Diversity Run Amok?

Seems there is a controversy in Minneapolis where certain Muslim taxi drivers are refusing to carry passengers that have alcohol in their luggage. According to a recent article in the Star Tribune by Katherine Kersten, the problem involves Somali cab drivers who do not want to carry passengers who have alcohol. She notes that the issue in part has to do with conflicting interpretations of the Koran by different Muslim groups and that the current problem stems from a fatwah issued by the Minnesota chapter of Muslim American Society.

This may seem like a minor issue, but it is really quite similar to the controversy about the "rights" of medical personal to refuse to dispense birth control or do some legal procedure that is against their religion. To me the issue is quite simple. We live in a secular society and it has been against the law for some time now to discriminate in public accommodations and in public transactions based on religious preferences.

To me this means if someone comes to you for your service, you do not have an automatic right to refuse to offer the service just because something about that person or that person's choices offends you. You do not have to approve of their choices but you need to provide the services, unless you have some safety or other legitimate medical consern about providing the service. The cabbies would, for instance, be well within their rights to refuse service to some one drinking or disrupting the peace, just as a pharmacist can refuse to dispense medicines for which a person does not have a valid prescription or a doctor can refuse to do a medically dangerous procedure.

Some might say, let the free market decide and on the surface that seems OK. But let's imagine a different situation. I hail a cab and just happen to be carrying a copy of Richard Dawkins the God Delusion. Would a Fundamentalist Christian cabbie be able to refuse me service? Most of the nation is Christian so were we to let market forces decide the issue then I might have difficulty getting a ride. We have anti discrimination laws precisely because market forces don't always work. They don't always protect the minority or the individual in what ought to be economic transactions or from violations of core American beliefs.

Not convinced? Well here is another example. On my campus we have a group of Christians who belong to Campus Crusade for Christ. Quite frankly I find their theology quite offensive personally and I know they find my theology equally offensive. Should I have the right to demand that they not advertise on campus because they offend me or some other subset of the campus community? Of course not, any more than they have the right to demand that gay groups, such as the college LGBT club be removed.

We live in a secular society: one that tries to balance respect for individual beliefs with protection of individual rights in public accomodation-transportation, education, services, and housing. It is this core value that most (I wish I could say all) Americans understand. It is this celebrating this sort of core value that we celebrate when we talk about diversity as something to celebrate. You don't have to approve of someone else's beliefs, but in our society you need to interact impartially with all the people you contact.

Links to articles about this case and the role of Muslims in America:

As an aside, much of the criticism of the cabbies seems driven by conservative fears about Muslims rather than conservative commitment to a secular society! So I detect just a hint of hypocrisy and fear mongering in some of these articles and blogs. After all Sharia is to be feared but this sort of thing doesn't raise an eyebrow. Where is Thomas Jefferson when you need him?

http://www.danielpipes.org/article/4058

http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/013737.php

http://www.swlip.com/2006/10/minneapolis_mus.html

http://www.amren.com/mtnews/archives/2006/10/airport_taxi_fl.php

http://counterterrorismblog.org/2006/10/minneapolis_cab_ordinance_rais.php

http://chasblogspot.blogspot.com/2006/10/socialists-multiculturalists-and-trust.html

http://www.foxnews.com/wires/2006Sep29/0,4670,MuslimCabbiesAlcohol,00.html

See if this suits you any better than Sharia:

http://www.natreformassn.org/ccGov.html

or this:

http://www.biblesoft.com/products/addons/institutb00167.htm

Technorati Tags(For all it's worth; Technorati has stopped updating its links for me):
secularism
Freedom
Religion

The Last Word on MIchael J. Fox

Is here at Jon Swift's "conservative" blog. Enjoy.

Getting to Heaven?

My son is gay and last night a family friend told me what a wonderful son he is. Well I know that, but then she had to go on and say something to the effect that "I bet in 30 years he will be a Christian; it would be a shame to have heaven without Norman." I bit my tongue in the interest of keeping peace. I know, a mistake probably; but she is a fundamentalist Christian and there is not going to be any changing of her mind; just one of those jaw dropping comments that certain Christians make.

I am sure in her mind she has lots of rationale for her beliefs-Christ's comments about burning the weeds and so forth. But quite frankly, I have always questioned the belief that only Christians go to heaven. I remember asking my priest in high school how one could rationalize that the bulk of humanity would not go to heaven, since most of the population of this planet is not Christian, shocking as that may seem to fundamentalist Americans. His response was that if a person has the opportunity to hear the Word and refuses to come to Jesus, then yes that person goes to hell-weeds burnt in the flames. Needless to say, that makes no sense. Are there not many paths to God? Is there not one Spirit many gifts? Maybe being a Buddhist is a gift-worshipping God from that perspective. Isn't determining who goes to heaven something that is outside of human judgment?

