Dumbing Down Jesus

 

Dumbing Down Jesus

 

Photo by Ed Robertson on Unsplash

 

The Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines intellect as: the power of knowing as distinguished from the power to feel and to will: the capacity for knowledge; the capacity for rational or intelligent thought especially when highly developed; a person with great intellectual powers.

That person and that power have come under fire in this postmodern, post-truth America and in many of the world’s advanced techno-industrial nations. American political and religious leadership have turned toward a belief that intelligence is anathema to the new American nationalist worldview. The extreme right-wing with its cancel culture and obsession with censorship have taken hostage the Grand Old Party and turned it into the fascist pursuit of one nation, one party, one mind modeled after the regimes of Il Duce in Italy and the German Third Reich.

Leading the charge in the recent anti-democracy campaign is evangelical Christianity.

One of the most influential figures in the early history of Christianity, Augustine of Hippo (354-430 CE), warned against the danger of intellectual curiosity: “There is another form of temptation, even more fraught with danger. This is the disease of curiosity… It is this which drives us to try and discover the secrets of nature, those secrets which are beyond our understanding, which can avail us nothing and which man should not wish to learn.” ¹

That line of thinking set the tone for populist Christian anti-intellectualism for the next 1,500 years

At his first address to Congress, George Washington offered a bundle of securities worth over $20,000 to establish a national university. Congress refused to involve itself in the project for fear that it would be seen as a rejection of colleges found by religious institutions. ² Thus began the new nation’s foray into state-sanctioned ignorance that began with Augustine’s institutionalization of anti-intellectualism and found a home in an American colonial government via the Maryland Toleration Act of September 21, 1649. That legislation, enacted by the Province of Maryland to protect minority Catholic settlers from Protestant persecution, included articles to put to death anyone who denied the divinity of Jesus-- not a noble beginning for a country that would come into existence over a century later and founded on the principles of the Age of Enlightenment.

Americans share a binary, either-or, black-and-white thinking known as “splitting” ³ that lends itself well to visual media and to hysterical, emotion-triggering news and information media. That manic presence in our lives that reaches into our homes and workplaces every day is an endless stream feeding the split, demanding that we take a side, commit to it, and do not stray from the path of truth that the “fair and balanced” machine has laid out for us.

 

Christian nationalists, Christo-fascists, and evangelicals base their authoritarianism, misogyny, racism, and cruelty toward immigrants and “the Other” on their religion, yet most American adults cannot name the four Synoptic Gospels or identify Genesis as the first book of the Bible ⁴ This might not reflect as negatively on Americans as the raw data would suggest: It could indicate that Americans have moved on from the doctrines and superstitions of Christianity to look for a more logical and believable God. But, and it is an epic “But,” given the intelligence shown by extremists of all stripes, we cannot at this time hope for this improvement in the critical thinking capacity of the American people.

Nothing said here should be taken as a diatribe against Christians in general. Many adherents of that worldview conduct their lives with quiet meditative grace that attracts rather than repels the skeptic and arouses his curiosity about the cause of that sure-footed maneuvering through a treacherous world. One such Christian was Lutheran minister, Dietrich Bonhoeffer,⁵ who gave us fair warning about the effects of stupidity on a nation’s politics and social structures. These effects show up in statistics such as:

·       Twenty percent of the American people believe in the literal interpretation of the Bible. The good news: The number of Americans who believe that the Bible is the literal word of God is now half the percentage of those who believed the same in 1984—20 percent now versus 40 percent then.⁶

·       “A third of Americans mistakenly believe that there is substantial disagreement about evolution among scientists.”⁶

·       Seventeen percent of the American people reject the science of evolution in any form⁷

·       64 percent of Americans want creationism taught alongside of evolution in public schools. 48 percent accept any form of evolution—even theistic evolution. 26 percent accept Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection. 42 percent believe all life have existed in their present form since the beginning of time.⁸ (That number dropped to 33 percent according to a 2013 Pew Research Center analysis. The number of people who thought that “humans and other living things have evolved over time went from 48 percent to 60 percent.)

·       “Majority Still Credits God for Humankind, but Not Creationism. New high of 24% say God not involved in human origins; new 37% low say God created humans in present form.” “Creationist Belief Linked to More Religious, Less Educated, More Conservative Americans.”⁸

·       Contrast that with the 27 percent of college graduates believe all life has remained unchanged.⁹

·       Nearly 6 in 10 American adults “believe that the bloody predictions of the Book of Revelations—which involve the massacre of everyone who has not accepted Jesus as the Messiah—will come true.¹⁰

·       “Don’t be stupid about intelligent design. President George W. Bush and Senate majority leader Bill Frist have recently publicly advocated teaching intelligent design in science classes.”¹¹

·      “President George W. Bush and Senate majority leader Bill Frist have recently publicly advocated teaching intelligent design in science classes. Their endorsement of a discredited, nonscientific view could signal a huge step backward for scientific education. It is time for educated, motivated scientists to get involved and to educate others.”12

·       “George W. Bush, an advocate for Dumbing Down America, said in a 2005 interview, ‘both sides ought to be properly taught, so people can understand what the debate is about.’”^{12 (} Bush obviously did not understand what the debate is about.)

      Great minds have warned us of the dangers of allowing religion to govern a civil society. British philosopher A.C. Graying told us, “The really surprising thing about ID (Intelligent Design) theorists is that they miss the larger point about explanation, which is that to explain something by invoking something itself unexplained is to provide no explanation at all.”¹³  From philosopher of science Karl Popper we get the truism that, “a theory that explains everything—and says nothing can refute it—explains nothing.” Man created the omni-cubed god to cut off all counterarguments before they could even get off the ground. A perfect god is one who cannot be refuted. “God did it” is not an explanation any thinking person could rationally accept.

