He sowed terrorism, but what Osama bin Laden hoped to reap was a full-out war of Islam against the modern world. His target was modernism; his bulls-eye was on modern values such as democracy, equality between sexes and social groups, separation of religion and government, sexual freedom, and affluence. He hoped to use anger against heavy-handed American and European support of Israel (and against US military interventions in the middle east) in order to galvanize Muslims to join in asymmetrical warfare against the “modern” infidels. His ultimate goal: restore medieval theocracy, an Islamic Caliphate.

The past few months have made it evident that he has failed. We have seen the beginnings of a general revolution breaking out in the Muslim world—not against modernism but for it. This is the opposite of what bin Laden had in mind. As Juan Cole writes,

Usama Bin Laden was a violent product of the Cold War and the Age of Dictators in the Greater Middle East. He passed from the scene at a time when the dictators are falling or trying to avoid falling in the wake of a startling set of largely peaceful mass movements demanding greater democracy and greater social equity. Bin Laden dismissed parliamentary democracy, for which so many Tunisians and Egyptians yearn, as a man-made and fallible system of government, and advocated a return to the medieval Muslim caliphate (a combination of pope and emperor) instead. Only a tiny fringe of Muslims wants such a theocratic dictatorship. The masses who rose up this spring mainly spoke of “nation,” the “people,” “liberty” and “democracy,” all keywords toward which Bin Laden was utterly dismissive.

Today, nearly a decade after his triumph on 9-11, he has been erased from the scene. It’s too much to hope that al Qaeda and Islamic suicide terrorism have suddenly come to an end. But perhaps we can see a bit of sunrise. Perhaps this is the beginning of the end of what bin Laden tried to sow.

So Huckabee wants to amend the Constitution to make it properly subservient to God and his divine standards. He doesn’t exactly say what standards he has in mind, at least it’s not reported here

I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution,” Huckabee told a Michigan audience on Monday. “But I believe it’s a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living god. And that’s what we need to do—to amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards rather than try to change God’s standards so it lines up with some contemporary view.

Perhaps he’d like us to imitate the current Iraq Constitution, with it’s long religious preamble and enshrinement of Sharia, in contrast to what Americans currently have. . .

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

And

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.

Hmmm. That’s so secular. Didn’t the founders know about the importance of basing our government on God’s standards? Did they forget we are supposed to be a Christian nation? Well, there’s always the amendments to pull God out of the hat, right?

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

That pretty much sums up what the Constitution has to say about God and religion. Which is why from the beginning scholars and historians—not to mention the founders themselves—have maintained that the Constitution enshrines the principle of separation of church and state. After the Constitutional Convention finished its work, the Constitution was sent to the state legislatures for ratification. There was vigorous debate across the country, and it wasn’t missed by some Christians that the Constitution never mentioned God. When one woman confronted Alexander Hamilton about why God had been left out, Hamilton replied “Madam, we forgot!”

He was being facetious. The omission was intentional. It was thoroughly vetted, it was thoroughly debated; then the respective state legislatures endorsed the wording of the Constitution and it became the supreme law of the land.

When we look at the debates of which we have record, we see that as far as religion was concerned the biggest worry from opponents was that the Constitution didn’t specifically prevent an establishment of religion (a concern that would find its answer in the 1st amendment).

True enough, some had other worries. With “no religious test” for office allowed, a few opponents objected that a Jew, an atheist, a Mahometan (Muslim), a Catholic—god forbid, even the Pope—might be elected President. (Yes, this worry was actually expressed by opponents in the North Carolina legislature). Proponents made short work of such objections. An effort in Virginia to require belief in God was also turned down.

Equally unsuccessful was the Virginia initiative in April and May 1788 to change the wording of Article 6 itself. “No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office of public trust under the United Stares” became “no other religious test shall ever be required than a belief in the one only true God, who is the rewarder of the good, and the punisher of the evil.” This change was rejected. –The Godless Constitution: the Case Against Religious Correctness by Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore. W. W. Norton & Company New York/London.(1996) pp 37

And yes, a few Christians of the time echoed the complaint so often heard from evangelicals today: our nation needs to be based on God’s authority, not man’s, and the Constitution needs to say so explicitly. One example occurred in Connecticut in February of 1788, and the vigorous defense of the Constitution’s secular nature which followed makes plain, I believe, the Enlightenment temper of the times.

