While I was doing research for "The Ordinary and Universal Magisterium", I came across some amazing passages in the New Advent Catholic encyclopedia's article on infallibility. Since it can be safely assumed that these still represent the Catholic church's viewpoint, I thought it was worth calling some wider attention to them.

The article starts out by making the same threats that are endemic to all forms of Christianity: the ominous proclamation that the church is infallible, and if you don't believe what they tell you to believe, you face an eternity of torment:

...the Church is entitled to claim infallible doctrinal authority. This conclusion is confirmed by considering the awful sanction by which the Church's authority is supported: all who refuse to assent to her teaching are threatened with eternal damnation.

(I like to imagine the pope holding a flashlight under his chin while he says that. Woooo, spooky!)

Now, as I mentioned in the previous post, the church doesn't claim that all its teachings are infallible, just the ones that it says are infallible. But from the standpoint of the ordinary man or woman in the pews, it doesn't matter, because the church says that the penalty for rejecting any church teaching, whether claimed to be infallible or not, is the same. Disbelieving anything the church commands you to believe is a mortal sin, and those who die with a mortal sin on their souls, etc., etc. The New Advent article acknowledges this:

...[T]he same penalty is threatened for disobedience to fallible disciplinary laws or even in some cases for refusing to assent to doctrinal teaching that is admittedly fallible.

The obvious rejoinder to this is that it proves the church's allegedly God-given authority is a sham, because in the past they've demanded that people give their assent to claims which even the church now admits are false. The most obvious case, of course, is when a church tribunal censored Galileo's writings, threatened him with torture and consigned him to house arrest for teaching that the Earth orbits the Sun. And the New Advent article acknowledges this, but the apologetic they propose is truly staggering in its delusional arrogance:

...in the Catholic system internal assent is sometimes demanded, under pain of grievous sin, to doctrinal decisions that do not profess to be infallible. [But]... the assent to be given in such cases is recognized as being not irrevocable and irreversible, like the assent required in the case of definitive and infallible teaching, but merely provisional; and in the next place, internal assent is obligatory only on those who can give it consistently with the claims of objective truth on their conscience - this conscience, it is assumed, being directed by a spirit of generous loyalty to genuine Catholic principles.

To take a particular example, if Galileo who happened to be right [who "happened" to be right? —Ebonmuse] while the ecclesiastical tribunal which condemned him was wrong, had really possessed convincing scientific evidence in favour of the heliocentric theory, he would have been justified in refusing his internal assent to the opposite theory, provided that in doing so he observed with thorough loyalty all the conditions involved in the duty of external obedience.

What this means, if I read it right, is that Catholics are required to believe everything the church tells them to believe - unless they know for a fact it's false, in which case they can secretly withhold their assent. But even so, they're still required to act and speak as if they believe the thing they know is false, and they're still required to obey any command the church gives that's based on that falsehood, which may include a decree of censorship ordering them to never discuss the thing they know is true or even to destroy the evidence that shows it to be true.

And if the church issues an ex cathedra proclamation, even that option of completely ineffectual resistance is taken away. Anything that's taught infallibly, Catholics aren't permitted to doubt, even inwardly. They're required to believe it wholeheartedly and that's that, and if they don't, they put themselves at risk of eternal damnation.

The church's claim of absolute authority over the lives and even the inward thoughts of its members shows how far it hasn't come. In fact, its mindset hasn't really changed at all from its medieval, theocratic past - the days when it really did have the power it now only believes it has, when it could compel governments to obedience and threaten heretics with torture and death. Inside the Vatican, it's as if time has stood still for centuries: the church's rulers dwell in faded citadels surrounded by memories of past empire, and still delude themselves that they command the eternal destiny of the world. They're welcome to live their lives in dreams of the past if they wish, but when they venture out into the present day and pompously proclaim their superiority over the rest of us, the only response they should get is the laughter and scorn they so richly deserve.

