BoogymanBlog

A lot has happened since I last posted anything.  Mainly, it's been a while because I've been busier than a soccer mom on black Friday.  My dad and I put a new engine, transmission, and front end in the DeSoto; then I graduated, took a 2 month backpacking tour through Europe, moved to Florida, and started "working" for the real Air Force.

For my ethics class here, I had to write a paper about the relationship between morality and justice.  The only guidelines were that it had to be 2-3 pages so it was a really easy paper to write.  If you're interested, here it is:

            Everybody has a slightly different idea of how morality relates to justice.  Each community defines what they consider to be moral, but the concept of justice seems less flexible.  Both justice and morality can be ways to define right and wrong, but why is justice more consistent while morality sometimes seems culture-based?  The concepts of justice and morality overlap quite a bit.  In fact, moral codes tend to include the concepts of justice, but justice does not always include morality.  The apparent solution is that morality is based on some ideology which includes the basis for justice.

            First, it seems prudent to define the concept of ethics.  For the sake of specificity, ethics will be used to address universal ideas of right and wrong.  These ideas rise from the standard human belief that it is wrong to harm other people.  A person loses their protection under this code if they break it.  Ethics does not take into account personal ideas of good and bad, only the universal goal to not harm other people.  The idea of justice is a way of enforcing ethical standards on a community as evidenced by the consistency of laws against theft and murder.  Morality then is a system of personal values addressing issues of good and bad. 

For example, murder is wrong, which makes it both unjust and unethical.  Since “wrong” is included within the concept of “bad” murder is also immoral.  On the other hand, premarital sex between consenting adults does not harm either one of them and cannot be said to be “wrong”.  Since it is not wrong, it is neither unethical nor unjust.  In terms of morality, whether premarital sex is good or bad is subjective and varies for each person.  Similarly, donating money to charity is an issue of morality only.  Whether or not one donates, they are not doing harm, so the donation is not a consideration of justice or ethics.  However, since the donation would be a “good” thing to do, it is the morally proper action.

            Now the source of overlap between morality and justice is evident: both include the concept of ethics.  Clearly if everyone lived an ethical life, societies would have no need for a justice system to enforce ethical standards.  There is however a problem with ethics, because it is too narrow.  Ethics only concerns itself with not doing harm, but is not at all concerned with doing good.  If a person was only concerned with being ethical, they would never give to charity and they would never concern themselves with the actions of others.  So if there was a society of many ethical people and one unethical person, the unethical person would go unchecked.  This is when morality becomes necessary.

            While a life may be ethical just by refusing to do harm, morality provides the motivation to prevent others from doing harm.  It is generally considered good to stop bad people from doing bad things, so morality is a necessary trait in anyone designated to enforce justice.  By taking a moral position, one realizes a responsibility to do good by preventing wrong.  Morality can only come after a solid foundation of ethics, and is incredibly necessary in an imperfect world.

            The potential pitfall of justice comes when morality and ethics are confused.  An example of this would be Nazi Germany.  Germans generally believed that it would be good for their nation to regain its economic stability.  Adolf Hitler believed a good way to accomplish this would be through the development of a genetically superior nation.  He also believed and persuaded others that a good way to accomplish this was through genocide.  Entire armies were caught up in the “good” idea of a genetically superior and financially stable nation.  They got so caught up that ethics were completely forgotten.  The Holocaust was completely unjust and unethical because it caused so much unnecessary harm, but in the minds of the Nazis it was the moral thing to do. 

Injustice occurs when people mistake morality for ethics.  They are not the same thing even though they often overlap.  Usually, a person’s concept of morality includes the universal standard for ethics.  Most people extend their concepts of morality beyond ethics to concern themselves with the ideas of helping people or following specific religious practices.  However it is necessary to remember that morality is a personal issue, ill-suited for application to a community.  If morality is broadly applied, ethics loses its influence and the society suffers injustice.  While both morality and ethics are important in a society, injustice can only be prevented when the society concerns itself more with ethics than with morality.

I'm taking a comparative religion class which requires me to visit religious services from different faith backgrounds than my own.  For my first visit, I went to a Jewish service.  For my second visit, I went to an Islamic ceremony.  I figured I'd post my experience here for all to see:

            With all the media attention focused on Islam since 2001, I started to feel like I should learn more about it.  A few months ago I finished reading the Qur’an, but I still did not understand how Islam was much different from Judaism.  Both claim the same deity and the same biblical history laid out in the Christian “Old Testament”.  The only textual basis I could find for a potential theological conflict was the prophet Muhammad claimed by Islam.  The Qur’an states that Muhammad passed on the word of God.  While Jews might disagree with the source of Muhammad’s inspiration, I could never find anything he said that would conflict with Jewish teachings.  I was left wondering why there is so much conflict between Judaism and Islam when this passage from the Qur’an even claims the Torah and the Gospel as moral guides sent down by God:

“Step by step, He has sent the Scripture down to you [Prophet] with the Truth, confirming what went before: He sent down the Torah and the Gospel earlier as a guide for people…” (Qur’an, book of “The Family of ‘Imran” verse 3)

It became my hope that I would understand the differences between Judaism and Islam more by visiting each of their services.

