - The Envira, one of the last few uncontacted tribes left in the Amazon Rain Forest, aim their weapons at a helicopter flying overhead.

In our comfortable post-modern existence, it's not too difficult for us to lionize and become sentimental about our hunter-gatherer forebears. This is often most visible in our popular attitudes towards Native Americans, Australian Aborigenes, and the !Kung Bushmen of the Kalahari in Africa (as portrayed in The Gods Must be Crazy). I'm not villifying them, there has certainly been too much of that in the past, but following Rousseau we have a tendency to glorify the "Noble Savage," and to ascribe superior qualities to him, such as a greater sense of holistic and integrated spirituality, a greater respect for creation and stewardship of the earth and its natural resources, and a non-possesive, communal sharing of resources that made violence and war unnecessary. Some ethnographers and anthropologists point out that our hunting-gathering and foraging ancestors were highly successful for hundreds of thousands of years living the way they did, and that their remains indicate that they were taller and better-fed than their farming competitors who first came upon the scene some 10,000 years ago. Certain field studies done on contemporary hunting-gathering groups have led some to claim that historically, they spent less time working per day than farming and industrial peoples did.

It may very well be that none of these things are true. Sometimes, the good old days just weren't, as much as we, living our hectic and complicated lives, would like to make them so.

Harvard archaeologist Steven A. LeBlanc is the Director of Collections at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology (a very cool museum, although not as cool as it used to be... a lot of neat exhibits and dioramas have been dismantled and replaced in recent years by collections of baskets and pottery... when I was a kid, the prospect of seeing weapons and shrunken heads from the South Sea Islands was much more appealing than looking at painted bowls). He is also the author of Constant Battles: The Myth of the Peaceful, Noble Savage.



According to LeBlanc, war, far from being an isolated sort of game-like incidental "raiding", has been a constant throughout human history. In addition, humans have never been consciously conservationist - we have always had a tendency to hunt other species to extinction, and to degrade and go beyond the carrying capacity of our environments. Far from being consistently well-fed, hunter-gatherers were often hungry and one small disaster away from starvation. One dirty little secret that is not often heard in respect to hunting-gathering, foraging, and nomadic groups, is the means by which they kept their populations from outstripping what their environments could provide - infanticide.

The fact of the matter is, infanticide was widely practiced among the aforementioned groups. It was not unusual for them to kill an infant if the paternity was unsure, if the baby was deformed or diseased, if it was a twin, or for sex selection (female babies were more often killed than males). Hunter-gatherers, foragers and nomads were constantly on the move, looking for sources of food. Mothers could carry only one infant on their backs at a time, and suckling children were often not weaned until the age of three or four. This is not to say that these people were any more or less evil than we are today. These were often very painful decisions being made by people on the edge of survival. And, as is so often the case throughout history, these decisions were often made by dominant males instead of mothers... Now, in case farming, industrial, and post-industrial people like ourselves feel superior, we should take into the account the existence of the foundling hospitals that existed up until the 19th century. LeBlanc writes:

Infanticide is a factor in forager demography that must be considered. Infanticide was common among all foragers for whom there is relevant information, including most forager groups in Australia, where scholars estimate that the number of children was reduced by 30 percent. Infanticide was common among all Eskimo groups and was significant among South American foragers like the Ache, 14 percent of the boys, 23 percent of the girls...

The fact that infanticide was such a common practice in the past can come as a shock to many people today. Anthropologists have found that the practice occurred in a variety of forms, some direct, and some indirect… Male and female babies are born in almost equal numbers. When there are far more young boys than girls in a society, we can assume that some kind of infanticide was being practiced, even if it was only selected neglect. Since in the past abortion was much more dangerous for the mother than was childbirth, infanticide was a less risky approach – and one that selectively allowed a baby of a particular sex (usually a boy) to survive.

In some societies – Eskimos (Inuit), for example, the couple would make a very public decision and simply place the baby outside. If another couple wanted the baby, they took it in. If not, the infant died. In the 1700s and 1800s, Europeans developed institutions to give this practice the appearance of propriety. Foundling hospitals were established, after the leadership became upset at the sight of so many abandoned babies along streets and roads. These hospitals had special doors designed to allow an adult to leave a baby anonymously. Allegedly orphanages, these institutions spelled death for the majority of infants that crossed their thresholds. Most scholars believe that about 90% of all babies soon died. Hundreds of thousands of infants were admitted to foundling hospitals; one estimate had seventy-five thousand babies per year in France alone…

Infanticide was practiced in the ancient states of Rome and Greece and in more recent times in Europe, as well as China, Japan, and India, with estimates of 10 to 25 percent of all births being affected from various countries… This level of infanticide is a continuation of that found among foragers and tribal farmers, where even very small-scale societies, such as the Australian Aborigines or Eskimos, had equivalent rates to those found in many (chiefdom) states. Some states officially outlawed the practice of infanticide, but it continued under disguised forms. In England, prior to the previously mentioned foundling hospitals in the mid-1700s, many abandoned infants were raised in workhouses. In the thirty years after 1728, of five hundred thousand abandoned infants in England, less than 40 percent survived to age two. These numbers do not include the thousands killed by being given drugs, like the opiate laudanum, being “overlain,” or being abandoned outdoors… When European missionaries reached Melanesia and Polynesia in the 1700s and early 1800s, they attempted to stop the common practice of infanticide, while the very same thing was taking place at home.

What I'm not trying to say here is that prochoice people are genetically more receptive to infanticide than others. I'm just saying that due to our evolutionary history, our feelings toward children carry more ambivalence and complication than we might otherwise be inclined to believe at face-value.

Just the same, this legacy of infanticide does manage to make its way into our contemporary culture wars.

When certain moral philosphers such as Peter Singer and Steven Pinker look to apply this kind of information to the field of ethics, and who seem to accept that certain evolutionary features indicate not just how things were, but how they should be, then we move into the area where evolutionary psychology ceases to be merely interesting and becomes rather frightening.

For example, Steven Pinker writes in his article Why They Kill Their Newborns:

Killing a baby is an immoral act, and we often express our outrage at the immoral by calling it a sickness. But normal human motives are not always moral, and neonaticide does not have to be a product of malfunctioning neural circuitry or a dysfunctional upbringing. We can try to understand what would lead a mother to kill her newborn, remembering that to understand is not necessarily to forgive...

It seems obvious that we need a clear boundary to confer personhood on a human being and grant it a right to life. Otherwise, we approach a slippery slope that ends in the disposal of inconvenient people or in grotesque deliberations on the value of individual lives. But the endless abortion debate shows how hard it is to locate the boundary... The only thing both sides agree on is that the line must be drawn at some point before birth...

Neonaticide forces us to examine even that boundary. To a biologist, birth is as arbitrary a milestone as any other. Many mammals bear offspring that see and walk as soon as they hit the ground. But the incomplete 9-month-old human fetus must be evicted from the womb before its outsize head gets too big to fit through its mother's pelvis. The usual primate assembly process spills into the first years in the world. And that complicates our definition of personhood.

What makes a living being a person with a right not to be killed? Animal-rights extremists would seem to have the easiest argument to make: that all sentient beings have a right to life. But champions of that argument must conclude that delousing a child is akin to mass murder; the rest of us must look for an argument that draws a smaller circle. Perhaps only the members of our own species, Homo sapiens, have a right to life? But that is simply chauvinism; a person of one race could just as easily say that people of another race have no right to life.

No, the right to life must come, the moral philosophers say, from morally significant traits that we humans happen to possess. One such trait is having a unique sequence of experiences that defines us as individuals and connects us to other people. Other traits include an ability to reflect upon ourselves as a continuous locus of consciousness, to form and savor plans for the future, to dread death and to express the choice not to die. And there's the rub: our immature neonates don't possess these traits any more than mice do.

Several moral philosophers have concluded that neonates are not persons, and thus neonaticide should not be classified as murder. Michael Tooley has gone so far as to say that neonaticide ought to be permitted during an interval after birth. Most philosophers (to say nothing of nonphilosophers) recoil from that last step, but the very fact that there can be a debate about the personhood of neonates, but no debate about the personhood of older children, makes it clearer why we feel more sympathy for an Amy Grossberg than for a Susan Smith.

