One Controversial Dialogue about whether or not Quakers' Nonviolence was the Best Way to End Slavery

AGAINST QUAKER NONVIOLENCE, FOR WAR INSTEAD:

"Was...Quakerism the best route to abolition?

In the USA, slavery was abolished by a war - which remains America's bloodiest even in absolute terms despite the subsequent growth in American population.

Quakers were and are pacifists and conscientious objectors, so at least in the USA they did not contribute directly to abolishing slavery as much as the (mostly) men who died to eradicate it.

Also, Quakers initially opposed Darwin, and about half of Quakers today remain creationists according to Wikipedia. So the question is whether the good done by Quakers verbally objecting to slavery (while not shedding any blood for the cause) outweighs the harm done by their science denial.

That's not an easy accounting job so I would hesitate to call the Quakers "good."

And not to mention that Quakers continue to promote the bible, which itself on plain reading promotes slavery or at least conspicuously fails to condemn it. According to the bible, picking up sticks on the Sabbath is a capital offense while slavery is A-OK as long as you follow the directions laid out.

Imagine there were some liberal anti-Nazis who continued to promote Mein Kampf as the source of all truth. They would come with opportunity costs too. There are better ways to oppose the evils of Nazism than by teaching people to take its sacred text seriously.

I don't deny that some theists in some circumstances have done some good things. Hamas for example peforms lots of charity work among its folk while calling for Israel to be eradicated.

Even some secular drug lords provided jobs and support for the impoverished Latin American communities where they operated.

Drugs and religion have many parallels. They are both harmful businesses built on a foundation of lies, often accompanied by a window dressing of conspicuous benevolence."

-
English Quakers on a Barbados plantation. / Image courtesy of New York Public Library


FOR QUAKER WAY OF NONVIOLENCE AGAINST WAR: Yes, the British Quaker movement and their U.S. abolitionism, Underground Railroad, etc. was "the best route to abolition"
NOT the horrendous vast slaughter of the U.S. Civil War, (which wasn't even intended for abolition but for forcing seceding Southerns back into the Union).

HOWEVER, as you point out...

1. Quakers in history and now are a very diverse and contrary group--have been all over the place. Heck, rich Quakers, such as in the Caribbean owned slaves. However, because of their original emphasis upon equality for humans, they finally--many reluctantly--rejected and opposed slavery in the latter part of the 1700's (as I already stated, my original point).

They did lead the movement against slavery in Britain. And in the U.S. by 1776, they totally opposed slaves and eventually helped lead abolitionism, were part of the Underground Railroad, helped lead the political movement for women's rights, etc.

2. However, the central founder of the Society of Friends, George Fox in 1640 strongly supported Cromwell and his slaughter of the English Civil War!

3. The majority of Quakers at present in the U.S. are mostly fundamentalist-Evangelical! Heck, I couldn't have been a member, nor would I want to be.

4. Historically, some Quakers have held horrendous views. In Indiana in the 1920's a very large Quaker meeting was a very strong supporter of the KKK. In one infamous picture, the KKK in their robes are all standing down at the front.

Quaker Yearly Meeting in Southern California in 1980 came out strongly for nuclear weapons.

5. Early Quakers were charged with heresy. Good grief, William Penn was jailed because of his book that cast doubt on orthodox Christian creed.

6. in 2012, a Quaker meeting in South Carolina strongly promoted Calvinism.
ETC.

7. I think you have a serious--though common-- misunderstanding of the U.S. Civil War, one that I, once, held, too. Until I had spent years studying too many tomes on the Civil War era and teaching it in secular public high schools.

While plantation leaders of the South did fight the war to retain slavery--they wrote into their Constitution--most of the millions involved in that horrific conflagration weren't fighting about slavery.

Lincoln specifically stated that he invaded the South, Not to end slavery, but to force the seceding states back into the Union.
Lincoln, even in 1863 wanted all Blacks to leave the U.S. and move to another country. He had specifically emphasized that if they returned they could keep slaves.

Not only that, but when Lincoln declared all slaves in the South freed in 1863, Lincoln continued to enslave Blacks in the Union! The Union's slaves weren't freed until 1865!

Also, keep in mind that as a lawyer, Lincoln had gone to court for a slave owner against a slave!!

And Lincoln and many others in the Union held that Blacks weren't equal to Whites, etc.
ETC.

Contrary to your point in favor of war, the Quaker method of abolition was far superior to a war that slaughtered at least 800,000 individuals, wounded millions, intentionally attacked civilians, etc.

Did you know that according to historians, Grant's wife continued to use slaves (her father owned them) even while Grant was shelling and killing civilians at Vicksburg?!

8. Your comparison of Quakers to HAMAS is very unfair and untrue.

HAMAS is a horrific terrorist organization, who even murders other Palestinians!

In contrast, there are Palestinians who are kind and caring. I've lived and worked in Palestine-Israel; our family has helped 2 impoverished Palestinian families, etc. And I was a guest of a Palestinian family in Nablus (where some of the killing is going on).
I used to teach about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the Holocaust, etc.for years

BOTH SIDES of that horrendous conflict for the last 100 years are partly right and partly wrong.