       TheThe last word belongs to American conservative philosopher, Sidney Hook: “How can anyone who eschews intelligence or reason know or describe what he has faith in.”¹⁴

#

Notes

¹ The quote appeared on the epigraph page of Charles Freeman’s The Closing of the Western Mind. (2002) and again in Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion (2006). Some controversy arose regarding the accuracy of the quote, with some bloggers and online commentors claiming it as a fake quote. A search of Augustine’s Confessions (written in the late 4^th century CE) and his City of God (written in the 5^th century) did not turn find those words; however it did find this quote:

"In addition to this there is another form of temptation, more complex in its peril.. For besides that concupiscence of the flesh which lieth in the gratification of all senses and pleasures, wherein its slaves who 'are far from Thee perish,' there pertaineth to the soul, through the same senses of the body, a certain vain and curious longing, cloaked under the name of knowledge and learning, not of having pleasure in the flesh, but of making experiment through the flesh. This longing, since it originates in an appetite for knowledge, and the sight being the chief amongst the senses in the acquisition of knowledge, is called in divine language, 'the lust of the eyes.'

The quote used by Freeman and Dawkins reads like a paraphrase of the one found in The Confessions.

² Adolphe E. Meyer, An Educational History of the American People, (New York, McGraw Hill Book Co., 1957), 103, Internet Archive, https://archive.org/details/educationalhisto00meye_0/page/102/mode/2up, (Accessed April, 8, 2026)

(The full speech by George Washington is at: First Annual Address to Congress, January 08, 1790, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/first-annual-address-congress-0)

³ Ilana Redstone, “Splitting: The Psychology Behind Binary Thinking And How It Limits A Diversity Of Opinions”, Forbes, Jan 11, 2021, https://www.forbes.com/sites/ilanaredstone/2021/01/11/splitting-the-psychology-behind-binary-thinking-and-how-it-limits-a-diversity-of-opinions/ (Accessed 30 March 2026)

⁴ Pew Research Center, ^“Religious Literacy: What Every American Should Know,” December 3, 2007, https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2007/12/03/religious-literacy-what-every-american-should-know/ (Accessed April 4, 2026)

⁵ On the Wing, “BONHOEFFER: On stupidity,” https://nsjonline.com/article/2021/12/bonhoeffer-on-stupidity/, December 3, 2021, (Accessed April 1, 2026). See also, https://www.onthewing.org/user/Bonhoeffer%20-%20Theory%20of%20Stupidity.pdf

⁶ Frank Newport, “Fewer in U.S. Now See Bible as Literal Word of God,“ Gallup, https://news.gallup.com/poll/394262/fewer-bible-literal-word-god.aspx July 6, July 6,2022, (Accessed March 30, 2026)

⁷ National Center for Science Education, “Vast majority of Americans accept human evolution, new survey finds,” National Center for Science Education, https://ncse.ngo/vast-majority-americans-accept-human-evolution-new-survey-finds https://ncse.ngo/vast-majority-americans-accept-human-evolution-new-survey-finds February 28, 2025 (Accessed March 30, 2026)

⁸ Pew Research Center, “Public Divided on Origins of Life,” Pew Research Center, https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2005/08/30/public-divided-on-origins-of-life/, August 30, 2005 (Accessed April 5, 2026)

⁹ Frank Newport, “In U.S., 42% Believe Creationist View of Human Origins,” Gallup, https://news.gallup.com/poll/170822/believe-creationist-view-human-origins.aspx , June 2, 2014 (Accessed March 26, 2026)

¹⁰ Nancy Gibbs, “Apocalypse Now,” Time, July 1, 2002, quoted in Susan Jacoby, The Age of American Unreason, (Pantheon Books, 2008), 19.

¹¹ Ushma S Neill,  "Don’t be stupid about intelligent design,”, Pub Med Central https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1236706/, October 1, 2005, (Accessed February 2, 2026)

¹² Charles P. Pierce, Idiot America: How stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free (New York: Anchor Books, 2010) 48-9.

¹³ A.C. Grayling, The God Argument: The Case Against Religion and for Humanism, (New York: Bloomsbury USA, 2014), 111

¹⁴ Hook, Sidney, “Modern Knowledge and the Concept of God,” July, 1959, In Critiques of God, ed, Peter A. Angeles, 29-30, Amherst NY: Prometheus Books, 1997, 29-30.

The Corporate States of America

The Corporate States of America

 

By Jonathan McIntosh — Cropped version of File:J20_corporate_flag_dc.jpgCropped and uploaded by Trickymaster at de.wikipedia (07:25, 12. Apr. 2009), CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8458827

 

Introduction

Large corporations have commandeered the world economy to such extent that, of the one-hundred largest economies in the world, sixty-nine are corporations. Those numbers don’t appear alarming on the surface but placed in the framework of the 2008 collapse of the world economy, the problems of what to do about “too big to fail” takes on an alarming importance. Only a handful of America’s largest corporations have brought down the housing market, reallocated pension and retirement funds of millions of workers into exorbitant salaries and bonuses for corporate executives, produced massive job layoffs around the world, and caused a spike in personal and small-business bankruptcies.

Corporate representatives in government, such as Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, have created a “shadow government” that essentially controls American economic policy. The 2010 Supreme Court Citizens United Decision that granted human rights to non-human corporate entities has turned electoral politics into a scramble for massive campaign funds from organizations with no stake in the public interest. The American political system is now governed by those sixty-nine corporate economies, which have perpetual life, unlimited resources, and the ability to make their own law to assure that their rights and their power take precedent over the will of the people and the public good.