So how do you provide grounds for outlawing neonaticide? The facts don't make it easy. Some philosophers suggest that people intuitively see neonates as so similar to older babies that you couldn't allow neonaticide without coarsening the way people treat children and other people in general. Again, the facts say otherwise. Studies in both modern and hunter-gatherer societies have found that neonaticidal women don't kill anyone but their newborns, and when they give birth later under better conditions, they can be devoted, loving mothers.

Of course, Pinker's article evoked a strong reaction in First Things. James Nuechterlein writes in Infanticide for Beginners:

Pinker's whole analysis would lead to the conclusion that neonaticide is not the “immoral act” he called it at the outset but rather, at worst, the “unavoidable tragedy” that the hunter-gatherer women endure. But at the brink, Pinker blinks. Just as the reader steels himself for a proposal for “infanticide reform,” Pinker retreats to a dying fall. “We will probably never resolve” the dilemmas surrounding neonaticide, he lamely concludes...

Just why Pinker pulls back from the brink one cannot tell. Perhaps because he recognizes that his argument has led him further than he originally intended. He wants to maintain a clear distinction between neonaticide and filicide. But consider the “morally significant traits” he invokes as necessary to a claim of a right to life: “a unique sequence of experiences that defines us as individuals and connects us to other people . . . an ability to reflect upon ourselves as a continuous locus of consciousness, to form and savor plans for the future, to dread death, and to express the choice not to die.” Those are traits unavailable not just to mice and newborn babies, but to all people up to several years of age. From such a brink only a moral idiot would not pull back.

But no doubt future moral explorers will venture where Pinker, for now, fears to tread. That's the sort of thing that happens when you start “thinking the unthinkable.” Which is a good reason for people possessed of moral common sense politely to refuse invitations to such thought experiments.

Abortion on demand, neonaticide, filicide. Next thing you know—to echo Everett Dirksen in a different context—you're talking real people.

At Play in the Fields of the Lord

Which brings me finally to a contemporary example. Last year, controversy erupted between a group called the Hakani Project, sponsored by a Christian missionary organization called Youth With A Mission, and Survival International, a group that advocates for the protection of tribal peoples and their right to live unencumbered according to their own customs and traditions.

The Hakani Poject claims that a certain Amazonian tribe (the Suruwaha) practices infanticide, and that a young girl named "Hakani" was saved from this fate. They are pushing for Brazilian authorities to intervene and remove the children and/or the parents when children's lives are at stake. In the video shown below (warning - nudity and disturbing content), the Hakani Project shows such an incident in a docu-drama.



Survival International (who put the captions on the Hakani video shown above) claims that what the Hakani Project presents as a "re-enactment" is in fact a "fake," claims that infanticide among the tribes of the Amazon is rare, that presentations such as this stoke hatred and bigotry against the tribes, and that Youth with a Mission is using this issue as a ploy to subvert native cultures and to advance their missionary goals.

There's a question that is not often considered, at least in this country... How should the rights of indigenous tribes to maintain there own cultures be balanced against the lives of children, if in case they do conflict?

Good Shepherds

Words from wise bishops... We still have some...



Here are the closing paragraph's from Cardinal Seán's O'Malley's blog post about his attendance at Ted Kennedy's funeral, and the controversy around it, of which he said "There are those who objected, in some cases vociferously, to the Church’s providing a Catholic funeral for the Senator. In the strongest terms I disagree with that position."

At times, even in the Church, zeal can lead people to issue harsh judgments and impute the worst motives to one another. These attitudes and practices do irreparable damage to the communion of the Church. If any cause is motivated by judgment, anger or vindictiveness, it will be doomed to marginalization and failure. Jesus’ words to us were that we must love one another as He loves us. Jesus loves us while we are still in sin. He loves each of us first, and He loves us to the end. Our ability to change people’s hearts and help them to grasp the dignity of each and every life, from the first moment of conception to the last moment of natural death, is directly related to our ability to increase love and unity in the Church, for our proclamation of the Truth is hindered when we are divided and fighting with each other.

President Obama and three former presidents attended Senator Kennedy’s funeral. I had the opportunity to speak briefly with President Obama, to welcome him to the Basilica and to share with him that the bishops of the Catholic Church are anxious to support a plan for universal health care, but we will not support a plan that will include a provision for abortion or could open the way to abortions in the future. The President was gracious in the short time we spoke, he listened intently to what I was saying.

Democrats and Republicans sat side by side in the Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, praying for Senator Kennedy and his family. It is my sincere hope that all people who long to promote the cause of life will pray and work together to change hearts, to bring about an increased respect for life, and to change laws so as to make America a safe place for all, including the unborn.

And in the latest issue of America, the "Obama at Notre Dame" controversy was revisited, with columns submitted by Bishop John M. D’Arcy of Fort Wayne-South Bend (The Church and the University), and Archbishop Emeritus John R. Quinn of San Francisco (The Public Duty Of Bishops). Both articles made very good points, but I appreciated these from Archbishop Quinn in particular:

The great tragedy of American politics from a Catholic perspective is that party structures in the United States bisect the social teachings of the church, thus making it impossible for most citizens to identify and vote for a candidate who adequately embraces the spectrum of Catholic teaching on the common good. For instance, Republican candidates are, in general, more supportive of the church’s position on abortion and euthanasia, while Democratic candidates are generally stronger advocates for the Catholic vision on issues of poverty and world peace.

For most of our history, the American bishops have assiduously sought to avoid being identified with either political party and have made a conscious effort to be seen as transcending party considerations in the formulation of their teachings. The condemnation of President Obama and the wider policy shift that represents signal to many thoughtful persons that the bishops have now come down firmly on the Republican side in American politics. The bishops are believed to communicate that for all the promise the Obama administration has on issues of health care, immigration reform, global poverty and war and peace, the leadership of the church in the United States has strategically tilted in favor of an ongoing alliance with the Republican Party. A sign of this stance is seen to be the adoption of a policy of confrontation rather than a policy of engagement with the Obama administration.

Such a message is alienating to many in the Catholic community, especially those among the poor and the marginalized who feel that they do not have supportive representation within the Republican Party. The perception of partisanship on the part of the church is disturbing to many Catholics given the charge of Gaudium et Spes that the church must transcend every political structure and cannot sacrifice that transcendence, and the perception of transcendence, no matter how important the cause...

(There is a ) message that the bishops are ratifying the “culture war mentality,” which corrodes debate both in American politics and in the internal life of the church. Both poles of the American political spectrum see our society as enmeshed in a culture war over the issues of abortion, marriage, immigration rights and the death penalty. In such a war, they argue, the demonization of alternative viewpoints and of opposing leaders is not merely acceptable, but required. More intense tactics and language are automatically seen as more effective, as necessary and more in keeping with the importance of the issues being debated. The “culture war mentality” has also seeped into the life of the church, distorting the debate on vital issues and leading to campaigns against bishops for their efforts to proclaim the Gospel with charity rather than with antagonism.

The movement toward sanctions against public officials will be seen as ratifying this trajectory in our political, cultural and ecclesial life. Whatever our intention may be, the acceptance and employment of a strategy that deliberately moves beyond teaching and pointing up the moral dimensions of public issues to labeling those with whom we disagree, will inevitably embolden those who de-Christianize our public debate both within and outside the church.

...Perhaps the most difficult task we face, as teachers on the moral dimensions of public policy in the United States today, is emphasizing the pre-eminence of abortion as a moral issue while defending a holistic view of the rights intrinsic to the defense of the dignity of the human person. This task of balancing arises not only in the formulation of our policy statements, but also in the steps we as bishops take to achieve justice in the political order. The pathway of sanctions and personal condemnation will open every bishop to the charge that if we do not use the tactic of sanctions and condemnations on issues such as war and peace or global poverty, we are tacitly relegating those issues to a level of unimportance. And it would indeed be difficult to explain how it is appropriate for a Catholic university to honor those who authorize torture or initiate an unjust war or cut assistance to the world’s poor. To assert on the one hand that the tactics of sanction and personal condemnation are legitimate tools for episcopal action in the public order, while on the other hand refusing to employ those tactics for any issue other than abortion will only deepen the suspicions of those in American society who believe that we bishops of the church in the United States are myopic in our approach to Catholic social teaching...