BUT HAMAS and the Jewish settlers who regularly steal Palestinian land, destroy orchards, go into Palestinian towns and torch cars, houses, etc. are doing what is very wrong.

In contrast, the Quakers have had a school in Ramallah for 150 years that teaches reconciliation, peace-making, etc.

Yes, HAMAS and other terrorist organizations do charity work, BUT that is ONLY for other Muslims, NOT for Jews or others. Instead, they slaughter innocent Jewish civilians intentionally.
Several years ago, Palestinian leaders hailed a Palestinian who snuck into a 13-year-old Jewish girl's bedroom and knifed her to death. He was declared a patriot, a martyr!
Instead, Quakers emphasize helping those outside of their group, even those contrary to their way of life!

9. Let me emphasize again. I already knew all the terrible wrongs that you pointed out about some Quakers' bad actionsin the past. And there are plenty more that I could add to your list. I used to teach Quaker history and views of Reality to our Quaker meeting in the late 1970's.
And, by the way, when I did that, I was an extreme liberal, as I have already emphasized never thought Jesus was God, etc.

Since you don't accept my example of the Quakers leading abolition, here's another one:

Martin Luther King Jr. and other Baptists, etc. led the Civil Rights Movement. And one of his advisors was a Quaker and one was an Atheist.

And yes, I know that he was a gross adulterer, probably cheated on his thesis for PhD. etc.
My point isn't that the Baptists are in general, or MLK, specifically, are paragons of virtue and goodness.

My original point is that sometimes some religions (just like sometimes some atheists) lead the advancement of the good, the true, and the just in human history.

That was my ONLY point.

I know all too well, that all humans including us, have some good and some bad in our actions.
-
Against Quaker: wrote, "Was it their religious proclivities that drove their abolitionist ideals, or was it a sense of what was right?"

For Quaker: BOTH. It was a particular "religious proclivity"--that of equality--which led the Quakers to end their slave-owning and to help lead the abolition movement.

In the LIGHT,

Dan Wilcox

Book Review: STAMPED FROM THE BEGINNING by Ibram X. Kendi

This non-fiction survey of racism in American history is well worth the read. It is a good introduction to racism in American history and the winner of the National Book Award. The explanations and descriptions of early 16th to 18th racist leaders are seldom written about, so few people know of that era other than brief descriptions of the murderous Middle Passage.

Kendi has a deep passion for what he writes, and he gives new readers a handy way to break down and to remember all of the complex events, leaders, and crises that took place over hundreds of years. His handy key history sheet reduces all humans into about 4 or 5 categories related to the topic of racism--there are racists, or assimilators, or accommodators (not his term, can’t remember, but something like it), and a small number are anti-racists.

So this popular book in a simple basic sense at first, is helpful, especially for those who don't know racism's history.

And, despite his skimming across the surface of most of American history, Kendi does go a bit more deeply into the horrific tragedy of Reconstruction and its racist aftermath when the racist Redeemers took over all Southern governments between 1865 and 1879 (and the U.S. government let them; indeed, the Hays government helped them!:-()

His book was a good review for me of that time period since I read Foner’s Reconstruction, a scholarly tome about 7-10 years ago.
HOWEVER by midpoint Kendi’s basic schematic for categorizing all of humankind begins to show signs of distortion, misleading claims, down-wrong falsehood, and confusion. He obsesses to make everyone fit into his ideological biases, into his few cookie-cutter stereotypical categories.

Cutting every human to fit into one of his 4 or 5 Procustrian beds. He, especially does this when he attempts to blame almost everyone for holding racist views, even calls nearly all abolitionists and Civil Rights workers “racist” including Garrison, Douglas, and Martin Luther King! And then his book gets worse.

#1 Kendi confuses inherent worth of all humans with thinking that all humans essentially have the same immediate achievement ability. He thinks American leaders who thought that illiterate, abused ex-slaves weren’t immediately ready for voting, leading, and achieving were racists because of that. Maybe some of them were.


Contrary to what Kendi asserts, American leaders seeking to help ex-slaves become literate before they were allowed to vote (and become full citizens) weren't "racist," weren't denying their inherent worth. Rather it was an acknowledgment that despite the Blacks' human inherent worth, enslavement had hindered them, had kept them from achievement in many areas, and that therefore, the ex-slaves needed to be given the means and finances and education to work toward achieving what had been previously denied them.

Most of ex-slaves, especially the field workers, weren’t as capable as educated Whites and free Negroes, just like at-risk teens raised in dysfunctional abusive families aren’t immediately capable of the same achievements as teens raised in high-achieving positive, loving families.

Kendi goes onto to claim that unless all Africans were immediately given total control of their nations in Africa in the post-colonial era, then the leaving European leaders were just as racist and oppressive as their forebears who had committed so much evil. Not so.

This shows a severe lack of historical understanding, anthropology, etc. OR more likely, since Kendi is a brilliant individual with a PhD., his claims show how ideological-driven his book is.