We’ve had amble warning about the excesses of corporate power. Thomas Jefferson wrote in an 1816 letter: “I hope we shall take warning from the example of England and crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which are already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws our country.”

And on another occasion:

“Headed toward a single and splendid government of an aristocracy founded on banking institutions and moneyed incorporations and if this tendency continues it will be the end of freedom and democracy, the few will be ruling and riding over the plundered plowman and the beggar.”

And again, in a letter to Secretary of the Treasury, Albert Gallatin: “I sincerely believe […] that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies.”

The history of the United States has no shortage of great leaders who have alerted us to the dangers of the corporate monster; Along with Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Dwight D. Eisenhower issued public warnings of the encroachment of corporate money and corporate power into government.

 

A History of Corporate Personhood: Causes and Consequences

Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment, passed into law in 1869, reads:

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

The Amendment was written primarily to overturn the Dred Scott decision of 1865 that denied citizenship to slaves and clearly refers to person and citizen. But Supreme Court decisions before and after the Fourteenth Amendment have resulted in the creeping — and creepy — definition of “person” to include corporations, including multi-national corporations.

“A corporation is an artificial being, invisible, intangible, and existing only in contemplation of law.” A corporation is not a person. American jurisprudence takes corporate strengths and human weakness into consideration in making and enforcing its laws. Prisons are built for people but cannot contain a corporation. Corporations have perpetual life in which to realize their goals, while humans have about fifty productive and voting years. Corporations have, for all practical purposes, unlimited resources, while the average worker lives on a weekly wage. Corporations have the legal power to make laws as they wish; the citizen can cast a single vote for a representative he can trust to look out for his interest in the legislative and executive branches of government.

Corporate personhood extends back to Roman law, but its American History began with the end of the American Revolution. Citizens of the newly found republic held contractual agreements with agencies in the mother country. Did the Revolution nullify those obligations? Could the United States legislate new laws to supersede English law that created the contracts?

Those questions came before the new Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Marshall in 1816. The state of New Hampshire had passed laws changing the charter of Dartmouth College from a private institution, chartered by the British Crown in 1769, to a state university. The college trustees filed suit. The court ruled that the charter was a contract between the king and the college trustees, and that a state cannot pass laws to alter a contract. That ruling honored corporations and people as equals in contract law.

In the case of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, filed before the Supreme Court in May 1886, “Chief Justice [Morrison] Waite said, ”The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of opinion that it does.” That statement was made before arguments were heard in the case, and do not appear in the court record. Subsequent cases before the court have drawn on that case as legal precedent regardless of the error.

Since 1886, the court has heard several cases involving corporate personhood, and the benefit or loss to actual humans has swung in unpredictable directions. Then, in 1978, the issue of corporate personhood exploded.

The Secretary of Labor, Ray Marshall, brought Marshall v. Barlow’s before the Supreme Court. An inspector for the Occupational Health and Safety Act (OSHA) entered Barlow’s Company, a plumbing and electrical installations contractor. The president and general manager of the company denied access to the agent on the grounds that he did not have a search warrant. OSHA had the responsibility and the authority to conduct warrantless searches of businesses to guarantee worker safety, but Barlow’s argued that the corporation enjoyed the same Fourth Amendment guarantee of protection against illegal search and seizure as an individual. The court sided with Barlow’s, and henceforth OSHA inspections of businesses must be enforced with a search warrant, or OSHA must make an appointment with the company to conduct an inspection.

On January 21, 2010, an appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Columbia reached the Supreme Court. Led by the court’s conservative members, Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission, citing free speech rights, struck down the McCain-Feingold Bill and allowed corporate entities to sponsor funds to political elections without revealing their source. Multi-national corporations now control the financing of elections in the United States, and corporate financial contributions to the political process reached the one billion dollar mark in 2018. The Democratic Party under President Obama appealed to the corporate interests for a détente. Democrats softened their support of workplace safety, a livable minimum wage, and government regulation of business.

With Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Shell The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit issued a stunning decision that a corporation cannot be sued for human rights abuses. A panel of the court ruled 2–1 on September 17, 2010, that the Alien Tort Statute gives U.S. courts jurisdiction over alleged violations of international law by individuals only, not by corporations.

Seeing the direction those court decisions will take the country, former President Obama’s plea for détente with the corporate community makes good political sense but has the potential to forever end the democratic system. His party has traditionally championed worker safety, equal employment opportunity, and a livable wage; issues at odds with corporations. If the Democratic party is to survive — that is, to receive unlimited campaign funds from the deep pockets only corporations can provide — it must relax its support of the proletariat. Ergo, détente.

I find reams of eloquent prose about the failure of the American democratic experiment in the phrase, “Follow the money.”

 

Abuses Committed by National and Multi-National Corporations

Who can forget the televised images of Enron company employees who found it hilarious that “grandmas” were in danger of dying in the heat due to the artificial electrical shortages created by Enron to hike their fees for services?

“A Defense Department auditor testified [on August 10, 2010] that DynCorp International billed the government $50 million more than the amount specified in a contract to provide dining facilities and living quarters for military personnel in Kuwait.”

Headlines like that represent a common feature of Americans’ daily lives. We have become inured to corruption. The 2010 mid-term elections resulted in a turnover of the political majority in Congress because of the anti-corruption mood among the electorate. Yet, many of the very people ushered into power have praised the Citizens United decision. The revolution in Washington suggests lyrics from a rock anthem by the British rock group, The Who: “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.”

Human rights violations by corporate entities don’t often garner headlines, though. The only way to get a handle on corporations’ involvement is through research. Here are just a few of those violations. For a full list of name brand-name companies engaging in behavior that might have made Genghis Khan blush, the Global Issues website at http://www.globalexchange.org/.

https://archive.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/221-transnational-corporations/46979.html offers a full alphabetical list of offending corporations and links to reputable organizations that back up its claims.