            The first thing I noticed when I entered the room dedicated for Islamic services was that I was asked to remove my shoes.  This was just to show respect for the sacred space of the chapel area.  Throughout the day, your shoes get dragged through the dirt and mud so removing them before you enter the chapel is a way of not defiling it.  Islam is built around a very deep respect for God.  Taking your shoes off before entering a place devoted to his worship is just one of the many ways Muslims show that respect.

            The word “Islam” literally means devotion to God.  I felt that the name accurately describes the religion.  Muslims are required by Sharia (Islamic law) to face Mecca and pray five times daily.  Sharia law also requires Muslims to attend a formal service for the noon prayer on Fridays.  By comparison, Islam seems to mandate a closer relationship with God than the other Abrahamic religions.  Before the prayer, there was a formal call to worship sung by one of the attendants.  During this call to worship everybody would stand, bow, and sit in unison while only one person sang.  Afterward, everybody knelt with their forehead on the ground for a few minutes to pray.

            I asked about some of the motions during the call to worship.  I was told it is just a way to consecrate the prayer time and open up a direct channel to God.  At one point, everybody made a waving motion behind their head.  It was explained to me that this was to represent pushing everything else out of your mind so the prayer would be completely undistracted.  The kneeling stance taken during prayer also symbolizes submission to God.

            After the prayer came a few readings from the Qur’an and a brief sermon on Sharia law vs. Muslim law.  All of the readings were in Arabic, and most were also in English.  I don’t know why the readings were in Arabic, but I assume it was because Arabic is the original language of the Qur’an.  Presumably, maintaining the use of the original language assures that congregants will always have access to the original message passed down by Muhammad.  The part I found really interesting though was the sermon.  One thing that really struck me is that it was formatted like a persuasive essay, and constructed around the thesis that Muslim law is a dilution of Sharia law. 

He argued that the guidance passed down in the Qur’an is unambiguous and clearly explains that Muslims should not do things such as drink alcohol or have extra-marital sex.   He said that Muslim law would also prohibit these things if it maintained the true spirit of Islam; however, he argued that Muslim law did not maintain the spirit of Islam and was obviously an inferior version of Sharia law.  This argument also made it clear that Islam does not distinguish between religious law and state law.

As the name suggests, Islam is intensive on devotion and submission to God.  It is most important to follow the laws laid out by God through Muhammad.  Understanding the law is important, but even if you don’t understand, it is vital to follow the law.  Like many other religions, the importance of tradition is emphasized over its meaning.  The meaning of the traditions and laws offered to me when I asked was generally something to the effect of “because God said so.” 

I find it surprising that Judaism and Islam can claim the same God and even many of the same books, but still evolve as such diverse methods of practice.  Both religions orient themselves around devotion and obedience to God.  Both religions even contain strict dietary restrictions and mandate circumcision without a clear explanation for why God mandates it.  Islam seems to be more focused on prayer while Judaism is heavily focused on reciting biblical readings.  Based solely on observing the practices of Muslims as compared to Jews, conflict would seem reasonable because the ways they devote themselves to God look very different.  After visiting a service from each tradition though, I feel like understanding the persistent Islam-Judaism conflict is farther out of my reach.  It seems to me that the real conflict might lie in the obvious cultural differences instead of the theological ones.

Two days ago, I had to write a persuasive speech for my English 411 class.  It took me a while to think of a topic I cared enough about to try to convince people to agree with me on.  Eventually I picked skepticism.  I thought about going off on creation science (which is not science), but thought I should warm up with a lighter topic like astrology.  My plan was to ease into creation science from astrology through psychics (I don't buy it).  Eventually I realized that I was already going to be pushing the 8 minute upper limit, and religion might be too touchy a topic anyway, so I just argued about skepticism in general.  Here it is.

