Sometimes fate comes out of nowhere to remind us of its power and presence. And sometimes a fellow motorist is following the car in front of his too closely and looks away for just a second and CRASH!

I was traveling west on State Road 580 in Dunedin, Florida when traffic stopped for a red light at the intersection of S.R. 580 and Overchash Drive. I had applied my brake and had just come to a full stop when I felt a strong jolt that made my brain feel like it was sloshing around inside my skull and sent my sunglasses flying off my head and into the backseat. My seat belt held me in place and prevented me from sustaining serious injury, but I did have whiplash and a minor seat belt bruise.

For a second, I thought that I had hit the car in front of mine. Then I looked in my rear view mirror and saw that the car behind mine had a shattered windshield and that its airbags had deployed. I grabbed my phone and got out of my car to check on the driver to see if he’d been hurt. He was stunned, but not seriously injured.

The woman driving the car in front of mine got out of her car and walked back to ask both of us if we were okay. Then she said that she had been slightly bumped, but not badly enough to cause any damage to her car (apparently, the jolt caused my foot to slip off my brake pedal, causing my car to roll into hers). She really just wanted to go home, but when she called the police, they told her that she was involved and therefore legally obliged to stay and give her statement to the police.

The Pinellas County Sheriff’s Deputy arrived on the scene and the matter was handled officiously, license, registration and insurance information was collected and run through the criminal databases for warrants and such, statements were taken, tow trucks were dispatched and the driver who was responsible was cited for careless driving. All in all, it was a pretty mundane event.

I wasn’t even going to blog about this because it seemed so silly and trivial at the time, nobody was badly injured and there was no controversy (everyone was sober and the gentleman who ran into the back of me did not even own a cell phone and asked to borrow mine to call his wife), but this was the first traffic accident I had ever been involved in that was not my fault and that has had some unexpected ramifications.

You’d think it would be easier to deal with the psychological trauma of such an accident if it was not your fault, but I am finding that this is not the case for me because this accident was completely out of my control. There was nothing that I could have done to prevent it. Even if I had seen the car coming at me, I could not have steered into another lane without hitting another car.

When I had accidents that were my fault (the only time I ever injured anyone — knock wood — it was only me in a one-car, one-tree incident) I had to deal with the guilt that came from the knowledge that I had been careless and negligent, but at least I was in control of the situation and could take future preventative action by being more attentive and careful while driving.

The pain in my neck and shoulder is gone, but I still feel anxious every time I stop at a red light. I keep having to resist the urge to look in my rear view mirror because when I do I am afraid that every car behind mine is not going to stop. It is most unsettling to contemplate that the usually unseen presence of fate can, at any time, come out of hiding to remind me that I am not as in control of my own destiny as I often like to think I am.

This post is part of a continuing discussion between yours truly and Dory of Wittenberg Gate. Thus far, our dialogue has not been so much a debate as it has been a sorting out of ideas and the semantics used to describe them. And it has been a most enlightening experience that has caused me to re-think a few things. Here is the history of it thus far, in chronological order:

• Traditional Judeo-Christian Morality by Margaret Romao Toigo, April 24, 2005
• On Judgment vs. Discernment and Sin vs. Crime by Dory, May 02, 2005
• The Difference Between Crime and Sin by Margaret Romao Toigo, May 5, 2005
• By What Authority and By What Standard? by Dory, May 10, 2005

Ethics and Morals

Dory prudently questioned the practicality of using a standard of unchanging, unalterable truths of conscience to determine what should or should not be civil law. It would create rationalizations for tyranny, “All any tyrant would have to say is that this or that standard is an unalterable truth of conscience and that would be that. By what concrete standard could anyone object?” And it begs several questions that cannot be answered objectively such as, “How does one determine if something is an unalterable truth of conscience? Is it by doing a survey of current thinking or by looking at cultural trends historically? Do we have experts who can decide these things? And then, who sets the standard by which these things are judged?”

This gave me cause to reflect upon my previous assertions and ideas about recognizing the distinction between transient social conventions (ethics) and the unchanging, unalterable truths of conscience (morals) for the purpose of determining whether or not civil government should intervene in matters of morality. And now I must question the necessity of making that determination at all in a free society because while I still believe that there are unchanging, unalterable truths of conscience, I now understand that they are not revealed to all of us in the same manner and form.

The Trouble with “Harm”

Understanding the fundamental difference between the prosecution of crime and the judgment of sin might seem as simple as making the distinction between consensual acts and behaviors that do not directly encroach upon the civil and human rights of others from acts that cause direct harm to others, but the concept of “harm” is too broad and subjective to be pragmatically applied. Dory provided a most astute example of why “harm” is unworkable, “I can cause harm to others in many legal ways. I could set up a business that competes with an existing business and never say a word about my competitor and yet still reduce his profits.”

Indeed, you could bake your noodle for close to an eternity — mine’s been roasting in a metaphorical oven for quite some time now, but thanks to Dory, it will not be as overcooked as it could have been — contemplating the semantic implementation of the concept of “harm,” when it has no universal definition. I will stop doing that now, just like I ceased to use the expression “victimless crime” some time ago (note to self to re-word The Question).

The problem with the “harm” approach was in my attempt to define the philosophical concept of sin for the purpose of separating it from the civil definition of crime when the weakness of my mortal flesh makes me unfit to judge what is and is not sin (sometimes my pride makes it difficult for me to live by the Scriptures in Matthew 7:1-5). The limitation of humanity requires that the extra layer of complexity — attempting to define sin — be stripped away so that crime can be defined as those acts and behaviors that encroach upon the civil and human rights of others.

What Authority?

Of course there will be numerous objections to that frighteningly simple and unambiguous definition of crime and the severe limits it places upon the government’s authority over the actions and behaviors of the people. However, the American government was not intended to be an authority over the actions and behaviors of the people, but rather the keeper, protector and defender of the rights of the people. Because we hold the truth “that all men are created equal,” to be self-evident, no man has authority over another. We are obliged to protect and defend the rights of our fellow man and that is not possible when we presume to have authority over his free will.

The standard we have for the purpose of securing, guaranteeing, protecting and defending our civil and human rights is a fittingly brief — and brilliant — document that strikes the balance between a government that is big enough to protect the rights of the people while limiting its authority so as to not infringe upon them itself. It is our Constitution, the source of our government’s ethics, which outlines government’s obligations to the people, not its authority over them.

Since the duty of government is to secure, guarantee, protect and defend our civil and human rights, the government cannot (should not) have authority over our morals. Morality is conscience and conscience originates from within each of us as an essential part of our God-given free will. Therefore, the government has no authority to prosecute people for certain actions and behaviors that might be sinful but do not encroach upon the civil and human rights of others.

But Who Will Lead Us?

The very first of our Bill of Rights is quite clear about where we are to look for moral authority and guidance even though it doesn’t actually get specific. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” secures and guarantees our right to choose our own moral authorities and, by that measure, places the onus upon us, the people, to exercise our free will as the arbiters of our own consciences. Our government’s purpose — protecting and defending our civil and human rights — is man-centered and man is not fit to be the source of authority for standards of morality.

The vast majority of Americans find their moral authority in God’s own revelation in Scripture and on the surface it might seem logical and fair to use that standard in the application of civil legislation. However — besides the obvious First Amendment issues and the fact that not all Americans are Christian — Christians are a diverse group made up of many different denominations and sects (Roman Catholics, Protestants, Presbyterians, Baptists, Lutherans, Unitarians, Methodists, Christian Scientists, Adventists, Pentecostals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, etc.) whose interpretations of the Word of God are greatly varied and sometimes even contradict one another. This subjectiveness makes the Biblical standard impractical for the purpose of civil law but that does not mean that Americans cannot/do not look to God and His Word in matters of morality or that churches cannot/should not impose Biblical standards upon society, only that the state has no place enforcing such standards with civil laws and punishments.

How Can We Be a Moral People Without Civil Deterrents to Sin?

My question has always been, how can we be a moral people when we employ civil “deterrents” to sin as if the conscience God gave us consists of nothing but our fear of the punishments an Earthly authority might impose upon our mortal flesh? How can we be truly free when our right to look to a Higher Power for inspiration to live a moral life is supplanted by secular laws that are intended to hinder our God-given free will? How can we call ourselves moral when we attempt to ban temptation with civil laws rather than finding the spiritual strength to truly resist it?