Caterpillar, Inc. supplies equipment to the Israeli army for the purpose of destroying Palestinian homes to facilitate annexation of East Jerusalem.

The crimes charged against Chevron are too numerous to list in a paper of this scope, but they include rape, murder, political corruption, and — the plague of America’s dependency on oil — environmental destruction.

Outside of the United States, the Coca-Cola Company behaves like a mafia family. Murders, kidnappings, and torture highlight its activities in Third World countries, and in some of the industrialized world, reads like intrigue and adventure fiction.

Employees of DynCorp have been found to have engaged in sex trafficking with women and underage girls.

 

A different kind of corporate abuse arose with the Supreme Court's Burell v. Hobby Lobby decision. That case gave closely held corporations a super-power in that it permits Hobby Lobby and others to govern the religious preferences of their employees by denying them health insurance based on the employer's religious beliefs, not on those of the employee. That decision went far beyond the question of non-human personhood, it allows corporations to seek to control workers beliefs. That is only one step removed from attempting to control employees' political affiliation.

It goes without expression that the American version of Christianity is little more than a medieval superstition, yet legal attitudes from 1200 CE govern the Supreme Court's decision in Burrell as well as cases like Sebilius v. Hobby Lobby. In that decision the Court ruled that the personal beliefs of a small number of corporate executives can overrule the personal beliefs of some 50,000 employees.

 

The Future of Corporate Personhood: Consequences

The year 2010 marked the crowning of transnational corporations as the new owners of the American government. Where it will lead us is, at this time, anybody’s guess. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) have prepared the way for the new leadership with international laws that supersede federal and state statutes regarding relaxed food safety governance, reduced product quality standards, a virtual end to workplace safety regulations, and the erosion of individual rights and national sovereignty. We have already seen the cost of those agreements in the recent flood of product recalls, tainted food in the marketplace, and the undermining of workplace safety laws.

Social attitudes, too, have favored the growing power of corporate entities. Contemporary views of entrepreneurship no longer include the bootstrap legacy. An entrepreneur is now one with massive financial backing from banks and capital investment firms. Corporate culture is rapidly becoming the only socially acceptable course of economic pursuit. Employment in a large company, preferably a multinational corporation, is regarded as a most noble profession, one pursued by most college students. The arts and crafts, manual trades, outdoor work, jobs in philanthropic organizations, and vocations in religious organizations are rarely considered by those who came of age in the corporate world, and — judging by a barrage of human-interest stories in the media — shunned by even the chronically unemployed.

 

Conclusion

Of all the conceivable results of the corporatizing of America and the world, the bulk of them are unpleasant but that need not be the reality. The companies that now own the country’s political and judicial system rely on consumerism to feed their gluttony, and they have the power to destroy the consumer culture through the elimination of a middle class with disposable income. They must take care that, in bringing down American wages, they do not undermine their own profits. Worldwide, people have shown a surprising tendency throughout history to sacrifice their individual pursuits and band together to resolve injustices. If our new masters do not tread carefully — with much more care than they have in the recent past — they could find themselves pitted against the very source of their power: the consumer.

 

Note: This work is an updated version of an earlier piece that appeared on this website.)

 

Works Cited:

“69 of the richest 100 entities on the planet are corporations, not governments, figures show” https://www.globaljustice.org.uk/news/69-richest-100-entities-planet-are-corporations-not-governments-figures-show/

 “Corporate representatives in government, such as Senator James Inhofe” https://www.opensecrets.org/members-of-congress/james-m-inhofe/summary?cid=N00005582&cycle=CAREER

 “the will of the people and the public good” Corporate Influence: Exploring the Relationship Between Lobbying and Corporate Power. https://systemicjustice.org/article/corporate-influence/

 “Thomas Jefferson wrote in an 1816 letter” 12 November 1816 Founders Online https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-10-02-0390

 “And on another occasion” Google Books, Hidden Treuhand  page 226 https://www.google.com/books/edition/Hidden_Treuhand/wdxvhhUiabEC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22Headed+toward+a+single+and+splendid+government+of+an+aristocracy+founded+on+banking+institutions+and+moneyed+incorporations+and+if+this+tendency+continues+it+will+be+the+end+of+freedom+and+democracy,+the+few+will+be+ruling+and+riding+over+the+plundered+plowman+and+the+beggar.%22&pg=PA226&printsec=frontcover

 “And again, in a letter” “Thomas Jefferson quote about banking-Truth!” Posted on March 17,

2015 by Rich Buhler & Staff. https://www.truthorfiction.com/jefferson-banking/

 “Those questions came before the new Supreme Court” Definition of a corporation by Chief Justice Marshall in Dartmouth College v. Woodward (1819) https://famguardian.org/Publications/PropertyRights/corpor.html

 “A corporation is not a person”: “Surprise! Citizens United Legal Reasoning Doesn’t Rely on Corporate Personhood” By Nick Bentley November 11, 2012 https://reclaimdemocracy.org/citizens-united-corporate-personhood/

 “In the case of Santa Clara County” “Supreme Court: Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Co., 118 U.S. 394. (1886)” https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/118/394/#:~:text=CHIEF%20JUSTICE%20WAITE%20said%3A,laws%20applies%20to%20these%20corporations.

