The Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King

18 Monday Jan 2016

Posted by Gary Herstein in Ethics, Ferguson, Martin Luther King, Moral Law

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Ethics, Martin Luther King, moral laws, objective morality

I missed Dr. King’s actual birthday, because I’ve the organizational skills of an F³ tornado and the discipline of a goldfish. But at least I’ve something for the official Martin Luther King day. King Injustice Anywhere

While the Reverend Doctor King had a Ph.D. from Boston University in Speculative Theology, he was also (of course) a Baptist Minister. I’ll have some thoughts to share about right-wing reactions to this fact below the fold, but now I wish to point out some facts that make some atheists on the left side of the political spectrum a bit uncomfortable. First among these, not only was King a Baptist minister, but the entire American Civil Rights movement was religious to its core. A number of the noisier atheists seem to think that, after watching five minutes of Pat Robertson, they are now experts in theology and the history of religion. This presumption often leads these folks to conflate right-wing ideologues spewing twaddle clothed in a veneer of religious talk with the entire spectrum of human religious experience, and utterly oblivious to theological (to say nothing of philosophical) ideas about “god.” (See for example HERE and HERE.) But more importantly for our purposes, there is oftentimes a systematic failure amongst some secularists and atheists to understand that the American Civil Rights movement was irreducibly religious in character, in organization, and in philosophy. Secularists participated in the movement, but they played no substantive role. So these types of atheists contradict themselves when they simultaneously praise the civil rights movement and yet damn all religion wholesale. Continue reading →

Until It Bleeds – Until It Burns

07 Sunday Dec 2014

Posted by Gary Herstein in Ethics, Ferguson, General Philosophy, Race

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being human, Ferguson, Morality, Race

The predictable, self-righteous clucking by privileged White commentators of various stripes that followed especially upon the Ferguson rioting (which followed upon a grand jury result that shows every sign of having been aggressively manipulated so as to avoid, even preclude, any indictment of the White cop who killed an unarmed Black teenager) betrays a level of willful obtuseness that is truly beyond all measure. Add to this now the similar refusal to indict in the Garner case in Staten Island, and the shock and outrage in minority communities has reached levels not seen since the 1960’s. This rage continues to leave many people – almost entirely White people, and regardless, almost certainly members of some significantly privileged collection of people – completely dumb-founded as to the reason why this rage is fulminating in so many minority communities, a rage that often expresses itself blindly in violence. Why are black people, especially, so angry? Why do they lash out so violently at their own communities? These respective cases went before their grand juries, and when presented with all of the evidence, the grand juries said that there was not evidence enough for an indictment. Isn’t this how the system is supposed to work?

But that, of course, is precisely the problem: that IS how the system is supposed to work. The system IS supposed to dismiss the value of minority, especially black, lives. Because the system that we live in is one of monstrously institutionalized racism in which black people can be safely viewed as not even human by people who insist that this is not a problem. Yes, the system “worked.” Such “working” is the moral catastrophe of our age.

I wish to make two points here, the first is quite patently clear, while the second and longer point will be far more problematically speculative. Point #1 is that, while rioting – which is not at all the same as civil disobedience – is almost certainly not helpful, it is understandable. The second, far more speculative, point is an approach toward such an understanding that I’ve not seen suggested elsewhere.

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Black Devils

29 Saturday Nov 2014

Posted by Gary Herstein in appeal to emotion, Critical Thinking, Ferguson, General Philosophy

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being human, Critical Thinking, Ferguson

“And then after he did that, he looked up at me and had the most intense aggressive face. The only way I can describe it, it looks like a demon, that’s how angry he looked.” This is how Officer Darren Wilson described Michael Brown in the moments before Wilson killed the unarmed Brown. According to Wilson, Brown wasn’t angry, infuriated or even enraged – because for Wilson, Brown wasn’t even human. Notice that Brown’s face isn’t even his (Brown’s) face; Wilson calls Brown’s face an “it.” (Found on pp’s 224 — 225 of Wilson’s testimony.) Brown was a demon, he was a black devil. And because Brown was a black devil, it required nothing more than Wilson feeling he was threatened for the threat to have the legal standing of an objective fact.