Humanists Cannot Afford To Be Passive Spectators

Mormon church to expand to Colombia, Africa - US news - Faith - msnbc.com

MSNBC reported today that the Mormon church is expanding into Columbia and Africa. If this doesn't seem important to you, then I suggest you consider the fact that the Church of Latter Day Saints is a religious cult that promotes American exceptionalism, bigotry, and the worst kind of misogyny, and they are among the most aggressive proselytizers the world has ever seen. Because of this, Harold Bloom predicted in his book, The American Religion, that Mormons would eventually become the dominant religion of America and capture the White House. Moreover, that prediction is dangerously close to being fulfilled by Republican candidate Mitt Romney.

It is terrifying to speculate that a group of people so deluded and mentally brainwashed that they believe in things such as "magic underwear" could possibly be in control of the largest nuclear arsenal in the world, and they think America is a chosen nation by their "God." While American exceptionalism is a belief that is passively prescribed to by almost all evangelical Christians, it is actually written into the doctrine of this virulent and poisonous religious doctrine.

As secularists, we have a responsibility to confront and oppose the efforts of religious brainwashers such as the Latter Day Saints before it is too late. They are travelling the world converting the gullible and unenlightened to their absurd belief system, and humanists need to answer in kind. This is precisely why I argue that at no time in history has the world needed secular and humanistic missionaries, who might inoculate people in other parts of the world against these religious snake oil salesman, more so than now.

They Must Be Looking In The Mirror When They Say This . . .

The Independent reported recently that the Jehovah's Witnesses' publication, The Watchtower, has taken to branding apostates of the religion as "mentally diseased." The Independent reports:

An article published in July's edition of The Watchtower warns followers to stay clear of "false teachers" who are condemned as being "mentally diseased" apostates who should be avoided at all costs. "Suppose that a doctor told you to avoid contact with someone who is infected with a contagious, deadly disease," the article reads. "You would know what the doctor means, and you would strictly heed his warning. Well, apostates are 'mentally diseased', and they seek to infect others with their disloyal teachings."

The irony of anyone related to Charles T. Russell's cult accusing ANYONE else of being "mentally diseased" is almost too good to be true. Keep in mind, this is the same organization that repeatedly prophecies the end of the world, only to have to repeatedly move the date further ahead when the "end" fails to come. Isn't there an expression we use for people who persistently fail at an activity, yet keep doing the same thing expecting different results? Oh, right, "mentally diseased."

Faith Makes You Gullible

On September 28th, The Los Angeles Times reported:

"A San Fernando Valley doctor and evangelical minister who federal prosecutors said used bogus herbal medications to offer false hope to dozens of people suffering from diseases such as cancer and Alzheimer's was found guilty Tuesday of nearly a dozen federal charges."

Later the article goes on to explain how Christine Daniel stole money from evangelical cancer patients by claiming to have an herbal cure for cancer, even going so far as to tell one patient she had been cured of her terminal breast cancer. That patient died several months later. According to the Times, Daniels used the Trinity Broadcasting Network, an evangelical Christian broadcaster, to find her prey.

Reportedly, Daniels charged her "patients" anywhere from $4,270 to $150,000 dollars for the fraudulent treatments. Moreover, patients were taken to low income hotels where they were given placebo ointments and medications. The Times goes on to say that Daniels instructed her clients to report their payments as donations in order to help her avoid corporate taxes.

The religious make easy prey for criminals like this because they have already demonstrated their willingness to believe any kind of nonsense without a shred of evidence. While evangelical Christians obstinately deny realities such as evolution and climate science, two phenomena for which their is an overabundance of scientific facts and evidence, they wholeheartedly chase after quackery like this. In a sense, this is the price they pay for closing their minds to facts and evidence in order to cling to their dogmatic religious ideologies that are based on nothing more than quaint legends and myths. In fact, scams like that which Daniels pedaled are no different than the remedies offered by their religious clergy when they tell their congregations that prayer or some supernatural cosmic daddy will cure them or make them rich.

Ultimately, religious believers set themselves up for this kind of abuse by their willingness to believe anything that makes them feel good, with no regard for evidence or science.

A Humanist Perspective on Criminal Justice

In a recent post on his blog, It's Only Natural, John Shook brought up some important points regarding shortcomings of the American justice system, and while I don't completely agree with his conclusion that opposition to the death penalty is the only clear humanistic viewpoint on the death penalty, many of his criticisms of American justice are spot on.

In the article, John says:

"The pro-death side behaves as if some people’s value is higher than others, the rights of the victim outweigh the rights of the accused, the desire for retribution should dictate just punishment, and that the government needn’t defend everyone equally."

Here he has touched on something that is symptomatic of a more globally flawed philosophy of justice that is practiced in the American legal system, and that is the philosophy of justice as revenge. Americans treat incarceration as a means of retribution rather than rehabilitation. One can easily see this sentiment in commonly used idioms, such as "He needs to pay his debt to society."

But is retribution the ultimate aim of a criminal justice system? As a humanist, I should certainly hope not. It seems to me that the ultimate function of any kind of criminal justice is to protect the public and to prevent people from breaking our laws, and this is where the practice of incarceration enters the picture. Why do we incarcerate people to begin with? We should incarcerate people when they are harmful to the public. Hence, it seems only rational that it would be beneficial to all parties to rehabilitate those criminals that need to be incarcerated in order to reintegrate them into society as functional and contributing members thereby relieving the public from its obligation to provide for said criminals. This is only logical thinking for any humanist who is interested in minimizing the suffering of humans and animals.

Unfortunately, the philosophy behind much of the policy driving the current practices of American justice has little in common with this philosophy. Instead, the American system of incarceration is driven by a desire for vengeance. The American public is more interested in an individual "paying for what he has done" than in rehabilitating them. And it's expensive.

Moreover, the problem is getting worse. In his book, Crime and Punishment in America, Elliot Currie wrote:

In 1971 there were fewer than 200,000 inmates in our state and federal prisons. By the end of 1996 we were approaching 1.2 million. The prison population, in short, has nearly sextupled in the course of twenty-five years. Adding in local jails brings the total to nearly 1.7 million. To put the figure of 1.7 million into perspective, consider that it is roughly equal to the population of Houston Texas, the fourth-largest city in the nation, and more than twice that of San Francisco. Our overall national population has grown, too, of course, but the prison population has grown much faster: as a proportion of the American population, the number behind bars has more than quadrupled. During the entire period from the end of World War II to the early 1970s, the nation's prison incarceration rate--the number of inmates in state and federal prisons per 100,000 population--fluctuated in a narrow band between a low of 93 (in 1972) and a high of 119 (in 1961). By 1996 it had reached 427 per 100,000.

And the sad consequence of this mentality is that our nation is going broke for it, because revenge is expensive. Every time we send a man to prison for life, we are essentially saying that the taxpayers will feed, house, and provide medical care for that person for the rest of his life. Furthermore, by focusing on the punitive effects of incarceration rather than possible rehabilitative solutions, we are not only wasting tax money, but also ruining the lives and causing unnecessary suffering. In fact, not only are we not rehabilitating inmates, but our prisons are actually making them worse.

Ultimately, in an age in which America is faced with difficult fiscal decisions such as whether to fund education for our children, provide health care for the elderly, or rebuild infrastructure, can we really afford a prison system that is this flawed?