What about determining who is Christian? I was surprised to find out when I left the North East to go to grad school at the University of Georgia, that many people down there didn't think Catholics are Christians, just as many Catholics think that the Roman Catholic Church is the one true Church and that if you are a Protestant then you are outside salvation. Further I was once damned by a member of Campus Crusade for Christ because I did not and do not believe in the literal interpretation of scripture and (gasp!) I also believe in evolution!

What am I going to make of my friend's comments? She prides herself on being tolerant of other people, but clearly this tolerance does not extend very far. You might think well so this is her personal belief so what's the harm? There is a certain sense I suppose that there is no harm. Maybe this is analogous to a "victimless crime", and certainly she is entitled to her benign opinion. She does not love my son any less because he is gay because after all that is indeed the Christian thing to do. The problem is that, this belief about who goes to heaven or who does not go to heaven, provides a wedge for less benign rationalizations and actions.

For example, if you carefully analyze the evolution controversy in Kansas, one recurring theme is the notion that belief in evolution leads to atheism. If atheists can't get to heaven then one ought not do anything that promotes atheism, including teaching evolution without some sort of warning that evolution is "just a theory not a fact". This really is a code phrase for evolution promotes atheism and therefore ought to be down played. After all don't we want to save souls? So science is sacrificed on the altar of theology.

Consider the issue of gay marriage. If one wants to say that marriage should be between a man and a woman, that sounds harmless enough. But when you analyze what actually is going on, many of the anti gay marriage amendments that have been proposed restrict civil unions, or provision any of the benefits that marriage confers, to gay couples. Why else is the President so incensed about the New Jersey Supreme Court decision that says that gay couples should have the same protections and rights (and presumably responsibilities) that heterosexual couples have? Clearly the issue is not about marriage but really about who goes to heaven. This is also probably why gay recovery ministries such as exodus have been promoted by many Christian groups. If your religion has conditioned you to believe being gay is a sin, it must be a matter of choice and hence reversible. Of course, giving gay couples access to the marriage contract system promotes the gay life style which we don't want to do because we want gays to go to heaven. Love the sinner hate the sin. Fine feel good slogan. Even Fred Phelps will say that. Love the sinner we want them to be able to go to heaven.

Consider, the Inquisition where people were tortured to get them to repent. Getting to heaven is after all so important that if a person doesn't believe like you do and therefore can't get to heaven, well he or she must be insane or the devil has misled him or her. So anything you for their eternal life is justified; torture is justified. Denying people the tools they need to form committed stable relationships is justified because one's sexual orientation and intimate behavior is not conducive to getting to heaven.

It all starts with the notion that it is OK to believe someone won't go to heaven because they don't believe or act like scripture says they ought to, at least in your intepretation. It's OK as long as you are tolerant and show Christian love. Love the sinner; hate the sin. It's OK, you say because "I am tolerant." But I wonder, is it really OK. Who are you to say my son won't go to heaven if he is not a Christian and if he is gay. Tell you what. Do what you think you need to get yourself into heaven and let my son worry about his own salvation. Or not if he so chooses.

Technorati Tags(For all it's worth; Technorati has stopped updating its links for me):
Gay
Kansas
Heaven

Kansas Guild of Bloggers

Better late than never. Been a bit busy with family matters this last week but did uncover an interesting mix of articles.

First, from John over at Blog Meridian, a review of Mark Z. Danielewski's new novel, Only Revolutions followed by a funny look at the Dewey decimal and Library of Congress classification system. Brings back fond memories of my undergraduate school where some libraries used Dewey and others used Library of Congress.

http://blogmeridian.blogspot.com/2006/10/only-revolutions-america-and-history.html
http://blogmeridian.blogspot.com/2006/10/torn-between-two-numbers-library-of_20.html

Several bloggers have commented on recent changes in Kansas and national politics, and we can always count on Red State Rabble for political commentary, for instance this one, about Phil Kline's campaign.

http://redstaterabble.blogspot.com/2006/10/phill-kline-hits-jackpot.html

Over at Right Minded Thinking, Jason gives a, well conservative, analysis of the Mark Foley scandal: http://rightmindedthinking.blogspot.com/2006/10/real-issue-of-foley-scandal.html#comments

Striking a less serious tone, Lady Gunn wonders why October 22 is not a holiday:
http://ladygunn.blogspot.com/2006/10/travesty.html


Richard Dawkins spoke at KU last Monday and here are three different takes on Dawkins and his talk:

Forthekids, over at reasonablekansans, was not happy with his talk and thinks perhaps she was one of only a few people there that did not view Dawkins as the bearer of truth. I am not so sure about that, but certainly the audience was extremely friendly to Dawkins.
http://reasonablekansans.blogspot.com/2006/10/dawkins.html

Pat Hayes of Red State Rabble is much friendlier to Dawkins and observes that "Dawkins sees a shifting of the tectonic plates when it comes to the public acceptance of non-belief. And Monday night, at the Lied Center, you could almost believe it was happening around you."
http://redstaterabble.blogspot.com/2006/10/one-god-further.html

Josh Rosenau at Thoughts from Kansas liked parts of the talk but found other parts disappointing and I highly recommend following the discussion thread with this article:
http://scienceblogs.com/tfk/2006/10/dawkins_at_ku.php#comments

Joel Mathis seems to need a good cuppa Joe right now and I think I do as well:
http://www.lawrence.com/blogs/mathis/2006/oct/16/sleep/

Finally I end with my own submission dealing with the death of my father-in-law who we buried today in Wetmore Kansas, north of Topeka.

http://theforcethat.blogspot.com/2006/10/quiet-time.html

The oldest building in Wetmore is the Jail which according to the historical marker is called the Calaboose. It looks like it can hold one prisoner...standing. This is a really interesting part of the state and maybe we can round up some bloggers from this area.

Pictures of Wetmore including the Calaboose are at:
http://www.mikezulu.com/wetmore.htm.

If you have a Kansas related blog or article related to Kansas, submit your entry to the kgb's submission page! Next week's kgb carnival will be probably be back to Blog Meridian. So get blogging and submit something. You really don't want us to come after you.

Technorati Tags:
kansas
kgb

Quiet time.

My wife's father John Ely died at our house on Friday. He had cancer and we have (had) been taking care of him the last several weeks with help from Hospice. Thursday night all the family was around him telling stories and having a great time while he rested. We think he knew we were all there.

Friday morning my wife thought it was going to be OK for me to go teach so I went to school. Her brother and sister and were there. But I did something I don't ordinarily do and that is leave my cell phone on while I lectured. Sure enough right as I was starting my 11:00am class the phone vibrated and it was my wife telling me he had died.

She had told the rest of the family to go out for breakfast and she would watch him and had just gotten herself something to eat and put on some bluegrass music on for him when he had a couple of rattling breaths and he died. By the time I got home he was laid out and the Hospice people including the chaplain had arrived. As I type this in our master bedroom where he died, everything is quiet. My wife is in bed and I think when death comes I hope it comes to me as gracefully as for John Ely and with my family around as well.

One of the stories I remember was about the time the power company sent the "Electric police" to check on him. He was so frugal with his use of power that the utility thought that he was stealing electricity from the neighbors or that his meter was broken. In fact having seen how he lived...he defined frugal living. Those yuppie advocates of simple living can't hold a candle to him. Yet he had a sense of grace and humor right up to the end.

Both my parents are gone and that leaves such a hole in the mind that it never fills completely, and that loss hits at unexpected times and I see the same thing with my wife. She was fine until she came into this room last night and just couldn't take it knowing how much life there had been just the night before. Right now it is so quiet but I think it will be awhile before we are able to sleep here again.

Kansas Guild of Bloggers on Monday

The Kansas Guild of Bloggers will be hosted here on Monday.

And no, Kansans don't really believe in the Stork Theory, but this is a slide from Richard Dawkins talk at the University of Kansas last Monday...just one of the many interesting events in Kansas this week.

So if you have Kansas related blog entries, send them on via the kgb's submission page.



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kansas
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Dawkins at KU

Finally getting around to posting about Richard Dawkin's visit last Monday to the University of Kansas. As might be expected most of his talk stuck pretty closely to the points made in his book, The God Delusion. The audience generally received him well and he got two standing ovations.

His major points dealt with what he sees as the improbability of God. He calls God the ultimate 747, in reference to Fred Hoyle's image of a 747 being assembled by chance. Dawkin's argues that if God really does keep tabs on everything in the universe then God must be more complex than the universe and hence even more improbable than life itself. This turns the creationist's favorite probability argument nicely on its head. In a not so subtle dig at Bill Dembski and related ID advocates Dawkins said about God that:

"God tries to get his free lunch and eat it too."

and he calls theistic solutions (that is God) for understanding the Universe "Grotesque amplifications" of the improbability problem.