 “The Secretary of Labor, Ray Marshall brought Marshall v. Barlow’s before the Supreme Court”“Supreme Court: Marshall v. Barlow’s, Inc., 436 U.S. 307 (1978)” https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/436/307/

 “Citizens United V. Federal Elections Committee) Citizens United v. FEC, 558 U.S. 310 (2010) https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/558/310/

 “multinational corporations now control…” ‘Dark money’ topped $1 billion in 2020, largely boosting Democrats. By Anna Massoglia and Karl Evers-Hillstrom, March 17, 2021. https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2021/03/one-billion-dark-money-2020-electioncycle/

 “With Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Shell…” Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co., 569 U.S. 108 (2013) https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/569/108/

 “former President Obama’s plea for détente”: U.S. President Barack Obama said Monday he wanted to lower the corporate tax rate and eliminate tax loopholes to pay for that, requesting support from the business community to achieve that goal.” 11 Feb. 2011 https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna41456730

 “jurisdiction over alleged violations of international law by individuals only, not by corporations.”Geoffrey Pariza, Spring 2011, Loyola University Chicago, School of Law “Genocide, Inc.: Corporate Immunity to Violations of International Law after Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum” https://lawecommons.luc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1022&context=lucilr

 “jurisdiction over alleged violations of international law by individuals only, not by corporations.” “Companies Immune From Alien Tort Suits, Court Rules” Bob Van Voris & Patricia Hurtado, Bloomberg, 17 Sep 2010 https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/companies-immune-from-alien-tort-suits-court-rules/

 “US: DynCorp Billed U.S. $50 Million Beyond Costs in Defense Contract” Published by Washington Post, By V. Dion Haynes, Wednesday, August 12, 2009 https://www.corpwatch.org/article/us-dyncorp-billed-us-50-million-beyond-costs-defense-contract

 “behavior that might have made Genghis Khan blush” December 2005 https://archive.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/221-transnational-corporations/46979.html

 “sex trafficking with women and underage girls.” Sex Trafficking Scandal in Post-Conflict Bosnia DynCorp employees and international peacekeepers accused of forced prostitution and child rape in Bosnia. https://icoca.ch/case-studies/sex-trafficking-scandal-in-post-conflict-bosnia/

 “and the undermining of workplace safety laws” Lori Wallach, essay, “Hidden Dangers of GATT and NAFTA: The Case Against Free Trade” (San Francisco: Earth Island Press, 1993), 23-64.

 “…one step removed from attempting to control employees' political affiliation.” https://healthlaw.org/resource/summary-of-the-supreme-courts-decision-in-hobby-lobby/

Suggested Reading:

Grace Blakeley, Vulture Capitalism: Corporate Crimes, Backdoor Bailouts, and the Death of Freedom, (New York: Atria Books, 2024)

 

The U.N. and the Sex Slave Trade in Bosnia. Isolated Case or Larger Problem in the U.N. System? April 24, 2002. https://commdocs.house.gov/committees/intlrel/hfa78948.000/hfa78948_0.htm

 

Matthew Desmond, Poverty, by America (New York: Crown 2023)

 

“Corporations data 2017” https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/12Jdgaz_qGg5o0m_6NCU_L9otur2x1Y5NgbHL26c4rQM/edit#gid=1364122473

 

Timothy Gorringe, Fair Shares: Ethics and the Global Economy, (New York, Thames & Hudson, 1999)

 

The History of Corporate Personhood: How did we get to the point where a for-profit corporation can lay claim to religious rights? Ciara Torres-Spelliscy on the slithering history of corporate personhood. Ciara Torres Spelliscy, April 8, 2014https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/history-corporate-personhood

 

SCOTUS Blog: Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. https://www.scotusblog.com/cases/case-files/sebelius-v-hobby-lobby-stores-inc/

 

SCOTUS Blog

New fallout from Hobby Lobby, By Lyle Denniston, on Jul 9, 2014. https://www.scotusblog.com/2014/07/new-fallout-from-hobby-lobby/

 

Bloomberg Law. Court Opinions. Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., 573 U.S. 682, 134 S. Ct. 2751, 189 L. Ed. 2d 675, 123 FEP Cases 621, 82 U.S.L.W. 4636 (2014), Court Opinion. https://www.bloomberglaw.com/public/desktop/document/Burwell_v_Hobby_Lobby_Stores_Inc_No_13354_and_13356_US_June_30_20

 

SEC. 6. EXEMPTION FOR RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS. https://sblog.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/ENDA-religious-exemption.pdf

 

Hobby Lobby symposium: A decision based on conclusory assertions and results-oriented reasoning. By Marcia Greenberger, on Jul 2, 2014. https://www.scotusblog.com/2014/07/hobby-lobby-symposium-a-decision-based-on-conclusory-assertions-and-results-oriented-reasoning/. 

SEX TRAFFICKING SCANDAL IN POST-CONFLICT BOSNIA: DynCorp employees and international peacekeepers accused of forced prostitution and child rape in Bosnia. https://icoca.ch/case-studies/sex-trafficking-scandal-in-post-conflict-bosnia/

 

THE U.N. AND THE SEX SLAVE TRADE IN BOSNIA: ISOLATED CASE OR LARGER PROBLEM IN THE U.N. SYSTEM? April 24, 2002. https://commdocs.house.gov/committees/intlrel/hfa78948.000/hfa78948_0.htm

Philosophical Atheism: A Review

 

Philosophical Atheism: A Review

Photo by Ed Robertson on Unsplash

 

Ernest Nage’s essay, “Philosophical Concepts of Atheism” appeared first in Johnson E. Fairchild’s 1959 philosophy anthology, “Basic Beliefs: The Religious Philosophies of Mankind,” and then, in 1997, in Peter A. Angeles’ “Critiques of God: Making the Case Against Belief in God.” Nagel stated that his purpose in writing the piece was to “show how atheism belongs to the great tradition of religious thought.”

