The Nicene Screed, I mean Creed, Is the god affirming rant, that god is one and three, coeternal, and damn it, uhhh, you, if you don’t know the difference. It is also other canon law that mostly supports the whole jealous god thing that your only chance for salvation is through him and his minions. It firmly places deism as heretical and worthy of anathema. Now you know when a deist is claimed to be Christian it is total BS, damnation.

I most recently experienced the screed at the funeral of an in-law though the screed, creed, is also done on Sundays which I choose not to attend except under duress. Which is as it should be as I find nothing pleasant about it and worry that my children will catch a bad meme.

I really don’t understand why any family would expect a person of different faith to attend an event that requires a swearing of opposing fidelity. I understand that weddings, funerals, and occasional church are appropriate places for belief but in a community of varying faiths it would be gracious and right to not insist of someone to commit perjury merely to make the ceremony inclusive.

Shortly after this funeral, where I was banned from accompanying my partner in future church attendance because I commented, there was a family wedding where I foolishly thought I could mediate the disgust and participate because there was so much good will present already. It is important to attend these things even if one is retching their way through in some sort of Sartrean nausea. It’s not the bastards on the walls in the patriarchal paintings that objectivize you here but your fellow worshippers, happy sheep, and closet seculars feigning comfort, and demanding desired demeanor.

At the end, in an outside ceremony, the members weave their way through each other, hug, or shake, and say “peace be with you.” Oy my goodness, no one told me this was going to be part of it. Such sweet nonsense and yet I knew not what to do. I clumsily made my way and attempted to be sincere during at least this somewhat generous part of their spiritual retinue.

It really was very sincere, I loved the couple, and I marveled at the contradiction of exclaiming peace, yea, only to those of the group, after swearing fidelity to a three-part godhead, and achieving ascendance to heaven by vowing fidelity to Jesus, god, logos, whomever.

I had an awkward moment with the bride and groom who know I am secular and though I thought we’d hug, any excuse to hug, transcend the event, wink at the lie, finger to the nose, we sort of shuffled by in awkwardness. Boy, this religion thing sure is a comfort!

I wondered why they drink and smoke so much. Oh, we still do though health or lack of it caught up to me. That’s why they call themselves Whiskeypaliens. And indeed, afterwards, some retreated to Bloody Mary’s and some retreated to the back for something more vivid.

I  muse at screed. The Nicene Creed is like a screed used to level fresh poured concrete, or as a leveling guide when plastering. How many church members have openly praised their screed as the moral leveling of fresh young minds?

The Nicene Creed as most commonly recited by Episcopalians, as set forth in the 1975 Book of Common Prayer, goes like this:

We believe in one God,
the Father, the Almighty
maker of heaven and earth,
of all that is, seen and unseen.

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made,
of one Being with the Father.

Through him all things were made.

For us and for our salvation
he came down from heaven:
by the power of the Holy Spirit
he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man.

For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;
he suffered death and was buried.
On the third day he rose again
in accordance with the Scriptures;
he ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.

He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,
and his kingdom will have no end.
We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of Life,
who proceeds from the Father and the Son.
With the Father and the Son he is worshipped and glorified.
He has spoken through the Prophets.
We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.
We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
We look for the resurrection of the dead,
and the life of the world to come.

Amen

It’s not too long but long enough to be interminably long for those enduring it terminally. My apologist bro-in-law thinks believers are righteous for their dislike of secularists because we wish to stop foolish faith but acquiesces to my eternal exclusion from absolute bliss by not saying a word or even a wink during these dreadful, enforced, solipsistic silences.

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Mitt Romney tithes to his church, the LDS or mormons for slang, as detailed by Rachel Zoll in the AP News. Keep religion out of politics unless you wish it examined on its merit… I continue.

“Romney reports he will give a total of $4.13 million to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints over two years as part of his overall charitable donations. The former Massachusetts governor reported income of about $43 million for the two years. Separately, over the past decade, Romney and his wife, Ann, have given more than $4.7 million to the denomination through the Tyler Charitable Foundation, a multimillion-dollar trust the couple leads.

The LDS are a full family function for its members; they want your soul and your life. Their churches, wards, stake houses, and temples provide welfare, emergency services, and near all show necessary support. They also recommend members keep a two-year food supply for when the rapture, uhh, second coming, comes though they tell gentiles it’s for emergencies. Monday is family home night and on at least two other days a week there are Ward or Stake functions to attend. Additionally, members must “seal,” baptize, fifty or so dead people so they can be saved and there is a tremendous amount of genealogy performed, unfortunately some of it bad (many pro’s say terrible), to find family to save. This means Lincoln, Washington, probably Hitchens now, all baptized mormon.

I wonder how those dead people feel about being baptized, sealed, and saved without their knowledge–thank goodness they are dead. That’s the great thing about sheep and dead people, you can do anything to them. Piss on em even but that’s another story only religious people care about.

It is not a church so much as a culture and harkens back to preReformation Catholicism, modern Hasidic Jew, and modern Muslim (I’d say orthodox or fundamental Islam but Koran suffers no living apostates). Mormons thought I was a “golden prospect” as I didn’t smoke or drink at the time and being of Jewish descent was from another all inclusive tribal culture, Israelite tribe, that is a fellow descendent of their tribe.

I can’t help taking up space for this but… Laminates, Indians, Polynesians, Blacks, whoever dark, are colored because of past sin, uhh, curse (they fought and lost a good and evil battle with the light-skinned Nephites) and once forgiven by god they will lighten up–or when the Supreme court makes them equal. My doctor friend insisted that they lightened during their stays in mormon hospitals–as if blacks and Indians don’t tan. It would be a giant article to discuss the absurdities and oddities of this wanna-be Christian church founded by a traveling patent-medicine man receiving bastard, uhh reformed, Egyptian hieroglyphics on golden tablets somehow lost. Why do modern people descended from obviously false faith insist it’s true? Reputation rules!

The hardest cultural exclusion is to be excommunicated or become a jack mormon, there is no such thing as a secular mormon, and still live there. Nevertheless these often unhappy (from familial isolation or castigation) apostates abound, they call them excommunicated, either for abominations to material laws like drinking, blasphemy, nonattendance, witnessing to bad character, homosexuality, or lack of tithing 10% of your income not counting all of the other things you have to buy into.

My first wife a social worker was furious that mormon bishops served as counselors, untrained, unprofessional, and prosthetically unreliable. My high school teacher said “teen age pregnancy isn’t a problem here, they just get married.” Right out of the old testament where a rapist must marry his victim–as if that made it Ok–and let’s hope no one hers her scream or she gets stoned and worse.

Romney may claim he is a good church guy because he tithes but it’s the mormon law and, more intrusive than the IRS, church auditors and accountants come to your door and help with your budget and accounting to be sure they get their share. It happened to my family in West Granger every year and when they found we weren’t mormons they’d mumble away. 80% of members tithe according to the above article. The rest are probably in the process of being excommunicated.

Rick Warren the megachurch demigod who prayed for Hitch at death, calling him friend, when Hitch blasted him, claims he reverse tithes by donating 90% of his income. But Rick has more money than god and need never work again for his palace and it is his current pillaging and financial raping of his members from which he pays 90%. Maybe he should have a tax, I mean indulgence, uhhh, tithing refund, or just stop pillaging people’s savings and give his own money to all of the people without prejudice. Oh wait, he wouldn’t have any of his own money if he hadn’t robbed it, uhh, had it donated.

Romney and other LDS claim the bible says to tithe but there is nothing in the new testament on tithing. It is all from Leviticus the old testament which mormons tend to dislike for it’s confusing and often terrifying myths, as well as those multiple food and social sanctions that maker theirs look like playground stuff. Jesus hated taxing and tithing from what I can tell in spite of rending Caesar’s to Caesar. He’s hanging out with poor people, telling them they are poor and it’s good to be poor. Near everything I see says to shed wealth to be poor and nary a word to says give it to temple.

As an aside, I can’t help it, the weirdest mormon food sanction is not to drink cold water and my doctor neighbor used to try to convince me that current research showed it was bad to drink cold water–so bad that it is an abomination?  Mormons laugh that since they can’t drink alcohol they eat ice cream, vat fulls from what I can tell.

Mormons love to say how it is all about self reliance and good will (god will) to their members but nonmembers don’t get it and I can’t tell you how many mormons I knew were terrified of the rapture, umm, return of the messiah, when the gentiles will gather to Salt Lake City, the streets will flow with blood, and their houses will be raided by heathens.

What they don’t get is their superior attitude and exclusiveness, surpassed only by the Amish (who are at least passive), Hasidim (not socially passive) and FundoIslamists (not passive), caused them to be hated by their neighbors just because they were such arrogant bastards and like the chosen ones (Jews) bragged about how they were going to heaven and you weren’t and then proving it here on earth by becoming far more successful than the average citizen, such  that few would suffer them, even though they may have started out as oppressed or a minority.

The Romans get a lot of shit for oppression but the Christians were insisting on disobeying the law and attributing it to god, swearing that polytheism would take every Roman to hell, and looting and tearing down pagan images, temples, and public gatherings everywhere. Some of the poor were Christians and they used their religion to gain power rather then seek justice. It’s not until the Catholics revoke from the book no graven images that western European society suffered religious icons again.

It is 787 AD (After Despot) at the Seventh Ecumenical Council where they approve graven images in spite of the many biblical admonitions against it. Islam is more true to the bible in this respect! Technically, truly, any Christian creating a graven image is damned! It was all about crapping on the Roman iconography of polytheism present everywhere. Just like burning a library because you don’t agree.

If you want advice on how to avoid welfare, prepare for retirement, and avoid emergency indebtedness save 10%. My grandfather, FL Watkins, President of Dakota Business College, praised the value of duration in compound interest. No matter what when you start earning put 10% away and keep doing it. It’s the last few years that count the most and why accounts don’t pass through death to survivors except through usurous inheritance taxes or capital trusts without fixed interests–bankers aren’t dumb.

If I had done that even though I was a rather low earner I could retire at 54. But I didn’t so I won’t judge you on the equality bias. The other thing he said is always keep working; persevere to success and be open to opportunity; you make your luck. It doesn’t matter if it is for money but always work towards money through education, volunteering, or other preparation. Giving 10% to a cosmic salesman is like buying a car with sawdust in the transmission.

The only thing worse than a rich asshole is one who says he’s so rich because he’s more moral, more pure, more true, more naturally better. Even Aristotle warns of hubris, pride, the original confirmation bias, the down fall of most people. Only Mary Poppins gets away with that bullshit.

Jim Newman, bright and well

www.brightpride.com

via CBS News.

Mr. Santorum tries to break the irony meter.

Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum said Wednesday that “the left” uses universities to indoctrinate young people for the purpose of “holding and maintaining power.”

After saying “we’ve lost, unfortunately, our entertainment industry,” Santorum told a Naples, Florida, audience that “we’ve lost our higher education, that was the first to go a long time ago.”

I guess one of his first acts as president would be to close down college.

“It’s no wonder President Obama wants every kid to go to college,” said the former Pennsylvania senator. “The indoctrination that occurs in American universities is one of the keys to the left holding and maintaining power in America. And it is indoctrination.

WOW!  I’m pretty sure he does not know what the word actually means.  The exposure to many new ideas in not indoctrination.  Exposure to one set of idea that can’t be tested or verified (like church) is indoctrination.

If it was the other way around, the ACLU would be out there making sure that there wasn’t one penny of government dollars going to colleges and universities, right?”

There are crazy fundie far right universities – and the ACLU does not sue them.

He continued: “If they taught Judeo-Christian principles in those colleges and universities, they would be stripped of every dollar.

Nope!  There are schools that do that.  You get a shitty education but you can become a minister.

Because you know 62 percent of children who enter college with a faith conviction leave without it.”

Yeah!  Where does that number come from?  What is causing that?  Reality?  or simply being away from oppressive parents?

Santorum went on to encourage his audience not to “give money” to colleges and universities that he said are causing harm to the country.

He hates college!

“I’ll bet you there are people in this room who give money to colleges and universities who are undermining the very principles of our country every single day by indoctrinating kids with left-wing ideology,” he said. “And you continue to give to these colleges and universities. Let me have a suggestion: Stop it.”

I say if you are giving money to a church you should stop!  They are undermining the very principles of our country every single day by indoctrinating kids.

Here is the video sensation “Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus”
It seems like a self satire to me but it does have more than 16,000,000 views.


Here is a fantastic response from Zinnia Jones. (Plus it rhymes)

The idiotic Youtube video “Why I hate Religion, but Love Jesus” emphasizes the horrors of church and the wonders of Jesus. He aint’t judging but he’s saying that logic isn’t worthy and the core is Jesus; now that he knows Jesus he knows grace will save him. It has 16 million hits.

I will not post a picture of this horrid piece that tries to separate personal faith from the cosmic salesmen that promote faith but here is the link. This is as stupid as a car salesman that says it is not about the sales pitch it’s about the car. Of course it is the sales pitch or there wouldn’t be a car in the first place to sell and his is just another cosmic sales pitch for the same damned car.

He has just figured out a clever single church of himself. He is a lone witness to his faith rather than a community of people establishing a church to their faith. His solipsistic witnessing is no different than a dog howling to the wind because his owner won’t let him in, and he didn’t want in anyway.

Back to his point that Jesus and religion are on opposite ends; one is the cure and the other is infection. This symptomatic belief that churches are evil belies the fact that without churches there would not have been a Jesus. They are the same and in communion. Jesus and his apostles founded the Christian church he hates.

I don’t like church or religion but I am not going to diss all of the honest and sincere people who go to church because they believe in Christ as if it would be better if they abandoned their community and howled to the wind alone, outside. Shut up, join your community, and clean up your neighborhood.

The only reason he can get away with this is we are in a period where people are changing churches like grocery stores and picking churches based on personality rather than community. His church of one is a fool’s paradise.

Jim Newman, bright and well

www.brightpride.com

Let’s see Paul is out, Perry is out, Santorum is out, Romney with revelation of his Swiss bank account (duh) is probably out and it looks like yes, it looks like Newt is in the lead. How on earth do the evangelicals and tea party types (they do not merit capitals until the occupy movement merits them)  vote Gingrich? He is a philanderer, a patent liar, a DC insider, and does not really hold Jesus in his heart or wear him on his sleeve?

Newt Gingrich is evidence to two contrary and holy moods these days, resentment and forgivance. Howard Schreiber:

“… he shares their resentments. He resents the media (“elites”), the rich (the leadership of his own party), the Democrats (educated people), people who live in big cities (liberals), and of course, Obama, just as they do”

“Gingrich and his supporters do not oppose Obama, they resent the fact of his existence. He will speak for his constituents by articulating their resentments in more strident, more combative, more articulate terms than they can themselves, which is why they find him brilliant.”

Ron Paul reduced complex economics to simple sound bites but Gingrich goes further:

“… he tells them that their nastiest, darkest, angriest, most irrational self-indulgent justifications are 100%, absolutely right. It’s a negative version of a politics of self-esteem: not that you are right to feel good about yourself, but that you are right to be resentful of everyone else.”

Gingrich feeds their Manichean, paranoid view. The world is going to end and Obama is riding that basket to hell. No, Obama is driving that basket to hell, yelling yippee kiyo along the way. The devil incarnate could do no better:

“Obama’s economic policies are not mistaken, he is deliberately trying to make Americans poorer. Obama’s foreign policy is not misguided, he is deliberately trying to surrender America to foreign powers. And Obama is not merely not one of the people, he wants to destroy American culture.

Resentment, a holy emotion, long based in slave religions of oppressed people. It’s not about change, it’s about replacing those in power. They don’t want a new country they want to be on top of the pile. Pummeled by economics they don’t understand, terrorized by wars they don’t get but patriotize, and seeking solace in salvation through poorly understood biblical morality they just want to be mad and go shoot something. Gingrich is the hired gun. Whoopee! Get em boy.

Wait, there’s another side to this. Jaweed Kaleem thinks Gingrich is outpacing Romney because Evangelicals embrace forgiveness, the sour grapes side of resentment but first asks as do we all:

“How is a twice-divorced serial cheater whose ex-wife has accused him of wanting an “open marriage” also able to tout his credentials as a devout Christian and remain in good standing with his family-oriented Catholic Church? And in the Palmetto State, where 60 percent of voters are expected to be evangelical Protestants, does it matter?”

Does it matter? Can you really forgive some bastard philanderer or is trust torn so deeply asunder as to prevent full recovery?

“But a big part of evangelical theology is that we are a fallen humanity and we are never going to live up to perfect ideal. … It’s more of a question of saying ‘I have made a mistake, I acknowledge that mistake and I need to turn to God,’”

Gingrich is Catholic and while the confessional is a way of embracing forgiveness it is also a time of repentance and personal soul searching and personal resolution. This personal aspect Protestants can relate to. We are a long way from early Christianity where Catholics forced to conversion by Romans could later repent but still not reenter the church for communion. Hey, you can always change your mind, now. Can’t you?