He repeatedly commits either/or fallacies, blames all human horrors on only whites, excuses all POC from any responsibilities, and so forth.

A quick cursory glance at African nations, as they are now, 50-100 years later shows that Kendi’s view is delusionary, confused, and wrong.

No African nations, not a single one—at least none that I can think of--have rational, civil, democratic, balanced leaders. YEt most of the the nations have amazing natural resources and great potential. And millions of worthy humans who could accomplish much if given the chance.

But instead these nations' resources have been squandered by a succession of corrupt, often brutal dictators, autocrats, even mass murderers!

Some of these immoral horrors can be blamed on the abuse, misuse, racism, and massive theft of colonialism, but not all, or even most. Think of Uganda under Idi Amin, the Rwanda genocide, the former Congo, Zimbabwe under Mugabe (who has turned the former bread-basket of Africa into a failed malnourished state), Mozambique, Egypt, Algeria, Somalia, etc.

The few somewhat better functioning nations such as Kenya still have much poverty, suffer many killings during violent elections, engage in plenty of irrational behaviors, and lots of unnecessary suffering.

Even mostly democratic South Africa (probably the best example of a modern state in Africa) has since the end of Apartheid, been poorly governed, and even worse run, by the corrupt leader, Jacob Zuma, a polygamist, who built a mansion while millions of citizens still live in shacks and poverty, etc.

Though S.A. has had about 30 years to start making huge changes, restructuring and opening up the nation to ALL of its citizens, Black leaders (with the exception of the elderly Mandela) have failed miserably.

It’s true that many years of racist ruling by the white supremacist Dutch Reformed leaders left behind many severe problems, but Black leaders for the most part haven’t solved those and, instead, have created more problems of their own.

Nor does Kendi deal with horrific African leaders of the historic past such as Shaka and the Zulu. Nor does he engage with the tribal slaughters by Blacks that occurred in Africa for centuries and that still happen.

Instead, Kendi acts like only white Europeans are racist and engage in all manners of evil.

It's tragically true that hundreds of years of oppression, persecution, abuse, enslavement, and slaughter were caused by white Europeans. Kendi is correct there.

Where he misleads is that he fails to identify and deal with the hundreds of years of Black and Brown people's evil actions.

Further, Kendi defends the horrific criminal riots of the late 1960’s in the U.S. calling them anti-racist “rebellions”!

Any quick overview of U.S. history shows this to be completely untrue. Arson-burnings of many blocks of businesses including Black ones, massive lootings, vandalism, killings, etc. aren’t anti-racist “rebellions”! They are criminal riots.

He goes onto support the criminal Black Panthers and other violent Black racists who committed crimes including many killings.

Kendi also seems to defend ‘gangsta rap with its endless obscenities, calls for lethal violence, injustice, and so forth. He defends such rappers as Tupac.

About the only Black leader for civil rights that Kendi thinks gets good marks for anti-racism is Angela Davis! Yet she is a doctrinaire communist! Davis, allegedly, refused to condemn the Soviet Union and other communist nations for their imprisonment of millions of innocent protesters, writers, and scientists, and for their state-murder of millions.

Good grief, Davis admires Lenin, one of the worst leaders of the 20th century, guilty for the death of millions of humans!

Davis even accepted the Lenin Prize. Etc.

While her direct involvement in the kidnapping and murders of people by the Jacksons, and the attempt to help George Jackson to break out of San Quentin was rejected by the jury in her trial, the fact that she allowed the younger Jackson to use her own guns shows negligence. Heck, allegedly, she employed Jonathan as her bodyguard.

What had happened to the Black nonviolence of great leaders like Bayard Rustin who convinced a wavering King to not even have a gun in his home?
Davis also supports South African Winnie Mandela as a woman of "courage"! Sick!..Read about that immoral, unjust leader who advocated murder of others by burning tires around their bodies!

Kendi appears to admire Chairman Mao, one of the worst mass murderers of human history!

Kendi speaks positively of W.E.B. Du Bois going to meet Mao in the late 1950’s. That’s about the time Mao caused the starvation deaths of millions of innocent Chinese. Then there are the millions Mao intentionally slaughtered.

Further, Kendi claims that even Frederick Douglas, William Lloyd Garrison, Dubois, King, Obama, etc. held racist views. I kid you not.

He doesn’t mention the great Civil Rights leader, Bayard Rustin, who began protesting back in the 1940’s! Then advised King and others in the 1950's Please read the powerful biography, Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin.

Nor in all of his over 500 pages does Kendi speak of the huge influence of heretical and liberal Christianity as the source and standard bearer of anti-racism, abolition, civil rights, etc, (except for a few comments on Woolman and Quakerism).

And the further the book goes, the more obsessed, Kendi becomes in his simplistic ideological claims. As Kendi says in a recent interview, he thinks all humans are either racist or anti-racist. Another case of the either/or fallacy.

