"The War Prayer" Revisited

Not since Mark Twain’s “The War Prayer” have we seen a clearer encapsulation of the consequences of irrationality. Paul Meyers, known in the blogosphere as ‘PZ’, has given sentient beings pause for thought in his April 3 essay, “Shades of Gray“. Twain’s inability to publish such thoughts, posthumously discovered in a cache of his unpublished works, reveals a hopelessly bigoted public (yes, Mother, those were our grandparents), steeped in religious fantasy so pervasive that they were completely unable to examine their own lives as Socrates would have required them (us) to do.

PZ has brought all of it to the fore. The bigotry, fanaticism, compassion, ethics, reason, human rights, democratic processes, religious fantasy, and, ultimately, our individual responsibility to fulfill our own destiny by thinking for ourselves. His commentators, following his post, have added abortion, racism, infanticide, pre-emptive killing (Hitler, for example as a suggested target), and capital punishment to an already unbearable mix of human behaviors poorly tempered by individual reflection and judgment.

Ayn Rand’s fictional character, Francisco d’Anconia, in “Atlas Shrugged” declared that “There are no evil thoughts except one: the refusal to think.” Plato credited Socrates, in “The Apology” with recognizing that “The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance”. PZ has just reminded us that we are all woefully ignorant of our own thinking, let alone the thinking of others. When someone, a statesman, neighbor, pastor, relative, friend, colleague, loved one, priest, or elected official, invokes a term such as patriotism, sacrifice, duty, honor, truth, glory, or allegiance, in regard to your behavior or their own, be very cautious in proceeding on the strength of their advice. Be sure their words mean the same things to you as to them. Insist upon facts, evidence and reasoned argument before accepting anyone’s conclusions, and thoroughly examine your own motives, analysis, and conclusions.

These are dangerous times, from within, and without. Crackpot Christian fundamentalists need to stop hoping for the fantasy of armageddon rather than incrementally leading us to it. We desperately need a unification of humankind rather than an increasingly polarized and divided global population. Meyers made a critical point in how we conduct our affairs:

All around the world, people are killing and being killed; they are crossing the clearest, least arbitrary border we have. You don’t come back from death, and you can’t atone for extinguishing another life….In the real world, those bodies are people, with 20 years or 30 years or 50 years or 70 years of stories and connections behind them, part of a web of humanity, and their every action tugs on the people around them. Dehumanizing them, as we often do, dehumanizes us. You are the killer, but you are also the killed.

In America, we know how long it takes to repair social rifts such as the abolition of slavery. We must do everything in our power to preserve and protect the lives, stories, and connections represented by all the peoples of the world. This is The Only World We’ve Got.

Cross-posted to:  The Renaissance Post