            I’d like to speak to you about the importance of skepticism.  I believe that people are often all too comfortable with their gullibility.  Often we get lazy and allow ourselves to believe what is comfortable instead of what is reasonable.  The problem with this is that we don’t get to choose what is true.  Assuming our goal is to understand the world as it truly is, our level of comfort with an idea is entirely irrelevant.  The important thing is the evidence, so I encourage you to keep a question ready for any astounding claim you hear: “Is there a more rational explanation?”

            The first example I’d like to touch on is astrology.  As a group of well educated college students, I hope I won’t be offending any of you when I say that astrology is entirely fraudulent.  I will even go so far as to say that if you believe astrology has any use beyond cheap entertainment, you are a foolish person.  There is no scientific evidence to suggest that a person’s astrological sign is related to their personality traits, luck, or fate.

            A person’s astrological sign is determined by the zodiac constellation oriented behind the rising sun on their birthday.  I was born on March 3^rd which many of you can probably identify as the sign Pisces.  The modern convention is that the Pisces sign applies to anyone born between February 20^th, and March 20^th, but here’s the kicker.  On my birthday, the sun doesn’t rise in front of the Pisces constellation.  In the 2000 years since astrology was “developed” the Earth’s orientation in inertial space has wobbled so that all of the astrological signs have shifted by about a month, so my “true” sign would be Aquarious.

            One might argue astrology is valid because it is consistent with real life, and I agree that it is consistent.  Take me for example.  You’ve all had almost an entire semester to get an impression of me.  Tell me if this astrological description of me sounds accurate:

The Pisces person is compassionate, empathetic, imaginative, sensitive, mystical, spiritual, dreamy, passive, easy-going, idealistic, visionary, inspirational, accepting, undiscriminating, charitable, believes in soul growth, self-sacrificing and artistic. They can also sometimes be distracted, detached, illusory, impractical, gullible, neglectful, escapist and lazy.

I personally don’t see myself as visionary, much less charitable, self-sacrificing, artistic, detached, impractical, gullible, or escapist; and I’m sure that the adjective “sensitive” isn’t the first one that pops into your mind to describe me.  There were a lot of adjectives in there that could apply to me, but it’s easy to find some accurate descriptions in such a long stream of adjectives.  The real question to ask here is how many of you felt like this described you a bit? 

            This is a “cold read” which means it’s vague enough that everything in it seems to apply to the reader.  James Randi once performed an experiment where he handed out professionally developed personal horoscopes to a classroom of students based on their birth information.  The students all rated their horoscopes 4/5 or 5/5 for accuracy.  Then James Randi allowed the students to trade, showing them that all of the horoscopes were identical.

            Now I’ll admit that this experiment didn’t prove all horoscopes false, but it does answer that question I posed to you earlier: “Is there a more rational explanation?”  So I ask you which is more rational.  Option 1: Someone can tell you about your fate, personality, and luck based solely on the month you were born.  Or option 2: Someone other than James Randi figured out how to write a cold read.  James Randi has a standing offer of $1 million to anyone who can prove paranormal abilities under laboratory conditions.  His offer has been standing since 1964 with no winners.

            Hopefully, debunking astrology is old news to all of you so I’d like to move on to a closely related field: psychics.  If you listen to a psychic, or pull up some videos on YouTube, you’ll notice that their responses are always vague enough to answer the question with little chance of being wrong.  If you’re asking for a name, they might give you a letter, but it won’t be any old letter.  It will probably be E, R, S, or T because these are the most commonly used letters in English.  If you’re asking for a location, they’re inclined to respond with something vague like “there’s something tall nearby” or a description like hot or cold.  Can any of you think of a place you go to normally that doesn’t have something tall nearby?

            Now I’d like to ask a new question specifically tailored to psychics.  Why don’t they gamble?  If they can read minds, they can win at poker.  If they can guess numbers, they can win at roulette.  If they can see the future, they can win the lottery.  As always, it’s important to ask “Is there a more rational explanation?”  Do psychics possess these amazing abilities, but avoid casinos because they would rather charge people in need of their help?  Or is it more reasonable to think these so-called psychics have learned how profitable vagueness can be?

            In fact, when psychics are forced to be specific, they show zero ability.  When psychic Sylvia Brown was asked to make predictions for the year 2007 on television, she was exactly incorrect.  She said George Bush would pull out of Iraq, major drug busts would be made on both the East and West coast, terrorists would be caught smuggling bombs into the U.S., and the housing market was the safest investment.  As soon as we check for objective outside verification, the fabrications fall apart.