“No!” I wanted to shout at the open book. “Atheism has no connection to religion beyond the suspension of belief in its claims pending sufficient evidence to the contrary.” I pressed on, determined to debunk Nagel’s tagging of atheism as a philosophy and a component of religious thought. Atheism, I would counter, is simply the disbelief in a god or gods. Nothing more. Nothing less. To call it a philosophy is like calling creationism theory a philosophy. Mere disbelief does not make a philosophy of atheism. To insist on the atheist philosophy argument play too easily into the laughable theist claim that theism is a religion.

"Philosophical Concepts of Atheism" begins with a definition of theism as the view “that the heavens and the earth and all that they contain owe their existence and continuance in existence to the wisdom and will of a supreme, self-consistent, omnipotent, omniscient, righteous and benevolent being, who is distinct from, and independent of, what he has created,”

That is a definition of a transcendent god, but it does not address pantheism. Did Nagel feel that pantheism was not subject to criticism? Or that it is not a part of “the great tradition of religious thought”?

Also, defining atheism as a philosophy presented a greater challenge that forced the author to break atheism into two categories and four sub-categories: (1) “those which hold that the theistic doctrine is meaningful, but reject it either on the ground that (a) the positive evidence for it is insufficient, or (b) the negative evidence is quite overwhelming; and (2) those who hold that the theistic thesis is not even meaningful, and reject it (a) as just nonsense of (b) as literally meaningless but interpreting it as a symbolic rendering of human ideals.”

That, too, aroused some kickback from me for the “or” in (1.a.) and (1.b.). Why not “and?” Can’t we question supernatural claims for both insufficient positive evidence and overwhelming negative evidence? Of course it can. I do not see why an atheist cannot hold both positions, and that (2.a.). is an added legitimate position. Nagel appeared to claim that the three positions are mutually exclusive. I contend that they are not.

 

It is when he takes on theists’ arguments for the existence of their god that his essay shines. He dismantled the argument from design, and the cosmological and teleological arguments. His thoughts on the ontological argument- the claim that because God is a perfect being, “he is one whose essence or being lacks no attributes.” Nagel’s debunking caused a problem: Repeating Immanuel Kant, Nagel said that “existence” is not an attribute. Understanding that premise is above my pay grade. Why is it not an attribute? His answer to the question requires a greater education in philosophy than I currently hold. So, I will put that into the category of “weak atheists’ arguments” until I can better understand the attributes of existence. And why it is not itself an attribute.

Moving on.

Speaking of weak arguments, tackling the argument from design is- for someone of Ernest Nagel’s intelligence, like shooting fish in a barrel (pardon the cliché). He first takes apart the watchmaker argument on which so much of the argument from design depends, and then he dismantles the “Divine Mathematician” segment of creationists’ insistence on filling any hole in scientific knowledge with a supernatural deity.

Then, we come to my favorite: the Problem of Evil. Apologetics for evil have been so thoroughly debunked that it would be redundant to discuss Nagels’ disposal of them. It, like the argument from design, is beneath Nagel’s attention. That he expended ink and intellectual energy on the topic can only mean that such apologetics were a common response to unbelief in 1959.

 

Having dismissed the common claims of evidence for a supernatural being or beings, Nagel turned his attention to his stated purpose in drafting the essay: to “show how atheism belongs to the great tradition of religious thought.”

 He wrote that “philosophical atheists have not shared a common set of positive views, a common set of philosophical convictions which set them off from other groups of thinkers.” On asserting that “there has never been a what one might call a “school of atheism,” he then sets out from there to establish a school of atheism. He rejects from discussion of philosophical atheism the “’village atheist’ whose primary concern is to “twit and ridicule those who accept some form of theism.” Those of us who have suffered gross and minor injustices at the hands of Christians for our refusal to join their club reject his rejection, Nagel’s off-handed dismissal rings hollow. The “village atheist” with some training in rhetoric can display the intellectual capacity to debate supernaturalism from a philosophical perspective, but he can also engage feral religion in metaphorical back-alley brawls.

He parses philosophical atheists into three major groups: (1) those which “reject the assumption that incorporeal agents can exercise a causal agency.; (2) atheists generally agree that “controlled sensory observation is the court of final appeal in issues concerning matters of fact,” a wordy way of saying that the empirical method (of which I considers methodological naturalism as a significant component; Nagel does not elaborate) is the final arbiter in disputes of fact; and (3) philosophical atheists “have generally accepted a utilitarian basis for judging moral issues. It is on this claim that I wrestle with. Years ago, I would have agreed wholeheartedly with that, but reading Ursula K. Le Guin’s short story “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” changed my mind about utilitarianism as a basis for morality, but I have yet to find its replacement.

In summary, “Philosophical Concepts of Atheism” offers effective arguments against the claims of the existence of a supernatural entity or entities but falls short of providing evidence that “atheism belongs to the great tradition of religious thought.” He wrote an otherwise brilliant essay that would have served better if his stated purpose had been to debunk common arguments for supernaturalism.

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The Great American Dumb-Down

 

Photo By Roman Eisele - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=87283346

MISEDUCATION

There is a growing and disturbing trend of anti-intellectual elitism in American culture. It’s the dismissal of science, of the arts, and humanities and their replacement by entertainment, self-righteousness, ignorance, and deliberate gullibility. –Ray Williams, Wired for Success article July 07, 2014

The Texas Senate is pushing for the enforcement of its legislator’s preferred religion on the state’s children by requiring that the Christian scripture’s Ten Commandments be to be displayed in public schools. Senate Bill 10 passed on a 20-1 vote along party lines. Earlier. Senate Bill 11, allowing students to take time from the serious work of study to pray- a form of wishful thinking- to infringe on the three Rs. The bill ignored the fact that students are allowed to pray without the Senate’s input; they just cannot be guided or forced into the ritual by school staff. The dumb-down crowd pushing for a Taliban-like enforcement of their beliefs will not likely stop at mere displays and private time.