As we confront the admittedly difficult task of balancing the need to uphold the sanctity of human life while avoiding the enormously destructive consequences of the strategy of sanction and condemnation, we bishops could profitably look to the example of the Holy See, which wrestles with these same complex issues of integrity of witness, fidelity to truth, civility in discourse, and political, national and racial sensitivities every day.

The approach of the Holy See might justly be characterized as a policy of cordiality. It proceeds from the conviction that the integrity of Catholic teaching can never be sacrificed. It reflects a deep desire to enshrine comity at the center of public discourse and relations with public officials. It is willing to speak the truth directly to earthly power.

Yet the Holy See shows great reluctance to publicly personalize disagreements with public officials on elements of church teaching. And the approach of the Holy See consistently favors engagement over confrontation. As Pope John Paul II put it, “The goal of the Church is to make of the adversary a brother.”

These principles of cordiality will not make our task as bishops in the public square an easy one. But they do provide the best anchor for insuring that our actions and statements remain faithful to the comprehensive and transcendent mission of the church, our ultimate mandate. Much of this is summed up in the council’s decree on bishops, Christus Dominus (No. 13):

The Church has to be on speaking terms with the human society in which it lives. It is therefore the duty of bishops especially to make an approach to people, seeking and promoting dialog with them. If truth is constantly to be accompanied by charity and understanding by love, in such salutary discussions they should present their positions in clear language, unagressively and diplomatically. Likewise they should show prudence combined with confidence, for this is what brings about union of minds by encouraging friendship.

"It was the 3rd of September..."

Papa Was a Rollin' Stone



One of my favorite songs growing up was Papa Was a Rollin' Stone, which was a big Motown hit for The Temptations in 1972. The soulful vocals combined with a funky bass, wah-wah guitar, echoing horns and soaring strings constituted the epitome of what used to be called socially conscious "ghetto music" at the time.

Dope that I am, I just noticed when I looked up the lyrics for this post that the tail-end of mama's forlorn refrain was "... and when he died, all he left us was alone." I always thought it was "... and when he died, all he left us was a loan." I was figuring that papa had left them with some debt to pay off, if nothing else.

It was the third of September.
That day I'll always remember, yes I will.
'Cause that was the day that my daddy died.
I never got a chance to see him.
Never heard nothing but bad things about him.
Mama, I'm depending on you to tell me the truth.

And Mama just hung her head and said,
"Son, Papa was a rolling stone.
Wherever he laid his hat was his home.
(And when he died) All he left us was alone."
"Papa was a rolling stone, my son.
Wherever he laid his hat was his home.
(And when he died) All he left us was alone."

Well, well

Hey Mama, is it true what they say,
that Papa never worked a day in his life?
And Mama, some bad talk going around town
saying that Papa had three outside children and another wife.
And that ain't right.
Hey, talk about Papa doing some store front preaching.
Talked about saving souls and all the time leeching.
Dealing in debt and stealing in the name of the Lord.

Mama just hung her head and said,
"Papa was a rolling stone, my son.
Wherever he laid his hat was his home.
(And when he died) All he left us was alone."
"Hey, Papa was a rolling stone.
Wherever he laid his hat was his home.
(And when he died) All he left us was alone."

Ugh

Hey Mama, I heard Papa called himself a jack of all trades.
Tell me is that what sent Papa to an early grave?
Folks say Papa would beg, borrow, steal to pay his bills.
Hey Mama, folks say that Papa was never much on thinking.
Spent most of his life chasing women and drinking.
Mama, I'm depending on you to tell me the truth.

And Mama looked up with a tear in her eye and said,
"Son, Papa was a rolling stone. (Well, well, well, well)
Wherever he laid his hat was his home.
(And when he died) All he left us was alone, lone, lone, lone, alone."
"Papa was a rolling stone.
Wherever he laid his hat was his home.
(And when he died) All he left us was alone."

"I said, Papa was a rolling stone. Wherever he laid his hat was his home.
(And when he died) All he left us was alone."

The song was written and produced by Motown's award-winning duo of Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong. Among their other smash-hits were cuts such as Just My Imagination, Ball of Confusion, and I Heard It Through the Grapevine.

An interesting anecdote from wiki:

Friction arose during the recording of "Papa Was a Rollin' Stone" for a number of reasons. The Temptations didn't like the fact that Whitfield's instrumentation had been getting more emphasis than their vocals on their songs at the time, and that they had to press Whitfield to get him to produce ballads for the group. In addition, Dennis Edwards was angered by the song's first verse: "It was the 3rd of September/That day I'll always remember/'cause that was the day/that my daddy died". Edwards' father had died on that date, and although the song wasn't originally written for the Temptations, Edwards was convinced that Whitfield assigning him the line was intentional. Although Whitfield denied the accusation, he used it to his advantage: he made Edwards record the disputed line over and over again until Whitfield finally got the angered, bitter grumble he desired out of the usually fiery-toned Edwards (it was, however, one of the reasons Whitfield was eventually fired as the group's producer).

I just heard recently that one of Motown's best arrangers, David Van De Pitte (Keep On Truckin', What's Going On), passed away in August at the age of 67. Listen to Motown Arranger's Work Lives On.

And Norman Whitfield passed away in September of 2008, also at the age of 67. Listen to Hit-making Songwriter Dead at 67.

You can hear more about Motown's songwriters, arrangers, and producers on Motown: Not the Same Old Songs.

Finally, hear about Motown's rivals Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff at the Philadelphia International label (Love Train, Me and Mrs. Jones, For the Love of Money, Backstabbers, If You Don't Know Me By Now) on Riding Philly's "Love Train" with Gamble and Huff.

"Pseudepigraphic Paul, why do you persecute me so?"

Image of Paul & Thecla at the Grotto of St. Paul at Ephesus (c. 6th Century). Thecla's eyes and upraised hand have been vandalized

The Southern Baptist Convention has been in the news quite a bit recently. Traditionally Arminian, there has been a struggle going on the last few years over a growing movement in the SBC towards 5-Point Calvinism, driven largely by younger, more conservative members within the ranks. And early this month former President Jimmy Carter announced that he was leaving the SBC because its church leaders, discounting his advice, had prohibited women from being ordained and insisted that women be "subservient to their husbands."

Myself, I've always been rather resistant to change for the sake of change itself. In a lot of ways, I'm still one of those old-fashioned Boston Irish types with a suspicion of novelty. After all, I still live in the same house I grew up in. How do I feel about women's ordination? Within the Catholic Church, I think it will happen someday, but not anytime soon. I'm old enough and traditional-minded enough to know that I'd be somewhat unsettled by the appearance of women priests (sorry ladies!), but I also know that my own comfort level is not what's important and what's at stake here. I understand the pain and the outrage many women feel about this, especially those who feel called to ministry. For them, it is a matter of basic justice and fairness and would be a sign of the approaching end of oppressive patriarchy and male supremacy. I can see that, but I also see the crisis in Catholic ministry and the priesthood to be much deeper. I'd rather see the issue of mandatory celibacy for diocesan clergy dealt with first. I understand the issue around basic fairness, but beyond that I think our problems are deeper and I don't necessarily see women's ordination as a solution to those problems. We are still trying to absorb the fractious changes wrought by the Second Vatican Council nearly 50 years after the fact. The Catholic Church moves very, very slowly on things. It's just the nature of what it is... It looks at the way things develop outside of its own walls for a long time before jumping in to embrace them. For a lot of people, that glacial pace will always be too slow.

I've had women as bosses in the workplace for decades. It's not a matter of female ability or authority that I find threatening or questionable by any means. People are people. Just as some men make great priests and some make lousy priests, some women would make great priests and some women would make lousy priests too. I think our vocation crisis has deeper problems than the ordination of women alone would address, and the ordination of women would present new challenges on top of those. There's no reason to think that Catholic women would flock to the priesthood either. In fact, the mass disappearance of the sisters has probably more to do with the collapse of Catholic culture in this country and elsewhere than the disappearance of priests.

