God

God, Beck, and the Confirmation Bias Trap

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Hurricane Irene proves that God agrees with Glenn Beck. Glenn Beck says so, and he must be right, because God agrees with him. Hurricane Irene proves it.

Policy makers, decision-makers, journalists, and indeed all of us have an ethical obligation to be on the alert for confirmation bias, that insidious human tendency to interpret all external phenomena as confirmation of our established opinions and beliefs. Why do we have the obligation? We have it because confirmation bias makes us dogmatic, inflexible, close-minded, incompetent, and, in a word, stupid. Life can make us wiser, but not if we misinterpret everything so as not to disturb our most cherished certainties. Continue reading →

Ethics Reading Assignment…

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

If you are waiting for Irene to hit or simply looking for some ethical enlightenment, here are some scintillating posts from around the web on ethics, social norms and morality. It is also an opportunity to check out some of the excellent blogs and websites in the Ethics Alarms links, which I heartily recommend.

Here are...

Comment of the Day: “Dear God: Stop Calling”

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

The post about political candidates announcing that they have been “called’ by the Lord to run for high office continues to generate provocative, passionate and  perceptive responses, the latest from Glenn Logan,a blogger who covers the University of Kentucky Wildcats for their most discerning fans. Glenn’s comments here—sadly less frequent than they once were—are always thoughtful. Here is his comment on “Dear God: Stop Calling!”, putting to good use his expertise regarding competition of all sorts. I think you’ll agree that it is a most deserving “Comment of the Day”:

“Just because God calls us to do something does not mean that our effort will be successful, even if we do it the best we can. I would hope that most people understand this. Very often, it seems to be the case that the value, or the lesson, is in the journey rather than the outcome. This is pure assumption on my part — God has not seen fit to reveal his works to me, a fact for which I am eternally grateful.

“It is also possible that these worthies mistook their own desires as a call from God. Sometimes, it’s hard to tell the difference, for whatever reason. If we forget, for a moment, that we are talking about politicians and just assume they believe what they say, this could be little more than a misunderstanding on their part.” Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “Dear God: Stop Calling”

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

I haven’t posted many Comments of the Day of late, and that is due to my recent schedule and sloth, not the quality of the comments. Michael’s comment below on my recent post about politicians announcing that they have been “called” to the presidency shook me from my torpor, for it usefully details how not all divine callings are equally objectionable. Here is his Comment of the Day:

“I know many people who feel (or say) they have been called by God to do various things. These generally fall into three categories:

“Category 1. A person who feels that God has called them to do something that will benefit many people (other than themselves). The thing they are called to do requires a lot of training, hard work, and results in very little money or praise. They don’t generally tell people they were called to do this except as a response to the question “Why would someone as talented and smart as you be doing something so thankless and impoverishing?”

“Category 2. A person who feels that God has called them to fill a position of power, authority, or extreme skill. Such people pour themselves into preparing to best fill said position. They only admit that they are doing this in close confidence or when asked why they are going to such extreme measures to prepare themselves.

“Category 3. Someone who loudly announces they are called by God to do something. This something is usually something grand, resulting in money, fame, power, or a combination of the three. They generally tell people they were called in response to the question “Why should you be allowed to do this when you don’t appear to have the qualifications, experience, or work ethic required for such a lofty position?”

“People in two of these categories have much more of my admiration than people in the other.”

Dear God: Stop Calling!

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

We now have heard two pretenders for the Republican nomination, Rep. Michele Bachmann and unannounced tease Texas governor Rick Perry,suggest that they have been “called” to run for the White House. In other words, God told them to do it. Apart from the fact that this posits the existence of a rather disloyal and mischievous deity who enjoys starting fights among the faithful for the fun of it, a politician claiming to be endorsed by the Almighty is unsettling in many ways—so unsettling, in fact, that I  think the statement alone is grounds for disqualification for high office, since it strongly argues for a diagnosis of deranged.

Besides that, it is also unethical:

  • If not an indication of insanity, it shows dishonesty, and a frightening willingness to manipulate the gullible and trusting.
  • It is immodest and disrespectful to competitors, like baseball players saluting God after a home run, as if He decided to give a boost to his favorite player on his favorite team. (I have sometimes wondered why  players don’t make the same “Thanks, God!” gesture when a player on the opposing team gets injured on the field.) It takes a trivial and self-centered view of God to presume that the all-powerful creator of the universe has nothing better to do than to mess with the run spread in a baseball game, and only a slightly less trivial and self-centered attitude to believe that He is handicapping the GOP presidential field, and finds the other choices so flawed and sinful that He has to play kingmaker— just like with David in the old days. Continue reading →

The Judgement Day Leader’s Cowardly Ethics Failure

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

"It is all my fault."

After the catastrophic miscalculation of Pickett’s Charge led to the slaughter of his soldiers and the loss of the pivotal Battle of Gettysburg, Confederate General Robert E. Lee   met the bloody survivors returning from the field of fire, telling them, one by one, “It is all my fault!” To Pickett, whose division was all but wiped out, he said, “Upon my shoulders rests the blame.”