With the sweeping victory of Donald Trump into the White House and his party taking majorities in the nation’s senate and House of Representatives, such extreme politics have become the norm, not the exception. We can expect to see further bills from more conservative states introducing similar measures if the Texas effort succeeds and, being that it is Texas that those states will emulate, we can count on an authoritarian frenzy to sweep all but the most scientifically literate locales.

The United State has a long history of such attempts to dumb down the citizenry. Early in our history, Congress rejected George Washington’s proposal for a national university because it might offend the dominance of Christian universities in the nation’s educational system, ¹ thus beginning America’s long flirtation with what journalist Charles P. Pierce called’’ “Idiot America.”² The drive to force a bronze-age knowledge system onto the public, combined with the undercurrent of anti-intellectualism that rises to the surface with alarming frequency and driven with doctrinal Christianity’s obsessive need to force it’s dogmatic beliefs onto the world go back in U.S. history at least to the time of the First Great Awakening that captured the fledging nation between the 1730s and the 1770s. Christine Leigh Heyrman at the National Humanities Center writes: “Throughout the colonies, conservative and moderate clergymen questioned the emotionalism of evangelicals and charged that disorder and discord attended the revivals.”³ Now, some 275 years later, those conservatives embrace the very emotion over intellect they once rejected as a necessary component of political ideology. “Facts don’t care about your feelings,” someone once said, with feeling.

Look into any talk radio program, read any social media meme promoting far-right propaganda (and some from the left-- those devious libtards are waking up) and you will find appeals to emotion; Outrage, anger, revenge, hate… One might search for days without seeing a single message designed to stir the intellect.

“Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'” ― Isaac Asimov

Thomas Jefferson “was the first distinguished victim of a decisively anti-intellectual attack, and the assault on him (leveled principally by Federalist leaders and members of the established clergy) set a precedent for subsequent efforts to render an active, curious mind either trivial and ridiculous or evil and dangerous...The capacity for reflective, creative, and critical thought, finely honed argumentation, and public persuasion—talents one might other­wise assume well recommend a candidate for the office of president—were transformed into the gravest of liabilities.”⁴

 

A highly influential, if not seminal, work by Richard Hofstadter, defined anti-intellectualism as: “a resentment and suspicion of the life of the mind and of those who are considered to represent it; and a disposition constantly to minimize the value of that life”.

By that definition, anti-intellectualism has reached a fever pitch in modern American life. Consider that…

•     One-third of Americans believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible. “Nearly 6 in 10 believe that the bloody predictions of the Book of Revelations—which involve the massacre of everyone who does not accept Jesus as the Messiah—will come true.”¹
  
•     Two-thirds of Americans want creationism taught alongside of evolution in public schools.
•     Forty-eight percent accept any form of evolution—even theistic evolution.
•     Twenty-six percent accept Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection.
•     An astounding 42 percent believe all life has existed in their present form since the beginning of time.^{1a. 5.}

Those numbers a scary, but they are not the whole story. Though it appears that Americans are prone to magical thinking based on a particular religion as expressed in a particular sacred text, yet “A majority of American adults…cannot name the four Gospels or identify Genesis as the first book of the Bible.^1b

A 1998 study from the University of Texas found that one-fourth of public-school biology teachers believe that humans and dinosaurs inhabited the earth at the same time. Be afraid for our public-school students. Be very afraid.

The battle to keep knowledge and not opinion and belief in the public’s perception of reality was aptly addressed by Pastor Ray Mummert: “We’ve been attacked by the intelligent, uneducated segment of our culture.”^2.

Given that he thought he was attacking intellectualism, he likely did not think his message through.

The really surprising thing about Intelligent Design (ID) theorists is that they miss the larger point about explanation, which is that to explain something by invoking something itself unexplained is to provide no explanation at all ^6.

American media is replete with such campaigns to malign intelligence and expertise, but we cannot lay the blame entirely on religion for the persistence of anti-intellectualism in America. The political system has contributed more than its share of efforts to dumb down the populace.

 

JUNK SCIENCE

Trofim Denisovich Lysenko was a Soviet agronomist who developed a pseudo-science based on Lamarckism, defined bybritannica.com as “a theory of evolution based on the principle that physical changes in organisms during their lifetime…could be transmitted to their offspring.” The term has come to signify the suppression of or refusal to acknowledge, science for ideological reasons,⁷ such as that of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and his fellow conspiracy theorists.

A recent study is reportedly held up by Kennedy and conspiracy theory mongers as revealing a link between vaccines and autism. That study, The study “Vaccination and Neurodevelopmental Disorders: A Study of Nine-Year-Old Children Enrolled in Medicaid” does not show a relationship between vaccines and autism, regardless of Mr. Kennedy’s claims to the contrary. The study has a long list of flaws as documented by the American Council on Science and Health⁸, and the publisher of the study, itself, faces criticism across the world wide web as a fake science blog, and not a scientific journal—although, in fairness, there exists a number of sites praising the publisher, the "Science, Public Health Policy, and the Law."^9.

A few micro-incidents that sought to stupefy the American public:

·         George W. Bushe’s favorite climate “expert,” novelist Michael Crichton. Left a legacy for the delight of conspiracy theorists on the level of RFK’s vaccine disinformation drive.¹⁰ His climate change denial still resonates with the “alternate facts” set, twenty-two years later.