There can be elements of disengenuousness in the debate too. I've run into people who are highly critical of the Catholic Church for not ordaining women as priests who don't believe that there should be any "priests" to begin with. They consider the whole concept of a priesthood to be unbiblical. On occasion, I've also posed a question to cultural Catholics who are upset about this, asking "If the Catholic Church ordained women as priests, would you start going to Mass every week?" The answer is usually no, so I don't think women's ordination in and of itself is going to be a panacea for the crisis we're in.

In his parting shot, in an article titled The Words of God Do Not Justify Cruelty to Women, Carter made a laudable and well-intentioned plea for women's equality, pointing out how many religious traditions and cultures had not only shut women out from ministry, but had oppressed them with slavery, lack of education, violence, genital mutilation, forced prostitution, arranged marriages, gender inequality in the workplace, unequal pay, and so forth.


Jimmy Carter, still the Know-it-All-in-Chief

As always, Carter is well-intentioned but also manages to mess things up a bit and get things slightly wrong in his hubris. Carter is another one of these guys who can't be told anything, and always has to be the smartest guy in the room. Some excerpts:

I have been a practicing Christian all my life and a deacon and Bible teacher for many years. My faith is a source of strength and comfort to me, as religious beliefs are to hundreds of millions of people around the world.

So my decision to sever my ties with the Southern Baptist Convention, after six decades, was painful and difficult. It was, however, an unavoidable decision when the convention's leaders, quoting a few carefully selected Bible verses and claiming that Eve was created second to Adam and was responsible for original sin, ordained that women must be "subservient" to their husbands and prohibited from serving as deacons, pastors or chaplains in the military service. This was in conflict with my belief - confirmed in the holy scriptures - that we are all equal in the eyes of God.
This view that women are somehow inferior to men is not restricted to one religion or belief. It is widespread. Women are prevented from playing a full and equal role in many faiths.

Nor, tragically, does its influence stop at the walls of the church, mosque, synagogue or temple. This discrimination, unjustifiably attributed to a Higher Authority, has provided a reason or excuse for the deprivation of women's equal rights across the world for centuries. The male interpretations of religious texts and the way they interact with, and reinforce, traditional practices justify some of the most pervasive, persistent, flagrant and damaging examples of human rights abuses...

I understand, however, why many political leaders can be reluctant about stepping into this minefield. Religion, and tradition, are powerful and sensitive area to challenge.

But my fellow Elders and I, who come from many faiths and backgrounds, no longer need to worry about winning votes or avoiding controversy - and we are deeply committed to challenging injustice wherever we see it.

The Elders have decided to draw particular attention to the responsibility of religious and traditional leaders in ensuring equality and human rights. We have recently published a statement that declares: "The justification of discrimination against women and girls on grounds of religion or tradition, as if it were prescribed by a Higher Authority, is unacceptable."

We are calling on all leaders to challenge and change the harmful teachings and practices, no matter how ingrained, which justify discrimination against women. We ask, in particular, that leaders of all religions have the courage to acknowledge and emphasise the positive messages of dignity and equality that all the world's major faiths share.

Although not having training in religion or theology, I understand that the carefully selected verses found in the holy scriptures to justify the superiority of men owe more to time and place - and the determination of male leaders to hold onto their influence - than eternal truths. Similar Biblical excerpts could be found to support the approval of slavery and the timid acquiescence to oppressive rulers.
At the same time, I am also familiar with vivid descriptions in the same scriptures in which women are revered as pre-eminent leaders. During the years of the early Christian church women served as deacons, priests, bishops, apostles, teachers and prophets. It wasn't until the fourth century that dominant Christian leaders, all men, twisted and distorted holy scriptures to perpetuate their ascendant positions within the religious hierarchy....

The truth is that male religious leaders have had - and still have - an option to interpret holy teachings either to exalt or subjugate women. They have, for their own selfish ends, overwhelmingly chosen the latter.

I need to stop right there. First of all, I find it pertubing that Jimmy Carter, speaking on behalf of not just himself but this self-appointed group of elders (which includes him and other aging luminaries from yesteryear such as Nelson Mandela, Kofi Annan, Mary Robinson, and Desmond Tutu), would nakedly admit that he can speak his mind freely now because he "no longer needs to worry about winning votes or avoiding controversy." So much for the non-political outsider and man of the people, the humble peanut farmer from Georgia...

I can now see why he said this. Here's a man who has trouble with the leadership of his own SBC over their interpretation of the bible, feels compelled to leave it, and what does he do? He falls back on a bit of hoary old apologetics which the current leadership of the SBC would readily agree with - "It wasn't until the fourth century that dominant Christian leaders, all men, twisted and distorted holy scriptures to perpetuate their ascendant positions within the religious hierarchy."

It's that tired old argument that "the church was corrupted when Constantine converted and it became the religion of the Roman Empire..." In other words, in his attack on the Patristics era, he blames the Catholic Church for having "twisted and distorted the holy scriptures."

Jimmy Carter was the first person I ever voted for for president. I wish I'd known back then how he felt. Now I know how his supporters in the Jewish community felt when he wrote a book a few years ago accusing Israel of practicing "apartheid." I can now see why he worried about winning votes and avoiding controversy.

One thing I've noticed recently, to my sadness and disappointment, particularly with this train wreck going on within the Anglican Communion, is that liberal Protestants are as fully capable of being "anti-Romanist" and "anti-papist" as the most rock-ribbed conservative evangelicals. These liberals are also just as trapped within a certain view of biblical inerrancy and the need for total and complete biblical concordance as those conservatives are.

I once discussed this somewhat in the post How Elastic are the Scriptures. Just as liberals try to redefine the story of Sodom in Genesis 19 as being about a "lack of hospitality" rather than homosexuality, in a manner that is entirely strained and unconvincing (no matter how well-intentioned), Carter attempts to do the same with the treatment of women in the bible. I'm sorry, but the bible is what it is - a book written over a lengthy swath of time thousands of years ago. You can only stretch it so far without the thing completely losing integrity.

As far as a prohibition on women speaking up in church is concerned, my dear Mr President, if you don't like what you see, the fault lies not with "fourth century leaders twisting and distorting the holy scriptures," but within the "holy scriptures" themselves.

Carter claims that his belief in gender equality was confirmed in the scriptures - that we are all equal in the eyes of God. Yes, that's certainly true enough. He also said that the SBC leadership used carefully selected verses found in the holy scriptures to justify the superiority of men, verses that owe more to time and place - and the determination of male leaders to hold onto their influence. That may be true as well, but he also admits that he's not trained in religion and theology, and that's where he may be running into trouble. The fact of the matter is, some of the New Testament teaches gender egalitarianism and some of it does not. It isn't a matter of Church Fathers coming along later and twisting the scriptures, or of SBC leaders cherry-picking verses out of context or to the exclusion of others. The New Testament itself is mixed on these matters.

Recently, I read the books Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don't Know About Them) by Bart Ehrman and The First Paul: Reclaiming the Radical Visionary Behind the Church's Conservative Icon by Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan. Two of those authors come from an evangelical background and one is a former Catholic. None of them can exactly be described as conservative icons, so there's no reason why they'd be hostile to the good intentions of Jimmy Carter.

Ehrman has serious differences with Borg and Crossan, but one thing they all agree upon is that there is a massive consensus among biblical scholars, at least among those who do textual criticism, that of the 13 Pauline Letters in the New Testament, only seven of them were definitely written by the apostle Paul, and that the Pastoral Epistles I Timothy, II Timothy, and Titus were not.