He spent a lot of time discussing the power of natural selection as a process of accumulation and notes that natural selection rather than design is the alternative to chance and quite correctly I believe summarizes the creationist intelligent design argument as the 'illogic of default' and he had a wonderful syllogism that went something like this:

1. We have theory A and theory B

2. Theory A is very useful and supported by lots of empirical evidence.

3. Theory B is not useful and supported by no evidence.

4. I can't understand how theory A might explain a certain phenomenon.

5. Therefore theory B must be correct.

He makes an interesting contrast, which I am not sure is correct but certainly a good approximation to what creationists believe, between the role of ignorance in science and religion. Scientists readily admit ignorance and it drives scientists on to do research. I like to point out to my students using so called "Cell theory" as an example that a good theory points to its own weaknesses. Gaps in knowledge target scientific research, but in religion ignorance is seen as mystery and for intelligent design this gives victory by default. So in Dawkins' view the creationist is in effect arguing:

"Don't squander precious ignorance by researching it away, let's keep it as mystery"

Another major topic was the Anthropic principle which Dawkins characterizes as having a distinct Darwinian feel to it and these arguments are straight out of his book. He notes that the origin of life maybe highly improbable, but if so, if there are a billion billion planets where life could arise and the chance of life arising is 1 in a billion then the probability of life arising at least once in the universe is close to one. But once life, presumably in the sense of replicating molecules, then natural selection takes over from chance. Chance cannot explain the diversity of life on this planet, the explanation involves natural selection.

Toward the end of the talk he took written questions from the audience. For instance he was asked about Gould's idea that religion and science occupy non overlapping magisteria (NOMA). Dawkins clearly thinks this idea is nonsense and that a universe with God who violate physical law and do miracles would be a quite different place. He speculates that Gould really did not believe in NOMA but was an appeasement tactic that might make political sense. Theologians, in his view, like NOMA since there is no empirical evidence for religious claims.

Dawkins cannot bring himself to make this compromise, and here in he parts company with groups such as Kansas Citizens for Science who tend to accept the idea that science and religion are separate ways of knowing. I find myself in the middle. Science does not deal with questions of individual purpose, or existence of God because these are outside the empirical nature of science. Dawkins of course disagrees. But at the same time I tell my students that if you believe the Earth is only 10,000 years old, and believe in the Biblical flood and other metaphors as literal truth then your religion IS going to conflict with science.

Some local people I have talk with seem upset at Dawkins unwillingness to compromise and that he plays into the creationist argument that evolution leads to atheism. While I disagree with Dawkins on this point, I think in the long run evolutionists would be ill served politically by hiding these beliefs. Dawkins is right not to compromise. It seems to me that the science supporters need to do what I do which is to point out that one does not reject a scientific theory because it upsets you or leads you to question your religious beliefs.

Indeed the final question asked dealt more directly with Dawkins' belief that Darwinism does logically lead to Atheism and the notion that he is possibly acting as a "recruiting agent for the creationists". Dawkins admitted that the creationists would "rightly be gleeful." He observed that today Atheists are the "baddies along with pedophiles" and that hopefully this will change. He sees a shift in society in which Atheists and Agnostics are beginning to speak out. I hope he's right if only because that would signal a social retreat from the Fundamentalist absolutism of the Bush era and the cynical exploitation of religion by the administrations handlers.

Oh yes, I did get some books signed. I would have loved to have him sign my copy of the Selfish Gene but couldn't find it so had to be content with him signing my copies of The Ancestor's Tale and The God Delusion.

Here are some different perspectives of Dawkin's talk:

http://reasonablekansans.blogspot.com/2006/10/dawkins.html

http://redstaterabble.blogspot.com/2006/10/one-god-further.html

http://scienceblogs.com/tfk/2006/10/dawkins_at_ku.php#comments

http://scienceblogs.com/tfk/2006/10/the_god_confusion_dawkins_on_t.php

http://angryastronomer.blogspot.com/2006/10/richard-dawkins-at-ku-part-1-evening.html

Technorati Tags(For all it's worth; Technorati has stopped updating its links for me):
Dawkins
Kansas
Religion

He don't get no respect!

Richard Dawkins gave a great talk last night and I will be posting more later this week, but imagine my surprise when I learned in today's Lawrence Journal World that a theoretical physicist had slammed intelligent design. Umm had I missed an important talk? Well no:

http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2006/oct/17/physicist_takes_shots_intelligent_design/

The award-winning Oxford University theoretical physicist talked on "The
God Delusion" at the Lied Center as part of the KU Hall Center's Humanities
Lecture Series. While the evolution debate has quieted since a majority of
pro-intelligent design Kansas Board of Education members were voted out in this
year's primary elections, Dawkins still stressed the importance of not buying
the logic behind the design theory. Design proponents, Dawkins said, believe
that any flaw in evolution theory means that biological design by a higher power
must be the answer. That, he said, is flatly not true.
"I.D. is granted immunity from the rigorous standards of science," he said.

Well, at least the reporter got some things right.