I've written before about near-death experiences and what they can prove about the existence of the soul. Now another study has come to my attention, one that has an even more potent conclusion. (HT: Boing Boing)

It's long been known that the content of NDEs is influenced by religion and culture. People who have them consistently encounter the kind of afterlife they expect and meet the religious figures they've been taught to believe in. For example, while Christian NDEs often include Jesus or angels, Hindus report NDEs in which they meet Hindu gods, or a clerk in a celestial bureaucracy who says that there's been a paperwork error and someone else with the same name was supposed to die instead.

This suggests that NDEs, rather than a glimpse of another reality, are brain-generated experiences. Like dreams or hallucinations, they're shaped by people's background beliefs and expectations. And there's more evidence for this in a 1990 article in the Lancet, with the wonderfully sardonic title, "Features of 'near-death experience' in relation to whether or not patients were near death". (The abstract is online, as is full text.)

As the article says:

The medical records of 58 patients, most of whom believed they were near death during an illness or after an injury and all of whom later remembered unusual experiences occurring at the time, were examined. 28 patients were judged to have been so close to death that they would have died without medical intervention; the other 30 patients were not in danger of dying although most of them thought they were.

There were some differences between the two groups. People who were genuinely near death were more likely to report perceiving some kind of strong light (whether diffuse, at the end of a tunnel, or emanating from people they saw during the NDE). They were also more likely to report "enhanced cognitive function", including greater speed or clarity of thought or unusually vivid sensory perceptions. However, when it comes to the "classic" NDE elements, the sense of leaving one's body and of experiencing a "life review", there was no difference between the people who were actually near death and those who weren't:

Belief in having left the body and seeing it from above. The two groups showed no difference in this belief. 68% of both groups reported this belief.
Memories of earlier events in life. The two groups also did not differ in proportions reporting memories of earlier events in the subject's life (sometimes called "life review" or "panoramic memory"). 6 (27%) of 22 patients near death and 4 (17%) of 23 patients not near death reported some such memories. Most patients reported only a few memories; only 2 (9%) patients near death and 2 (9%) patients not near death reported a review or replay of his or her whole life.

Some of the patients who were not near death were judged to have no serious illness or injury; others had a serious illness or injury, but not one that put them in danger of dying. Regardless, they believed they were dying or near death, and they had NDEs that seemed indistinguishable from those of people who had serious impairment of vital signs and would have died without medical intervention. The conclusion is clear: NDEs are the product of imagination, of a brain that thinks it's dying, whether it actually is or not. As the authors of the paper say:

The psychological interpretation receives support from the evidence that persons who are not near death (from illness or injury) may have experiences that in all respects resemble those of persons who are near death. It would seem that among those who were not near death their experiences were precipitated by their belief that they were.

Although many sects of Christianity consider their own beliefs to be infallible, Catholicism has a formal, bureaucratic process for adding new inerrant teachings to its canon. When the pope speaks "ex cathedra", officially defining a new dogma, it's becomes something that all Catholics are required to profess. (I like to think he has a special "infallible hat" hanging in his wardrobe.) As the church thoughtfully explains, an ex cathedra statement must be true "independent of the fallible arguments upon which a definitive decision may be based, and of the possibly unworthy human motives that in cases of strife may appear to have influenced the result".

Now, admittedly, it's true that the pope doesn't claim to be infallible about everything he says. (I know, what a humble guy, right?) Although he can theoretically decide to issue an ex cathedra proclamation about anything at any time, it's true that the claim of papal infallibility has only been formally invoked on rare occasions. The last time it was used was in 1950, when Pope Pius XII declared that the bodily assumption of Mary into Heaven was an article of dogmatic belief for Catholics.

However, what's less well known is that an official proclamation from the Pope isn't the only way for the Catholic church to issue an infallible teaching. If all bishops throughout the world at any given time agree on a particular belief, then that belief is considered to automatically be infallibly true and dogmatically binding on all Catholics present and future. The church calls this the "ordinary and universal magisterium". Pope John Paul II, for example, explicitly stated that the prohibition on women priests is a permanent and infallible part of Catholic faith because of this doctrine.

