“Functionally there is no difference whether we live on this earth for hours, like some babies that die at birth, or live to see our twilight years.”

So from now on, when I get these emails, I’ve decided to start throwing them to the wolves opening them up to vigorous public debate. I now ask my querants if it’s okay to publish their letters on my blog, and debate them publicly instead of privately. If they say yes, it’s game on. (Names will only ever be published with permission of the authors.)

Our first contestant is Aaron deOliveira, responding to my April 27 piece on AlterNet, One More Reason Religion Is So Messed Up: Respected Theologian Defends Genocide and Infanticide. Here is his letter, published in its entirety, with no edits, and no illustrations until my reply.

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sorry it’s taken me this long to say anything about your post. i’ve been a lurker on your blog for a little while. the post gave me a lot to reflect on before i felt i had a suitable answer to your post. also, i’m emailing you rather than posting in the comments because the conversation there has already snaked in several directions.

i myself am LDS. i particularly enjoy talking with atheists and reading their blogs. on the whole, atheists ask very profound questions. i think it’s because they are able to be 100% critical and skeptical of religious actions whether by god or man.

so back to your post. first, lets call a stone a stone. what the Israelites did to the various people’s of Canaan was genocide. it’s functionally no different than the genocides that happened in Sudan, Bosnia/Croatia, etc. one group of people finds a reason to exterminate another group of people. anyone that argues that it was something else is being disingenuous.

so this leads us to the morality of the action. i picture god as a gardener and this earth as a garden. all the peoples of the earth are plants in this garden. by comparison, in the gardens that we till here on earth, the gardener exercises judgement over life and death frequently. he decides which plants to prune, which weeds to pull, which bugs to attracted for pollination and which to kill as pests. the garden is just as valuable to the weed’s continued existence as the flowers and the aphid is just as hungry as the bee. so why does the gardener get to decide what lives and what dies in his garden? shouldn’t he preserve all life unmolested in his garden?

the morality of the gardeners actions are usually judged by measuring against his purpose. the gardeners purpose is to raise up the best plants he can. so he naturally removes things detrimental to their development. because the gardener has designated this particular plot of land as a garden, when he exercises authority over the life and death of what is there, his actions are seen as moral because they fulfill his purpose.

if the gardener were to exercise the same authority over life and death in the wild, his actions would no longer be seen as moral. if he went into the wilderness and killed trees or destroyed animals because they didn’t please him, most people would censure the gardener for his actions even though they are functionally the same as what he does in his garden.

so coming full circle with my god as a gardener analogy. there are times where god as the creator and owner of both the earth and its inhabitants (ie. the garden) exercises authority over the life and death of those that dwell there. god’s purpose of making every inhabitant, both the committer of the genocide and the and the victim of it, into their best selves is fulfilled the same way as the gardener in the analogy.

leaving the analogy, i want to touch on something that you probably don’t accept, but is necessary in discussing god and man’s actions as they pertain to life and death. we are eternal beings. we existed before we came to this earth. we will exist long after we pass through death. functionally there is no difference whether we live on this earth for hours, like some babies that die at birth, or live to see our twilight years. life on earth is just one part of the entire spectrum of our existence.

another quick analogy to explain how god killing someone or directing that someone be killed isn’t immoral. picture every person passing through life as being on a highway. when god exercises his authority and pulls someone over, ie killing them, he does not prevent them from their destination. because of the resurrection, every person will live again and have full exercise of their life and all of its potentials. it is a generally acknowledged maxim that ‘life isn’t fair’. and yet, although it is intrinsically unfair, people don’t impute evil to life not being fair which gives rise to another maxim, ‘you play the hand your dealt’. so from these maxims we see that the length of each life and the manner in which it ends is not intrinsically immoral. because god provided the resurrection, all men, women and children will see the full potential of their lives, just in different orders. some die young and in the resurrection will live out their days. some die old and in the resurrection will receive renewed bodies to continue to become their best selves.

so does my ‘god as a gardener’ analogy hold water? let me know if there are flaws in my reasoning.

great blog.

regards,

Aaron deOliveira

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Okay. I don’t really have time and energy to take this apart line by line. But I can get the ball rolling.

Yes, Aaron, I think there are flaws in your reasoning.

But if you’re going to make the “mysterious ways” argument, then at least I hope you’re consistent. I hope that you never, ever, ever try to claim that anything at all happened in life because God willed it. I hope you never claim that good things happened because God made them happen. You don’t get to have it both ways: you don’t get to sometimes say that you clearly see God’s plan in your life and the lives of others, and at other times say that God moves in mysterious ways that elude us puny mortals, and we’re not competent to judge him or even understand him.