William Williams (whose prior opposition to the “no religious test” clause had apparently drawn strong reply), wrote a letter published Feb 11 in the Hartford American Mercury defending his objection (although he admitted “I would not wish to make it a capital objection”) to the clause. All he had intended to argue, he explained, was that the only religious test should be belief in God. Williams wrote,

When the clause in the 6th Article, which provides that “no religious test should ever be required as a qualification to any office Or trust, etc.” came under consideration, I observed I should have chose that sentence, and anything relating to a religious test, had been totally omitted rather than stand as it did; but still more wished something of the kind should have been inserted, but with a reverse sense so far as to require an explicit acknowledgment of the being of a God, His perfections, and His providence, and to have been prefixed to, and stand as, the first introductory words of the Constitution in the following or similar terms, viz.: We the people of the United Slates, in a firm belief of the being and perfections of the one living and true God, the creator and supreme Governor of the world, in His universal providence and the authority of His laws: that He will require of all moral agents an account of their conduct, that all rightful powers among men are ordained of, and mediately derived from God, therefore in a dependence on His blessing and acknowledgment of His efficient protection in establishing our Independence, whereby it is become necessary to agree upon and settle a Constitution of federal government for ourselves, and in order to form a more perfect union, etc., as it is expressed in the present introduction, do ordain, etc. And instead of none, that no other religious test should ever he required, etc. —The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution, Vol. III. Ratification of the Constitution by the States Delaware, New Jersey, Georgia, Connecticut, Edited by Merrill Jensen, Madison State Historical Society of Wis, 1978, pp 588-590

Huckabee, I imagine, and many of our current evangelicals, would heartily endorse Williams’ call to amend the preamble so that it acknowledges God in such fashion. So too, I suppose, would the Mullahs in Iraq. Nevertheless, this suggestion went nowhere in 1788. To understand why, I’d like to quote from a hearty reply Williams got from someone named Elihu*.

Should any body of men, whose characters were unknown to me, form a plan of government, and prologue it with a long pharisaical harangue about God and religion, I should suspect a design to cheat and circumvent us, and their cant, and semblance of superior sanctity would be the ground of my suspicion. If they have a plan founded on good sense, wisdom, and experience, what occasion have they to make use of God, His providence, or religion, like old cunning monks to gain our assent to what is in itself rational and just?

Elihu continued

“There must be (tis objected) some proof, some evidence that we the people acknowledge the being of a God.” Is this a thing that wants proof? Is this a thing that wants constitutional establishment in the United States? It is almost the only thing that all universally are agreed in; everybody believes there is a God; not a man of common sense in the United States denies or disbelieves it.

This was probably true. In the 1780s, atheism in the former colonies was extremely rare if not bordering on non-existent. At any rate, argued Elihu, no Constitutional test for belief in God was required.

The fool hath said in his heart there is no God, but was there ever a wise man said such a thing? No, not in any age or in any country. Besides, if it was not so, if there were unbelievers, as it is a matter of faith, it might as well be admitted; for we are not to bind the consciences of men by laws or constitutions.

The mind is free; it may be convinced by reasoning, but cannot be compelled by laws or constitutions, no, nor by fire, faggot, or the halter.

We can forgive Elihu for not anticipating that the scientific study of geology, biology and genetics—and, yes, the theory of evolution—would eventually make atheism respectable among the best-educated Americans of the 20th and 21st centuries. As it turns out, it is wise men and women, not fools, who today are most likely to disbelieve.

Elihu finished his reply with words that could be as easily directed at the Huckabees and theocrats of our day as at the opponents of the Constitution 220 years ago.

The time has been when nations could be kept in awe with Stories of gods sitting with legislators and dictating laws; with this lure, cunning politicians have established their own power on the credulity of the people; shackling their uninformed minds with incredible tales. But the light of philosophy has arisen in these latter days, miracles have ceased, oracles are silenced, monkish darkness is dissipated, and even witches at last hide their heads. Mankind are no longer to be deluded with fable. Making the glory of God subservient to the temporal interest of men is a worn out trick, and a pretense to superior sanctity and special grace will not much longer promote weakness over the head of wisdom.

A low mind may imagine that God, like a foolish old man, will think himself slighted and dishonored if he is not complimented with a seat or a prologue of recognition in the Constitution, but those great philosophers who formed the Constitution had a higher idea of the perfection of that INFINITE MIND which governs all worlds than to suppose they could add to his honor or glory, or that He would be pleased with such low familiarity or vulgar flattery.

Elihu ends on a note of elegance comparable with what might have come from the pen of a Madison or Paine or Jefferson.

The most shining part, the most brilliant circumstance in honor of the framers of the Constitution is their avoiding all appearance of craft, declining to dazzle even the superstitious by a hint about grace or ghostly knowledge. They come to us in the plain language of common sense and propose to our understanding a system of government as the invention of mere human wisdom; no deity comes down to dictate it, nor even a God appears in a dream to propose any part of it. —The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution, Vol. III. Ratification of the Constitution by the States Delaware, New Jersey, Georgia, Connecticut, Edited by Merrill Jensen, Madison State Historical Society of Wis, 1978, pp 590-592

* Postscript: It seems plausible to me that “Elihu” was in fact Elihu Palmer (1764-1806) who in 1787 graduated from Dartmouth, where he had trained to become a Presbyterian minister.  Palmer, who lost his eyesight after a bout with yellow fever in 1793, founded the Deistical Society of New York, started two newspapers (The Temple of Reason in 1800, and Prospect, or View of the Moral World in 1803), and wrote a book explaining his views, Principles of Nature; or a Development of the Moral Causes of Happiness and Misery among the Human Species. Despite being blind, he was apparently well-known (although controversial) in Philadelphia and New York as a public speaker and writer.

Another possibility, I think, is that Elihu was a pseudonym used by none other than Joel Barlow, the poet and diplomat who would later draft the Treaty of Tripoli (with its famous phrase, “As the government of the United States of America is not founded in any sense on the Christian religion…”). Barlow, together with Elisha Babcock, started the American Mercury (where the above exchange occurred) in 1784. Like Palmer, Barlow became a Deist. While Thomas Paine was in prison during the Reign of Terror, Barlow helped him publish the first part of Age of Reason.

Elihu’s full essay can be read here.

The United States has virtually no domestic problem that couldn’t be quickly resolved by freeing up that much wasted spending. We could push for treaties eliminating all nuclear, biological and chemical weapons (including our own, of course) and still have the greatest military on earth many times over. Eliminating weapons of mass destruction from the world’s arsenals would make us far safer than we are today (after all, Star Wars will never be a reliable defense), save us hundreds of billions, and allow us to invest the savings in ourselves and our economic future. Yet, as Greenwald points out, the major candidates in both political parties are unwilling — probably afraid — to propose the slightest cut in military expenditures.

Unless the United States can reign in what Eisenhower called the “military-industrial-congressional complex” its status as the world’s greatest economic power will come to an end during the 21st century. And with economic collapse, its military collapse will shortly follow.

Why is it that the most Christian of the worlds great nations is also the most militaristic? What is it about church-going Christians which makes them so eager to put money into warfare? The answer, I suspect, is fear. Fearful people become Christians in the first place, and Christianity — perhaps more than other religions — preys on fear in order to gain followers. Fear of death, fear of future punishment, fear of angering God. Add to that fear of other countries, fear of one’s enemies.

The result? A self-defeating blindness that leads to a monomania of investing in armaments and armies. Even when the nation’s weaknesses lie elsewhere.

These Christians, who generally call themselves evangelicals and fundamentalists because they take the fundamental tenets of their religion seriously, have managed to become powerful enough to dominate the Republican party and in 2000 they elected* one of their own as President of the United States. Within a year, this very Christian President began laying out plans for torturing his enemies.

Christianity and torture have, unfortunately, a long historical association. Indeed, the Spanish Inquisition perfected many of the most famous torture techniques, including waterboarding. You might think that Christians would be eager to strand Christianity’s associations with torture in the distant middle ages. You would think wrongly. Under the champion of Christianity residing in the White House, torture of prisoners became the official policy** of the U. S. Government.

It is difficult to write calmly about what has recently been done under the auspicies of the United States of America — difficult to avoid the intense anger and shame I feel as an American. But in the face of the Bush administration, anger and shame are unavoidable for anyone who cherishes civilized society. What is shocking is the extent to which evangelical and fundamentalist Christians embrace what Bush has done, much like the Holy See embraced the Inquisition.

I am no Christian, yet I am shamed by the way American Christians have embraced torture and other odious, uncivilized and unAmerican policies of the Bush Republicans. The evidence for the torture policy was obvious in 2004 — yet Bush was reelected. Reelected, it has to be pointed out, primarily due to the support of the most dedicated Christians. We must not forget that those who attended church regularly overwhelmingly supported Bush despite his policies, while those who rarely or only occasionally attended church opposed him.

