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Parents strongly resist anti-spanking laws
November 28th, 2009 by Richard Collins

Pro-spanking advocates insist they are against spanking bans because they wish to protect the sanctity of parental discretion. Leave aside the ethics or efficacy of using violence against children as a form of discipline. The issue is that parents must not be hampered in any way as they carry out their parental duties in accordance with their personal judgment. But does their argument withstand careful scrutiny?

Few parents would expect to go into a court and defend themselves against a motor vehicle code violation issued for not complying with a child safety seat ordinance. Laws are in effect all over the country that demand children under certain height and weight specifications ride in child seats and not regular passenger seats. This is because in case of a crash, inflatable air bags can actually kill or maim a small child when they inflate. Passenger car seats are designed for adult bodies, not child bodies and can actually produce injuries to children.

The child safety seat laws are founded on scientific research that predicts what will likely happen to children who are not protected by riding in a seat especially constructed for their safe transportation. Likewise, spanking bans are founded on scientific studies of the harm that will likely happen statistically to a number of children if such bans are not in place. Anti-spanking bans are not based simply on conjecture, but derive their authority based on valid data, rigorously compiled and analyzed.

Libertarian supporters of parental rights don’t seem to object to mandatory child safety seat laws. If their concern is really about government interference in their parental decision making, shouldn’t they therefore resist buying and using expensive child safety seats? What right does the government have to insist parents protect their children from harm by putting them in a car safety seat?

Likewise, many cities and towns have vehicle codes that require children to wear safety helmets when riding on a bike or as a passenger on a motorcycle. Do parents who favor unrestricted control over their decision making, think they would survive a court challenge in case they disregard child safety helmet laws?

When you board an airplane your children must wear a seat belt or you and the child will be removed from the plane. Why do libertarians not object to this intrusion into their parental decision making.

The objection to a spanking ban fails for the same reason that the parental rights defense fails in the instances cited. Although parental rights certainly have a place in the overall scheme of how society raises future generations, child safety deserves a higher priority than noble, abstract, theoretical considerations defending unrestricted parental rights.

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The Christian Morality Help Center Project
November 28th, 2009 by Richard Collins

The Holy Land Experience Theme Park - The Ten ...
Image by Rob Sheridan via Flickr

Christians rely on religious texts such as the bible to guide their moral behavior, or if they cannot find an answer to their moral issue in the Bible they consult their clerics. As our product experts here at the Christian Morality Help Center closely examined these time consuming options, we had no alternative but to conclude a new approach using modern technology will be the best solution to helping Christians live morally. By the way, the Cell Phone Bible Edition and the more compact Cell Phone Ten Commandments edition are going to be ready for release, real soon. Until then, Christians can carry a printed edition of the KJB, NIV, RSV, ASV; Greek N-A or any combination you like. Keep them handy at all times in your purse or backpack. Now, we realize how tiring that can be after a while, but relax, help is on the way. Our product development team has laid in a supply of Jolt Cola and Cheetos and is working around the clock to produce our product spec. Let me tell you about the project.

Problem Definition
Even if a Christian has one or more bibles or a copy of the Ten Commandments with them, it is often difficult to find the exact bible verse or commandment that fits your immediate moral dilemma and time is often a pressing factor. All of us Christians know our Bibles are just crammed with helpful advice, but unfortunately, most of it is contradictory and you wind up after wasting your precious time applying your own common sense, anyway. Well we are going to eliminate time wasting bible searches for you. You’ll see. It’s going to be great. We will even be including a solution to the fat man on the overpass dilemma.

When you think about it, the Ten Commandments are not much help in our modern world what with suicidal religious maniacs and fertilizer bombers on the loose. Plus, who can remember all 10 of the commandments, or is it 18 or 20? Secondly, I don’t recall reading anything in the commandments about overpasses, passenger trolleys or sacrificing one fat men to save other lives. What is the problem with fat men anyway?

We say the Ten Commandments are just too simplistic to help modern people, with all due respect of course. With just a modicum of thought you can easily see that even that old workhorse of ethical thought, the Golden Rule, is no help with the fat man and the train dilemma. Because, if I am the fat man I don’t want to get thrown on the tracks. No way! And I never, ever indicated I would throw someone over the railing, either. How does the Golden Rule apply?

Let me assure you the Christian Morality Help Center Design Team analysts along with our staff of ethicists and moralists are assiduously grappling with all such opaque moral problems Christians may encounter. We promise to supply fast concrete, concise answers to your requests for help using our patented BioEnergyFrequency accelerator software technology (Scientologists, take note!). I’ll just say here however, that to meet our aggressive development milestones we are really trying to avoid getting bogged down in pages and pages of dusty Christian dogma written eons ago by committees that didn’t respect the limited patience for double talk and obfuscation most readers today have for this kind of exposition. No disrespect meant, of course. It is just so wearing on a person to have to wade through texts on dogma. You thought the ISO 9000 QA regulations were a pain. Boy, there is no comparison.

The other option questioning Christians have now is to call their cleric for advice. But, our lab tests revealed the trolley and the hapless passengers are probably going to be history long before you ever get through your cleric’s answering machine command options. Let’s see now; press one for condom use, two for school prayer, three for chastity. Nah, that’s not fast enough in the real world and there are no options on his machine for trolleys or fat men. None, that we could find anyway. You can quickly see the problems with this scheme. Even if you do manage to select a good button and leave a message, your cleric might also get dragged down in dogma, which at the risk of being tedious, we have just pointed out, can be extremely vexing and time consuming to wade through (no offense meant). Then when he does get back to you, the answer is going to be filled with so many qualifications, ifs, ands, CYAs, and maybes, you might be more at a loss than you were to start with. You’ll have to go through the entire process all over again hoping to get a more appropriate answer. Can you see why our analysts rejected this solution?

Lastly, you could resort to a more direct, face to face approach if your nearest cleric is reasonably close by. Bear in mind, your cleric is a busy person, what with talking to paving and painting contractors, roofing experts, bankers, and maybe even composing a weighty sermon or two (although they could save time going to Google). Your cleric has to wear many hats. Plus they have to respond to hundreds of other parishioners and they might all have dire moral issues at the same time as you and need a quick response. Please take a number.

So by now, I think you’ll agree our proposed solution is best. I am proudly speaking about our fully modern, computer-equipped Christian Morality Help Center, staffed by knowledgeable friendly assistants. The good part is the assistants really don’t have to know a lot about solving moral dilemmas. They just have to be pretty good at text searches in what I propose to call the Morality Answers Database (MAD).

After we get this Christian project up and running, and the Buddhists, Mormons, Jains, Muslims and Jews see how beneficial it is, we can contract to design especially tailored morality help centers. I am positive all the religions will want their very own. From my limited study, the thing that stands out to me is that all religions don’t exactly agree with Christian morality on some of the more arcane points, like whether to stone apostates and women seen in the company of males who they are not related to or married to. Nonetheless, I’m convinced we are on the right track and this product concept is going to become a “killer app” as we marketing guys say. It will just take some judicious modification to get the Christian MAD ported over. Because of all the differences in religions, think of all the theologists, egg heads, computer programmers and technicians that will find work in these hard times. This will be a huge, badly needed boost to our economy — almost as big as the NASA space station. We may get the Medal of Freedom from the President of the United States. Well it pays to think big.

When we roll out the product, here is how the concept will work:

You, Mr or Mrs Christian, encounter a Christian moral problem. The first step is to connect to the Christian Morality Help Center by phone or computer. After you complete the simple security formalities by stating your full name, customer number, social security number (no hyphens please), pass code, mother’s maiden name, birthplace, color of your first car, make and model of your toaster, your pet dog’s name, your favorite cousin’s astrology sign and your favorite soft drink, the center will complete a quick confirmation of what you supplied. The security check is going to be fast and will probably take no more than 20 maybe 30 minutes tops. Don’t worry, it’s a toll free call, at least for our new customers, for a while.

As soon as an attendant is available (for the fastest service, place your call at 1:00 AM UT) you’ll be whisked right over to your personal help center attendant, who to save costs is probably in Calcutta, India. No worries, they all speak good English, and have easily remembered Anglo Saxon first names. Have you, like me, wondered how they all have Anglo Saxon names? This must have resulted from when the Brits were running India as a colony. Don’t bring this up to your attendant though; they are still slightly peeved at the Brits as I understand it.

Once your attendant completes your interview process and has your problem well in hand they will turn to their computer and type in some key words. Before you know it, their computer screen will light up with all kinds of “hits”. Then all that is required is to read this list to you or send it to your computer. Simple, no? In chat mode with the attendant your amazingly complex, state of the art computer can work just like those Teletypes we used to use, only slower.

To my mind, the absolute best part of the system is that the Christian moral seeker is totally relieved of any tedious effort needed to think through their problem and apply logic and reason to finding a solution. Don’t you agree logic and ethics are two of the most intellectually challenging academic specialties? Who needs them when you have a Bible or better yet our subscription service. Do you know anyone in your family or among your friends who chose such a loser academic path? Not my dad or mom.

I often wonder why god has not updated his commandments to — you know, sort of better suit our modern world (no offense God). Why do you insist on hiding? Maybe the Deists are right and after you made our little solar system, you went in search of bigger and better cosmological projects, thinking we would take responsibility for the planet, all of the life on the planet, and ourselves, of course. Let’s hope we fix it back up before God thinks about returning to check on how we are minding his handiwork. It would not be good to disappoint the big guy.

About the fat man and the trolley problem don’t be squeamish. Toss him over the rail onto the train tracks. It’s really a very simple moral judgment problem. At least that’s how I see it. I gotta get back to writing the spec. I’m jazzed and I’ve only had 10 Jolt Colas.

By, Richard Collins
Copyright, all rights reserved
Available on Amazon Kindle

Resources:
http://tinyurl.com/267etl New York Times Magazine – The Moral Instinct

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New Zealand referendum “tragic”
November 27th, 2009 by Richard Collins

http://yesvote.org.nz/2009/08/13/swedish-newspaper-nz-referendum-tragic/

August 13, 2009

How does our referendum on smacking look to the world? Not good. Journalist Lotta Hördin wrote this editorial for independent newspaper Helsingborgs Dagblad the fifth largest morning paper in Sweden on New Zealand’s “tragic referendum”.
It’s never right to hit children (8th August, 2009 – Helsingborgs Dagblad)

Tragic referendum in New Zealand

Raising children using violence should definitely be a thing of the past. Unfortunately this is not the case. This is illustrated by the current referendum in New Zealand. Sweden was the first in the world to illegalize hitting children in 1979. Here (in Sweden) how could anyone think about changing this law? But in New Zealand, who introduced the law in 2007, an organization called Family First gathered enough signatures to force the politicians to carry out a referendum. The referendum is now underway.

The current opinion polls show that the majority of New Zealanders think a little “smacking” should be allowed. Indicating they want to remove the current law. It was not easy when the law was introduced here (in Sweden). In the 1920’s a law called “Husaga” allowed the master of the house to hit his wife, children and servants. Up until 1958 teachers were allowed to hit students. But in the 1960’s public opinion turned and laid the foundations for the current law.

Since then 23 countries have created a similar law including our Nordic neighbors, and many other European countries. However, in the UK you are still allowed to smack your child and even in USA it is allowed in the home. In some states it is also allowed in the schools.
A law against smacking children doesn’t mean that all the violence stops. That’s illustrated in the statistics. Children get smacked and abused even in Sweden. You need more than a law to change bad behaviour, but from society’s side prohibition is an important signal. It also provides an opportunity to hold the offender accountable to the law. The increase in the reports of child abuse we have seen (in Sweden) can relate to fact that the tolerance levels have been lowered and in some way this is thanks to the law.

Children are vulnerable and defenseless to adults, therefore it is important that there are laws to protect them when people in their close environment fail. In New Zealand the opposition to the law argues that parents that give their children a smack on the bum are criminals. But where do you draw the line?

Well of course you draw the line that all violence is illegal otherwise you’re skating on thin ice. Raising children should, above all, be built on good communication and mutual respect. That is not to say that the adult surrenders and lets the child take over and decide everything. But violence large or small should be forbidden. The referendum in New Zealand is to illustrate public opinion on the issue. Leading politicians are planning not to vote and a NO to the law will be a hot potato to handle, but it shouldn’t be. The only right thing, of course, is that New Zealand in the future has a law against smacking children.