Worst of all Kendi thinks that the solution for racism is power and self-interest, not altruism or spiritual elevation or moral realism. Forget about King, John Lewis, and so many others who emphasized that the answer to racism and all other evils is altruism.

The central basis of Kendi’s book appears to be Critical Race Theory, though I don’t remember him actually writing about that overtly.

In the 3rd section of the book (an era that I know well), I started skimming for key names and actions because his commentary is superficial and a distortion of 20th century history and leaders. I do agree with his condemnation of the unjust actions of the famous racist leaders.

In conclusion, I am glad I read Stamped, despite its distortions and failures and ideological fanaticism.

I do agree that racism is still with us, and that the long evil shadow of the enslavement past still distorts American culture and society, and that all of us need to work to alter all that is wrong, and that intensive help needs to be given to Blacks and others who have suffered from structural racism of the past.

But the HUGE glaring chasm in Kendi’s book is that he blames only Whites for racism.

He never deals with the fact that Blacks were the ones in Africa who sold millions of other Blacks into slavery, or that long before Europeans came down the coast and started the Middle Passage, Brown Muslims were enslaving millions of Blacks for centuries, etc.

And, most, negligently, Kendi dismisses any Black responsibility for immorality, injustice, and killings. He never deals with Black crime, including the horrific slaughter by Blacks in Chicago, including many children. Instead, he blames everything on white racism!

Kendi also denies that Blacks are responsible for vandalism, abuse, drug-use, prostitution, broken families, missing fathers, illegitimate children, promiscuity, etc. OR sometimes he does even worse, Kendi justifies immoral and the unjust actions by Blacks claiming that those wrong actions aren’t really wrong!

I was tempted to next write that Kendi has done a “white-wash” of American history, but, heck, he would no doubt accuse me of racist speech.

EVALUATION: D+ (B-F)
8/4/20

In the Light of Justice, Goodness, and Equality,

Dan Wilcox

"Strange...a God..."

"Strange...a God who could make good children as easily as bad, yet preferred to make bad ones;
who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short;
mouths Golden Rules and forgiveness
multiplied seventy times seven and invented Hell;
who mouths morals to other people
and has none himself;

who frowns upon crimes yet commits them all;
who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man’s acts upon man,
instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself;
and finally with altogether divine obtuseness, invites this poor, abused slave to worship him!"

— Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger*

1. This "a God" described by Samuel Clemens is horrific and alien to me--was so even back when I was a young Christian teen growing up in Bible-belt southern Nebraska. We certainly didn't believe in any such deity.

YET I do know--from my having read many tomes of history and theology, and from personally speaking with a few famous Christian leaders--that Mark Twain's "a God" is a fairly accurate view of creedal Christianity, especially of the Augustinian, Reformed, and Lutheran branches.**

2. Here is background for the assertions of Clemens' anti-creed:

A. "a God who could make good children as easily as bad, yet preferred to make bad ones;"

It is very baffling why an, allegedly, perfectly good God would intentionally foreordain, before the creation of the universe, that all the many billions of infants be conceived and born totally "sinful" and "in essence, evil."

But remember the famous Puritan, Michael Wigglesworth, in his poem "The Day of Doom" emphasized that infants will get the "easiest room in Hell." :-( Line 370-72, http://www.bartleby.com/400/poem/171.html

No wonder that Twain was so bitter about this ethical obscenity.

B. "who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short;"

If you had a dollar for every Christian book which emphasizes that Christians ought to accept, even glory in their suffering because it brings glory to God, you would soon be rich.

Titles will be added here later.

Of course, think of the millions of young children and young adults who suffer and die terribly from cancer and other agonizing and death-dealing scourges which God pre-planned for his own glory and "good pleasure."

One of the last tragic cases that happened shortly before I finally realized that organized Christianity CAN'T be true was a young lady of about 32 in our church who suffered and died leaving her 3 pre-schoolers without a mom.

C. "mouths Golden Rules and forgiveness
multiplied seventy times seven and invented Hell;"

Strange as it may seem to many, the sort of Christianity dominating the U.S. where Clemens grew up--and which still dominates some areas--does emphasize that even Hell was created for God's glory.

Heck, one famous Christian theologian said that even the Jewish Holocaust will bring what ever glory to God that he wills!

D. "who mouths morals to other people and has none himself;"
and
"who frowns upon crimes yet commits them all;"

This is called Divine Command Theory in the Christian religion, or God's total sovereignty. According to many Christian leaders, God has two separate contrary wills; in one he commands humans to obey certain laws, but in the other will, God's hidden will, God causes every evil including molestation, rape, murder, slaughter, natural disasters, diseases, plagues, famines, etc.

Not a molecule moves in the cosmos but that it is by this "a God's" will.

Because God's ultimate nature is his absolute sovereignty, then whatever God wills, then becomes "good." That is why God could order slaughter, slavery, abuse, lying, stealing, and so forth in the Hebrew Bible and in the New Testament.