·         America’s disconnect with reality was on full view when an untold number believed that the Democratic Party ran a child-trafficking ring out of a pizza restaurant in Washington, D.C. Such is the state of the nation’s critical thinking capabilities. Elon Musk widened the gap between reality and the gullible set when he revived the story in late 2023,¹¹ proving once again that the wealthy are not smarter than you; only luckier.

·         The Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines "factoid" as "1: an invented fact believed to be true because it appears in print. 2: a briefly stated and usually trivial fact. Here, that definition is expanded to, a fact stripped of all nuance and context. Factoids are not usually used in the media, but they are effective in use among friends, relatives, and associates. In this sense, factoids are intended to produce specific inferences. Someone might tell you, in reference to undocumented immigrants sent to New York City, “The government gives illegal immigrants in New York City free luxury hotel rooms and credit cards. Credit cards!”

You are supposed to imagine hundreds of immigrants bound for El Salvador living in the Waldorf Astoria while shopping with their government-issued Platinum American Express cards. But you know that New York City has contracts with area hotels to hold several rooms for official visitors. It cost less to house immigrants there than to lease rooms anew. And those credit cards? Limited to use for food and baby supplies only. Your conspiracy-minded uncle neglected to divulge that part as it didn’t serve his narrative. That, or he was merely disinformed.

In that event, he was in large company.

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Bibliography

1. Susan Jacoby, The Age of American Unreason (Pantheon Books, 2008) 18

1a. Jacoby, The Age of American Unreason, 22-23

1b. Jacoby, The Age of American Unreason, 25

2. Charles P. Pierce, Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free (Anchor Books, 2010)

3. Christine Leigh Heyrman, Department of History, University of Delaware, “The First Great Awakening,” ©National Humanities Center, Accessed April 22, 2025, https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/eighteen/ekeyinfo/grawaken.htm

4. Susan Searls Giroux , “Between Race and Reason: Anti-Intellectualism in American Life,” Stanford University Press, September 16, 2011, https://truthout.org/articles/between-race-and-reason-antiintellectualism-in-american-life/

5. “Public’s Views on Human Evolution,” Pew Research Center, December 30, 2013, https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2013/12/30/publics-views-on-human-evolution/

5a. “Public Divided on Origins of Life: Religion A Strength and Weakness for Both Parties,” Pew Research Center, August 30, 2005, https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2005/08/30/public-divided-on-origins-of-life/

6. A.C. Grayling, The God Argument: The Case Against Religion and for Humanism (Bloomsbury, 2014) 111

7. Chris Mooney, The Republican War on Science (Basic Books, 2005) p.12

8. Junk Science, Bought and Paid For: The Latest Anti-Vaccine ‘Study’ is a Political Stunt, By Andrea Love, Ph.D. and Katie Suleta — Feb 07, 2025, https://www.acsh.org/news/2025/02/07/junk-science-bought-and-paid-latest-anti-vaccine-study-political-stunt-49291

9. Science, Public Health Policy & the Law – Bias and Credibility, "Overall, we rate Science, Public Health Policy & the Law as a pseudoscience source based on the frequent publication of vaccine misinformation to promote vaccine hesitancy. We also rate them Low for factual reporting due to false claims and inappropriate claims of being peer-reviewed." https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/science-public-health-policy-the-law-bias-and-credibility/

10. Michael Crichton, author of State of Fear, leaves global warming disinformation legacy, https://whistleblower.org/politicization-of-climate-science/global-warming-denial-machine/michael-crichton-author-of-state-of-fear-leaves-global-warming-disinformation-legacy/

11. Philip Marcelo, “Elon Musk and others spread meme reviving unfounded ‘pizzagate’ conspiracy theory,” November 29, 2023, https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-pizzagate-conspiracy-elon-musk-abc-657657139374

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Jesus in a Medical Cart

 

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c9/Christus_Ravenna_Mosaic.jpg

US work that is in the public domain in the US for an unspecified reason, but presumably because it was published in the US before 1929.

 

Upon entering the previously unknown world of cancer diagnosis and prognosis, I saw a religious plea brochure on a countertop in the oncologist’s waiting room. Oh, no, I thought, I’m going to be deluged with sappy Christian propaganda. The descent into illness and death is not just fertile ground for Christian evangelists and other proselytizers: It is justification for their existence. Remember “No atheists in foxholes” mantra? It was a favorite for years, until enough people came forward with the invention of the internet, people who had faced death and did not convert to their religion and its and any one of its associated ideologies.

To my surprise, Christians did not spring en masse from woodwork and sewers to inform me of the suffering that awaits me if I do not convert to their particular brand of their particular religion, or of the rewards that await if I just pay them lip service. That’s all. Just lip service. Pretend Christianity. Instead of swarming around cancer patients I saw only the brochure and an infusion cart with a sticker that proclaimed the cart’s technician’s something something Jesus something something. My chemo and iron infusions were performed by a kindly lady who worked out of the cart and arranged it so the Jesus sticker faced me. She was such a sweetheart that I forgave her for her superstitious delusion. Her gentle and friendly manner were far from the violent, threatening posturing of my previous experience with Christians. I can only hope she is setting a trend.

If that is her goal, it is not working, or so I thought. I relied on the news of a decline in religiosity among Americans, but a tour of social media and news reports of a surge in Christian fundamentalism reveals that the religion of misogyny and xenophobia is not done with us yet. Americans working to produce a bright future are locked in a battle against forces that seek to return them to a medieval theocracy. The state of the future is the battleground.

Unless you’re dying of cancer; then you have only the present world that dreams of freedom from the kind of religion and of the kind of government Christianity (and Islam) seek to force on us.

 

More information:

https://bigthink.com/the-present/a-surprising-explanation-for-the-global-decline-of-religion/

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