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The Cognitive Dissident

A blog by Ronald P. Thompson, Ph.D.

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The Cognitive Dissident

How the Rise of Donald Trump will Benefit the American Christianity

So large parts of the leaders of the evangelical community has embraced Donald Trump whose entire life epitomizes the pursuit of wealth and personal vainglory at the expense of anyone who gets in his way. Even without any discussion of how he treats women or specific minority groups, it is fair to say his value system stands diametrically opposed to that of Jesus. However, at the debate this week he endeared himself to the political Christian right by promising to overturn Roe v. Wade and thus pave the way for the banning of all abortion in at least some states.  No matter that the opposition to abortion was conceived in the Vatican and has only the most tenuous relation to any Christian scripture and none at all to the teachings of Jesus. I see this is an outright surrender by the evangelical right of any real connection to the religion they claim to follow. They are now simply fighting a rearguard action to preserve any political clout when the very nomination of Trump indicates their influence is on the wane.

As presented by Jesus and as practiced by the early church, the Christian religion was focused on helping the oppressed find meaning in their lives despite living under a political system that did not care one wit for their well-being.    Neither Jesus nor the writers of the New Testament ever once suggested or even hinted at the idea that Christians should expect the government or the society at large to live by the morality that they espoused for themselves.   Quite the contrary was true. The early church assumed they would always be the small minority subject to the whims of the larger world and their way of living was what set them apart from the general society in which they lived. Continue reading “How the Rise of Donald Trump will Benefit the American Christianity” →

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The Eternal Message of Adam & Eve

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The book of Genesis presents the early monotheist’s vision of nature of humanity and of life.  Like monotheism itself, it is a huge step from the elaborate conceptions of reality and nature of older religions, to one stripped down to the basics.  Compare the creation story in Genesis to other ancient traditions. There is no war of the gods, no birthing of a god race, no complicated story line; just one simple and elegant idea. Everything was created from nothing by a power that was beyond comprehension to humans.   Sadly this beautiful and honest simplicity is completely missed by conservative Christians today.

The story goes on to present Adam and Eve as the protohumans. They are the embodiment of the human condition as it was for many thousands of years prior to the first written records. I would suggest, this story is an important allegory that can give us insight that the basic challenges of life are intrinsic to the human condition, not some modern invention of technology, modern society or capitalism.

Consider this, the story of Adam and Eve show that the binary of male and female is not a modern construct; rather it is a biological construct that predates human civilization. This does not say we must be constrained by that construct any more than we must be constrained to travel no faster than we can run, but it does say the argument that the male-female binary is some form of modern oppression is a false claim.  We humans now have the power to move from our evolutionary roots. In many ways, that freedom is a good thing; but, we should never buy into the lie that those evolutionary roots are some sort of evil conspiracy by a nefarious group of people. Continue reading “The Eternal Message of Adam & Eve” →

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Exodus: The Story of a Brutal God

 

With the spectacle of religious violence on the rise, particularly by Islamists; I think it is time to take a hard look at the monotheistic vision of God from its inception. Not from the time of Mohammad, though his followers were spectacularly violent, but further back to the effective birth of the monotheistic religion that is the basis for Islam, Christianity and Judaism.  I think we need to look at the story of Moses and his general Joshua.  Actually, we need to look at the vision of God that is presented in the story of the Exodus and the conquest of the land of Israel and the actions of those two key figures.

I know most people in the US know the story, but the question is have you ever really thought about what it says beyond the feel good story of an oppressed people being freed?

Consider this.  The story opens in the empire of Egypt, ruled by a god-king, Pharaoh Ramses the Great.  In this world, everyone, rich and poor, are essentially owned by the Pharaoh.  In the story God tells Moses that his people should be released from bondage and leave Egypt. Significantly, not all people should be freed from slavery and oppression, but only a select group.  This clearly indicates that the God of Moses did not believe in universal human rights, but only in rights for his chosen people.  Thus the concept of justice by race and/or group affiliation is given divine sanction.  Continue reading “Exodus: The Story of a Brutal God” →

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Abortion: A case of Jesus v. Pope

The other day I watched an interesting documentary about the Pro-Life movement on Netflix.  In some ways it was difficult to watch due to the content, but it was very illuminating as to the methods and mindset of the core anti-abortion activist.  The method of the film maker was not to have a debate, but to let the excesses of this movement’s leaders speak for themselves.   Though I commend this method, particularly for this topic, it left a great many deceptive assumptions lying on the table with no rebuttal.

Underlying the entire argument of those who seek to ban abortion is the assumption that the United States is, or was, or ever has been a “Christian” nation in the sense that Israel under King David was a Jewish nation.  This assumption is critical because the fact that Jesus, the person they ostensibly are seeking to emulate, never once even suggested that the mission of his followers was to sway or change Roman government policy.  In the day of Jesus, the whole of Israel was a province of Rome and it follows that if his message was to change the civil government’s practices he would have said so.   And Roman governmental practices were both brutal and unjust.   Christians today wince at the reality of Jesus’s crucifixion, yet in his day it was just a small but normal part of life, in the good times.  In bad times the main roads were lined with rotting crucified corpses.   For non-Roman citizens, no trial nor evidence was needed to be presented before the victim was crucified, just the capricious whim of a Roman official.   Yet, what do we see Jesus’s model for response to such injustice?  In the gospel of Luke Jesus answered:

“But I say to you that you must not oppose those who want to hurt you. If people slap you on your right cheek, you must turn the left cheek to them as well. When they wish to haul you to court and take your shirt, let them have your coat too. When they force you to go one mile, go with them two.”