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Hereditary Religion: Cultural Genetics
November 19th, 2009 by Richard Collins

The End of Hereditary Religion is pleased to publish this article written by David McAfee, a student at the University of California, Santa Barbara. This is part one of a multi-part treatment on the subject of Hereditary Religion. We look forward to more articles by this talented young writer.
Richard

My interest in the field of Cultural Genetics began two years ago during an interview with a university student for a local magazine. His name was Mike and he was a second-year Theater Major at the University of California, Santa Barbara. I had the chance to speak candidly with Mike and asked him a series of questions regarding his religious preferences and freedoms, his answer to one question in particular would surprise me more than the rest. I asked Mike a very simple question, “Do you consider yourself a religious person?” A 2001 American Religious Identification Survey indicates that 81% of Americans DO associate themselves with a specific religion, so a “Yes” would not have been cause for alarm. Instead, Mike paused for a moment and answered “I’m half Catholic and half Agnostic.” Before I responded, my mind was filled with ideas of what he could have meant, some blend of Catholic intrigue mixed with skepticism perhaps? Upon elaboration I discovered that Mike’s mother was a practicing Catholic and his father was not associated with an organized religion.

When I describe the “genetics” of religion, I am referring to a phenomenon that I came across during the course of my research and, to me, implies the thought of religion as something similar to heritage; it is passed on from generation to generation via the parents. For example, people who have extremely limited knowledge of the Bible or its implications may still choose to classify themselves as Christians on the basis that their parents do so. This phenomenon of our nation’s children inheriting religion is often overlooked because the perpetrator guilty of indoctrination is not a dictator or cult leader, but their own parents. In the course of my research and daily life, it became increasingly apparent that many Americans consider themselves “religious” with extremely limited knowledge of the beliefs and practices of the particular religion simply because of their parents, peers, and popular culture.

When a child is growing up, there is a crucial period in which they begin to ask questions about life and wonder about the origin of existence. In a religious family, these questions are typically answered by creationist ideas in the home, church, or Sunday School. Once these beliefs are instilled in the child, it becomes a part of his or her identity. So much so that, in many cases, the child will grow up and forever identify themselves with that specific religion without question or skepticism. This is not to say that all religious parents pass on their faith to their offspring, but it seems as if it is just as likely as inheriting hair or eye color. For an idea as important as religion, it is a shame that Americans simply take what they are taught from family at face value as opposed to studying, questioning, and learning about multiple religious traditions in order to make an informed decision.

It seems to me that more and more people are treating their religious affiliation as if it were an inherited trait as opposed to an individual right and a decision not to be taken lightly. The momentous event of choosing a religion, or lack of religion, should not be a mindless reflex but a carefully scrutinized moment in life… and the key to this moment is information.

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You do not have to take your children to church
November 19th, 2009 by Richard Collins

{{en|Inside Hillsong Church, :en:Sydney ==Copy...
Image via Wikipedia

There is a presumption that children must be taken to church. This presumption is based on centuries old tradition and the full backing of religious institutions that rely on new converts to keep their faith alive down through the ages.

Morally this is reprehensible because it treats vulnerable children as instruments. Treating others as objects or as instruments to satisfy a desire has been recognized by moral philosophers as repugnant since the days of Kant. Why are children any different? What makes it morally OK to treat children as instruments in a scheme to promote a certain brand of faith?

Secondly, the notion that a child who does not like the faith you chose for them will suddenly recover at age 18 from 15 years of being subjected to a deliberate mind control program is simply risible. There is no reset switch you can press to set a child’s brain back to it’s pristine state at age three. In fact, brain scientists have shown that the brain is actually changed physically by early learning (age 3 to 7). Those changes to the brain are extremely difficult to overcome. Logically, childhood is actually the longest stage in our lives because we retain the memories of childhood for a lifetime.

Do people break the locks on their religious cage? Yes, but usually at great emotional cost. Sometimes people suffer anxiety and depression for years as they break away and recover from religion. Family relations can be stretched to the breaking point.

Personal narratives tell the story of “making up their own minds”. Poignant accounts can be found all over the web at recovery sites established by people seeking mutual aid and comfort. Every faith and sect is represented. The biggest sites look to be for Catholics, Mormons, and Pentecostals.

Is this news to people reading this article and will it shape your thinking about hereditary religion?

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