I am no admirer of Robert E. Lee, but this was his finest moment as a leader, and an example for all leaders who are followed in faith and meet disappointment or worse.  I wrote two days ago that Harold Camping, the evangelical broadcaster who proclaimed with absolute, 100%  certainty that his calculations foretelling the end of the world on May 21 were correct, had better be prepared to be held accountable when we were all still here on May 22. He wasn’t. From Reuters:

” With no sign of Judgment Day arriving as he had forecast, the 89-year-old California evangelical broadcaster and former civil engineer behind the pronouncement seemed to have gone silent on Saturday. Family Radio, the Christian stations network headed by Harold Camping which had spread his message of an approaching doomsday, was playing recorded church music, devotionals and life advice unrelated to the apocalypse.” Continue reading →

Is Harold Camping Ready For His May 22 Integrity Test?

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

"Never mind!" will not do it, Harold.

In response to a New York Magazine interviewer’s question about how he could be so sure the world was going to end on May21 (that’s tomorrow, folks!), Harold Camping, the leader of the imminent rapture movement,  said this:

“God has given sooo much information in the Bible about this, and so many proofs, and so many signs, that we know it is absolutely going to happen without any question at all. There’s nothing in the Bible that God has ever prophesied–there’s many things that he prophesied would happen and they always have happened–but there’s nothing in the Bible that holds a candle to the amount of information to this tremendous truth of the end of the world. I would be absolutely in rebellion against God if I thought anything other than it is absolutely going to happen without any question.”

The Rapture’s not happening on May 21st, but on May 22nd this good and pious man will have a big ethical decision to make. Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: Fox

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Now if you want to see a mad prophet on TV, you'll have to watch "Network." Thank you Rupert, Roger, Fox!

The Fox network, in ending its relationship with Glenn Beck after the expiration of his current contract as it announced yesterday, placed principle over profit. In today’s culture particularly, that is always a welcome development, an ethical one, and deserving of praise.

I can comfortably assign Fox Ethics Hero status and discount the braying from partisan Beck-haters like Media Matters, the shamelessly one-sided “media watchdog” that has declared “war” on Fox because it dares to deliver news from a generally conservative perspective. Beck was not brought down by their attacks, or by the boycotts against him by various interest groups. His show was still one of the most watched current events programs on cable, and Fox was still making money on it. The demise of Glenn Beck’s Fox show was not an example of successful suppression of conservative opinion by the Left. Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Month: Newt Gingrich

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments

“There’s no question at times of my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked far too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate. And what I can tell you is that when I did things that were wrong, I wasn’t trapped in situation ethics, I was doing things that were wrong, and yet, I was doing them. I found that I felt compelled to seek God’s forgiveness. Not God’s understanding, but God’s forgiveness. I do believe in a forgiving God. And I think most people, deep down in their hearts hope there’s a forgiving God.”

—–Former Speaker Newt Gingrich, preparing for a presidential run by attempting to explain and apologize for his serial marital betrayals, the most spectacular of which was visiting his first wife while she was in the hospital recovering from cancer surgery to announce that he was divorcing her to marry his mistress. Then he cheated on his second wife, the former mistress, with a member of his staff. He ditched Mistress #1, Wife #2, for Mistress #2, who became Wife #3. This is why he needs a forgiving God, or at least a forgiving electorate.

Newt’s defense now is that he felt so passionately about his country that it caused him to dump his cancer stricken wife (so much for all that “in sickness or in health” stuff), and later, while he was leading a party that was making the case that a U.S. President shouldn’t be having on-the-job sexual encounters with interns, using his staff and appointees to cover it up, and lying about it under oath in court, to commence a second extra-marital affair of his own. This, naturally, helped let President Clinton wiggle of his well-earned impeachment hook, and also helped cement the socially destructive public perception that 1) everyone cheats on their spouses, so it’s okay, and 2) you can’t trust any of our elected leaders.

Thanks for nothing, Newt.

God is welcome to forgive you; I won’t. You are obviously untrustworthy. Once cheating on a spouse may be a mistake; cheating on a second spouse is a behavior pattern. If a politician who likes to invoke God will lie to and betray two women who he swore, before God, to take “’til death us do part,” not to mention his children, I see no reason to assume that he won’t betray voters who has never met, loved, or lived with.

God’s forgiveness is irrelevant to the central issue of whether New Gingrich has the reliability of character and core values to justify entrusting him with great power. As his self-serving quote demonstrates, he does not.

But good luck with God, Newt.

 

Intolerance Plus School Cowardice=Cultural Deprivation

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

The Supreme Court has refused to reconsider a Ninth Circuit decision agreeing that a school could forbid the school band from playing Franz Schubert’s “Ave Maria”.

I don’t want to argue about the legal issues (you can read Justice Alito’s dissent here), although I suspect tha the law favors the school’s absurd conduct. But although self-righteous intolerance can effectively bully people and institutions in an atmosphere of school administration cowardice and timidity, it still is wrong, and we all suffer for it. Because one student objected last year to a musical piece at her graduation that mentioned God and angels, the pusillanimous administrators at the school decided to nix an orchestral rendition of “Ave Maria,”  because the title might offend some other intolerant and insufferably self-centered child. Continue reading →