The ordinary and universal magisterium is probably also why Pope Paul VI overruled his own handpicked commission when they recommended that the church permit contraception: because even though the pope has never made an ex cathedra statement about birth control, the unanimous agreement of bishops up till that point made it an infallible matter of morals, and therefore, according to the church, impossible for them to ever change their position.

Now, I've got a question: Under the doctrine of the ordinary and universal magisterium, is it an infallible teaching of the Roman Catholic church that priests who rape children should be sheltered and protected from the law?

If I understand the principle, the dissent of even one bishop would render this null and void as a church doctrine. But, as far as I'm aware, this has never happened. As far as I'm aware, no Catholic bishop anywhere has ever informed the police voluntarily when a priest was accused of molestation, as opposed to turning over said priest because his proclivities were already known or as part of a legal settlement in which that disclosure was compelled.

It seems absurd that the Catholic hierarchy should hold as an infallible truth of faith that the church should protect pedophiles. And yet, the church's officials have consistently acted as if this is the case. They've consistently acted as if avoiding the embarrassment of a sex predator being discovered among the clergy is more important than preventing that person from preying upon children in his pastoral care. Whether they've explicitly said so or not, they certainly seem to think that shielding child molesters from the law is an essential part of Catholic morals.

I'm very pleased to announce that I'm going to be on Ring of Fire Radio this weekend, discussing my recent AlterNet article on creationism with Mike Papantonio. (Some of you may remember Papantonio as the voice of reason in Jesus Camp. They also used to be part of Air America, and it's good to see they've forged ahead on their own.)

There's a list of local stations that carry Ring of Fire. There's also a downloadable podcast, though it's not free, I'm afraid. I believe it's also available through the iTunes store.

If you do catch the interview, let me know what you think! I'm not the best at extemporaneous speaking, I have to admit - I prefer to have my speeches prepared in advance. But I'm thrilled for the opportunity, and this ought to be a lot of fun.

This essay was originally published on AlterNet.

The most common stereotype about atheists, the most common reason why religious people fear and distrust us, is the belief that people who don't believe in God have no reason to behave morally. In the view of the planet's major religions, the way we know what's right and what's wrong is that God tells us so, and the reason we follow the rules is because we fear divine retribution if we break them. This worldview is simple and emotionally satisfying and to those who believe it, it's a natural implication that a person who no longer believes in God has no reason not to indulge their every selfish desire.

Now, I've never claimed to speak for every atheist. Because nonbelievers are a diverse and quarrelsome lot, there may in fact be a few who think this way. But if there are, they're staying well hidden. The vast majority of atheists, like the majority of human beings in general, are perfectly good and decent people. This should be no surprise, as the evidence shows that human beings all tend to have similar moral intuitions, regardless of whether we profess a religion. But that doesn't address how an atheist justifies acting morally. When we're wrestling with an ethical dilemma, how do we make up our minds? What can nonbelievers appeal to as a reason for their action?

Again, atheists are a diverse bunch. There are some who would argue that morality is just an opinion, an mere matter of taste, like preferring vanilla ice cream to chocolate. But I reject this view, just as I reject the view that morality can only come from obeying what people believe to be God's will. I believe that morality is real, that it's objective, and that it's a thoroughly natural phenomenon that's perfectly compatible with a worldview that includes nothing spooky, mystical, or supernatural.

To see how this can be, consider the question from another angle: What's the point of morality? What quality are we trying to bring more of into the world?

The problem with most common answers to this question is that they're arbitrary. If your answer is something like freedom or justice or familial duty or piety, you can always ask why we should care about that quality and not a different one. Why should we care about freedom more than stability? Why should we care about free speech more than harmony? There obviously can't be an infinite regress of justifications, but we should keep asking the question as long as it can be meaningfully answered. And if you do keep asking, there's only one answer you'll find at the bottom.

The only quality that's immune to this question is happiness. You can ask someone, "Why do you want [good friends/a loving family/a fulfilling job/etc.]?", and the answer is, "Because it will make me happy," but it's meaningless to ask, "Why do you want to be happy?" Happiness is its own justification, the only quality in human experience that we value purely for its own sake. Even theists who say that morality is based on following God's commands, whether they realize it or not, are really basing their morality on happiness. After all, if you should do what God says because you'll go to heaven if you do and to hell if you don't, what is this if not a claim about which actions will or won't lead to happiness?

This is my answer to moral anti-realists who say that facts are out there in the world, waiting to be discovered, but morality isn't. They rightly point out that there's no elementary particle of good or evil, that it would be bizarre to have a moral commandment - an "ought" - just hovering there, hanging over us with no prior explanation for its existence. This is a spooky, mystical, weird notion, and they're right to reject it. But as I've said, this only applies to arbitrary qualities chosen as the basis of morality with no real justification. Happiness is not an arbitrary choice; by definition, it's what we all wish for. This, then, is where that "ought" comes from. It comes from us: from our essential nature as human beings and from the fact that we all have this basic desire in common.

My definition of happiness isn't just physical well-being or pleasure of the senses. Nor is it limited to economic stability, or meaningful human relationships, or productive achievement. Rather, it's a balanced approach that includes all of these and more besides. Some might charge that this is too vague, but I'd answer that any moral theory which reflects the almost limitless variety of human experience is bound to be multivariate, sprawling and diverse, and not reducible to a single number on a measuring stick. As the neuroscientist and philosopher Sam Harris notes, "health" is a similarly broad concept - the inability to leap three feet straight up could be perfectly normal for me, while for an NBA player, it could be a sign of crippling injury - but no one would argue that therefore the concept of health is too poorly defined to base the entire field of medicine on.

The next question to ask is why I should care about other people's happiness, rather than just my own. In theory, you could use happiness as the basis of morality and construct an Ayn Rand-type moral system where everyone is perfectly selfish and cares only about themselves. But the problem with this is that human beings are intrinsically social creatures, designed by evolution to live in groups - which is why people who are deprived of contact with others, like prisoners in solitary confinement, tend to go insane in short order. Our social nature gives rise to the phenomenon of emotional contagion: for better or for worse, we're affected by the moods of those around us.

This means that, if you value your own happiness, it's not in your interest to live in a society where it can only be achieved by the downfall of others. Friendly competition has its place, but there's greater potential for happiness in a society structured to encourage cooperation and reciprocal altruism, one where we can achieve more by working together rather than fighting against each other. If your success is others' success as well, they'll have every reason to work with you and assist you, rather than opposing you and impeding you from achieving your goals. Regardless of what you personally desire, the best thing for you is to live in a society that values honesty, generosity, fairness and the like. A rational being will always come to this conclusion, regardless of their own desires.

One more key piece of this moral synthesis is that we should choose our actions so as to create not just the least actual suffering and the most actual happiness for those immediately involved, but the least potential suffering and greatest potential happiness. In short, this moral system asks us to care not just about the immediate impact of our actions, but the precedent they set down the line, which establishes a basis for principles like human rights. Even if you can come up with contrived and unlikely scenarios where a temporary gain in happiness could be realized by violating a fundamental right like free speech, in the long run, it's far better for all of us to live in a society that respects those principles.

Now, I acknowledge that this argument won't win everyone over. If there's someone who believes that happiness can't be proven to be the highest good, there's little I can say to them. But then again, no rational system can derive its starting principles out of thin air. Every field of human inquiry, from science to history to mathematics, is based on assumptions that a stubborn person could reject. Just as a morality denier could say, "Why should I care about happiness?", a science denier could say, "Why should I care about the scientific method?" The only answer you could give that person is that science works - it discovers truths about the world, and thereby makes it possible for us to achieve our desires. And the same is true of morality. The only real, practical reason for believing in it and adopting it is because it works - because it makes the world more free, more fair, more peaceful, and makes it possible for more people to lead happy and fulfilling lives. In this respect, morality could even be seen as another field of science, like a subdomain of anthropology or sociology: the study of how best to promote human flourishing.

With these basic ingredients, we can build a moral system that's completely secular and religion-neutral, one that's in no way dependent on following the decrees of a holy book or a religious authority. By always seeking to bring about the greatest happiness, we have a guide for what we should do in any situation, one that's rooted in human nature and based on something real and measurable.

That said, I want to emphasize that I don't claim to possess the definitive answer to every ethical problem. The theory of morality I've sketched here is more like the scientific method: not a list of claims to be taken as dogma, but a way of thinking about certain kinds of problems. It still requires people to evaluate evidence, offer reasoned arguments and use their own judgment, and I consider this a point in its favor.

But even in its broadest strokes, a world where everyone agreed on the goal of advancing human happiness would be dramatically different from the world we live in now. In this society, other, more selfish goals - increasing the wealth of the wealthy and the power of the powerful, maintaining the privilege of the few at the expense of the many - often interfere and cause suffering and inequality to persist. But a world where happiness was the primary goal, and where every human being's happiness was judged to be of equal value, would necessarily entail some major changes.

It would be a world of democracy, where all people have a say in how their society is governed, and where human rights are fixed and inviolable. It would be a world of free enterprise, where people succeed on the basis of effort and merit; but it would also be a progressive world with a strong safety net and a more equal distribution of wealth and resources, rather than the law-of-the-jungle capitalism championed by libertarians or the Dickensian dystopia sought by Tea Party conservatives. It would be a world that valued sustainability and environmental conservation for the sake of future generations that have yet to come into existence, but whose happiness matters no less than our own despite that.

It would be a world where all people have access to education and the other public goods needed to develop their talents to their fullest extent; since, after all, a society where everyone is educated, productive and prosperous offers far more potential for happiness than a world with a vast gap between rich and poor, where people succeed or fail based on accidents of birth. For the same reason, it would be a world of free choice, where no woman would ever become pregnant against her will, where population is sustainable and every child is wanted and cared for.

And, most of all, this would be a secular world. Whether religion still existed or not, it would be a private and individual matter, not the loud, overbearing presence in public affairs that it currently has, and moral rules based purely on religious belief would fade away. As I said earlier, most religious moralities are also based on happiness; but their error is that they arrive at moral decisions through unverifiable private faith, rather than facts and evidence that can be demonstrated to anyone's satisfaction. The fact that the world's longest-running, most destructive and most intractable conflicts all stem from religion only highlights this problem... and in a world built on secular reason and compassion rather than faith, it's entirely possible that these would finally cease.

Imagine a world where the sun rises on olive trees and vineyards growing where once there was barbed wire and checkpoints; a world where religious terrorism is unknown and the holy books that preach war and vengeance on the infidels peacefully gather dust on shelves. In this world, the churches, mosques and temples, institutions which teach doctrines that divide people from each other, will have become libraries and museums, institutions that teach wisdom and advance the common good; and human beings care about each other's happiness in the present, rather than looking wistfully to an afterlife where evil will be eradicated.

I freely admit this is a utopian vision. But even if's unattainable, it still has value as a guide, a best-possible outcome that we should try to approach as closely as we can. If every person was willing to work together, it wouldn't take much effort at all to create a better world. All I'm suggesting is that we each do the small part that would be required of us in that ideal scenario. As the great orator and freethinker Robert Ingersoll said, we can all help "toward covering this world with the mantle of joy." What higher purpose, what deeper meaning, could you ask for in a human lifetime, regardless of what you do or don't believe?

If you've read Penn Jillette's new book God, No! and want to ask him something about it - or if you just have a general question you've been dying to ask him - then this is your lucky day!

My soon-to-be blog home, Big Think, is having Penn back for an interview on Friday, and they're soliciting reader questions. Presumably, he'll answer some of them. If you've got a question for him, post it in the comments on Big Think (or post it here - I'll send them in to the overlords).

This one is mine:

Hello Penn,

Glad to see you’re doing this. I’ve followed you with interest for a long time – I met you after your show in Vegas a few years ago, though I’m sure you don’t remember. (I still have a picture of me and you, though!)

I just finished reading God, No!, and I was hoping you’d address a conflict I find in your thinking. From the book and from watching shows like Bullshit!, I know you’re an atheist who values skepticism and critical thinking. But in that book, you’ve also made it clear that you’re a libertarian who values a minimal state and considers it immoral to tax people for any other reason, even if the goal is something good like education or medical research.

From the work of sociologists like Gregory S. Paul, we know that religion and other kinds of harmful superstition flourish best in poverty-stricken, unstable, uneducated, grossly unequal societies. If we as a society don’t commit to educating people, to teaching them how to think, and to providing them some measure of peace and prosperity in this world, they’ll always be fearful, ignorant, and hungry for miracles – easy prey for any religious huckster or demagogue who comes along. And you know as well as I do how this threatens the well-being of the rest of us. Do you think that a true libertarian state could ever effectively address this problem?

Ophelia of Butterflies and Wheels has been writing some excellent posts lately about the abuse and oppression of women in Christian communities. One of them led me to an outstanding blog titled Love, Joy, Feminism. Its author, Libby Anne, grew up in an incredibly strict and fundamentalist Christian home that practiced a way of life she calls "Christian Patriarchy" (some might also refer to it as the Quiverfull movement). She and all her (twelve!) siblings were homeschooled, indoctrinated with religion from their earliest years, taught that women's role in life is to obey men and that women must give up their dreams and ambitions to better subordinate themselves to their future husbands.

Despite the endless chores and incessant hard work, despite the perpetual religious indoctrination, despite the beatings doled out as discipline, Libby Anne's childhood wasn't miserable. On the contrary, she remembers it as a blissfully happy time. She genuinely wanted to be a good, submissive daughter, and took pleasure in fulfilling her parents' expectations. She was excited about the idea of her father selecting a husband for her, which she viewed as a romantic fantasy, and she couldn't wait to become a housewife and devote the rest of her life to serving her husband and having as many children as possible for Jesus' right-wing cause. One could, of course, argue that this was the happiness of enforced ignorance; she was happy in this way of life because she had nothing to compare it to, because she literally wasn't aware that there were any other ways to live.

How did she escape this? Despite all they believed about Christian patriarchy, her parents also valued education, and they allowed her to go to college. While she was there, she met people who didn't follow the script, people who led happy, fulfilled lives despite not hewing to the strict rules she grew up with, which she'd always been taught was impossible. She also found herself defending her religious beliefs for the first time, and she kept encountering arguments she'd never heard before, arguments that could punch holes in the beliefs she'd grown up learning as absolute truth. Eventually, the worldview she'd been taught crumbled, and despite intense emotional pressure and guilt-tripping by her parents, she found the courage and the honesty to walk away. (See also her longer account of her deconversion.)

One thing I noticed while reading these posts is the startling number of similarities there are between the Christian patriarchy and the Islamic one: women kept isolated at home, forbidden to work, get an education or travel without male approval. (Libby Anne's parents were unusual in letting her go to college; here's another post by an escapee who didn't, and now laments her inability to support herself.) They're taught that their only role in life is to serve and obey men, treated as property to be passed off from father, to husband, and sometimes to son - this happens in fundamentalist Christian communities as well as Islamic ones.

Another observation, readily apparent, is how absolutely consumed by fear these people's lives are. Parents who follow the teachings of Christian patriarchy are, necessarily, terrified of letting their children come into contact with any idea that doesn't conform with what they've been taught - which is why they go to such extreme lengths to isolate themselves. Despite biblical verses like the Great Commission, we're increasingly seeing believers like Libby Anne's parents conceding the battleground of ideas, propagating their beliefs only by reproducing and not even attempting to convince outsiders. As society becomes more secular and atheism becomes more influential, we're going to see more of this sort of thing: fundamentalists retreating into these isolated, closed-off bubbles and locking the door behind them.

This is just what Daniel Dennett is talking about when he writes in Breaking the Spell that any faith which has to "hoodwink — or blindfold — [its] children to ensure that they confirm their faith when they are adults, [that] faith ought to go extinct." But that's easier said than done, and it creates a dilemma for us. How can we effectively evangelize for atheism and teach ideals of human freedom and liberty to those inside these communities? How can we reach people when their entire upbringing is organized to deny them contact with the outside world? I don't have a good answer for this, but I'm open to suggestions.

My latest article has been posted on AlterNet, Why the Anti-Science Creationist Movement Is So Dangerous. In it, I survey the history of the modern creationist movement, point out how it's completely captured one of America's two major political parties, and illuminate the larger ideological goals that lie behind the assault on evolution. Read the excerpt below, then click through and see the rest!

A few weeks ago, Jon Huntsman torpedoed his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination by making the following announcement: "To be clear. I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy."

It's a pathetic commentary on the anti-intellectualism rampant in American politics that this is newsworthy. A major-party candidate announces that he doesn't deny a foundational theory of modern science! In fact, given the political atmosphere in the Republican party, it's not just newsworthy but a daring act: polls have shown that almost 70 percent of Republicans deny evolution.

Huntsman is clearly trying to position himself as the moderate candidate. But while that strategy might play well in the general election, it won't do him any good unless he can get the Republican nomination. And to win that nomination, he has to get past a huge obstacle: a solid bloc of Republican primary voters who are emphatically anti-science. This isn't an exaggeration for polemical effect; it's the plain truth. The modern Republican party has made a fervent rejection of scientific consensus its defining attribute -- both on evolution and climate change, as well as in other fields -- and Huntsman's refusal to submit to party orthodoxy is likely a fatal blow to his chances.

Continue reading on AlterNet...

The other day, I found this article from a Google alert: an essay on the religious website First Things by the author and Catholic apologist Elizabeth Scalia (who also blogs as The Anchoress).

The post was about Terry Pratchett, the celebrated fantasy author and secular humanist. Since his personal beliefs come through clearly in his writing, I was surprised to find out that Scalia's a fan of his Discworld series. She quotes with approval the following passage from one of the Discworld books, Carpe Jugulum, which features a dialogue between the Discworld's greatest witch, Granny Weatherwax, and the Omnian priest Mightily Oats:

"There is a very interesting debate raging at the moment about the nature of sin, for example," said Oats.

"And what do they think? Against it, are they?" said Granny Weatherwax.

"It's not as simple as that. It's not a black and white issue. There are so many shades of gray."

"Nope."

"Pardon?"

"There's no grays, only white that's got grubby. I'm surprised you don't know that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That's what sin is."

"It's a lot more complicated than that—"

"No. It ain't. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they're getting worried that they won't like the truth. People as things, that's where it starts."

"Oh, I'm sure there are worse crimes—"

"But they starts with thinking about people as things..."

It's interesting that Scalia didn't mention that Omnianism is a satire of Christianity. But in any case, she approves of this passage because, as she reminds us, Pratchett is suffering from early-onset Alzheimer's and has announced his intention to end his life on his own terms, when the time is right, rather than wait for the disease to rob him of himself. She thinks that Pratchett's own characters would counsel him against that course of action:

I wonder if Granny Weatherwax would agree with Pratchett, or if she would tell him he was making a thing of himself — placing his life within the context of a simple stop-start mechanism without regarding the inborn transcendence that, regardless of origin, is demonstrated so ripely in his own inventiveness. She might wonder what that ripeness might yet become — for others, if not himself — if allowed to remain on the vine rather then be plucked early. Perhaps she would warn Pratchett that he risks thing-nifying the people surrounding him and loving him, by turning them into mere markers and bystanders.

This sounds like a challenge, and I accept it. I've been a fan of Discworld for a long time, and I'll be damned if a Catholic apologist is going to tell me that Terry Pratchett's wonderful cast of characters is on her side. And as it happens, I remembered another passage from the very same book, one which bears far more directly on the topic, which Scalia's post didn't mention. Here it is:

Granny Weatherwax was airborne again, glad of the clean, crisp air. She was well above the trees and, to the benefit of all concerned, no one could see her face.