This is a colossal moral failure on the part of American Christianity. Amazingly, among church-attending Christians there is little question about abortion’s immorality, but much doubt about whether torture is immoral. Or if torture is admitted to be wrong, it is denied that “simulated drowning” is torture. When pressed, Bush supporters have equated waterboarding with merely being dunked in water a bit — and who could object to that? Yet, everyone knows full well that the entire point of waterboarding (the water cure it used to be called) is to create the experience of drowning in the subject. As described by former Judge Advocate General Evan Wallach,

the victim experiences the sensations of drowning: struggle, panic, breath-holding, swallowing, vomiting, taking water into the lungs and, eventually, the same feeling of not being able to breathe that one experiences after being punched in the gut. The main difference is that the drowning process is halted. — “Waterboarding Used to be a Crime”, Washington Post, Nov. 4, 2007

Or consider the description by Scylla at StraightDope.com who tried waterboarding hmself,

The water fills the hole in the saran wrap so that there is either water or vaccum in your mouth. The water pours into your sinuses and throat. You struggle to expel water periodically by building enough pressure in your lungs. With the saran wrap though each time I expelled water, I was able to draw in less air. Finally the lungs can no longer expel water and you begin to draw it up into your respiratory tract.

It seems that there is a point that is hardwired in us. When we draw water into our respiratory tract to this point we are no longer in control. All hell breaks loose. Instinct tells us we are dying.

I have never been more panicked in my whole life. Once your lungs are empty and collapsed and they start to draw fluid it is simply all over. You know you are dead and it’s too late. Involuntary and total panic.

There is absolutely nothing you can do about it. It would be like telling you not to blink while I stuck a hot needle in your eye.

At the time my lungs emptied and I began to draw water, I would have sold my children to escape. There was no choice, or chance, and willpower was not involved.

I never felt anything like it, and this was self-inflicted with a watering can, where I was in total control and never in any danger.

And I understood.

Waterboarding gets you to the point where you draw water up your respiratory tract triggering the drowning reflex. Once that happens, it’s all over.

. . . . So, is it torture?

I’ll put it this way. If I had the choice of being waterboarded by a third party or having my fingers smashed one at a time by a sledgehammer, I’d take the fingers, no question. – Scylla at StraightDope.com

It is tempting make the assumption that Christianity’s lack of moral compass on issues like torture is due to its flawed doctrines. Christians believe in a “perfect” God who, it so happens, will torture most people in hell for an eternity. To reconcile this with “perfection” requires a perversity of mind unimaginable to me, though hundreds of millions of Christians seem to have no problem with it. Apparently they reason that if God does it, and if God is perfect, then torture can’t be so bad, can it? So torture becomes acceptable, even respectable.

Still, one might ask, how can decent human beings ever end up there? Are Dawkins and Hutchings and Harris right? Is religion essentially an evil enterprise, one which warps the human mind and subverts decency? Sometimes it seems that way, I admit.

But the better explanation, the one that makes most sense to me, is the one provided by psychologist Bob Altemeyer in his book The Authoritarians and endorced by John Dean in his book Conservatives without Conscience and his Findlaw Writ columns. Altemeyer’s studies explain how it is possible for dedicated Christians to become the least morally grounded of all Americans. It happens not because they are Christians or even because they are religious, but because they have a personality trait which certain religions both encourage and attract.

In my opinion, The Authoritarians is a must-read book. You can download it as a PDF, or order it here. Nothing else more clearly reveals the nature of the problem facing us.

——— Footnotes ———

* “elected”– or more accurately mis-elected. In the Supreme Court’s worst moment, its decision in Bush v Gore tossed aside the provisions in the U. S. Constitution for handling Presidential elections (as if the Constitution had nothing to do with the process) and prevented the State of Florida from following the laws set up by its Legislature for choosing Presidential electors. Had the Constitution been followed Bush would likely have become President anyway — but it would have happened constitutionally, a process the religious conservatives on the Court were afraid to trust.