If you question this, Christians will ask you, "Who do you think you are to question God?"
--

"That was my fix exactly. The more I studied about this, the more my conscience went to grinding me, and the more wicked and low-down and ornery I got to feeling. And at last, when it hit me all of a sudden that here was the plain hand of Providence
slapping me in the face and letting me know my wickedness was being watched all the time from up there in heaven,

whilst I was stealing a poor old woman's nigger that hadn't ever done me no harm,
and now was showing me there's One that's always on the lookout, and ain't agoing
to allow no such miserable doings to go only just so fur and no further, I most
dropped in my tracks I was so scared. Well, I tried the best I could to kinder soften
it up somehow for myself, by saying I was brung up wicked, and so I warn't so much to blame;
but something inside of me kept saying, "There was the Sunday school, you could a gone to it;
and if you'd a done it they'd a learnt you, there, that people that acts as I'd been acting
about that nigger goes to everlasting fire."

It made me shiver. And I about made up my mind to pray; and see if I couldn't try to quit being the kind of a boy I was, and be better. So I kneeled down. But the words wouldn't come. Why wouldn't they? It warn't no use to try and hide it from Him. Nor from me, neither. I knowed very well why they wouldn't come. It was because my heart warn't right; it was because I warn't square; it was because I was playing double. I was letting on to give up sin, but away inside of me I was holding on to the biggest one of all. I was trying to make my mouth say I would do the right thing and the clean thing, and go and write to that nigger's owner and tell where he was; but deep down in me I knowed it was a lie-and He knowed it. You can't pray a lie- I found that out.

So I was full of trouble, full as I could be; and didn't know what to do. At last I had an idea; and I says, I'll go and write the letter- and then see if I can pray. Why, it was astonishing, the way I felt as light as a feather, right straight off, and my troubles all gone. So I got a piece of paper and a pencil, all glad and excited, and set down and wrote:

Miss Watson your runaway nigger Jim is down here two mile below Pikesville
and Mr. Phelps has got him and he will give him up for the reward if you send.
HUCK FINN

I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now. But I didn't do it straight off, but laid the paper down and set there thinking- thinking how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost and going to hell...

It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself:

"All right, then, I'll go to hell"- and tore it up.

It was awful thoughts, and awful words, but they was said. And I let them stay said; and never thought no more about reforming. I shoved the whole thing out of my head; and said I would take up wickedness again, which was in my line, being brung up to it, and the other warn't. And for a starter, I would go to work and steal Jim out of slavery again;
and if I could think up anything worse, I would do that, too;
because as long as I was in, and in for good,
I might as well go the whole hog."
--from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
by Mark Twain

Samuel Clemens on the theme of his book: "A book of mine where a sound heart and a deformed conscience [because of Christian society and the Bible] come into collision, and conscience suffers defeat."

*As a literature teacher for many years, I used some of Clemens' bitter satire and deep ethical insights for a whole unit on the nature of ethics, and the dangers of conscience, duty, and honor.
But I've not written on Twain or his books for a long time.
Thanks to Bruce Gerencser and Infidel753
for bringing up Twain's keen ethical passage this week on their blogs.

**I won't bother with ranting and raving against the bad three, have done that enough in the past here on the blog. And, since encountering their theological and ethical horrors first 55 years ago have virtually driven all my close loved ones to drink;-), especially my patient wife. She, being non-theological and non-philosophical, doesn't worry about what famous leaders and famous Christian denominations teach. Maybe that is why we share a margarita or wine once in a while for dinner. Much better than the bad spirits.

In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

Presuppositions: The Beginning and the End

After many years of trying to reason with those thinkers who claim that ethics are "subjective," that good and bad are relative, that there are no rights, no equality,
it has become clear that one can't reason to what ought to be, to what is true, to justice, and so forth.

This is because from the get-go, those who reject moral realism and claim "it is impossible to figure out ethical truth," that all ethics are "subjective," "nothing but your personal preference," that the Enlightenment is "subjective in the same way,"
do so as presuppositions, not as a conclusion.

When they state, "there is no basis for objective morality," no basis for the abolition of slavery, that slavery is "only wrong if we say its wrong," that opposition to some actions and many behaviors is only an "opinion"--
they are stating all of those points as presuppositions,
not as a conclusion!




Furthermore, many Enlightenment leaders and abolitionists and human rights leaders have the totally contrary presuppositions, from the get-go:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights..."

Even if all conscious life disappeared,
justice, truth, goodness would still exist in the same way that
mathematics would still exist even if there was no one to compute.

Steven Pinker, though, not taking a strong stance on this whole topic in his book, Better Angels of Our Nature, does show how the Enlightenment Declaration of Natural Rights has transformed our world in the last several hundred years.

"I think that the humanitarian movements that have gathered momentum since the Enlightenment will continue to make progress. The burning of heretics, gruesome executions, blood sports, slavery, debtors’ prisons, foot-binding, eunuchism, and wars between developed states won’t make a comeback any time soon."