And if you are being consistent, and see God as entirely mysterious and incomprehensible, with both practical plans and moral guidelines that mean nothing to us… then what meaning does he have in your life? Are you motivated to obey him purely from fear of punishment and desire for reward? Do you see him as an unpredictable abusive parent, who hits or hugs for no reason you can discern, and whose patterns of behavior you’re desperately trying to understand so you can avoid the worst of it?

Is that really how you want to live?

So that’s my quick- and- dirty response. Readers, what have I missed here? Aaron, what do you think? Everybody, please remember the ground rules: Stay civil. Critique ideas as harshly as you like, but don’t engage in personal insults. And please don’t critique grammar, spelling, tone patrolling, or other irrelevancies: please stay focused on content. Go for it!

Well, well, well. So PZ Myers thinks he has us licked, eh?

As I mentioned here a few days ago, we’ve started a blogging contest to see who can raise more money for Camp Quest, the kids’ camp for children of atheists, freethinkers, humanists, and other non-supernaturalists. On Team Awesome, we have me, Hemant Mehta of Friendly Atheist, Jen McCreight of Blag Hag, and JT Eberhard of WWJTD?.

On Team Evil Cephalopod Overlord: PZ Myers at Pharyngula, all by his lonesome self.

And so okay, fine, PZ kicked our ass. For Round One, anyway. In the rules of the initial contest, whichever team raised more money by June 1, or raised $5,000 first, would be the winner. But PZ cheated. He cheated by getting up early in the morning, and gaining the unfair advantage of many hours of valuable fundraising time before the more civilized late risers among us could get started. He cheated by being in the Central time zone and getting the jump on us West Coast folks. And he cheated by using the patently unfair advantage of having more readers than the rest of us combined. His “team” reached $5,000 just as Team Awesome was closing the gap.

But Team Awesome will not admit defeat. We don’t know when we’ve been beaten. We don’t know when we’re winning, either. We don’t have any sort of sensory apparatus known to man.

So we are doing what any amoral atheists with no reason to care about right and wrong would do: We are moving the goalposts. We are changing the rules in the middle of the game. We are — grudgingly — conceding that PZ has won Round One… and have unilaterally decided that the real winner will be whichever team has raised more money for Camp Quest by June 1, 2011. (The race is not always to the swift, my tentacled friend…) And we’re proving ourselves to be clever and devious beyond PZ’s wildest imaginings — and are adding new members to our fundraising team! Already, Adam Lee of Daylight Atheism has thrown his hat into the ring. And still more reinforcements and secret weapons are being worked on, even as we speak. (Any other bloggers who want to join Team Awesome, drop me an email, at greta at gretachristina dot com.)

So help support Camp Quest… and support Team Awesome when you do! Click on the Chipin widget below, and spend the rest of your day basking in the knowledge that you have not only helped support an eminently worthy and fun cause, but that you have struck a blow for the underdogs. Cute, fluffy, tail-wagging underdogs who want to be your friend.

Oh, right. The actual cause we’re raising money for. You probably want to know a little more about that, don’t you?

If you’re not familiar with them, Camp Quest is the first residential summer camp in the history of the United States aimed at the children of Atheists, Freethinkers, Humanists, Brights, or whatever other terms might be applied to those who hold to a naturalistic, not supernatural world view. The purpose of Camp Quest is to provide children of freethinking parents a residential summer camp dedicated to improving the human condition through rational inquiry, critical and creative thinking, scientific method, self-respect, ethics, competency, democracy, free speech, and the separation of religion and government.

The nontheist community offers many programs for adults, but very few for children. To provide a future for our values we need to provide freethinking families with a place for their kids to find community, develop critical thinking skills, and learn ethics and values. Fortunately, that is what Camp Quest is all about. Well, that, and all of the summer camp fun that you can pack into a week.

Camp Quest builds a community for children and teenagers from atheist, agnostic, humanist and other freethinking families. They provide campers a place to explore their developing worldviews, ask questions, and make friends in an environment supportive of critical thinking and skepticism. Camp Quest is open to campers from all backgrounds. They encourage campers to think for themselves, be comfortable with who they are, and engage respectfully with people who have different views.

And yes, Camp Quest is a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation, and donations are tax deductible.

You can help support this awesome cause, strengthen the future of the atheist community… and help stave off the crushing arms of PZ’s cephalopod army! Just click on the handy Chipin widget. That number again: