Dualism vs. Materialism

Dualism – the belief that we are both physical and spiritual beings – is essential to our lives, relationships and legal system. Without this belief, society as we know it will be vastly degraded. For one thing, without the spiritual component, we lack any stable identity as people or even as humans. Perhaps a hypothetical meeting between two materialists – those who claim that we are merely the sum total of our physical parts – might prove illuminating.

Josef Mengele was in charge of human experimentation at Auschwitz - Birkenau, the Nazi death camp. His extreme cruelty earned him the title, “angel of death.” He secretly escaped to South America where he successfully avoided capture until his death, 34 years later. In this fictitious dialogue, he is finally cornered in an empty bar by a bounty hunter, Richard Mawkins, both of whom love to talk philosophy.

MENGELE: You’ve got the wrong person, Mawkins. I am not the Josef Mengele of Auschwitz. You see, during these 30 years of exile, every chemical in my body has been replaced. I therefore am not the same person. Our identity is a matter of our materiality. Therefore, I’m a completely different person than the Mengele who ran all those so-called diabolical experiments. It would therefore be a gross mistake to take me into custody.

MAWKINS: Very clever, Mengele! You are a man after my own heart – devious and unprincipled. We are both materialists who don’t believe in ghosts, like an unchanging immortal soul. Even though such an immortal soul provides a basis for believing in our unchanging identities and our guilt, we both have the courage and wisdom to reject such ridiculous fantasies. They’re for sissies, not for men like us. However, you are making a significant philosophical blunder. Your identity and consequent guilt do not rest upon your material substances but rather in their organization – their DNA.

MENGELE: Mawkins, did you know that I have an identical twin. He has the same DNA as I do. Would you therefore regard him as guilty as “I” of my so-called crimes against humanity? After all, we are genetically identical! Does this make us the same person? Of course not! Besides, no one believes in your preposterous notion that we are our genes and consequently, the my brother is me. If that were the case, my brother would have been arrested long ago. Therefore, you can’t appeal to DNA as the basis for our individual identities.

Did you know that I had wanted to clone an entire army of “humans.” Of course, they would all possess the same DNA. But would this mean that they were all identical, without their own identities? I think not!

Once again, I must inform you that I am not the Mengele of Auschwitz! Besides, I’m now an old man with many ailments. I don’t think that they will throw me into prison.

MAWKINS: Mengele, I must admit that I have underestimated you, but there is something that you fail to understand about my contract. If there is no conviction, I don’t get paid. Besides, if I bring you in dead, I am guaranteed my bounty. I guess I’ll just have to kill you. No disrespect intended, of course. Actually, I’m growing to admire you. But I am a materialist, after all. And, as you said, you are just an ever-changing sack of chemicals, without any personhood that extends beyond your chemicals.

MENGELE: But that would be wrong to kill me. I’m a human being, and I have my rights!

MAWKINS: Mengele, you are indeed funny. You know better than that. How can you claim to be a “human being,” when you even deny that you are the Mengele of Auschwitz? If your changing materiality provides no basis to prove that you are the same Mengele of Auschwitz, then how can your materiality establish the fact that you are a member of the human race? As you point out, “you” are always changing. How then can you claim to fit into any one category, if you are different every day! “Humanity” is just a label we’ve invented to convince ourselves of our superiority. Actually, there is only a continuum, a solidarity between all living things. The distinctions we make are just passing and illusory.

And who has given you “rights?” Aren’t our rights just arbitrarily given at the caprice of the government? They no more real than our changing identities! Materialism has no room for the fiction of “rights.” Rights are merely manipulative tools that the ruling class extends to the masses in exchange for their compliance.

Besides, we’re all different in terms of the physical, some more evolved than others. As such, we have no reason to believe that we’re better than the pig. In fact, the pig might have a superior sack of chemicals than what your sickly body now contains. Why then should I treat you any better than I would a pig, especially if it’s going to cost me my bounty? I’m sure that you understand that, Mengele.

MENGELE: Spoken as a true materialist! Mawkins, I admire the fact that you conduct yourself without insincere sentimentality. You know that materialism has no room for those silly conventional values! You refuse to escape to the world of imaginary values when things get a bit tight and the rules of the game need to be changed. I was never that way. I never shed tears of repentance for the things I did, not like that cry-baby, Albert Speer. We are two of a kind. I’d consider it an honor to be slit as a pig with your knife.