Well-intentioned but oppressive and reactionary secular laws are usually supported by the ridiculous notion that simply outlawing/banning something will make it go away and/or keep people from doing it. And no matter how many times history and pragmatism demonstrate that this approach is ineffective, impractical and unrealistic, the proponents of it can only deduce from those immemorial lessons that the prescribed consequences were not sufficiently harsh to act as an effective disincentive.

When we implement civil legislation as if conscience/morality is comprised of nothing more than a fear of civil punishment in this life and on this Earth, we divert our source of moral authority and guidance toward a man-centered power and away from God and His Word. When we submit our free will to man-made forces that can only intimidate our mortal flesh, it is to the detriment of our immortal souls because those forces do not inspire us to genuine repent, but rather pressure us to merely express insincere repentance for the purpose of avoiding Earthly punishment.

People living in a free society must be equipped with the fortitude and restraint to cope with the unavoidable temptations of their liberty. Attempting to limit temptation by placing limits on liberty only undermines our discipline because it defers personal responsibility to the same degree that it curtails freedom — without ever actually affecting the pervasiveness of Earthly temptations of the flesh. For this reason, we must be courageous and refuse to succumb to the lure of submitting our free will to the state for the purpose of subverting sin.

If the only thing keeping us from sinning is fear of civil punishment then we are not a truly moral people, we are merely controlled by our fear of authority (and sometimes, especially when we are young, we might even be motivated to sin for the sake of rebellion against the man-made rules that we resent being imposed upon our free will). When we allow our moral choices to be made for us by a man-centered authority, we are absolved of any real spiritual responsibility for our free will because we cease to be possessed of free will, having some time ago turned it over to our civil government in the hope that a man-made, temporal institution could provide us with salvation and deliverance from sin.

The Bible, which has not been updated in over 2000 years, is most decidedly not a science book. Charles Darwin’s controversial 1859 bestseller, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, which is widely accepted by modern scientists as the prevailing theory with regard to the origins of life, is not an holy book. And intelligent design, which is not based upon any religious text, is really more about mathematical probability — that life/nature are far too complex to have come about randomly/accidentally — than it is about creationism or any particular theism.

Charles Darwin did an excellent job of documenting a scientifically verifiable and therefore plausible accounting of the biological and genetic connections between living things and the scientists who have followed in his footsteps have expanded upon and modified Mr. Darwin’s original theories as new discoveries have been made over the years. However, the theory of evolution is still incomplete — it has been a work in progress for almost 150 years — in that it does not actually explain that much about the origins of life on Earth.

Creationism is based upon the literal reading of the Book of Genesis, in which the Biblical God created the heaven and the earth, the day and the night, the land and the seas, the plants and the trees, the sun, moon and stars, the fishes and the animals and of course, man — “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” (Genesis 1:27, KJV) — in six days, about 6000 years ago.

Intelligent design is supposed to help to bridge the gaps between what we already know and understand from scientific observation and experimentation, what we have not yet learned and those empirical concepts and spiritual ideas which we accept on faith in the meantime until new research and discoveries come to light. Intelligent design is simply an effort to apply critical thinking and practical experience to the question of whether the apparent design of nature is a genuine design of an intelligent agent or the product of an undirected process. Unlike creationism, intelligent design is agnostic regarding the source of the design and does not involve defending the Bible or any other religious scriptures.

Because the origin of life is still a gigantic question mark and much of what we understand of it requires various leaps of faith in natural and/or supernatural forces, the teaching of both evolution and intelligent design in schools is a way to allow for a scientific basis for the leaps of faith we make to ease our uncertainties without sacrificing proper scientific instruction or promoting or dismissing any particular religious belief.

These distinctions should be fairly easy to understand if one is intellectually honest and open-minded about the many questions that science has yet to answer completely, but distinguishing between them appears to be quite difficult for the people who are so set in their ways that they think of alternative viewpoints as sacrilegious to either their scientific doctrine or religious dogma.

What I find most ironic about the evolution/intelligent design/creationism issue is the zeal with which some evolutionists will attempt to quash any debate about the controversies surrounding the incompleteness of the work Mr. Darwin began over a century ago (Mr. Darwin passed on in 1882 but his theory of evolution is still evolving). Those who agree with the idea of teaching the controversy and contemplating the possibility of intelligent design are automatically — and unfairly — branded as religious zealots hoping to sneak Biblical instruction into public school science curricula, supposedly leading us down the slippery slope into a future in which our childrens’ science textbooks are taken away and burned so that they can be replaced with Bibles.