From wiki:

These are the 7 letters (with consensus dates [2] considered genuine by most scholars:(the undisputed epistles):

Romans (ca. 55-58 AD)
Philippians (ca. 52-54 AD)
Galatians (ca. 55 AD)
Philemon (ca. 52-54 AD)
First Corinthians (ca. 53-54 AD)
Second Corinthians (ca. 55-56 AD)
First Thessalonians (ca. 51 AD)

The letters thought to be pseudepigraphic by the majority of modern scholars include:

Pastoral epistles
First Timothy
Second Timothy
Titus
Ephesians

The letters on which modern scholars are about evenly divided are:

Colossians
Second Thessalonians

An anonymous letter that nearly all modern scholars agree was probably not written by Paul is:

Hebrews

And here:

According to Raymond E. Brown (An Introduction to the New Testament, 1997), the majority of scholars who accept a post-Pauline date of composition for the Pastorals favour the period 80-100. Scholars supporting a date in this mid range can draw on the description in 2 Timothy 1:5 of Timothy's Christian mother and Grandmother who passed on their faith, as alluding to the original audience being third generation Christians.


While Ehrman, Borg, Crossan, and the late Fr. Brown all agree on the list of books that are authentically the writings of the apostle and which ones were most likely written under his name by other people, there is a very serious disagreement between Ehrman and the others. Most biblical scholars, including the latter group, maintain that writing letters pseudepigraphically (or pseudonymously) under someone else's name was a common and accepted practice in the ancient world, often done out of respect by a disciple or follower of a respected teacher. Ehrman takes a much dimmer view, claiming that pseudonymously written letters are more properly called forgeries, and that forgeries were decried and resented just as much in the ancient world as they are in today's world.

In any case, whether they are forgeries that were meant to subvert and recast the original writings of St. Paul, or if they were letters written in his name by respectful followers of a beloved mentor, most biblical scholars agree that the letters to Timothy and Titus were not written by St. Paul himself, and these are where some of the most troublesome passages are when it comes to the treatment of women.

I think that Borg and Crossan make a pretty good case in their book that the real St. Paul was just as radically egalitarian and gender blind (as reflected in his uncontested original letters) as Jimmy Carter says he was. In fact, on a range of issues, from slavery, to obedience to earthly governmental authorities, and to the status of women in the church, there can be seen a "Radical Paul", a "Conservative Paul", and a "Reactionary Paul."

One key thing to remember. A lot of things that St. Paul wrote about in his original letters can be considered an interim ethic. I think it's pretty clear in reading his letters that he thought that the general resurrection had already begun, that the parousia, the Second Coming of Christ, was imminent, and that the Kingdom of God was going to be established at literally any moment. When this didn't occur within Paul's lifetime (with his death occurring around 60 AD), later Christians had to do some reinterpreation of what all this meant. A good argument could be made (and is made by Borg and Crossan) that the authors of Timothy and Titus were more focused on structure and good church order than on the imminent End of Ages. My own guess would be that in the gender-conservative world of Paul's gentile converts there was growing consternation over chaotic situations in the early churches with their rampant egalitarianism, people speaking in tongues and prophecies, and with women claiming the gifts of the Holy Spirit celebrating the eucharist and leading congregations. It may very well be that that they wanted to reign all this in and put a more familiar structure around it. Now, this isn't a matter of fourth century Church Fathers doing this. This is happening around 80-100 AD, by the very authors themselves of what would later become acknowledged as scripture .

Cases in point...

The radically egalitarian Paul of Galatians (celebrating equal status by virtue of baptism):

For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.
There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free person, there is not male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's descendant, heirs according to the promise.
--Galatians 3:27-29

The radically egalitarian Paul of Romans (celebrating female and male co-workers in ministry):

I commend to you Phoebe our sister, who is (also) a minister of the church at Cenchreae, that you may receive her in the Lord in a manner worthy of the holy ones, and help her in whatever she may need from you, for she has been a benefactor to many and to me as well.
Greet Prisca and Aquila, my co-workers in Christ Jesus, who risked their necks for my life, to whom not only I am grateful but also all the churches of the Gentiles;
greet also the church at their house.
Greet my beloved Epaenetus, who was the firstfruits in Asia for Christ.
Greet Mary, who has worked hard for you.
Greet Andronicus and Junia, my relatives and my fellow prisoners; they are prominent among the apostles and they were in Christ before me.
Greet Ampliatus, my beloved in the Lord.
Greet Urbanus, our co-worker in Christ, and my beloved Stachys.
Greet Apelles, who is approved in Christ. Greet those who belong to the family of Aristobulus.
Greet my relative Herodion. Greet those in the Lord who belong to the family of Narcissus.
Greet those workers in the Lord, Tryphaena and Tryphosa. Greet the beloved Persis, who has worked hard in the Lord.
Greet Rufus, chosen in the Lord, and his mother and mine.
Greet Asyncritus, Phlegon, Hermes, Patrobas, Hermas, and the brothers who are with them.
Greet Philologus, Julia, Nereus and his sister, and Olympas, and all the holy ones who are with them.
Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the churches of Christ greet you.
--Romans 1:1-16

The reactionary "Paul" of Timothy (telling women to be quiet in church and subservient to men):

It is my wish, then, that in every place the men should pray, lifting up holy hands, without anger or argument.
Similarly, (too,) women should adorn themselves with proper conduct, with modesty and self-control, not with braided hairstyles and gold ornaments, or pearls, or expensive clothes, but rather, as befits women who profess reverence for God, with good deeds.
A woman must receive instruction silently and under complete control.
I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man. She must be quiet.
For Adam was formed first, then Eve.
Further, Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and transgressed.
But she will be saved through motherhood, provided women persevere in faith and love and holiness, with self-control.
- 1 Timothy 2:8-15

What about, then, verses that seem to denigrate the status of women in the uncontested Pauline corpus, like this one from 1 Corinthians?

As in all the churches of the holy ones, women should keep silent in the churches, for they are not allowed to speak, but should be subordinate, as even the law says. But if they want to learn anything, they should ask their husbands at home. For it is improper for a woman to speak in the church.
Did the word of God go forth from you? Or has it come to you alone?
- 1 Corinthians 14:33b-36

People can take it any way they like, I'm no biblical scholar myself, but Borg and Crossan claim that this is a redaction, or an insertion made to Corinthians at a later date. They argue with some persuasive force that the evidence of an insertion lies in the fact that the preceding and following text flows better without it.

Maybe yes, maybe no, but if I look at the difference between the quotes in Galataion & Romans vs. Timothy, I find it very hard to believe that they were written by the same person.

Nevertheless, I do not deny that they are both considered authentic scripture, and this is the issue Jimmy Carter has to deal with and is failing to deal with.

The pagan Greco-Roman world was full of priestesses, a generally easygoing attitude of tolerance towards religious diversity, homosexuality, and medicines of sterility. For one reason or another the early churches were in opposition to all of these, regarding each in some way as a form of idolatry.

Now, if some people today consider that Hellenistic worldview to be superior to a biblical (and therefore Judaic) worldview, they should just admit it and stop trying to appeal to the bible. After all, in a lot of ways, we are more of a Hellenistic culture today in both our body worship on the one hand, and a sexual puritanism on the other hand (which owes more to Stoicism than to Judaism). If people think the Greco-Roman ethics were superior, they should just come out and say so.

If we don't want to do that, if instead we have good and laudable reasons for changing our attitudes towards these things, we need to do so with reason and with appeals to tradition and the development of the Church as a living organism, as a Pilgrim People working its way through the wilderness towards God. I don't think we can do it through appeals to scripture alone, because quite frankly, it just isn't there.

A God Dumbfounded by Humanity's Hope

Charles Péguy (1873 - 1914)

The French poet and essayist Charles Péguy, of whom I'd like to write about further when time permits, wrote something I found interesting, daring to speak as the voice of God in Le Porche du Mystère de la Deuxième Vertu (The Portal of the Mystery of Hope) in 1912.

The faith that I love best, says God, is hope.

Faith doesn’t surprise me.
It’s not surprising.
I am so resplendent in my creation. . . .
That in order really not to see me these poor people would have to be blind.

Charity, says God, that doesn’t surprise me.
It’s not surprising.
These poor creatures are so miserable that unless they had a heart of stone, how could they not have love for one another?
How could they not love their brothers?
How could they not take the bread from their own mouth, their daily bread, in order to give it to the unhappy children who pass by?
And my son had such love for them. . . .

