A LETTER TO CAL THOMAS

I don’t know whether or not Cal read this email essay I sent to him, but it was gone for almost a week before it came back with an "unable to deliver" message attached. I thought that only took 24 hours. Well, anyway, someone read it. Here ‘tis for you to read.

Dear Cal Thomas,

May I quote you?

“This is why the slippery slope analogy applies in cases such as stem cell research. Having abandoned an Author and definer of life, it quickly becomes possible and then probable that any value attached to a living thing — particularly a human being — is simply a matter of individual or societal whim. Such values, like a fluctuating stock market, may change at any moment and for any reason, or no reason.” —Cal Thomas

I’m a modern day atheist by which I mean I’m not like Stalin whose stint as a seminarian made him a vicious ideologue in the other direction once he decided that religion tended to keep people meek and in their place so that others could run over them. Then he promptly ran over them just like the Christian ideologue Hitler ran over those opposed to his ideology. It’s ideology that makes people mean, not pragmatism, and I resent your implication that just because I believe in reason and science I’m less human than those who adopt the irrationality and superstition of religious faith. Religious superstition and irrationality have caused just as much if not more harm than science ever did.

All changes are for reason though the reasons are not always the obvious ones. Change may be a result of unconscious processes hidden in our evolutionary natures or through false reasoning, for examples, but to speak of “no reason” is to speak of a logical impossibility.

When I look at the misguided reasons that led to our attacking Iraq and, in fact, the whole history of human behavior, including moral reasoning to conclusions for behavior, I see nothing but whim involved on every hand. To bring whim in as a cause for poor judgment in genetic matters is a canard. Further, for solid logical conclusions, I’ll put my trust in top notch scientists any day above a trust in moralists and theologians who are likely to let dogma decide matters of importance without reference to common sense or logic.

There is no group of people who more “value” the human condition than atheists who put humankind at the center of the universe and, thus, make him fully responsible for every action she takes, whereas, though they don’t admit to it as often as they ought, religionists often lay blame for bad things on forces beyond human will. Evolutionary psychology (see Steven Pinker’s Blank Slate) is giving us a much clearer picture of the springs of human behavior than that imaginary story about the fruit of a badly identified fruit tree and some sexy and tempting woman of six thousand years back.

Now to another column of Cal Thomas’s:

When you were lecturing others in another column recently about fiduciary responsibility, you credited Daddy with helping you and blamed others who might not be so lucky as you because their Daddies didn’t do the job your Daddy did. Do you see how you blamed the child for the father’s actions without really seeing what you did? And you claim to have Bible knowledge which tells you about the sins of the father being visited on the son, etcetera? See… moral reasoning is so relative, isn’t it? Escapes us at times, the full implications of what we moralize about?

Further, why do some people with no parental guidance succeed where others with good parents not “amount to much”, whatever that means? And maybe some of us got good guidance from our parents but were freer spirits than you were and so experimented more than you dared to experiment because, perhaps they feared their daddies less than you did? Some of those freer spirits may have succeeded wildly beyond your level of success. And then other free spirits may have failed because they tried some pretty zany ways to succeed. I think you are being pretty simplistic when you just claim that people succeed to the same measure that their daddies taught them to succeed.

Also, another logical error. If the good old days were better and, presumably, fathers were better teachers then than currently, how did we fall off, why and when did the teaching go awry? How did the good teaching go bad since good teaching, according to your claim, leads to right action? There should be no falling off according to your logic. Good teaching leads to good teaching leads to good teaching, ad infinitum. So, if your good teaching paid off, your teacher had nothing to do with it unless you can logically explain why others fell away from their good teaching teaching. Was it because they were genetically freer spirits, less afraid of their fathers while you were more tightly bound to your father's belt strap? More afraid? Many things to consider here, eh?

Another thing you give no credit to is your good fortune. You should be grateful for your good teaching and for your good genes and not be so busy judging others. The genes which give me a 127 IQ are no credit to me but to my parents. They’re the luck of the draw. The genes which give you more aggression than a meeker man are no credit to you either. I bear no credit for the genes which make me more sensitive than some others. They drove me crazy for some time. Genetic makeup is why great creative genius is born and not made. For the more average sort, like you and me, perhaps effort might have something to do with our survivability but that’s not much difference.

We were both given middleclass values because we were lucky to be born into the manner. That is if you are middleclass and did not go to Ivy League schools which, if you study the class system in America, certainly give opportunity for networking and advancement even for a mediocre mentality like that of George Bush Junior. His genes, like so many of the genes of financially and socially successful people, don’t lead to brilliance, but they do lead to aggressive pursuit and tenacity in the rough going. Again, just a matter of genes. I don’t deny that each of us has some wiggle room within the constraints of our genetic makeup, but it’s less wiggle and more wattle than most would imagine.

I’ve spent a good part of my life with those less successful in adapting to social pressures. Most of them don’t have the genetic drive nor intelligence to really thrive in our current complex society. It was much easier when all one had to do was shove a stick in the dirt, drop a seed, and pray for rain and sunshine. That cultural complexity is the current variable that is leaving so many peoples in the dust, unable to successfully adapt. Culture is beginning to bring an adaptive pressure to bear, and that’s the subject of much evolutionary psychology.

Sorry to have gone on so long, but let me make this last consideration. I think conservatives would be a nicer lot if they felt a little more gratitude for their genes and a lot less time congratulating themselves on their imagined moral superiority.
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“Only a [an old-fashioned] mother would think her daughter has been a good girl when she returns from a date with a Gideon Bible in her handbag.” —Frank McKinney Hubbard