"Most likely capital punishment, violence against women, human trafficking, the beating and bullying of children, and the persecution of homosexuals will continue to decline, albeit bumpily and unevenly, over a span of decades."
http://stevenpinker.com/pages/frequently-asked-questions-about-better-angels-our-nature-why-violence-has-declined

"...complex, instinctive and worldwide moral intuitions — led Hauser and John Mikhail (a legal scholar) to revive an analogy from the philosopher John Rawls between the moral sense and language."

"According to Noam Chomsky, we are born with a “universal grammar” that forces us to analyze speech in terms of its grammatical structure, with no conscious awareness of the rules in play."

"By analogy, we are born with a universal moral grammar that forces us to analyze human action in terms of its moral structure, with just as little awareness."

"The idea that the moral sense is an innate part of human nature is not far-fetched. A list of human universals collected by the anthropologist Donald E. Brown includes many moral concepts and emotions, including a distinction between
right and wrong; empathy; fairness; admiration of generosity; rights and obligations; proscription of murder, rape and other forms of violence; redress of wrongs; sanctions for wrongs against the community; shame; and taboos."

"The stirrings of morality emerge early in childhood. Toddlers spontaneously offer toys and help to others and try to comfort people they see in distress."

"And according to the psychologists Elliot Turiel and Judith Smetana, preschoolers have an inkling of the difference between societal conventions and moral principles. Four-year-olds say that it is not O.K. to wear pajamas to school (a convention) and also not O.K. to hit a little girl for no reason (a moral principle)."

"But when asked whether these actions would be O.K. if the teacher allowed them, most of the children said that wearing pajamas would now be fine but that hitting a little girl would still not be."

"The only other option is that moral truths exist in some abstract Platonic realm, there for us to discover, perhaps in the same way that mathematical truths (according to most mathematicians) are there for us to discover."



"On this analogy, we are born with a rudimentary concept of number, but as soon as we build on it with formal mathematical reasoning, the nature of mathematical reality forces us to discover some truths and not others."

"(No one who understands the concept of two, the concept of four and the concept of addition can come to any conclusion but that 2 + 2 = 4.)"

"Perhaps we are born with a rudimentary moral sense, and as soon as we build on it with moral reasoning, the nature of moral reality forces us to some conclusions but not others."

"Moral realism, as this idea is called, is too rich for many philosophers’ blood. Yet a diluted version of the idea...is not crazy."

"Two features of reality point any rational, self-preserving social agent in a moral direction. And they could provide a benchmark for determining when the judgments of our moral sense are aligned with morality itself."
"The Moral Instinct" by Steven Pinker
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/magazine/13Psychology-t.html?_r=2&oref=login&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin

"Though I have always had a vague sense that a scientific understanding of human nature was compatible with a robust secular morality, it was only through the intellectual influence of my wife, the philosopher and novelist Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, that I understood the logic connecting them."

"She explained to me how morality can be grounded in rationality, and how secular humanism is just a modern term for the world view that grew out of the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment..."

"...it’s this set of ideas, which I call Enlightenment humanism (pp. 180–183), which has driven it, and it offers the closest thing we have to a unified theory of the decline of violence (pp. 694–696).
http://stevenpinker.com/pages/frequently-asked-questions-about-better-angels-our-nature-why-violence-has-declined
--

But, relavitists immediately reject Pinker's evidence in Better Angels, pointing out that some minority figures of the Enlightenment, such as Jeremy Benthan, rejected the "Declaration of Human Rights."

Benthan called such rights "nonsense on stilts."

In a short essay, Benthan attacked the philosophy of the "Declaration of Independence."

His view was utilitarianism: "It is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong."

Tragically, this view has been used to justify the bombing of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, the use of torture, capital punishment, first-strike war, slavery, and many other forms of injustice.

"We must rid ourselves once and for all of the Quaker...babble about the sanctity of human life."
Leon Trotsky

And I suppose Benthan's utilitarianism could be used for almost any action, if the greatest number of humans would be happier and only a lesser number of losers.

In contrast, the presupposition of innate rights,
holds the view that even if the entire human population
of the globe would be happier by the death of one child

or the torture of one human, such immoral actions wouldn't be justified,
but on the contrary would be inherently unjust, indeed, evil.




Secondly, Benthan wrote in The Principles of Morals and Legislation:

"Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do."

"On the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne. They govern us in all we do..."

But "Nature" hasn't placed humankind..." That is personification.

According to nearly all biologists, evolution has no purpose, no direction, no meaning. It is an unthinking process that can't "place mankind under the governeance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure."

Again, we see that what rules is one's presuppositions.



And I point out the danger when they say, "If a group of people come together and find that they all agree to a common set of moral beliefs, that's a good foundation for building a society" and "The problem is that there's no evidence for objective morality.”

On the contrary, the whole basis of human rights is that equality, justice, etc. aren't based in what any society decides, but on what is true for everyone, universally.

Rights and ethics are, as many Enlightenment leaders stated, "unalienable."

For instance, over 80% of Egyptian parents have agreed that female mutilation of little girls is good and right, but that doesn't make it so.