MAWKINS: Mengele, I really hate to do you in, but that’s just my genes talking. As you know, business is business.

What makes us who we are? If we are nothing outside of our component substances which are always in flux, then when I say that I am “me,” what can that possibly mean? Also, when I say, “Here’s a picture of me when I was five,” does such a statement have any meaning? In other words, can a materialistic worldview provide the continuity for life, truth, and justice in the way we have enjoyed?

Guilt: Another Proof for God

Many atheists have asked me, “What evidence do you have that there is a God?” I respond, “The entire world points to God. All creation bears His imprint, like a Van Gogh painting unmistakably bears the imprint of Van Gogh and no one else!

To demonstrate this point, let me just look at our feelings, one in particular – guilt. Now, let’s ask the question, “Which makes more sense”:

1. Guilt is merely the product of bio-chemistry, the product of evolution. We evolved this feeling to socially connect us, something that would impart a survival edge.

2. While guilt does have a bio-chemical component, it also represents the workmanship of the Creator who, through it, instructs us that His absolute moral truth has been violated.

What then happens when an atheist feels guilty? He can regard this feeling as a useless evolutionary contrivance that has outgrown its usefulness, like the belief in God, and disregard it, even to his own discomfort and detriment. However, there is another choice. He can obey it for pragmatic reasons. He can apologize for his “guilt,” recognizing that this both resolves the uncomfortable guilt feelings and also has a salutary effect upon his relationships.

However, this will cause dissonance. If guilt lacks any objective reality – there is no right-wrong or good-bad, these being no more than social conventions or bio-chemical reactions – for what then need he apologize? Yes, it works, but it only works if both parties maintain the illusion that an objective law has been violated. How will the atheist respond if the wronged party says, “You’re a hypocrite! You are apologizing and you don’t even believe that you’ve done something wrong. You’re merely apologizing to manipulate me!”

The same thing can be said about any altruistic act. The wife can always ask, “Why did you buy me flowers? Is it because it makes you feel good about yourself or do you think that your flowers have purchased a favorable response from me?” If an altruistic act lacks an adequate cognitive foundation, then it cannot be altruistic, but rather self-centered.

When a paradigm leads to inevitably incoherent results, we generally seek a new paradigm, one that will resolve the contradictions. Let me suggest that you try on a new paradigm for size, one that explains the facts.


At this point, you might answer, “Well, I never said that there weren’t problems with living out atheism, but that doesn’t mean that it wrong!” I think that you are overlooking an important issue. If the way you live your life contradicts your stated position, then your life contradicts and invalidates your position. This is especially the case if atheistic morality is based upon what works (pragmatism), and life clearly shows that it doesn’t work.

There is also another perspective to consider. There seems to be such a wonderful correspondence between feeling-action-moral resolution-feeling that bears the imprint of intelligent design. When I feel guilt, it seems to be more than an un-designed chemical reaction. I feel that I’ve committed an objective wrong, and the guilt doesn’t dissipate until I deal with it in a moral way. I’ve got to confess my sins and make restitution for them. Interestingly, if I just apologize to get my wife off my back, it doesn’t work. The entire process has to be bathed in truth and the recognition that a wrong has been done that has to be addressed in a truthful way. Furthermore, it is not enough to buy my wife flowers if I’ve wronged her. I have to humble myself and confess my wrongdoing. It is amazing the restoration that true confession can bring!

The same truths also pertain to my relationship with God. I can say “forgive me” for hours, but I won’t feel any relief until I confess the very thing for which I am guilty. Clearly, confession must be based upon moral truth and not chemistry.

This is a paradigm that not only works for me, but one that also corresponds to reality and provides the ultimate roadmap for restoration.

