Faith + Reason = Truth

A comparison between a little-publicized episode of American private life during WWII and today's atmosphere of distrust and loss of some privacy and possibly civil liberties has been on my mind.  I was reminded of it while reading a line of this blog post  by Mark Cuban about what people can do to serve our armed forces:

"I wonder how future generations will look back at these Post 9/11/2001 years. Will they see us as Enlightened ? Barbaric ? Confused ?"

The WWII episode I refer to is the establishment of forced internment camps for American citizens of Japanese descent after the attack on Pearl Harbor.  "Better safe than sorry" was the approach, and you couldn't be too careful when it came to spies and espionage.  So, in the interest of national security, Americans (Japanese Americans, but still Americans) were rounded up and locked in camps, under armed guard, until as late as 1945.  Here's a snippet from infoplease.com:

"On February 19, 1942, soon after the beginning of World War II, Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. The evacuation order commenced the round-up of 120,000 Americans of Japanese heritage to one of 10 internment camps—officially called "relocation centers"—in California, Idaho, Utah, Arizona, Wyoming, Colorado, and Arkansas."

Note that this was done through Executive Order, meaning that it took the signature of the President rather than legislature enacted by Congress, to begin this chapter in American history.  What would be the fallout if President Bush ordered this for Americans of Middle Eastern descent, or of Islamic faith?  I shudder at the thought.  But, in Roosevelt's defense, the order was only temporary, with a definite end to the war bringing a definite end to the camps (he actually rescinded the order before the end of the war, however).  With the present state of affairs, there is admittedly no end in sight to the war on terror, and presumably no end in sight to the erosion of civil liberties.

What's the solution?  And was Roosevelt right in issuing that order?  After all, it may well have prevented spying in the U.S. by some of those locked up in camps, and may have therefore played a significant part in our Pacific theater victory (and also in the secrecy of the D-Day invasion at Normandy, since any information obtained by Japanese spies in America would likely have been shared with their German allies).

But at what cost?  At some point, don't democracies have to endure sacrifices for the preservation of their citizens' freedoms at home?  What if internment camps for Muslims, say 120,000 of them for 3-4 years as was the case in WWII for the Japanese Americans, would have prevented the events of 9/11/2001?  Should it have been ordered?  I'm sure millions of people would scream "of course!" at the top of their lungs, and righfully so, if that's what they believe and how they feel.  But with freedom comes risk, danger, and trust in both those that grant and protect the freedoms as well as those who enjoy them.  Once they begin to be taken away, and with no timeline for their promised return, we are no longer enjoying all of the ideals and the promises of our American way of life, are we?

Local library + Audible.com + iPod + daily commute = more book "reading" over the past year or so than I've done since I was in college and basically read books for my "job" as a student.  The Arlington Public Library system has lots of branches, all of which have a decent selection of audio books on cd and cassette.  I used to just listen to these through the car or truck stereo, which was fine.  But I realized that I was more focused on listening when I wore headphones, so I started using personal cd players and an old Sony Walkman for cassettes, which was fine.  Then, after I finally got my first iPod this past spring, I started ripping the audiobook cd's into iTunes and having entire books on the iPod, which I ALWAYS carry with me, so I could listen in the car, walking through downtown, sitting outside or in the food court for lunch, lying in bed at night, anytime, any place.

So going back to the books to which I've listened, all unabridged, there have been classics such as St. Augustine's Confessions, Thucydides's The History of the Pelopponesian War (I'm actually only 8 hours into this almost 30 hour extravaganza), several books each by the religious historians Karen Armstrong and Elaine Pagels, Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, Freakonomics, a few books by G.K. Chesterton, popular science books, general philosophy books, you name it.  Hundreds of hours, months or even years worth of reading time (I'm one of those slow and thorough readers that re-reads passages to absorb and fully understand every word rather than just skimming for the general concepts and main points, which carries over to rewinding and re-listening to passages when necessary).  Seriously, I have listened to more books over the past year than in several previous years worth of reading combined.  And I LOVE my daily commute now, because it's about the only time when I can read for long stretches of time uninterrupted by household duties, family obligations, work, tv, etc.!

This morning, I commenced listening to the New Testament of the Bible, 16 cd's of about 70 minutes apiece, with the Old Testament waiting in the wings on the library's bookshelf (another 48 cd's for that baby - and did I mention that all but 2 of the audiobooks I've read have been free except for a few dollars in late fees, since I checked all of them out from the library?).  I'm about 40 minutes into Matthew, and I can honestly say I know more about that gospel as of right now than in all of my previous Catholic upbringing.  You see, when you read the Bible, you tend to skim over sections containing long lists of crazy-sounding names, or places you can't pronounce, or archaic styles or writing.  But when you listen to and concentrate on every single word, you get the whole picture, and it comes together in its entirety, the way it was meant to be communicated in the first place.