** “official policy” — according to John Kiriakou, a CIA agent involved in torturing prisoners for the Bush Administration. As Scott Horton wrote in Harpers

But this week, a CIA agent, John Kiriakou, appeared, first on ABC News and then in an interview with NBC’s Matt Lauer, and explained just how the system works. When we want to torture someone (and it is torture he said, no one involved with these techniques would ever think anything different), we have to write it up. The team leader of the torture team proposes what torture techniques will be used and when. He sends it to the Deputy Chief of Operations at the CIA. And there it is reviewed by the hierarchy of the Company. Then the proposal is passed to the Justice Department to be reviewed, blessed, and it is passed to the National Security Council in the White House, to be reviewed and approved. The NSC is chaired, of course, by George W. Bush, whose personal authority is invoked for each and every instance of torture authorized. And, according to Kiriakou as well as others, Bush’s answer is never “no.” He has never found a case where he didn’t find torture was appropriate. Here’s a key piece of the Kiriakou statement:

LAUER: Was the White House involved in that decision?

KIRIAKOU: Absolutely, this isn’t something done willy nilly. It’s not something that an agency officer just wakes up in the morning and decides he’s going to carry out an enhanced technique on a prisoner. This was a policy made at the White House, with concurrence from the National Security Council and Justice Department. — “The President’s Coming Out Party”, Harpers, Dec 15, 2007

Horton goes on to observe that the Bush administration has resurrected

the process of official cruelty under the Stuart monarchs in seventeenth century England. Persons accused of state crimes very frequently were interrogated with the use of specific techniques, including the rack, the thumbscrew, and waterboarding. King James I personally described the process in The Kings Booke (1606). He would, on the advice of his officers, “approve no new torture,” but he would certainly avail himself of the existing practices. In ascending order of severity they were: thumbscrews, the rack and waterboarding. That’s right. Waterboarding was considered the most severe of the official forms of torture. Worse than the rack and thumbscrews.

In the depraved humor of Dick Cheney, of course, it’s just bobbing for apples at a Halloween Fair. — “The President’s Coming Out Party”, Harpers, Dec 15, 2007

This is the face of American Christianity today. Are Christians ashamed? Or will they continue as a group to support the Republicans who have brought us to this point?

The problem is that the U.N. Human Rights Council’s wording is so broad that it condemns not just biases against people of various religious traditions, but any “defamation” of the content of those religious traditions. Instead of defending, this betrays human rights. As Brown wrote,

We believe that the Council resolutions combating defamation of religions are inappropriate and misguided. It is people that merit protection, Mr President, not their beliefs. We would suggest that member States would do better to consider a resolution combating religious obstruction to the enjoyment of human rights.

Brown pointed out that religion is often the enemy of human rights, and the resolution seems to support local laws which protect religion from being criticized on that point.

In our work of promoting reproductive health and rights we often find ourselves being opposed by religious leaders. In our programs for sex education for young people in Africa it is more often than not the churches who oppose us, believing that ignorance in matters of human reproduction is better than knowledge. In Africa, many campaigns for AIDS prevention have been cut back or replaced entirely by religiously-inspired and totally ineffective campaigns promoting abstinence only – in a continent where abstinence is simply not an option for many young girls. And we actually find some church leaders telling lies about the efficacy of condoms in the fight against HIV/AIDS.

In March this year we presented to the Council a paper on the cruel practice of child marriage [A/HRC/4/NGO/84] . In some countries we are told that this blight on the lives of young girls has divine sanction, and that to criticise it is tantamount to blasphemy – defamation of religion.

I’m glad the IHEU has seconded her on thi.

In a not unrelated matter, the IHEU has also criticized the U.N. Special Report on Islamophobia, calling the report by the U.N. Special Rapporteur “seriously flawed”. The idea behind the report is to criticize hatred and bias against Muslims which has been rearing up in Europe and elsewhere. But like the resolution against defamation of religion, the report fails to distinguish between belief systems and the people who hold to them.

As I quoted Brown earlier, “It is people that merit protection…not their beliefs.” The U. N. Special Rapporteur, explains the IHEU letter,

… fails to distinguish between, on the one hand, Islamophobia, which he defines as “baseless hostility and fear vis-à-vis Islam”, and on the other, legitimate concerns regarding the rise of Islamic extremism.

Furthermore, IHEU points out something so obvious that it should never have to be pointed out to any “Human Rights Council”, namely that the radical Islam which has become ascendant in many parts of the world is an enemy of human rights, including the right to freedom of religious belief, but also the right to kiss in public, the right of women to drive cars or teach in schools or even show their faces in public, the right to dance with someone of the opposite sex or play modern music — the list, ridiculous as it is, goes on and on.