            Keep searching for outside verification when you hear a claim, but search honestly.  It’s easy to find support when you start from a conclusion, so we must approach investigation scientifically.  I wrote an entire research essay in High School claiming that Attention Deficit Disorder was due to candy, and that medication couldn’t treat it.  That was the idea I had in my head before I started writing, and I found the support for it.  I had to rely on outdated studies and unscientific sources, but with a lot of effort I backed up my conclusion.  Had I started with the topic and done research before making my conclusion, I would have finished earlier.  I wouldn’t have had to spend so much time ignoring reputable studies.  I wouldn’t have had to dig through blogs to find personal anecdotes by unqualified citizens arguing unsupported opinions.  Only when we question our beliefs can we truly learn.

            I know it’s uncomfortable to question the things you believe.  It might lead you down a path you don’t like.  It might shatter your world view, or redefine what’s important to you; but I assure you, the truth is worth it.  I stand before you both as a victim of skepticism, and someone who has been saved by it.  When critical thinking started disassembling the beliefs I held so dear, I was terrified.  I didn’t know what to do if the things I had sworn were important weren’t.  I felt lost, scared, alone, and unimportant.  If you develop the habit of skepticism, you might go through some of the same crises. 

While they may be scary, they’re incredibly liberating experiences.  When you finally realize that you don’t have to contrive reality, you can spend time on the things you learn are actually important.  The bottom line is that you can’t change reality just by wanting it to be one way or the other.

            We face fabrications that can give us false hope, but we tell ourselves that false hope is still hope.  Why do people suffer from consistent gullibility?  It’s because we’re afraid.  We’re afraid that we can’t know what will happen next.  We’re afraid that there’s no structure and reassuring plan for our lives.  We’re afraid that we’re small and insignificant.  We’re afraid that our existence is a meaningless series of random events.  What if all it’s true?  What if tomorrow is a surprise?  What if our chances really are random?  What if you’re really just one of 6 billion people living on just one of billions of planets in one of too many galaxies to count?

            Like it or not, your existence is cosmically insignificant, but that’s not really a problem.  To me, we’re important.  I hope you think we’re important to.  So, lacking a strict definition of important who’s to say we’re wrong.  Why do we need to succumb to our gullibility?  Things are the way they are, and maybe there’s not a problem with that. Documentation:
I got the pisces info from wikipedia.org
I learned that the signs are shifting from Bill Nye (youtube clip), and double checked with another site, but I forget it's address.
I got the James Randi challenge info from his website randi.org
I got the info on Sylvia Brown from a video clip of her on youtube.com

Finally, the much anticipated tale of bodily harm.

The Thumb:
So there I was, standing in the hallway.  I was hanging out with a girl named Storm from my squad.  I had only really gotten to know her a few days earlier, but we were getting along really well.  Lo and behold, she found out that I was ticklish and that it's really funny to watch me squirm when you poke me in the ribs.  She proceeded to do so, and an onslaught of tickling commenced.  At one point, she jabbed me with her left hand and I jammed her forefinger.  At another point, I smacked away her hand before it made contact forcefully enough to leave a bruise.  I want to make it clear that I'm not normally so abusive.  It's just that my sister always used to tickle me and still does.  You could say that over the years, I've been conditioned to react a bit forcefully at the threat of involuntary laughter. 

The most significant thrust of the evening was next.  She successfully penetrated my defenses and poked me in the ribs.  The squirm that followed was a fast one.  I twisted back and accidentally caught her thumb between my elbow and hip bone.  I heard a loud popping noise which I thought was just her knuckle popping.  She said it really hurt and I thought I had jammed another finger.  At this point we agreed that the tickling should stop.  But apparently Storm is a slow learner because she started up a few minutes later.  With much restraint, I managed to overcome years of conditioning and calm the degree of my reflexes.  She kept complaining about how bad her thumb hurt all evening.

The next morning, it still hurt pretty bad and her roommate talked her into going to the hospital to have it checked out.  She got X-rays and hilarity ensued.  The doctor came back and told her two things.  First: that her thumb was broken.  Second: that she should "milk it for all it's worth."  When she learned this, she told me, and she told her mother.  Now to illustrate my gift for impeccable timing, it's important to explain that she learned her thumb was broken on the Friday of parents' weekend.

Within a few hours, I had the privilege of meeting Storm's mom and little sister.  It's without a doubt, the most interesting way I've ever introduced myself.  "Hello, my name is Casey.  I'm really sorry I broke your daughter's thumb."  Her mom forgave me, but her little sister didn't.  All day I had a cute little 9-year old shaking her fist at me and telling me "You better stay away from my sister!"

It's probably the strangest way I've ever started off a friendship, but it's working pretty well so far.  Storm's mom loves me because I've been spending every waking moment nursing her daughter back to health.  Soon I'll post photographic evidence of my selfless commitment to her recovery.