For hundreds of years Christian and Islamic societies legalized slavery. Mauritania didn't outlaw slavery until 1981. But all of them were founding their actions on views contrary to human rights. Heck, we just sent a letter to Mauritania because it has arrested anti-slavery protesters (allegedly, slavery still is going on there).

That's not a good foundation for any society!

If every human in every society declared, that slavery, rape, mutilation of little girls, inequality, mass slaughter, etc. were right, that wouldn't make it so.

I do admit, however, that equality, justice, rights, and so forth are my presuppositions.

We humans can't get "oughts" from what "is."

Ought by definition is transcendent.

And that is a presupposition.

The Beginning and the End.


In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

"Fox digged out of his Burrows" and other C.Q.H.;-) Fractured As Usual

A city Quaker from an Evangelical Friends church was talking with a Quaker from a Friends meeting in the country. "You are in violation of our Faith and Practice!"

"On the contrary, dear Friend, maybe it would be good if you re-read the words of the son of man. It's in Luke 12:14, "But he said to him, 'Man, who appointed me a judge or arbitrator over you? Beware, and be on your guard against every form of creed;
for not even when one has an abundance does his life consist of his propositions.'”

"What?! I don't remember Jesus saying anything like that in Matthew." The Evangelical grabbed up his Bible and began leafing through the pages.

"Look it up, City Friend. You may think we liberals are country heretics, a bunch of Hicks, but we seek the Light." Then the Friendly farmer walked away smiling.

--

At the Underground Railroad history museum, the guide, a descendant of Levi Coffin, held up a wooden bowl and spoke to a junior high group of teenagers, “This is the very bowl that Levi Coffin’s wife used to feed runaway slaves hidden in a secret compartment in their house.”

Several students, murmured, “Wow,” a few looked bored, and someone loudly whispered, “If only I had my cell phone! I wish--”

“To uh-bowl-ish slavery with that very dish!” interrupted a bright kid in the back.

Some of the teens broke into laughter, and so did the guide.

--

Do you know why the Quaker sailors on Nantucket Island could get their ships cleaned up fast?

They had plenty of mussels.

--

One Quaker student to another:

“Consider how many women among Friends worked for women’s rights based on spiritual truth. For instance, do you remember reading about Susan B. ‘At-the-knee’?" asked the girl in a North Face hiking vest, smiling.

"Sure," said the petite girl next to her, missing the friendly pun.

"She must have kneeled to pray all the time," the North Face girl added, snickering. “Furthermore, think how far we women have progressed since. Why we even have a ‘Hillary’ who is seeking the ‘ever-most’ peak of her career, trying to set a new ‘precedent.’”

“Wait a minute, Hilary’s not a Quaker; she’s a Methodist!”

“Ah, there is madness in my method-dist thee not see;-)?” and the first girl broke out laughing.

--

Did you see the dog kennel in Quakertown, Pennsylvania? The large sign outside proclaims, “There is that of dog in everyone.”

--

"If you don't listen to or play gangsta rap or hip hop, what music do you Friends listen to, then?' asked the skinny teen, tapping time to his I-Pod."

The student from Friends School in North Carolina said, “Oh, Quake and Roll, Quaky Tonk, Quakeabilly, Quakem and Blues, Rapt.”

"Stupid! But I get yer lame jokes, even 'rapt' for 'rap,' except what does 'rapt' have to do with Quakers?

"You need to read The Journal of George Fox or John Woolman and listen to the spiritual songs of Jon Watts! We're talking spiritual rapture, man. Like the dictionary says, 'transported by spiritual feeling'."

--

But sometimes word-play humor in history became mean-spirited. There was a long-titled book ridiculing Quakers by punning their leaders’ names, George Fox and Edward Burroughs.

George Fox digged out of his Burrowes… published in 1676 by Roger Williams

“The old Fox thought it best to run for it, and leave the work to his…” page 5

Burroughs had already died in prison at the age of 29 in 1663. He had been jailed for holding a Quaker meeting. Such religious events were banned by the British government in 1662.

Then the Quakers responded with this long-titled book against Roger Williams:

“A New-England-fire-brand quenched being something in answer unto a lying, slanderous book, entituled, George Fox digged out of his burrows, &c. printed at Boston in the year 1676, of one Roger Williams of Providence in New-England ... : of a dispute upon XIV, of his proposals held and debated betwixt him, the said Roger Williams, on the one part, and John Stubs, William Edmundson, and John Burnyeat on the other at Providence and Newport in Rode-Island, in the year 1672 where his proposals are turn'd upon his own head, and there and here he was and is sufficiently confuted : in two parts : as also, something in answer to R.W.'s Appendix, &c. with a post-script confuting his blasphemous assertions ... : also, the letters of W. Coddington of Rode-Island, and R. Scot of Providence in New-England concerning R.W. and lastly, some testimonies of ancient & modern authors concerning the light, Scriptures, rule & the soul of men / by George Fox and John Burnyeat. [London: s.n.] 1678.”
http://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A40216.0001.001/1:4?rgn=div1;view=toc
--



In the 'Lightening' Flash of Punness,

Daniel Wilcox

Can Islam, Given Its Violent Past, Become a Religion of Peace?