....There was a story under every roof, she knew. She knew all about stories. But those down there were the stories that were never to be told, the little secret stories, enacted in little rooms...

They were about those times when medicines didn't help and headology was at a loss because a mind was a rage of pain in a body that had become its own enemy, when people were simply in a prison made of flesh, and at times like this she could let them go. There was no need for desperate stuff with a pillow, or deliberate mistakes with the medicine. You didn't push them out of the world, you just stopped the world pulling them back. You just reached in, and... showed them the way.

There was never anything said. Sometimes you saw in the face of the relatives the request they'd never, ever put words around, or maybe they'd say "is there something you can do for him?" and this was, perhaps, the code. If you dared ask, they'd be shocked that you might have thought they meant anything other than, perhaps, a comfier pillow.

....She'd been a witch here all her life. And one of the things a witch did was stand right on the edge, where the decisions had to be made. You made them so that others didn't have to, so that others could even pretend to themselves that there were no decisions to be made, no little secrets, that things just happened. You never said what you knew. And you didn't ask for anything in return.

When I pointed this out in a comment, Scalia responded with the following. I invite you to judge how plausible an interpretation of the above passage it is:

I think I interpret that very differently, along the lines of both the death of JPII and my own brother's passing..."reaching in and showing them the way" through love and presence to the end.

I strongly suspect that Granny Weatherwax, far from siding with Elizabeth Scalia, would regard her as one of the people who "pretend to themselves that there were no decisions to be made". As many times as I read it, I can't understand her argument that ending your life on your own terms is degrading to the people around you by treating them as "mere markers". (Why doesn't this same argument apply to offering yourself as a substitutive sacrifice? Why doesn't it apply to the willing martyrs whom the Catholic church exalts? If anything, aren't they the ones who treat others as markers of their deaths?)

Insofar as this definition of sin is a useful moral standard, the Catholics are the ones who are guilty of transgressing it. If treating people as people means anything at all, it means recognizing their right to self-determination, allowing them to make their own choices even when we disagree. Yet it's the Catholics who think they have the right to control others' decisions; it's the Catholics who regard a person's happiness or suffering, their independence and autonomy, as unimportant, and it's the Catholics who advocate keeping a person alive, even against their own expressed wishes, to suffer the disintegration of self and the ravages of terminal illness. Terry Pratchett saw these people for what they are long ago, so I'll let him have the final word, by way of one more apt quote from Granny Weatherwax:

The smug mask of virtue triumphant could be almost as horrible as the face of wickedness revealed.

Well, I think I've kept you all in suspense long enough. :)

Today, I'm announcing that I've accepted an offer to join Big Think, a media website whose purpose is to bring together ideas, opinions and commentary from some of today's great minds. Big Think's signature offering is its video interviews with an impressive range of newsmakers and luminaries, including Stephen Hawking, Richard Dawkins, James Randi, Daniel Dennett, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Sam Harris, Steven Pinker, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, and many more. Big Think was declared one of the 50 best websites of 2011 by Time magazine, and just recently announced The Floating University, a video lecture series in the liberal arts that will be used in courses taught concurrently by Harvard and Yale this fall.

With this move, Daylight Atheism will come under Big Think's umbrella. I'll be joining their other house bloggers, the ranks of which include Michio Kaku, Lindsay Beyerstein, and, um, Matthew Nisbet. (OK, so two out of three ain't bad.)

The move is effective October 1. Here's how it's going to work: The site you're reading right now will stay up as an archive. Permalinks to my past posts won't change, and I see no reason to close comments on the ones that are still open. Ebon Musings will be unchanged as well. But www.daylightatheism.org will redirect to my new home at Big Think, and my new posts will appear there. I haven't yet figured out whether RSS readers will have to resubscribe or whether I can transparently redirect the feed from this site to its new URL at Big Think, but I will if I can.

Comments? Questions? Post them below - I'll answer whatever I'm able to.