Jesus was presenting a way of life for the individual who lived in a brutal and oppressed citizenry.   Not once did he, nor the apostles, seek to implement his new morality of love and compassion via any means of coercion, least of all by the strong arm of the state.   In the end Christianity was created for the powerless individual to find happiness in an unjust world. Continue reading “Abortion: A case of Jesus v. Pope” →

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Of Human Rights and Government

I am an American.  The sanctity of unfettered freedom of speech, assembly, press and religion has been ingrained in me as, it is in all Americans, since my earliest years.  This belief is, in many ways, the heart of who we are as a people.

“We hold these truths to be self evident that all men are endowed by their creator to certain inalienable rights:  life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”  This we believe as a people.   The political right, center and left know the fastest way to public repudiation is to trample those basic rights.

Americans citizens regularly get in trouble in other countries when they give the authorities the proverbial finger only to find out that they have committed a crime in doing so.  This type of behavior is often seen as American arrogance, but in fact it is not that Americans think they should have that right, they believe every person on earth already has that right. Rather than being arrogant, we tend to be naive to the ways of the rest of the world.

Against that backdrop we look at the execution last year of a women’s rights lawyer for simply stating that women have rights equivalent to men.  We see the Chinese government arrest people for practicing unapproved religions and systemically destroying Christian churches.   We see the a number of governments arrest not only those who practice freedom of the press, but lawyers who defend the journalist. And we hear of death sentences handed out by the governments in several countries on the charge of changing religion or daring to question even the smallest tenant of the official religion.

How can all this be?  Don’t all people know they have the inherent human right to freedom of speech, press, assembly and religion?  It is a puzzlement for us in America. How does a government get away with it?  Such a flagrant violation of the social contract between government and the governed simply must result in the fall of the said government.  Mustn’t it? Continue reading “Of Human Rights and Government” →

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Yes, we could always do better, but to often the rhetoric implies that in “The West” women have it worse than in other parts of the world.  That is simply not true. Yes there are tiny societies where women are treated as well as in Western democracies, but compare the status of women in the most populous nations: China, India, Pakistan, Nigeria & Bangladesh.  This list represents 6 of the 8 most populous countries and nearly half the world’s population.  Take a look at women’s political power, women’s economic power and women’s social status, then compare them to the status of women in North America and Europe.

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Of all Lies and Hype of the Gun Control Debate

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(note this is a repost of an essay I wrote after Sandy Hook.  I still think this is what we need to do, but no one is even proposing it.)

The vitriol has now reached a pitch so high as to likely preclude any sort of reasonable discussion and both sides are 100% at fault.

We have long known that counter to  what seems reasonable, that the more people are forced to defend their own position on an issue the more (rather than less) they become committed to their position.

So every time a story headline on CNN reads “NRA’s paranoid fantasy flouts democracy” everyone who is at all in sympathy with the NRA and even many “neutral” gun owners feel attacked and will resist any sort of dialogue.

Continue reading “Of all Lies and Hype of the Gun Control Debate” →

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The Choice in November

So it is down to a choice between The Donald and Hillary.

As I wrote back in the fall, Trump is not fit to be a small town mayor, let alone president of the United States. His actions since then have only reinforced the fact that he is driven by vindictive, narcissistic, capriciousness; but he seems to have not the slightest regard for the damage his words have.  Just as bad, he doesn’t seem to have a clue about the complexities of the issues.  He has taken the Obama template of “Hope and Change” from eight years ago and simply changed the words to “Make America Great Again.”   Neither campaign actually said anything about real policy. Sadly Americans seem to like vague catch phrases over real plans.  Time and time again I’ve listened to him speak at length only to ask myself “Do any of his supporters actually listen to what he is saying?”  I recall his daughter in an interview point out that her father says what he thinks his audience wants to hear. This is what a good salesman does, and Donald Trump is simply a big dollar salesman.  With this in mind, no one should be surprised that he never seems to feel bound by what he says.  Be sure those Republicans who are now supporting their party’s candidate have no idea what Trump will actually do if he is elected.

Now the line I’m hearing from die hard Republicans is that he is better than Hillary.  I ask if you took away your tribal loyalty would you come to that conclusion.   Yes, Hillary is corrupt in the classical sense. Yes she gave favors to people who gave her foundation money.  Yes, even before she took the Secretary of State’s office she began the process of creating a private network to evade the Freedom of Information laws. In her approach and personality she seems to be Richard Nixon come back to life.  Significantly the laws she worked to evade were mostly created by Democrats in response to Nixon.  She is very far from the kind of person I think should be president. I still think John Kasich was the best candidate, in either party, in the race.

To me the choice is clear: the center-left Hillary Clinton would be far less likely to do the country catastrophic damage than Donald Trump who doesn’t seem to have any guiding principles. Yes, she will have ethics problems. Perhaps she will, like Nixon, self-destruct. Yet, compared with Donald Trump’s utter lack of suitability to be Commander-In-Chief or the spokesman for the nation, I can do nothing else.

If we look at the history of our country morality is not necessarily the hallmark of an effective president.  Both Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush are good moral people, but neither was a particularly effective president.   Certainly this year we no longer have a choice of voting for a good moral person in the fall.  What we have to choose between are two different brands of self-serving amoral people.  And choose we (as a nation) must.  Wishing for the perfect candidate and not voting at all is the cowards way out. Following tribal party loyalty is the sheep’s path.  I for one will not be a coward or a sheep.  Though I have never voted for a Democrat in a presidential election before, with eyes wide open to her faults and failings, I will vote for Hillary in the fall.

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