But hope, says God, that is something that surprises me.

Even me.

That is surprising.

That these poor children see how things are going and believe that tomorrow things will go better.

That they see how things are going today and believe that they will go better tomorrow morning.

That is surprising and it’s by far the greatest marvel of our grace.

And I’m surprised by it myself.

And my grace must indeed be an incredible force.

My Daughter's Essay

Hey T, I'm glad you finally trimmed your bangs after that photo was taken. Now I can see all of your lovely face again.

Our second-oldest daughter will be going into the 9th grade in September. Last semester her Social Studies teacher asked everyone in his class to prepare both a written essay and an oral presentation on an issue that they felt particularly strong about.

To my surprise, T decided to present a pro-life argument on abortion. Anne and I are both pro-life without apology, and everyone else in the family is too, to varying degrees of intensity, but even though our views are clear and well-known, Anne and I aren't constantly hammering away at the issue the way we know it occurs in many anti-abortion households.

As far as I can tell, T shaped her own opinions about this topic (like she does with a lot of other things) almost entirely on her own. In fact, I can recall her being full of passionate intensity about this as far back as to when she was old enough to realize what abortion is. She's involved in her Catholicism, wears it and bears it proudly, but from what I could see, embracing the pro-life position seemed self-evident to her as soon as she was old enough to pick up on the message she took out of Dr. Seuss's Horton Hears a Who when she was just a little girl. "We are here! We are here! A person is a person, no matter how small..." By the way, when Horton Hears a Who was released as a movie (starring Jim Carrey) in 2008, there was controversy around the pro-life movement's use of Horton... as a parable for their cause and "a person is a person no matter how small" as a rallying cry, with Dr. Seuss's widow claiming that he meant so such thing. Since Ted Geisel (Dr. Seuss) himself is dead and seems to have said nothing specific about it (other than a claim by his biographer that he threatened to sue a pro-life group for putting his words and images on t-shirts), I don't know what anyone can say for sure about the meaning of a book that was written in 1954, quite some time before the abortion issue was such a divisive topic in America, but people on both sides are bound to take out of it what they want to regardless...

When a boy in her class decided to write his presentation advocating the pro-choice position, and heard that T would be arguing the other side, he said to her "OK, it's on!! This is basically just going to come down to a religious argument, isn't it?" That got under her skin a bit, because while she's glad that her religion teaches the same thing she believes, she says she'd feel the same way about it whether she was religious or not. She found the comment to be dismissive, condescending, and presumptuous, so she was determined to make her case without resorting to religious arguments and language.

As she was getting prepared the night before her presentation she called me over to the computer. She asked me if I thought it would be a good idea to include in her presentation some photos from a Google image search on "aborted babies." As I looked at the gruesome images, I was taken aback, not only due to the graphic nature of the images themselves, but because it surprised me that she would even think of performing a search on that. Anne and I both told her that we didn't think it was a good idea, and would more likely backfire on her than persuade anyone. This was also around the time of the murder of Dr. Tiller too, so this just wasn't a place to go, we advised.

She'd probably be mortified if she new I was posting this, but here it is.

“All men are created equal.” These are the words of our founding fathers in the United States Constitution, our law, and our duty to uphold. How would you react if you were told that every year over 45 million breathing, thinking, living people are killed legally? Where is this loophole in our system? How is this possible?

Forty-five million children per year are surgically aborted. That’s not including chemical abortions and medicines used even more regularly than expensive operations. Many people are still on the edge of being pro-life because they aren’t well informed. Here are some facts that will clear up common myths about abortion:

- Only one percent of abortions per year are from cases of rape or incest, meaning all other abortions are of unwanted children.

- Abortion is extremely dangerous to a woman’s health; it dramatically increases her chance of breast cancer by a minimum of 50%, risk of cervical cancer up to five times more likely, and after an abortion many women have serious issues with the liver, ovaries, and pelvis to name just a few possible casualties.

- Common myth that having baby will be too traumatizing; an abortion doesn’t make the situation less traumatizing. Women who have had an abortion have many more and longer lasting emotional issues.

- There is statistically a 154% higher risk of death from suicide from abortion patients.

Abortion centers do not show women the ultrasounds of their babies before they are aborted. Why? Because what the ultrasound shows is a human being. Babies in the qualified age group for an abortion have fingers, toes, eyes, legs, arms, tongue, a beating heart- all the major body parts are there, and the details are beginning to form. Babies can be seen with the hiccups, laughing, kicking- and thinking. Brain waves can be monitored only 40 days after conception. A baby is usually aborted somewhere around 3 months, and sometimes even later, meaning that baby has already developed a mind for thought. Science has proven that a baby’s entire genetic code is in the very first cell.

An abortion is an operation. If these babies have all these body parts, and they take the baby out of the mother’s body, then what do they do with all those little limbs? Well, they must be disposed somehow, right? Some abortion centers decide to chop up the little limbs and take them somewhere to be “disposed of properly.” One abortion clinic owner said, “We put them down the garbage disposal. Some second and third trimester babies' muscle structure is so strong that the baby will not come apart, so they must be disposed of through trash receptacles.” Others decide to burn them, or use them for medical testing. (Just searching aborted baby on Google images will bring up incredibly disturbing yet real pictures. After seeing these, it’s impossible to deny a fetus is a human being.)

Many people are pro-choice because they think abortion is just in rape situations. Its important to acknowledge that the amount of abortions for rape and incest added together equals less than one percent. But, of course, there still are girls who have been raped unfairly, and are not ready for the responsibility of being a mother. I read the book "Why Pro-Life?" By Randy Alcorn. There was an interview with a girl who had had two abortions but also had one baby by rape that she put up for adoption. She, along with many other women, said that the abortions were much harder on her than having the baby. Years later, she feels guilty and horribly responsible for the death of a person that would have been someone’s parent, sibling, friend, or spouse. Every baby killed takes that person out of someone else’s life, something that is hard for us to conceive. Imagine all the people we could have potentially met if it was not for abortion, all the people who could have made a difference in the world. The rape wasn’t her fault, but it wasn’t the baby’s either. Neither should have to take punishment, but whether she likes it or not, the situation cannot be put in the past. An abortion may take the baby away, but not the memory. Knowing that one of her babies is alive and safe is a comfort to her, and that her child got the chance to live their life.

Many pro-choice activists raise the point that a disabled person or child that was adopted might be living a horrible life. But isn’t it unfair for the parents to decide because their child’s life might be hard they should die? Dying is obviously worse than not having a chance to live. That’s like saying it’s justified to walk around a heavily impoverished area shooting people because they didn’t have great lives. It doesn’t make it right. Look at all the important people who came from a horrible start! No one should determine someone’s life from before they are born.

Anyone who was adopted instead of aborted would find the question, “Do you wish your mother had decided to kill you at birth so you wouldn’t have to be alive right now?” to be completely ridiculous. Everyone has a chance to live a wonderful life. There is also the preconceived notion that children who are adopted not aborted will be left on the streets .For every child aborted, there are forty eligible couples waiting for a child to adopt, so there is always the chance for any child to live a happy life.

It it’s true that having a baby means many difficult sacrifices for a mother. But it is irresponsible and unjust to take a mother’s mistakes out on another human being. Either way, the situation cannot be put in the past and forgotten, and no matter how much pain it may mean to one person, everyone deserves to live. Don’t deny the murder, if you feel like you couldn’t explain abortion to a little kid, you know that the situation is wrong.

Here is how you can help:

Continue researching. It’s hard to form an opinion until you are well informed. There's tons of interesting music, articles and books on the subject. I highly recommend the book, “Why Pro-Life?” By Randy Alcorn. Join the Pro-Life movement. Help protest outside abortion clinics, or walk for the pro-life movement. Signing for a mailing list on most pro-life sites will send you information on dates for rallies near you.