“People who put moral conservatism at the top of their personal agenda will be very troubled by his infidelities,” Clemson’s Olsen said. “But there is no actual true bona fide evangelical in the race anymore. Evangelicals who are in the majority here will have to say, ‘I have to support somebody who isn’t the same as me.’”

Evangelicals have to compromise? After taking death-zone machine guns to town hall meetings, ranting the rest of us to hell, and swearing Obama is the anti-Christ they can compromise? Where the only thing they have in common is resentment of an outsider and forgivance of a kinda-maybe insider? They must feel so dirty and yet so righteously indignant.

Jim Newman, bright and well

www.brightpride.com

My good friend Ashley Paramore (a.k.a. healthyaddict) has made this nice video of many of the crazy things that christians say to atheists.  I think I have heard them all.  I think my favorite is….”so, what do you believe?”

What is your favorite line?

via the Eagle Tribune.
A concerned parent in New Hampshire writes to their local advice column.  They need help with their son.  Do you have any suggestions for them?

Dear Doctor,

Recently our first child came home with an announcement. He has decided he is an atheist.

Cool.  Why did the paper use the title, “wants to be atheist”.  I’m sure if this young man made the effort to tell parents then his is not thinking about it – it has already happened.

He is a sophomore in high school, very bright….

Clearly!

and following our advice to speak his mind.

Yeah!  Good job parents.

But we never expected this. He has always gone to church with us and seems to enjoy the youth group. Is this typical?

Not as much as we would like.  Most children simply stick to their childhood indoctrination.

How do parents deal with these announcements? What happens?

Listening

Dear Listening,

Seldom a week goes by I do not hear something like this from parents.

More Great news!

It is not the end of the world.

That was last May or is it in December of 2012?

Think about it. You said it yourself. You have taught your son to think for himself and to speak his mind. What is bothering you is his tantalizing rejection of the faith of his parents.

Yes!  Good job!

What is he really saying? First, he is indicating he is not you. Rarely do we mindlessly adopt the faith of our fathers.

uh… no.  Many people mindlessly adopt the faith of their fathers.  Just as a christian if they have read their guide book.

We craft and articulate our own version of belief.

Second, he is separating from you. This is a process. He is saying he is different and is his own person. His version of what he believes will change as he grows.

Hmmm… He is rebelling?

Third, he is working out his own definition of spirituality which is very different from religion. Dogma and creeds are religious. Assenting to them form articles of faith but, in my opinion, are decidedly different from spirituality. Spirituality is an appreciation of the Immensity, Awe and the Holy itself.

What?  Where did the spirituality come from?  Is there more to the original letter or is this guy starting to go off the rails?

Finally, he is a bit of an “evangelical atheist,” insisting his interpretation of the world is best for everyone! Where has he heard that before?

WTF?  He informed his parents that he is an atheist and you call him evangelical?  The parents took their son to church for his entire life – now that is evangelical.

Stay calm. Listen. Consult but try not to preach or control. He sounds like a fine young man.

• • •

Dr. Larry Larsen is an Andover psychologist. If you would like to ask a question or respond to one, you can email Dr. Larry Larsen at lrryllrsn@CS.com.

Feel free to tell us if Dr. Larry missed anything else.  What would you tell the parents or the son?

Post by Jim Newman

—————————————–

Golshifteh Farahani the first Iranian to star in a major Hollywood film, Body of Lies, can now no longer return to Iran because she bared, cupped, her breasts in the French fashion Magazine Madame La Figaro.

Wait, doesn’t everyone pose nude in a French magazine? Have it published in Facebook, do a sex tape, become a star, retract the sex tape, and then go on to do more soft porn, uhh, I mean act? I am sorry. Her rights are too important to belittle the sad state of affairs in US female reality show acting these days.

Farahani won fame in her 2006 movie M for Mother and represented Iran when it won Best Foreign Film in 2008.

The Paris based model also starred in the 2007 film Santoori which has yet to be shown in Iran. The ministry of culture and Islamic guide have banned her from returning to Iran forever; declaring to her Iran doesn’t need actors or artists though she won the Best Actress award in Iran’s Fajr Film Festival. She had already been banned from leaving but now she can’t go back.