Secondly, he fails to recognise the important differences that exist between the Islamic and modern European worldviews; differences that need to be addressed if increasing tension is to be avoided. Rather than dismissing Europe’s defence of its identity, which he describes as ‘based on intangible “values”‘ in scare quotes, he should recognise that these values are neither intangible nor exclusively “European”. They include, inter alia, the dignity and autonomy of the individual, equality of the sexes, democracy, and human rights – surely the very rights that this Council should be seeking to defend.

I have no doubt that many in the U. N. are frightened by the hostile state of affairs which currently exists between Christians and Muslims, and they desire to the stave off the rhetoric about WWIII which rolls so easily off the lips of both Christian Presidents and al Qaeda mullahs today.

The neo-Conservative goal of militarily overthrowing conservative Islamic regimes throughout the middle east was doomed from the start because of neo-Conservatives’ fundamental inability to understand human nature. When under attack or the stress of warfare, people become frightened and religious, and in fact more fanatical. Attacking the middle east the way the U. S. has exacerbates the problem of Islamic radicalism. It’s the opposite of a solution.

But that doesn’t change the fact that Islam is a threat to human rights in every country in which it is dominant if that nation lacks adequate separation of religion and state. We don’t need the U.N. or its Human Rights Council to forget why it exists. Not now and not ever.

However, there’s no scientific controversy between evolution and ID; therefore no appropriate way to present the controversy in science class. ID relies on abandoning the scientific method and declaring that despite all the scientific evidence, evolution (at least macro-evolution) does not occur.

There is a controversy, of course. But it’s not a scientific controversy.

Now it’s true that ID could be brought up in science class in the context of explaining the scientific method — ID could serve as an example of what the scientific method does not look like. But that would be unfair to ID, for it is at heart a philosophical outlook, not a scientific one.

“Teaching the controversy,” teaching it right and doing so fairly, requires doing something long overdue: adding philosophy to the high school curriculum. Not, mind you, to teach Plato, Aristotle, Socrates and the boring same ol’ same ol’. Rather, add philosophy to the curriculum in order to engage students in an intelligent fashion in the burning controversy of our times: the debate between naturalism and supernaturalism. That really is what animates the proponents of ID.

The central tenet of supernaturalism is that some pre-existing intelligence or mind is the cause of physical existence, including brains. The central tenet of naturalism in contrast is that physical brains, themselves a product of natural evolution, are the cause of intelligence and mind. This is a debate which has consequences and matters to people, so why not bring it to school where it can be utilized in teaching reasoning skills.

I don’t harbor any illusions that most high schools students are going to find naturalism more appealing than supernaturalism. Nor do I harbor the illusion that our society would allow naturalism to be presented in a adequate fashion in any high school textbook today, but that is ok. Engage students in the subject and they’ll fill in the missing points and arguments themselves over the course of their lives. Getting that process started — even if imperfectly — is what counts.

To create the necessary conditions requires the presence of a dangerous, virtually undefeatable enemy. Satan, who is so powerful that God apparently needs our assistance to defeat him, fits the bill perfectly. And the devil is the sort of ubiquitous, wily adversary that can’t help but make believers paranoid at every momentary lapse from the battle, at every voice that isn’t an obvious paean to God.

That is the real reason we invaded Iraq. It is the reason we threaten Iran today with two major carrier groups sitting in the Gulf ready for attack. Fundamentalism relies on struggle with a dangerous adversary. The state of the world in 2007 is the direct result of putting a fundamentalist in the White House and giving him the most powerful position in the world.

After the destruction of the World Trade Center in 2001, nearly every country on earth offered to help the United States in the effort to find and capture the terrorists behind it. The offer of assistance came even from Iraq and Iran. In the case of Iran, their interests and ours meshed well together. The Taliban who ruled Afghanistan had long been a thorn in their side – there was no love lost between the leaders of Iran and the leaders of Afghanistan. The Taliban tolerated and even seemed to support not just al Qaeda but also anti-Iranian terrorist groups like MEC.

Iranian/US cooperation against terrorists operating in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Middle East seemed natural, and the Iranian government made overtures to the Bush Administration to set up just such an arrangement. There is a poem by Edwin Markham that perfectly encapsulates the opportunity that was suddenly available.

He drew a circle that shut me out
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout
But love and I had the wit to win
We drew a circle that took him in

The tragedy of 9-11 had a silver lining: it created an ideal opportunity to bring former enemies together in a spirit of cooperation against a common enemy. That enemy, suicide Islamic terrorism, was being condemned even in Tehran and Baghdad, and civilized people of all religions including Islam wanted to join us in stamping it out.

But that, unfortunately, would have left an adversary too small and weak to satisfy the needs of the fundamentalism inhabiting the White House. One can’t be involved with God in a cosmic struggle if the enemy is minor and easily defeated. Where’s the fear, the risk, the paranoia necessary to make people reject creature comforts and pleasures, the bodily satisfactions of life on earth, and embrace heaven?

You see, that is the fundamental challenge of afterlife. How to get people to stop loving the good things of the body, the social pleasures of food and sex and the genial enjoyment of the company of others, and get them to turn their allegiance toward what comes after death? Love, in all its forms, naturally draws us toward the embodiment of life, toward each other as body-beings.

To transfer our allegiance elsewhere, fundamentalism has to find a way to break people up, replace love with strife, condemn bodily pleasures as “sin”, create exclusive circles to drive people apart, divide human loyalties between “us” and “them”. Only by creating inordinate fear and dissonance is it possible to re-make something as undesirable as death into something to be worshipped.

That’s all heaven is: death marketed as something wonderful.

Death is eternal all right. Non-existence is the only thing that can be eternal. Call it heaven, give it wings and violins, declare the wasteland of non-existence “paradise”: that is what the cult of afterlife is all about.

Life, on the other hand, can only be temporary. Pleasures must be temporary or else they would cease to remain pleasurable, would become tedious and eventually a nightmare. Imagine having sex and being forced at the moment of orgasm to endure that sensation constantly and unchanging for weeks, years, centuries, a million billion centuries. It would utterly destroy the pleasure of it. It would transform the initially wonderful sensation into nothing less than torture.

Pleasure has to be temporary to be pleasurable. Life must be fleeting to be wonderful. We have to be able to die and cease to exist in order for life to be valuable and good for us. That is the simple reality. And our lives are good, our pleasures are supremely wonderful.

But fundamentalism has to find a way to make us forget that. It has to sabotage our human desires and pleasures. Has to, because fundamentalism is committed to worshipping not our existence but our non-existence, and calling it heaven.

It is not easy to make human beings turn against life, but fundamentalism has been successful at doing so. The fundamentalists who flew planes into the Pentagon and World Trade Center were so turned.

The trick is to create a climate of fear and paranoia peppered with the threat of a virtually undefeatable enemy, a Satan, a devil incarnate. That is what is required in order to motivate human beings sufficiently enough that they will abandon the pleasure of life for the mirage of afterlife. It is the modus operandi of fundamentalism.

And that is why the fundamentalist in the White House has positioned two carrier groups in the Gulf armed and ready to pummel Iran. It is why the administration manufactured a reason to invade Iraq four years ago. Fundamentalism must have as frightening an adversary as possible in order to turn us against life.

I doubt President Bush or the fundamentalists in his administration even understand their need for a powerful enemy. If they understood their actions, if they comprehended the fear and paranoia which pushes them to draw circles to shut others out and create enemies, that itself would be a step toward self-enlightenment.

It might even be a step toward comprehending the fundamental flaw of the cult of afterlife.

‘A featured speaker, Franklin Graham, who delivered George Bush’s first inaugural prayer, was introduced. . . .

The “heart” of Graham’s speech was a call for holy war. He preached about the “battle for souls of men and women from North to South, East to West, over the entire earth.” There is, he declared, “No way to God but through Jesus Christ.”‘

Franklin Graham and Ron Luce seem to be off the same religious block as Charles Stanley, head of the First Baptist Church in Atlanta and former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, who declared in a sermon that “God is in favor of war” during the propaganda run-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Taylor continues,

‘Graham told the biblical story of Daniel “taming the Babylonians.” After celebrating the U.S. troops who are killing in Iraq right now, he preached that there is “no difference between the Iraqis today and Babylon 1,000 years ago.” In the Bible Babylon is the epitome of evil and decadence. All manner of bloodlust and plunder against it is not just condoned but celebrated. As Psalm 137:9 spells out, even the babies are to be dashed to death against the rocks!

While calling on the youth present to engage in this “battle for the souls of men,” he exhorts them, “No souls can be saved without the shedding of blood. Blood must be shed!”

Then, a group of Navy SEALs are projected on the large screen above the stadium as they make their way from backstage. Dressed in camouflage, carrying automatic weapons, kicking down doors and firing blanks into empty rooms along their way, they looked like the house-to-house raids and indiscriminate killing seen in rare footage out of Iraq.

Fireworks exploded and flames billowed as Ron Luce greeted, bragging that all of these men have been involved in real battles. They are part of FORCE Ministries, which conducts Bible studies at military bases around the world and is made up of current and retired SEALs, law enforcement, and other military who preach the Gospel. Among those on stage, one is a SEAL just back from Afghanistan and another was a member of a police SWAT team. All of them are trained to kill and do so believing God is sanctioning them.

One of the SEALs told about boot camp and being forced to surrender his entire will to the demands of his instructor. Luce stepped in to tell the audience, “That is your youth pastor. He’s going to make you a SEAL for Christ.” Of course, the great Commander of this religious army is God who issues his foot-soldiers armor-”a shield of faith, a belt of truth, and boots of preparedness”-as well as “offensive weapons” like the “sword of the spirit” and the “word of God.”

This merging of “God’s Army” and the U.S. military returns full circle to the event’s opening when a letter of greeting and blessings from George W. Bush was read. After that, a minister had led thousands to bow their heads and thank the lord for giving them George Bush, who coincidentally is the U.S.’s Commander-in-Chief.”‘

It would appear that the goal is to create a mass movement to transform American into a theocracy and the U. S. Military into an “Army of God”. Although Islam may be the ultimate target, the immediate target is gays & lesbians, abortion, birth control, and our modern secular society in general.

See http://www.counterpunch.com/taylor05232006.html for Sunsara Taylor’s full article.

“radical conservative activists have used fudged and sometimes flatly false data to persuade the government to promote their agenda of abstinence until marriage. The fallout: Young women now read false data on government websites, learn bogus information in federally funded sex-education programs and struggle to get safe, legal contraceptives.”

Perhaps even more shocking are efforts by the anti-sex crowd to prevent release of Merck’s new vaccine Gardasil, which protects women from cervical cancer. Why? Because it would take away one of their (misleading) arguments against condoms: namely, that condom use doesn’t protect against HPV and that HPV causes cervical cancer.

“The public should be outraged at this misrepresentation of facts for political reasons,” says Dr. Holmes. “This really reveals the true agenda for those who have argued that the reason for not promoting condoms is to protect girls against HPV.” If you truly cared about HPV prevention, his reasoning goes, you’d be thrilled at the advent of a vaccine to save women’s lives. “It really illustrates that the opposition to condoms has nothing to do with protecting women and girls,” he says, “but everything to do with opposition to discussion of sexual health.”

“The new lies about women’s health” by Brian Alexander, Glamour, Apr 3, 2006

The latest example of a design “oversight” in humans was reported yesterday by EurekAlert!. Researchers at the Univ. of Calif San Diego School of Medicine have discovered the existence of certain T-cell molecules called “Siglecs”, “immune-dampening proteins that bind to sialic acids” which

“. . . regulate T cell activation in chimpanzees [and other non-human primates] by restricting the degree of signaling from the T cell receptor, which normally triggers the response of T cells in the immune system.

“Siglecs are like ‘brakes’ that can slow down the activation of an immune cell upon stimulation,” said Ajit Varki, M.D., UCSD Professor of Medicine and Cellular and Molecular Medicine and co-director of UCSD Glycobiology Research and Training Center. “During human evolution, we seem to have shut off these brakes on our T cells, allowing them to become hyper-active.”

The result is that primates other than humans have built-in protection against autoimmune diseases which result from hyper-active T-cells.

“The study raises warning flags about the stimulatory and potentially destructive potential of the absence of Siglec molecules in human T cells, compared to chimpanzees and other nonhuman primate counterparts.

This may explain some major differences in susceptibility to certain diseases between humans and great apes. One example is the lack of progression to AIDS in the great majority of chimpanzees infected with HIV virus. It could also account for the rarity of T-cell mediated liver damage, such as chronic active hepatitis, cirrhosis and cancer, following Hepatitis B or C infection in chimpanzees. In addition, several other common human T cell-mediated diseases, including bronchial asthma, rheumatoid arthritis and type 1 diabetes, have, so far, not been reported in chimpanzees or other great apes.”

From an ID perspective you would have to say that God created chimps, bonobos and gorillas with special protection against auto-immune diseases, but “forgot” to provide humans with the same protection.

Or maybe in His infinite goodness He was just punishing us. In which case God might less aptly be considered ID than MD (malevolent designer).

A synposis of the study can be found here.