Militant, Monopolistic, State-Sponsored Religion

The secularism of our Founding Fathers bears little resemblance to the “secularism” of today. The historian, Edwin Scott Gaustad, quotes perhaps our most un-Christian Father to this effect:

• “Almighty God hath made the mind free.” It follows therefrom that mankind should do all that it can to keep minds unshackled and un-coerced. Let us consider, Jefferson noted, that if an all wise and powerful God restrained himself from coercing either the bodies or the minds of men and women, how utterly absurd it must be for “fallible and uninspired men” to arrogate to themselves the right to exercise “dominion over the faith of others…Be it enacted,” therefore, “that no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever.” One will suffer in no way for his or her religious opinions; on the contrary, all persons “shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion.” And whatever their opinions, this will in no way affect their citizenship or their rights. (A Religious History of America, 119).

Now, I’d like to contrast these sentiments with the fate of Laura Fotusky who just resigned as town clerk of Barker, NY,

• Rather than violate her conscience by facilitating gay marriage….She had hoped New York’s gay marriage law – passed by the Republican-led legislature on June 24 – would allow religious exemptions…But when the law didn’t allow such exemptions, Fotusky resigned: “Basically I had to choose between my God and my job.” (World, August 13, 2011, 10)

Governor Cuomo responded to Fotusky’s resignation, saying: “The law is the law…” However, the law hadn’t always been that way. It had demonstrated more respect for divergent opinions and issues of conscience. Instead of proclaiming that “the law is the law,” our Fathers would have made allowances, as the freedom loving Jefferson proclaimed that the people “shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion.” Would it have been too difficult to ask someone other than Fotusky to process same-sex marriage papers?

This is something that has been routinely done in mental health clinics. A new rape-case client is not assigned to a counselor who had just been raped. A Christian therapist is not assigned a same-sex (SS) couple. There had been respect for people’s feelings and faiths. However, this is rapidly changing. Two Christian students were dismissed from graduate counseling programs in two different state schools because they refused to acknowledge that same-sex marriage is morally acceptable. This is a far cry from the Fathers who proclaimed that government should in no way exercise “dominion over the faith of others.” Jefferson had insisted that all people “shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion.”

Just recently, the Obama administration eliminated certain rights of health care professions to not have to participate in activities that violated their conscience. Must today’s secularism compel a dogmatic religious conformity in these matters? Must it force the pharmacist to prescribe the morning-after pill against his conscience? On the same page of the same World Magazine,

• A chaplain at a briefing asked a senior Pentagon official if a biblical worldview on homosexuality would be protected in the post-DADT {Don’t Ask, Don’t’ Tell] military. The reply he received was chilling: If you cannot come in line with the policy, then resign your commission.

We still don’t know how the repeal of DADT will play out for the chaplaincy and religion. However, this Pentagon official, reflecting the opinion of many others, is essentially saying, “The only religion will be our secular religion! We no longer allow religious diversity.” But why not? We’ve made provisions for the conscientious objector (CO). Why not also for the integrity of the religion which has provided the very foundation for this nation? In “God of Liberty,” historian Thomas S. Kidd writes:

• “Whether evangelical or rationalist, most Patriots assumed that Christianity would, in some sense, be the cornerstone for the preservation of the new American Republic.” (112)

According to Kidd, these sentiments were broadly held for quite a while:

• “Through the era of the Civil War most Americans would continue to believe that the Christian religion should assist government in lifting people’s moral dispositions, so that they might contribute positively to the freedom of the Republic. Even the skeptical Thomas Jefferson believed that Christianity, in it original purity, ‘is a religion of all others most friendly to liberty.’” (114)

The religion of the Founding Fathers allowed for religious diversity: “Almighty God hath made the mind free.” Therefore, this should guarantee the free expression of religious conscience. However, today’s secularism wants to place it in shackles: “You must believe in SS marriage, or else! No alternative speech will be tolerated!”

Our Founding Fathers were wise. They realized that by compelling religious conformity, they would not only be promoting a State religion, but also would jeopardize any possibility of unity. Meanwhile, today’s aggressively militant secularistic religion is placing this unity in jeopardy.

The De-Christianizing of America

How can we – Christians, Jews, Muslims, Homosexuals and Atheists – all live together peacefully under one roof? What type of society can best facilitate this peace?
The liberties of one group are now regarded as representing an affront to the liberties of other groups. Many therefore are gravitating to a “secular” solution that will ban offensive religious assertions and symbols from the public arena. Here’s one example of how this is playing out:

• The Air Force has suspended an ethics briefing for new missile launch officers after concerns were raised about the briefing's heavy focus on religion. The briefing, taught for nearly 20 years by military chaplains at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, is intended to train Air Force personnel to consider the ethics and morality of launching nuclear weapons - the ultimate doomsday machine. Many of the slides in the 43 page presentation use a Christian justification for war, displaying pictures of saints like Saint Augustine and using biblical references.

