Liberty
Eric Raymond now has a blog. His site seems to have the proper tags on the home page to allow it to be used with any rssify script, but I haven’t yet found one that allows me to subscribe to his site in my news aggregator. Today Eric is talking about Islam.
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When I first started reading today’s post, it looked like he was going to be spewing the same old “Islam is a violent religion and the Quran proves it” arguments. But he acknowledges further down that the same can be said of Christianity, which is nice to see. In fact, the Holy Bible (especially the parts that are shared between Judaism and Christianity) has far more passages inciting believers to violence and treachery against non-believers than does the Quran. It is true that modern Muslims focus on the “bad” parts of their holy scriptures in greater numbers than do modern Christians, but it is ridiculous to blame this on the Quran. Islam, Judaism, and Christianity are all originated in Abraham, and therefore carry much of the scripture in common — one criticizing the other’s scripturesis like throwing stones in glass houses.
On the other hand, poor economic and social conditions lead people to be more suceptible to extremism, and this is true for Christians, Muslims, and Jews. In all three religions, you will find the most fertile soil for extremism in the poorest of the people (although the people exploiting these conditions are rarely poor). The ultra-orthodox in Israel have garnered massive political clout by providing welfare and religious-oriented housing for the poor among the population, they fill the settlements largely with people who cannot afford to live in the cities, and so on. And in the case of Islam, there is no question that Islam is strongest among the poorest of earth’s people. Poverty and ignorance are the genesis of extremism — religion is simply one of the tools that are used to exploit (and often exacerbate) these conditions.
With this out of the way, Eric proceeds to explain what he sees as the real problem: coerced religion of any creed. In this, the bulk of his post seems like it could have been written by Dinesh D’Souza. Americans (and especially libertarians like Eric) value liberty almost religiously. Religious extremists of the house of Abraham value obedience to God’s will above all else, and tend to regard liberty as something that is cancerous to righteous virtue. From these two conflicting viewpoints, it is difficult to see any hope of reconciliation. However, D’Souza suggests that the two perspectives can find some common ground by stressing the fact that virtue cannot exist without free will– if virtue is coerced, there is no evidence that the person truly had a virtuous heart. In other words, society ought to protect individual liberties, so that people are able to choose the path of virtue.
I personally am sympathetic to the Raymond/D’Souza argument. However, an honest reading of Abrahamite scriptures will betray this argument to be Luciferian. The supremacy of “free will”in salvationis not something that is supported by the Talmud, Bible, or Quran, although most today assume that it is fundamental. Aquinas suggested that individual choice wasnot conducive to salvation, because if the choice were left up to the person, the person would always fail to demonstrate virtue. Surrounded, as we are, by The Cult of Liberty, it is not hard to see how such fundamental concepts have been interpreted and twisted into what modern westerners believe today. But a quick reading of Romans 9:10-21 spells things out pretty clearly. If God decides before you are born that your “free will” will lead you to reject salvation, that is exactly what will happen. You don’t have any say in the matter, and don’t bother complaing that it’s “unfair” — God doesn’t care. In fact, trying to exercise your own free will is the most consistent way to get yourself on God’s bad side. The Abrahamite scriptures drive this point home repeatedly, from the stories of Eden, Tower of Babel, Lucifer’s fall, and so on.
The religions of Abraham were fundamentally based in the knowledge that people will strive toward liberty, and theirexercise of liberty will ultimately be their destruction. Today, some of the greatest threats to humanity involvenuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. When you consider thatthese things were innovated bypeople killing each other over economic selfishness (who all happened to have the same religion), it is harder to take seriously the idea that religious extremism is the most significant threat to human survival.Some might even argue that humanity would be a lot further from the brink of extinction if we had just listened when the Pope said the earth was flat and had resisted our arrogant impulses to create flying machines and visit the heavens “like God”. The astute readers who have followed the above link to Romans willnotice thatthis a moot point, though. The people who ignored the Pope were predestined to do so (and to be punished for it).
As Jacob Shwirtz points out in his review of Minority Report, this seeming paradox of free will versus absolute determinism is revealed in places besides religion. In Minority Report, the paradox was illuminated by considering premonitions (a good catch that I completely missed). If someone has a premonition that comes true, does it mean that the world behaved deterministically, or that the person having the premonition exerted control over the environment to make a self-fulfilling prophecy? Both positions are equally defensible. In fact, there are many other possible ways to explain premonitions on the basis of determinism or free will. Premonitions are a great thought experiment for considering the paradox. Another good way to explore the two opposing perspectives is to consider the cause-and-effect chain backward to the beginning of time. Everything is caused at some point by something else. So that would imply that there was a thing that doesn’t have a cause. Aquinas called this the “prime mover” and offered it as proof of God’s existence. But, like the premonition thought-experiment, there are other possible answers that are equally defensible.
In the end, anyone who claims that either determinism or free will is the only logically defensible perspective, is lying. Both are at opposite ends of the spectrum, but both are equally defensible logically. Believing one or the other (or both, or neither)is a matter of faith, and the logic is merely rationalization. I believe that the incongruence between D’Souza (America) and Romans 9:10 (Islamist Ummah) comes from this same source. Fundamentally, the Cult of Liberty andthe Islamist Ummahare disagreeing about the very basis of free will.