The next afternoon, I asked her how it went. She said that even though her teacher disagreed with her (no big surprise there), he gave her a pretty good grade. His only real criticism was not the same one I offered her (that it seemed to end rather abruptly, without much of a concluding set of statements), but that he thought it was a weak argument to state that "Anyone who was adopted instead of aborted would find the question, 'Do you wish your mother had decided to kill you at birth so you wouldn’t have to be alive right now?' to be completely ridiculous." Neither T nor I can figure out why he thought so.

I asked her how it went over with her classmates. She said it was fine, but she seemed subdued and wistful afterwards. Despite what we'd counseled her, I think she regretted in a way that she hadn't included any images, saying "People just don't think it's anything real, dad... they think it's just a blob of tissue." It's the sanitation of it, the refusal to face what it is, that really bothers her.

I know that most of the people who participate here don't necessarily agree with all this. I'm not looking for a debate and I'm not trying to hide behind my daughter for a debate. Whether anyone agrees with us or not, I'm proud of her for taking what she knew would be an unpopular stand in a public school setting. I don't write about abortion much here. I can't think of a lot to say that hasn't been said ad nauseum elsewhere. It almost always turns into a slanging match. Having seen the warring sides at clinic protests first-hand, I've seen how ugly it can get... I've tried more to find common ground here and to cover other things that don't get discussed and debated as much, but maybe I've tried too hard not to offend. T, on the other hand, likes to debate. To turn an old phrase slightly, youth rushes in where old fools fear to tread.

P.S. The image above is a staged photo from her digital art class, and has nothing to do with the presentation.

Is it the "Religion" Gene or the "Tribal" Gene They Should be Worried About?

Where do the real seeds of violence come from?



In relation to this previous post, I’ve been thinking a bit more about Matthew Alper’s book, The “God” part of the Brain. You know, I have to admit I’ve never really given atheism and agnosticism much serious thought. I’ve always considered the existence of God to be intuitively obvious even when joined with a concurrent faith in the scientific method, so most of the apologetics I’ve bothered to follow have been focused on intra-Catholic and inter-Christian debates. I’ve never really looked at Christian apologetics in confrontation with atheism before, but it might be time, because my kids who are in public high school and middle school are telling me that aggressive atheism is very much in vogue with kids these days, and I’ve also heard that a sizable segment of a recent confirmation class in our town was openly challenging the pastor as to whether or not God was even necessary in our lives anymore.

I found Alper’s book to be challenging and very interesting, despite the fact that there are some obvious factual errors in it. For example, this website takes him to task for faultily claiming that if mass (matter) is accelerated to the speed of light, it will become energy (page 26). And in a dubious and highly “unscientific” chapter in which he suggested that religious belief leads to material and social backwardness, he observed that the most prosperous and advanced countries in the world were the ones in which religious practice was statistically low (meaning Scandinavia, Northern Europe, Canada, Japan and so forth), and that the poorest countries in the world (meaning India, Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East) were the ones in which religious adherence was statistically high, and while endeavoring to explain why the United States is the anomaly to this trend (by claiming that we are presumably the progeny of spiritual seekers with a dominant set of “God” genes), he claimed that George Calvert’s charter for the Settlement of Maryland in 1634 was the “first Roman Catholic settlement in the New World” (page 200). Hmmm.

Leaving that aside for a moment, I guess we are to infer that having an overdeveloped set of spiritual genes makes us slothful and lacking in creativity as well. It’s funny… I used to hear the same kind of specious arguments applied to the difference between Protestant and Catholic countries (with Catholic countries supposedly suffering from the lack of a “Protestant Work Ethic”), the difference between countries that had and had not ever been colonized, the difference between countries that benefited from having “Guns, Germs, and Steel,” and those that lacked the flora and fauna to support the benificent development of these, and just today I heard a radio program flatly putting the difference on the temperature. Apparently, it’s just plain harder to get productive work done in those hot equatorial zones. :-/

One of the most amazing claims of Alper’s is that humans are the only species that murders its own kind. I can’t believe there are people out there who claim to be of a scientific bent who are still saying this. I used to hear this nonsense all through my school years, but it has been known for some time now that intra-species killing is quite common. This is an important point to contest, because like a lot of the “new atheists,” Alper lays a lot of the blame for human violence on religion.

In our frivolous attempts to either oppose or escape unavoidable death, we channel our energies into a morbid array of self-destructive behaviors. In our futile efforts to oppose the unopposable, we have become the only animal that will needlessly kill one another as well as our own selves. Unlike any other creature on Earth, we are capable of acts of suicide, genocide, sadism, masochism, self-mutilation, and drug abuse, along with a multitude of other disturbed responses, all of which result from our species unique capacity for self-conscious awareness and with it an awareness of death…. Generally speaking, humankind’s spiritual propensities are pretty harmless… It’s really only when our spiritual sensibilities get bound up by some restrictive and dogmatic religious creed that problems arise… For all the advantages of possessing a religious instinct, for all the social cohesion it brings, the sense of community it fosters, and the alleged purpose and meaning it provides, religion has proven itself, time and again, to be a potentially hazardous impulse in us… religion continues to act as a divisive force, promoting discrimination and intolerance, inciting enmity, aggression, and war… Moreover, our religious functions instill us with an inherent belief that we are immortal. Because each religion possesses its own unique interpretation of what immortality represents, each religion views every other as a threat to its notion of an immortal soul… As a result, our species tends to engage in what could be termed religious tribalism, a predisposition to justify territorial conquest in the name of one’s Gods, a tendency that has marked our species violent and bloody history…. How many more times must we justify acts of cruelty, murder, and genocide in the name of God and religion before we learn to tame this destructive impulse in us… Only once the human animal comes to terms with the fact that it has been born into a mental matrix – a neurological web of deceit – will we have a chance of offsetting this potentially destructive impulse in us….It is time that the study of spirituality and religiosity be taken out of the hands of philosophers, metaphysicians, and theologians and “biologized.”

This is a recurrent theme that’s been showing up in the last few years, especially in the wake of September 11, 2001. It’s the same type of argument we see coming from Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins…. That religion is a destructive impulse which is to blame for the genocide and endless war and violence we see in the world, and that the self-knowledge to be found in the study of scientific Darwinism supplies the only hope we have to keep from destroying ourselves.

There are a number of things wrong with the statements made by Alper above, such as the sweeping generalization that all religions have a notion of an immortal soul, and that they can’t abide competing truth claims with respect to their own conceptions of immortality. Some religions have very little or no concept of an afterlife at all. Some are universalist. Some believe that salvation is not limited to their own sect alone... I also think Alper goes a little too far in his book in stating that humans are the only creatures with highly developed self-consciousness. I think apes have a sense of shame and are self-aware enough to pick up the idea of universal mortality. They are not the only ones. Elephants mourn.

In any case, I reject the idea that a religious gene or set of neurological functions is responsible for human violence, and I will attempt to take the Alpers of the world on in their own terms…

Let’s accept Alper’s basic premise and accept this argument:

Essentially, what I'm suggesting is that humans are innately "hard-wired" to perceive a spiritual reality. We are "hard-wired" to believe in forces that transcend the limitations of this, our physical reality… Here lies the origin of humankind's spiritual function, an evolutionary adaptation that compels our species to believe that though our physical bodies will one day perish, our "spirits" or "souls" will persist for all eternity. Only once our species was instilled with this inherent (mis)perception that there is something more "out there," that we are immortal beings, were we able to survive our debilitating awareness of death.

This is not especially troubling to me, it doesn’t surprise me that God made us and “hard-wired” us to want to know Him, but what does trouble me is the accusation that this religious impulse is the source of human violence that may someday annihilate us if not curbed somehow.

Alper says that “we have become the only animal that will needlessly kill one another as well as our own selves." He may have the suicide part right, but we are not the only animal that kills it’s own kind “needlessly.” Intra-species killing has been seen in lions, wolves, and spotted hyenas, but most importantly in our closest relative, the chimpanzee, with whom we share 98% of our genes, as evolutionary scientists are fond of pointing out (we also happen to share 50% of our genes with bananas).

I suppose Alper may know something about intra-species violence, which is why he tried to make a distinction around “needless” killing. Let’s have a look at the chimps...