It seems obvious, in this instance, that the Christian worldview has received favorable treatment to the consternation of other groups. It would seem that the most irenic solution would be to eliminate any religious favoritism in favor of neutrality on religious matters, thereby providing a common meeting ground for everyone. In this regards, David Smith, an Air Education Training Command spokesman, stated:

• "Ethics discussions are an important part of professional military development and it is especially important for our airmen who are training to work with nuclear weapons because they have to make hard decisions…We are looking to see if we need a briefing like this... but it will not be a religion based briefing."
This brand of secularism raises several questions. Is it possible to present a values orientation without it being “religion based?” And what does it mean to not be “religion based?”

While this Air Force presentation might be religiously based, the argument against it is, by necessity, also religiously based. If arguing in favor of the “just war” concept is religiously based, then arguing against it also must be religiously based. Otherwise, we would be unfairly discriminating against one point of view because it’s religious, allowing the other point of view because ostensibly it is not religious.

All of our values are religious. They can not be derived from the facts, reason, or science alone or any combination of them. Values come from another source. To discriminate against the source of one set of values, because it’s deemed “religious,” and not the other is biased. This disqualifies the opinions of a Jew or Muslim because their views come from a formally identifiable religion, in favor of the atheist, whose religion is less formal and explicit, is unjust. (Of course, we need to speak in a language that others can understand. For instance, we would resent it if a Muslim quoted the Koran in order to prove his point.)

This suggests that there is no values-neutral position to which government can resort. Every law and every judgment entails values and every government reflects its own philosophy, worldview or religion. It’s therefore disingenuous to plead that secularism provides a marketplace of values-neutrality where everyone can congregate equally. Instead, it will always have a set of values – implicit or explicit – to which the participants must conform. It will always favor one point of view over another.

What then is the solution? I’m not sure. However, in a democratic society, it must begin with open and transparent discussions about values, without hypocritically attempting to silence those voices that are labeled “religious.”

Doubt

Doubt can be highly disorienting and daunting, but it’s also quite normal, even among the most spiritual. None were more spiritual than John the Baptist. According to Malachi (3:1) and Isaiah (40:3), John had been the one selected to prepare hearts for the coming Messiah. Indeed, he was the first one to identify Him, proclaiming to all,

• “The Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!...I saw the Spirit come down from heaven as a dove and remain on him. I would not have known him, except that the one who sent me to baptize with water told me, 'The man on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is he who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.' I have seen and I testify that this is the Son of God." (John 1:29-34)

You might think that after John saw this confirmatory evidence, doubt would have been permanently banished from his thinking. However, after he was imprisoned by King Herod, doubts about Jesus played havoc with his mind. He therefore sent his disciples to Jesus

• …to ask him, "Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?" (Matthew 11:3)

When they found Him, Jesus could have told them, “What’s the matter with the faith of that John? Hasn’t he already received enough evidence?” However, Jesus knowing the painful depths of our trials of faith and our need for solid reasons-to-believe, advised John’s disciples to report back to him about the miracles that they were watching Jesus perform.

We, however, do not have Jesus living among us in the flesh, feeding His contemporaries on a regular diet of incontestable miracles. Yes, God is still a God of miracles, but it doesn’t seem that He performs them as liberally as He once had. How then are we to reassure our flagging faith through those “dark nights of the soul?”

I come from a long line of progenitors who have perfected doubt into an art form. Nothing that we hear can escape the clutches of our negativity, skepticism and criticism. While this might be OK if one doesn’t have any cherished beliefs, this tendency has made my faith-walk into a climb of Mt. Everest. Nothing came easily to me. Often, I felt crushed under the burdens of my own deeply entrenched skepticism.

Nevertheless, I’ve learned many valuable lessons on the Everest trek. For one thing, I’ve learned that I am incapable of keeping my own faith. My faith is a gift from God (Eph. 2:8-9), one that He also had guaranteed to service:

• Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade--kept in heaven for you, who THROUGH FAITH ARE SHIELDED BY GOD'S POWER until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. (1 Peter 1:3-5)

Knowing that God is the author and defender of my faith, when I go through those “dark nights,” I have learned to pray this way, “Lord, you will have to keep me. I can’t keep myself. My salvation is your gift, and so I’m committing it to you, completely.” I therefore leave my concerns with God, and He always picks them up, strengthening me at each slope.

Nor does He disdain me for my failures. After John disciples left Jesus, He began to muse about John:

• “I tell you the truth: Among those born of women there has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist.” (Matthew 11:11)

John’s lapse did not diminish him in the eyes of our Savior. Neither will ours!

Loving God

Spiritual maturity is so closely associated with loving God, but how do we love God and fulfill this first and most important commandment? There are several possible answers. Perhaps the first response would be obedience. Jesus stressed that loving God was about keeping His commandments:

• “Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him." (John 14:21)

Obeying His commends even includes loving our neighbors as ourselves:

• I am not writing you a new command but one we have had from the beginning. I ask that we love one another. And this is love: that we walk in obedience to his commands. As you have heard from the beginning, his command is that you walk in love. (2 John 1:5-6)

In order to “love one another,” love has to begin with loving God and following His truths. Instead, we usually associate love with the magnetism of being drawn to another. While this is an important feeling – and it motivates love – it doesn’t tell us enough about how to love. Instead of promoting the best interests of the other, it therefore might only indulge and enable the object of love to pursue a course of self-destruction, when pursued independently of God’s truth. For instance, instead of inculcating self-control and a sense of responsibility, parents might simply give their children what they want, thinking that this will fulfill their needs.

Loving others has to be grounded in truth, God’s truth. However, this understanding also begs another question: “Why are certain people more diligent than others in keeping His commands?” Sometimes this diligence is attributable to a fear of loosing God’s love or salvation. Martin Luther had been the most diligent monk in his Augustinian monastery. In fact, driven by the fear that he wasn’t good enough for God, he almost died through his zealous practice of the spiritual disciplines on two occasions. In addition to this, he would resort to confession four hours a day with his beloved vicar and mentor, Johann von Staupitz. Finally, Staupitz, being fully cognizant of Luther’s torment, advised him, “You just need to love God.”

Luther thundered back, “Love Him? I hate him!” This was because Luther had no confidence that God loved him, despite all of his acts of obedience. Although a necessary requirement, obedience to God’s commands is not always the same thing as loving God.

Instead, we need to be obedient for the right reasons. Jesus had been loved by a woman who had the right reasons. He had been invited to the home of a religious leader for lunch of elegance. However, while they were reclining at his hosts dinner table, a prostitute entered and threw herself down at Jesus’ feet, washing them with her tears, wiping them with her hair, and then massaged them with costly oil.

Meanwhile, the leader was disgusted by this sight. He reasoned that Jesus couldn’t possibly be a prophet, if he allowed such a woman to even touch him. Knowing what he was thinking, Jesus asked the man if one forgiven a great debt would be more grateful than the one forgiven a minor one. Jesus then explained to the leader:

• "Do you see this woman? I came into your house. You did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You did not give me a kiss, but this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet. Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven--for she loved much. But he who has been forgiven little loves little." (Luke 7:44-47)

The woman loved God much because she had been forgiven much. At last, she was free, eternally. She knew that no price was too much for her to pay in ministering to her Savior. Consequently, driven by gratefulness, she even entered the home of someone who would regard her with absolute contempt.

I therefore thank my Savior for His daily reminders about myself, that I am unworthy of even a “thank you” from Him (Luke 17:7-10). He shows me my moral failures, inadequacies, and inabilities. It hurts, but instead of this revelation sending me into a down-spin of depression, it now produces gratefulness and a sense of intimacy. It also reminds me that those who are forgiven much love much. So my prayer becomes, “Lord, continue to show me how much you forgive me so that I might adore You more.” However, this awareness is not nurtured apart from the daily revelation of my garbage.

Loving God also requires a Scripture-based knowledge of His love. We need to know how much He loves us before we can truly love Him. For Luther, Scripture opened a door to heaven as the Spirit illuminated Romans 1:17: “And the righteous shall live by faith.” Luther suddenly realized that it wasn’t about him attaining to his own righteousness – this was an impossibility – but about God freely giving him the gift of His own righteousness through faith, which He procured on the Cross (2 Cor. 5:21; Phil. 3:7-9).