Can Islam Be Reformed?

Yes, we know that some Muslims call Islam the religion of peace. And it is a fact that there are probably as many versions of Islam as Christianity, which has thousands of contrary varieties.

And (like its predecessors, Judaism and Christianity) some versions of Islam are more humanistic, but others are
horrifically destructive,
intolerant, and evil.
The latter at present having millions of adherents following the letter of the Qur'an and the Hadiths-- ISIS, HAMAS, Hezbollah, the Taliban, Al Quida, ad nauseum.

And back at the start, Muhammad (c.b.u.h.) ordered 500 to 800 hundred Jewish male prisoners beheaded and then sold their women and children into slavery. Not a good beginning for someone claiming to be the final prophet of God!

Then shortly after Muhammad's death the horrific persecution and bloodletting between Shia and Sunni began. Later in 680 CE occurred the terrible battle at Karbala (now in Iraq).

Then the Islamic jihad swept up through Byzantium into eastern Europe, and eastward all the way to India and westward across Africa and up into western Europe. Why didn't the two wings of this angel of death meet in modern day France?

(Yes, I know that many orthodox Muslims claim that Islam never was a colonizing/conquering religion. But if that is true, how did million of Muslim soldiers get from Medina to France and Austria? That's thousands of miles.)

Why didn't medieval Europe become Muslim?

Because jihad conquerors were finally stopped at Tours, France and Vienna, Austria by the equally vicious Christian forces, and so forth; history has gashed into the present. Millions of dead.

But—the cosmos help us!—let’s cut to the chase.

What about now, this moment, in time?

Can Islam be improved?

Can Islam--the Religion of so much killing for 1,300 years--can that worldview be reformed into a religion of peace?

And if it can, how? And what would be the first steps to do so?

Let's look at its older sister religion, Christianity. Has it been able to transition from the "Jesus Wars"* toward peace and justice?

Traditionally for 1,800 years, Christianity committed the bloodletting of millions of people, and committed nearly constant persecution and acts of intolerance. But then very gradually in some places hopeful changes occurred.

There was the pietistic movement in Germany in the 1700's, John Wesley’s God's love movement in Britain and America, the Brethren Anabaptists opposition to war, the Quakers' emphasis upon equality, and the Unitarian-Universalists rejection of Original Sin and predestinarian damnation of the 19th century.

From those groups and other new beginnings came peace societies, abolition against slavery, women’s rights, prison reform, etc. What great hope!


Is it not possible then, that Islam, despite its own immoral past, could also rethink itself into a hopeful movement of human rights, justice, and peace?


Because after all not all Christians were (or are now) fixated on creedal Christianity's horrific beliefs like the famous American Christian Th.D who wrote that infants at conception are "sinners from conception, guilty and vile worms" and another who wrote, infants at conception are "in essence, evil" and "devil worshipers." Not all Christians think that God ordains every evil and has foreordained most humans to Hell.

Can Muslims reject one of their 6 central tenets: that of Fate/Predestination, too?

from Declaration of Faith (Shahadah)
"Belief in Fate – Everything that happens is the will of Allah and is preordained. Acceptance of fate is an essential element in submitting to the will of Allah"
http://islamicpath.org/pillars-of-islam/

According to the famous Muslim scholar Al-Ghazali,

"Love is to sense a need of the beloved...it is therefore impossible that Allah should love."

What do you think?

Can active Muslims reject this central tenet of Islam?

In the past Christianity tried to change, to get rid of such determinism. But then about 30-40 years ago or so, the huge doctrinal theology returned with a vengeance turning mild ethically-centered Christianity back to the intolerant fatalistic religion of Augustinian-Calvinism.

Since Islam and creedal Christianity are almost identical on fate/determinism/predestination, and so many other similar beliefs and behaviors as Augustinian-Calvinism, such as war, intolerance, injustice, and inequality, and since so many Muslims are turning back to the past's fundamentalistic Islam...

Can this all be reversed?

What do you think?

Here we are.

(My own background experience with Islam: I've traveled through Palestine, stayed with a Muslim family in Nablus, dialogued with Muslims from various contrary branches of the religion for almost 50 years; my wife and I have supported reconciliation, development, and interaction in the Middle East amongst Muslims and others, etc.

Ever since I first engaged Muslims who were demonstrating against Israel, way back in late 1967 at Long Beach State College, I have pondered the nature of Islam read plenty of tomes about the religion (pro and con), read carefully through the Qur'an (in various translations) 1 1/2 times, and read 4 biographies on Muhammad, etc.)

So I am interested in everyone's view, thinking, questions, observations, and judgments on this, (especially practicing Muslims' perspectives).

Can Islam Become a Religion of Peace?

What do you think?

Leave a thoughtful comment, recommend a book, share an experience from your perspective.



In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

*Jesus Wars by Phillip Jenkins, a must read for anyone who wants to understand the nature of Christian history