Chimpanzees have long been considered by humans to be playful, impish, gregarious and peaceful primates, and to a large degree they are, but we’ve had some misconceptions about them too. It wasn’t known until the last few decades, for example, that chimps will occasionally hunt and eat meat. The renowned primatologist Jane Goodall was also distressed and saddened when during the course of her decades-long study of chimpanzees she observed that they will at times practice a sort of rudimentary form of raiding tribal warfare against each other. Over a period of months in the late 1970s, in Tanzania’s Gombe National Forest, she and other researchers witnessed a band of chimpanzees systematically hunt down and kill all the members of a neighboring group, one by one. This type of behavior has since been noted by other primatologists as well.



Chimpanzees have also been seen to cooperatively hunt down, kill, and eat the red colobus monkey, even though they have other sources of protein in their diet. The killing seems to be more of a social group exercise than it is a matter of necessity for them. It’s almost as if they are getting enjoyment out of the hunt, as if it was recreation. Is this “needful” or “needless” killing?



In foraging and hunting-gathering human societies, a type of raiding warfare is seen in patterns not very unlike those of the chimpanzees. If we share this type of behavior with our primate cousins, and if, as Alper claims, the self-conscious religious impulse is unique to humans, what accounts for this behavior in other primates? Mustn’t the roots of aggression and violence lay elsewhere, rather than in our religious and spiritual impulses?

A religious, or a political crime?

The Slaughter of the Innocents, by Carl Bloch (1875)

This is not to suggest that humans have a “beast lurking within,” but like the primates with whom we share a common ancestry, we are highly social creatures whose cooperative bonds also introduce pressures not found in less social species. Matthew Alper himself points out that every evolutionary adaptation that has a benefit may also have a cost. The chimpanzee violence in Gombe seemed to be related to an accompanying stress on resources. As William F. Allman points out in The Stone Age Present: How Evolution Has Shaped Modern Life – From Sex, Violence, and Language to Emotions, Morals, and Communities.

One of the key roles that aggression plays in society is, ironically, to keep the peace, Aggression helps maintain the complex pecking order that typically characterizes primate groups… While being a dominant doesn’t necessarily guarantee exclusive rights to food and mates, such hierarchies typically dictate who among a group will have first access to essential resources. Studies show that encounters in which a monkey peacefully defers to a more dominant monkey occur three times more often than incidents involving overt aggression between the two… The importance of the group’s hierarchical structure in keeping the peace is evident when a newcomer tries to join the group. When a young monkey tries to join a new group, his presence results in a jostling of the social hierarchy as he tries to work his way into the social ladder, and this often leads to fighting… Other studies suggest that aggression within a group is often focused on those individuals who act selfishly… Ironically, it is our own species’ supreme powers of cooperation that make war possible. Chimpanzee group-against-group conflict is similar in principle to warfare among small-scale human societies: Both are carried out by coalitions of males, both are the result of imbalances of power among neighboring groups, and both have their ultimate roots in males’ desires to gain access to females. In the case of the group-group conflict among the chimpanzees at Gombe, the “aggressor” chimps took over their victims’ territory and incorporated several of the females who were attached to the other group into their own community. A comparison of the warfare patterns in forty-two foraging societies worldwide reveals that when people live near vital resources such as fertile land or watering holes, the group-against-group aggression is typically over control of these physical resources. Yet, ultimately, these resources are also tied to access to females: Those individuals in the society who accumulated the most wealth typically had the most wives, and so gaining resources is an important factor in access to women.

According to Alper, Dawkins, and Harris, religion provides the impetus for human violence. According to Allman, it's all about… well, to be coarse and blunt about it… it’s all about the wood.

Therefore, in regard to Alper’s refrain, which Harris and Dawkins would gladly chime in on…

“Our species tends to engage in what could be termed religious tribalism, a predisposition to justify territorial conquest in the name of one’s Gods, a tendency that has marked our species violent an bloody history…. How many more times must we justify acts of cruelty, murder, and genocide in the name of God and religion before we learn to tame this destructive impulse in us?”

...We suffer from a sense of tribalism to be sure. Religion itself, however, seems to have very little to do with it. As Allman has shown, we have inherited a tribal instinct, a hard-wired predilection to be wary of strangers and those who are different from us and may pose a potential threat to our resources, whether that perceived threat is rationally based in fact or not. Those differences could be based upon religion, but also on a host of other factors as well, such as nationality, race, ethnicity, language, or politics. We all know about September 11 and the religious wars throughout history. The conflicts of the 20th century were the bloodiest and the most lethal by far. How many of them were really based on religion? Very few, I’d say.

How many of these massive conflicts, for example, were based on religion?

The Napoleonic Wars? The French Revolution which had occurred earlier had swept away the rights of the clergy along with the rest of the ancien regime. Napoleon, who had made himself an emperor by snatching a crown from the hands of a pope and placing it upon his own head, raised the very first nationalized citizen army with his Grand Armee from within the borders of the first modern nation-state, and swept across Europe all the way to Moscow and back.

The American Civil War? Both the Union and the Confederacy expected a short conflict. The ensuing cataclysm shocked them both. Wisely, Abraham Lincoln, upon seeing the cost of this endless savagery, heard the pleas of the abolitionists, and gave the war a moral purpose in the ending of slavery. It was only religion that was able to give meaning to what would have been an otherwise meaningless and senseless slaughter over a States-rights vs. Federalism squabble, and it was reflected in the Battle Hymn of the Republic

In the beauty of the lilies
Christ was born across the sea
With a glory in his bosom
That transfigures you and me
As he died to make men holy
Let us die to make men free
While God is marching on...

World War I? In the age of modernity, wars such as this were supposed to be a thing of the past, even though the European nations blundered into it after a period of relative peace with a shared belief that war was somehow “inevitable,” and the Darwinian conviction held by many that men had grown effete and soft, and needed to be blooded and have their moral fiber restored by the great chivalric adventure of war.

World War II? Out of the ashes of World War I, and from the disillusioned and disgruntled veterans rose the “New Fascist Man,” a man with the willingness to devote his life in sacrifice and service to the state and to the “Fatherland.” Communism, in actual practice, operated upon the same principle. Democracies were literally forced to prove that they had the mettle to survive in the face of these ideologies.

In those instances and to this day, extreme nationalism still provides much more fuel for conflict than religion does. As I’ve said before, I’m convinced that if everything else could be evened out somehow, people could still be convinced to take up arms with each other over something as innocuous as eye color.

Maybe there’s another way Matthew Alper should look at the religious set of genes and how it may have served as an adaptation towards reproductive advantage. Rather than causing tribal conflict, maybe the “God” part of the brain ameliorates the worst aspects of our tribalism. One of the questions frequently asked within the realm of religion is “How should I treat my neighbor?” A corollary to that is “Who is my neighbor?” In the Parable of the Good Samaritan, it is the “other” who acts justly, the one from the despised tribe who shows compassion and love for a stranger from “our” tribe and cares for him. Perhaps those with a strongly spiritual bent, those who could empathize with the “other” from a different tribe, had a better chance at survival than those who were willing to take up arms and fight with strangers at every opportunity. Perhaps the “God” part of the brain made us more fit for survival, and provided something more useful than just a means of coping with the prospect of death.

If the roots of violence lie in our own sense of tribalism, a tribalism which is spurred by our protective instinct towards resources and mating possibilities, perhaps that is a better place for those like Alper, Dawkins, and Harris to concentrate upon. Granted, some people can identify their tribe by their religion, but when the President of Iran says that he wants to wipe Israel off the map, is that really the “God” part of the brain speaking, or is it actually just the “tribal” part of the brain?

If we need self-knowledge, and need to learn how to thwart our worst inbred instincts, rather than the “God” part of the brain, perhaps we should look at the "tribal" part of the brain instead.

Or is it the “We should get rid of everyone who doesn’t think like me” part of the brain?

If they concentrate on religion only, they can’t be too serious about eliminating violence. It must be a bigoted and deeply ingrained bias towards religion only, because apparently there are times when violence must be useful to them. Ask Sam Harris, who openly speculates on the usefulness of torture, and the possibility of having to commit genocide against Muslims.