One of the things I listened to this morning was Jesus instructing people about prayer, telling them that when they pray, to avoid lengthy words and sentences and so forth; rather, open your heart to God, for He already knows what's in it, and all that needs to be said is the Our Father.  Those are the only words we need to worry about when we pray, about 60-70 words total, with the rest being in our hearts.  Just something to keep in mind when you know you need to communicate with God but are frustrated because you can't find the "right" words to use.  Don't worry about it - He already knows.  But you DO need to make the effort to at least open up the lines for the unspoken conversation to take place.  And that isn't too terribly much to ask, is it?

Driving to work in downtown Dallas, there are a couple of places where it makes sense to exit the highway for a mile or so and then get back on in order to avoid traffic bottlenecks.  In doing this, I've noticed a stray dog for the past couple of weeks hanging around the same general area.  After a few days of ranging over an area, then a smaller area, then a specific intersection, and then a particular corner of the same intersection, he has remained in that same spot day after day.  I didn't know why, until Monday when I was behind another vehicle at the stop sign that the dog hangs out at and I saw the driver roll his window down and toss a mostly-eaten Egg McMuffin to the dog, who promptly devoured it in one bite.  This animal has figured out that if he hangs out at this one specific point, people throw food to him.

Similarly, when I first started working downtown, I noticed the street beggars that asked passersby for money.  There weren't a huge number of them, and it didn't cause an uncomfortable feeling for me.  But day after day, I grew to recognize the exact same people in the exact same places, indicating that they, like the dog, had concluded that inhabiting those specific places resulted in people giving money to them.  You may ask yourself, "well, if they make enough money to eat and live and do whatever it is they do when they're not there, why wouldn't they continue to do so?"  In the case of the dog, I can agree with that train of thought:  his only thought is of food, and he can run around for enjoyment as much as he likes.

But with people, the thought should not be of only food or alcohol or money; it should also be about what is done in exchange for that money.  When an action is taken, it is taken either for the intrinsic value of that action, or for the expected outcome of that action.  People should not be assessed as successful or unsuccessful on the basis of their net financial worth (a mere outcome of action taken); rather, success should be judged based on the enjoyment they experience in the activities undertaken in pursuit of their livelihood (the intrinsic value of the action taken) as well as the contribution, positive or negative, that is made by them to society as a whole (an effect of the action taken that extends beyond the individual taking the action, of which our awareness makes us human).  If a person makes $100,000 per year by stealing other people's belongings, and he thoroughly enjoys himself while doing so, he is still not "successful" because he places such a drain on other individuals.  If a person makes $5,000,000 playing basketball and brings great joy and excitement to millions of fans, yet he does not enjoy himself in the process, then he likewise would not be considered a success as a human being.  And finally, in the case of the person who enjoys the work he or she does, and makes enough money to sustain a lifestyle that agrees with him or her, and helps their fellow man in the process, that person may be considered successful - at least by my standards, which may be different from yours or anyone else's.  Those people are exceedingly rare to come across, and if you are fortunate enough to know of one, then you will know what I'm describing.  Almost all of us fulfill one or two of the three requirements, but not all three, and to me, the realization of all three is what every one of us should be striving to attain.

Edge.org has an essay by Jonathan Haidt that provocatively interrogates the "new atheists" of pop science, questioning their methods as being more passionate and emotional than scientific (though by and large they are scientists leading the movement).  I could not agree more with that assessment, as I have made the same one myself.  Haidt is very rational in his approach, and takes an approach that one would expect out of any scientist in this debate.  Though himself an atheist, his dealings with facts and studies allows for a productive engagement by both sides.  So productive, in fact, that there are quite a number of responses by other Edge contributors to his essay.

I do not take issue with what he writes, and I only wish to shed some light on one of his assertions.  He states that:
  "surveys have long shown that religious believers in the United States are happier, healthier, longer-lived, and more generous to charity and to each other than are secular people. Most of these effects have been documented in Europe too."
I would advance the opinion that if "religious believers," who by definition are believers in a better afterlife or, at the very least, a better existence or non-existence to follow their earthly bodily ones, are surveyed, then they would in all likelihood be happier than their non-believing counterparts.  If one has a better circumstance than their present condition to look forward to, this would produce a self-described "happier" state than one who has nothing to look forward to.  Likewise, if the achievement of that preferred condition were predicated upon helping others during their time on earth, then those religious believers would naturally be more inclined to do so.

So that would explain two of the four survey findings.  As for the healthier and longer-lived statistics, only one is really relevant since health is a driver of longevity; i.e., if a population is healthier than another population, then it would in all probability also be longer-lived than that population, all other factors being equal.  And as to the health or non-health of groups of survey respondents, I can only say that each of the two groups had a 50% chance of being healthier than the other, so further research in that area would be required.  If, on the other hand, it were observed in survey after survey of various populations that there is in fact a high correlation between health and religious belief or non-belief, it could very likely also be correlated to a relationship between health level and happiness level.

Are these cause and effect relationships, or are they merely consistent with other "symptoms" of whatever it is that predisposes certain people to religious belief, mental/psychological happiness, and physical well being?