However, many of us want to love the Lord more and recognize that it requires a greater awareness of our Lord’s grace and how much we need it. Yet we lack this critical awareness. Instead, we might perceive that we are critical and self-righteous, and that our relationships have suffered as a result of this. Here are some recommendations to deal with this problem:

1. Everything starts with asking and trusting in Him. Just know that everyone who comes to Him in truth finds Him (John 6:37; Romans 10:13).

2. King David asked the Lord to examine him to reveal those things that David needs to know (Psalm 139:23-24). We must do likewise.

3. Trust that God will reveal to you what you need to know and when you need to know it (Psalm 51:6; Phil. 3:15).

4. Meditate regularly on the Word. The Spirit is able to make it come alive for you as He did with Luther (Hebrews 4:12).

5. Prepare your heart for hardships. We naturally only want to see good things about ourselves. However, Christ will use pain to bring long-denied truths to the surface (2 Cor. 4:7-11).

6. There is wisdom among our spiritual elders (Eph. 4:11-14). Seek out those you respect.

• He who listens to a life-giving rebuke will be at home among the wise. He who ignores discipline despises himself, but whoever heeds correction gains understanding. The fear of the LORD teaches a man wisdom, and humility comes before honor. (Proverbs 15:31-33)

Just know that when you ask Him to teach you to love Him, you are asking according to His will. Jesus desires an intimate relationship with you based on sincerity and truth (John 4:22-24).

The Religion Called "Naturalism"

My Dear Wormbottom,

Before things begin to escalate and I am surrounded by throngs of adoring reporters, I must explain to you our latest lawsuit. I think the best way to begin is to quote what the press has already reported:

• When two steel girders were found intact, in the shape of a cross, in the middle of the wreckage of the World Trade Center after 9/11, it was hailed by many as a mini “miracle” and a sign of hope for a country beleaguered by a devastating terrorist attack.

• Now, however, an atheist group has filed a lawsuit that seeks to tear down that cross, which was moved recently to the 9/11 Memorial and Museum in New York City…“What we’re looking for is a remedy that honours everyone equally, with a religion-neutral display, or display of equal size and prominence.” According to the lawsuit, American Atheists’ members “…are being subjected to and injured in consequence of having a religious tradition not their own imposed upon them through the power of the state.”

I know it sounds ridiculous to charge that we “are being subjected to and injured in consequence of having a religious tradition not [our] own imposed upon [us] through the power of the state.” And I know that it makes us seem like helpless victims, even though we are the ones who are actually at the helm of the ship. But this is what’s working today! It’s the victimhood strategy, and we have successfully cast ourselves in that role, even though we are anything but victims.

Just think of our victories—how we have already succeeded in marginalizing God in favor of our own religion of “naturalism!” Because of our efforts, we have been able to toss any discussion of God and supernatural causation out of the science classroom. That’s right—we have succeeded at convincing the ignorant public that supernaturalism is a religion, while atheism and naturalism are not.

I can’t help but laugh. Naturalism is no more scientifically provable than supernaturalism. But through our diligence, and of course our unparalleled propaganda machine, naturalism has been accepted as 100 % solid, bedrock science in the minds of 99% of the public. It doesn’t seem to matter that there isn’t a solitary stitch of evidence that the physical laws of nature are indeed natural rather than having been designed and emanating from the mind of God! The public has been gloriously bamboozled and we, my friend, are on a glorious roll!

Once this current “crusade” has succeeded in proving that religious symbols are all unconstitutional, then we can expand our horizons and proceed to remove any and all names with religious connotations from institutions. For example, I believe the day is just around the corner when there will no longer be any “Methodist” or “Presbyterian” hospitals. Likewise, the time is soon coming when there will no longer be any medical centers named Mt. Sinai or Beth Israel.

Just how will we do this?

Well, when it comes to removing any religiously-affiliated names, we will simply argue once again that by entering such a hospital we “are being subjected to and injured in consequence of having a religious tradition not [our] own imposed upon [us] through the power of the state.” You have to admit that this argument will work supremely well in this context. Hospitals are about healing, and how can we partake of optimal healing when we are constantly reminded that this is a “Methodist” hospital? Through this strategy, we will erase from public consciousness any appreciation for the fact that religious institutions have made vast contributions to the fields of health and medicine. Don’t forget that we have already been able to obliterate from public consciousness the undeniable truth that our most prestigious bastions of higher education—like Harvard, Princeton and Yale, just to name a few—all had their starts as loathsome, contemptuous Bible schools. As far as I’m concerned, the sooner we can forget that, the better!

Can you see where we are headed with all of this? We have already been able to convince many that it has been because of atheism and our brand of secularism that we are now a progressive, tolerant and freedom-loving society. Along with this, we have been able—through a barrage of constant repetition—to bring about an association in the minds of the public between two entities that in the past would never have been mentioned in the same breath. And just what might these two entities be, you ask? Why, it’s none other than Christian Fundamentalism with Islamic Jihadist Fundamentalism. That’s right. I’m sure you’ve sensed it as you’ve watched TV and listened to the news. The fundamentalist “connection” that we have tried to make between the two began very subtly but now has moved into the realm that some might call over-the-top. But, no matter…the plan has worked. As a consequence, now, whenever the public thinks of Christian Fundamentalists, they also think of Jihadists. Ah, how sweet it is!

But of course, we can’t let any of these victories totally go to our head. Not just yet, anyway. We must remember that the opposition can use the same arguments. They can also claim that they “are being subjected to and injured in consequence of having a religious tradition not their own imposed upon them through the power of the state.” There are so many examples of this. They could justifiably claim that required attendance at school pep-rallies marginalizes them, or that the school play diminishes them because they weren’t selected, or that the textbooks fail to give adequate recognition to their particular ethnic group. However, we have succeeded in keeping attention focused on our grievances. And, perhaps even more important, we have managed to keep the public’s attention away from the real issue—that any policy or institution is going to favor one set of values or people at the expense of others. For the most part, the public is not even entertaining this thought. Once they catch on, we’ll have to find a new strategy. But until then, we will push this part of our agenda as far as ignorance allows us. Lucky for us, there’s a lot of ignorance out there!

Now, please allow me to go back and try to explain the first part of our charge: “What we’re looking for is a remedy that honours everyone equally, with a religion-neutral display…” Of course, we know that “religion-neutrality” is impossibility, and that all displays, rulings and proclamations reflect some sort of a values orientation. Certainly, you and I are both well aware of the correctness of that assertion. There is no values-neutrality in anything that we, the media, or the universities do. However, we have succeeded admirably in promoting this deception for our own advantage. You see, we can promote our own values till the cows come home, but nobody charges us with violating the separation between church and state. Yet whenever the church raises a counter-issue, we invariably invoke the “separation clause!” Who cares if it’s blatantly hypocritical on our part—it’s working!

Let me give you some wonderful examples. We have been able to influence students towards sexual permissiveness for years. I won’t bore you with all of our strategies, but let me mention just one: values-clarification exercises. We designed these to demonstrate to students that there is no right answer. Of course, we haven’t explicitly said this, but the message is implicit nonetheless. However, when the religious simpletons start screaming that there are indeed right moral answers, we counter—once again, with phenomenal success—that they are just imposing their religion on the educational process. There’s a marvelous double-standard at work here… our stance that there are no objective values is just as religious as theirs. We say “no,” and they say “yes.” But you see, with this impressive string of victories we are amassing, their side has been virtually silenced, while we have been able to go our merry way, unscathed for the most part.

This strategy has worked in so many areas that I am breathless with excitement to share them with you. But let me end with just this one. We have succeeded in removing the school sanction for a Christian group at Hastings Law School. We argued that their religious requirement for membership and for holding office in the group violated the school’s non-discrimination policy. What the courts conveniently overlooked, for us at least, was the fact that all groups discriminate. The student Women’s Breast Cancer Support Group discriminates in favor of women. The Democratic Society discriminates in favor of democrats. I could go on and on, but I’m sure you get the point.

I can’t wait to hear from you about more of our luscious victories, the triumph of cunning over truth. I’m sure that you are rejoicing along with me as we continue to build a better world.

(With help from my friend, Van Misheff!)