These evolution zealots have created a straw man (ostensibly to push him down their slippery slope) and are trying to make intelligent design stand for religious fanaticism so they can debate against that easy target, thus avoiding the challenge of having to explain deficiencies in the theory of evolution or having to acknowledge that a lot of educated people who are not religious fanatics believe that some sort of intelligent design is evident in nature. And they likely also wish to avoid discussing the fact that Mr. Darwin himself believed in a Creator, “There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.”

Meanwhile, the real religious zealots are not actually relevant to the controversy — even if some of them might be laboring under the delusion that they are — because they completely reject the theory of evolution in favor of the literal Biblical explanation of creation and, by the same measure, reject the idea of intelligent design as well. Sure, they’re fanatics, but at least they are honest about their closed-minded assertions with regard to evolution and intelligent design.

Yes, there is a blog called Drunken Data. It is written by Jon Toigo, one of the world’s leading experts in the field of data storage management and disaster recovery planning.

This is not so much a plug — but if you have an interest in the subject matter you really should check it out — as it is a demonstration of trackbacks in WordPress.

(Maybe this post is just too small?)

Since Evolution versus Intelligent Design is in the news again, I went looking for this article and discovered that I did not move it into WordPress when I switched from Geeklog. It was originally posted on February 07, 2005.

After much reading and careful consideration, I find myself on the side of the religious right on one issue, even though I firmly believe that this ambiguous group of fundamentalists, evangelicals and fanatics has, through their political machinations and incessant meddling into numerous other matters of secular public policy, brought the injustice of Selman v. Cobb County School District upon themselves — and the rest of us.

In Selman v. Cobb County School District, the U. S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia ruled on January 13, 2005 that a sticker placed into science textbooks is an unconstitutional endorsement of religion. The sticker in question reads, “This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered.” In determining whether the government-sponsored message is in violation of the Establishment Clause, the court applied the “Lemon test,” provided by the Supreme Court in Lemon v. Kurtzman, which asks whether the message: 1) has a secular purpose; 2) advances or inhibits religion in its principal or primary effect; or 3) creates an excessive entanglement of the government with religion.

Now, call me crazy, but the text of the sticker appears to easily pass the Lemon test because it has the secular purpose of encouraging critical thinking, which should be considered essential to any sort of education. And since the sticker doesn’t even mention religion, it cannot advance or inhibit it. Thus it cannot not create any excessive entanglements of the government with religion.

Those who believe in Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution without question might be offended by these assertions, but please lower your defenses ( I am quite sensitive to the deteriorating condition of that proverbial wall that is supposed to separate church from state), keep an open mind and remember that the theory of evolution is based upon empirical evidence and observation which cannot be completely verified which means that evolution is indeed a scientific theory, not scientific fact. Therefore, belief in evolution (and many other scientific theories and hypotheses which are still being studied) requires more than a few leaps of scientific faith, even if some of the faithful cannot accept that uncomfortable truth.

The theory of evolution is still a scientific work in progress and there are several big questions that it does not answer such as how evolution adds information to a genome to create progressively more complicated organisms, how evolution brings about drastic changes so quickly and — most pertinently — how the first living cell arose spontaneously to get evolution started. As more study and research are done, the theory of evolution will either become complete, answering those questions which are currently unsolved, or it will be replaced by a new theory that better explains nature’s phenomena.

That is how the scientific process is supposed to work. As new discoveries are made, new theories are created and expounded and existing ones are modified in order to explain that which was previously misunderstood or unexplained. For example, Newtonian physics answered many types of problems — and still does — but it did not explain the many things that were eventually answered by Einstein’s theories of relativity.

And yet, there are many disciples of Darwin who insist that evolution is a fact, sometimes with a closed-mindedness which is not unlike that of which they readily accuse creationists who believe that the Biblical accounting is the absolute truth. To these believers, this talk about critical thinking with regard to the questions still surrounding the theory of evolution is nothing but religiously motivated nonsense. Can you smell the irony?