Lest you think this unAmerican, there are many fundamentalists in the US that detest pornography or even nudity and many more that believe a dour life of work, devoid of frivolous pleasure is the way to heaven, or prove they have been elected to heaven already. I think of the Amish, Mennonites, Quakers, Hasidic Jews, fundamental Muslims and of course fundamental protestants embracing Calvinism (get a job, go to work, die).

Max Weber famously coined the term Protestant Work Ethic to define the Calvinist emphasis on the necessity for hard work as a means to salvation. The Catholic notion of good works transformed into work obligation as a sign of grace.

Luther famously decided duty benefits the individual and society. Because of predestination, you are only saved by grace alone unknown to you. The best ways to avoid lip-service or gain a possible grace of perseverance are frugality and hard work. There is not a lot of joy when you don’t know if you will be saved but maybe if you work your ass off and stay serious you have a chance and that you could was a sign that you were maybe one of the elect.

The US has grown out of this somewhat but not entirely. Let us also see Golshifteh Farahani as a hero not merely because she has a right to her body but also because she has a right to joy in her life.

Jim Newman, bright and well

www.brightpride.com

The Santorum family is taking a lot of heat in the press for their “do as I say, not as I do” family culture. Karen considered abortion while hubby worked to deny it. Rick wants the government to restrict access to contraceptives, force schools to educate extramarital sex is a sin, and criminalize abortion providers. Now it’s revealed that Karen lived with a boyfriend out of wedlock for nearly a decade in her twenties. And her boyfriend was an abortion provider.

The press is gleefully ignoring the general historical state of pubcon hypocrisy and hysterically reacting to their transgressions as signs that pubcons cannot differentiate personal belief from public policy. Liberals think if pubcons are to have such a standard they must themselves follow it.

Pubcons have reacted defensively at this attack and in some sort of Jedi mind trick are saying the past is history, people make mistakes, they are repentant, let’s move on, there’s nothing happening here.

But there is and it is an entire misunderstanding of how pubcons and liberals think differently about the world and morality. Their communication to each other, as brilliantly demonstrated by the current DC politics, in posturing and talking past individuals to the ideological bleachers behind. Both sides plead for consistency, purity, and insist they are true to their belief, faith, ideals, reasons, whatever. Obama is stuck like a duck in the middle and it would be no surprise if he were caught late at night wandering the White House halls in hebephrenic hysteria!

The new Tea Party representatives are particularly green as many of them came from nonpolitical backgrounds and haven’t a clue what political maneuvering and compromise means. As if politics were the expression of purity when politics is the dirty and brutish intermingling of disagreeable people feigning politeness to get their constituent’s desires realized.

I saw no greater paradox and irony than Orrin Hatch and the late Ted Kennedy sitting together and sharing a joke, a conversation, and what Hatch called “a tremendous brotherly affection.” Politically, it was the most intelligent action both of them could take. If it were sincere all the better. Imagine the required compartmentalization.

All they needed in their coffee klatch was the late Paul Wellstone and Strom Thurmond, the former the most liberal representative in recent history and Strom the arch nemesis of civil rights who led the longest solo filibuster in history.

No, as I am formulating over at www.frontiersofreason.com both sides are reasonable and true to their premises. You cannot approach them using the same logic. But as a tease, David DiSalvo’s book “What Makes Your Brain Happy and Why You Should Do the Opposite” is liberal balm and does deal with new resolutions against computational malfunctions. I just don’t yet see how you get pubcons or liberal intuitionists to care.

Liberals believe in individual rights, fairness, and equality. Pubcons believe in group cohesion, obedience, and certainty. As Jonathon Haidt notes in The Edge

“People vote Republican because Republicans offer “moral clarity”—a simple vision of good and evil that activates deep seated fears in much of the electorate. Democrats, in contrast, appeal to reason with their long-winded explorations of policy options for a complex world.”

Yet, liberals love art reflecting good and evil, from Star Wars to Vampire Diaries; how on earth does an atheist stand the constant, banal appeal to “the force?” Daniel Everett responds to Haidt by relating an interview with John Wayne:

“They tell me that things aren’t always black and white. I say, ‘Why the hell not?’”

Cognitive science sheds some light on this:

“conservatism is a partially heritable personality trait that predisposes some people to be cognitively inflexible, fond of hierarchy, and inordinately afraid of uncertainty, change, and death.”

This explains why Ron Reagan’s son is a gay atheist and why Madeleine Murray O’Hare’s son was a born again Christian. While children are most likely to not fall too far from the tree their genetics have their own mind, so to speak. Perhaps epigenesis as well, the rolling thunder of genetically embodied decisions based on external, environmental factors.

This genopolitcs, for example, has demonstrated that genetic predispositions of conformity versus creativity and their resulting serotonin and dopamine release affect political party and religious affiliation. Republicans because of their genetics are more likely to go to church, join a political party, and vote. Democrats tend to be more creative, more novelty seekers, and hence a little bit more antisocial. Let me put it this way: it really does no good to call pubcons sheep, or liberals extremists. It’s not pejorative, they are compliments.

Conservatives feel like they should vote and liberals think they should vote. Conservatives don’t get why they should use reason to overcome their strong visceral sentiments and liberals don’t get why conservatives don’t use reason to overcome their gut feelings. Conservatives use an appeal to authority as moral light and liberals want to think out their choices.

Perhaps this is because conservatives would have to fight an addictive rush to change their gut feeling while liberals are yielding to an addictive rush by thinking out issues.

Interesting how “follow your gut” or “think from your heart” tend to cross the boundary.

The value of group think in corporations is obvious. In situations such as the regimented battlefield instant obedience has merit. In situations requiring creativity, teamwork, cooperation, and conformity kill necessary innovation; as would also happen in guerrilla warfare on fresh terrain.

You can’t be a team player if the goal is to find something different and further from what the team is currently experiencing. Brain storming is social masturbation, and the real creativity comes before or after the meeting with individual and person-to-person communication. Good meetings, if creativity and productivity are the desired goals, are basically rubber stamps of ideas engendered and politicized elsewhere.

Heber C Kimball past president of the Mormon church and considered to be a modern prophet, as they are wont to do, was known to swear freely from the pulpit. This common manner made him one of the most beloved of church leaders though it marked him. His reply: “Hell, they can’t excommunicate me. I repent too damned fast.”

This is key to understanding pubcon inconsistency. When your morals relate to an absolute authority involving obedience, and group adhesion there must be a way to be inconsistent, avoid cognitive dissonance, and yet remain pure and included. The confessional, repentance, and absolution of sins allows anyone to recover from any transgression and remain within the absolutely necessary fold.

It is terrifying for liberals to think someone can do the most heinous crimes all of their life, as an extreme example, and still, at their death bed, ascend to goodness and moral inclusion by asking for forgivance. Liberals think responsibility and truth are important but to pubcons, inclusion and abeyance are important.

If you wonder which side you are on consider Pascal’s wager. Would you repent at death or would you remain true? Now as Bertrand Russell noted it is really quite rare that this case occurs in reality. It occurs much more early in life when an atheist stays in the closet for the sake of family and society as might a gay, a pedophile, or a so called Uncle Tom.

When you read Hitchens’ Letter to a Young Contrarian do you have an epiphany or do your say yuck?

Sam Harris in his essay “Lying” chastises sweetly and demurly those who lie for conformity or politeness; that people typically diminish their own well being for this process. He is clear: it is near always better to be honest even if it requires masterful mental gymnastics. For many, this simply does not ring true as Mark Twain says well:

“The lie, as a virtue, a principle, is eternal; the lie, as a recreation, a solace, a refuge in time of need, the fourth Grace, the tenth Muse, man’s best and surest friend is immortal.”

Mark had his finger on the pulse of the people. Rather than risk familial friction, rather than leave their home, rather than disrespect their society, roughly half of us, if politics are correct, will lie out out their ass, eloquently, consistently, and happily with the rush of inclusion and social love.

The other half listen to a different drummer and follow Thoreau:

“Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.

No, for pubcons and closeted liberals, Machiavellianism is the proper way to expand principle while preserving peace, and no good action occurs from within a cell.

These basic differences define personality types expressed politically as liberal and conservative. Without some sort of geopolitical apartheid it is going to be difficult to mediate consensus towards a future requiring just that. I do not have a good answer yet but I also know in better defining the problem we get closer to the solution.

Jim Newman, bright and well

www.brightpride.com