And after this, I too will end this topic:

"Do the Christians at issue think that they're propagating mis-information?" No, they don't. Nor do people who propagate the idea that the earth is flat, or that kissing and public toilets spreads the HIV virus. At what point do you draw the line and say, enough's enough, go educate yourself.

Ah, you say, but those are statements we can prove wrong with a few quick & ready facts. Well, how do you combat someone who claims to have found proof that Islam is "regressive, fradulent, and violent"? He'll produce his Christian with ears cut off, courtesy of some Muslims, and I'll produce Christians and Muslims living together without cutting off each others ears. At the end of the day, no one will be convinced, I still won't have seen this "proof" he's been talking about, and I'll continue to refer to a lot of what he says as "mis-information".

Do I want to go argue theology with a fundamentalist? I think I see a boulder with my name on it that needs rolling up a hill.

Evil, one last time:

And here's my last post on the increasingly self-referential evangelist question. Amanda writes:

Crescat scientia, vita excolatur, come on, Will, Crescat scientia. There's nothing logically necessary to Christianity or to the salvation of souls in an Evangelical Christian sense that needs the propagation of mis-information.

Sorry, I didn't mean you to infer from "Satan's influence just isn't necessary" to a statement that "Satan isn't present here." [Pretend it's an LSAT question... not necessary doesn't mean non-existant.] Satan can cause bad things to happen. Free will can cause bad things to happen. And if someone can prove to me a means of distinguishing the two, I'll listen with interest; until that time, I'll consider them indistinguishable on the basis of whatever observations we mortals can make. [To be perfectly honest, I think it's all free will, but I'll allow the existence of Satan to serve as an example.]

Crescat scientia, vita excolatur, come on, Will, Crescat scientia. There's nothing logically necessary to Christianity or to the salvation of souls in an Evangelical Christian sense that needs the propagation of mis-information. The knowledge a person has not found Jesus is sufficient unto their ends.

Problems of Evil:
Amanda criticizes the gung-ho evangelists who think Islam is evil. Amy points out that they're just talking, offering cookies, and plotting strategy-- all the things we hope for in a society where people care deeply about things but also have to respect the rights of those who disagree. Amanda says the trouble is that these evangelists are wrong-- Islam isn't an evil, it's just been "hijacked by extremists." Peter replies, oh yes it is, at least from a fundamentalist Christian point of view. Amanda answers, no, the word is "incorrect," or "wrong."

I think the problem is a disagreement both about the assumptions that the Christians are operating under, and the degree to which people are theologically culpable for ignorance. From the evangelical (you're using "evangelical" and "fundamentalist" interchangeably. I hate that..--ed. But these guys are both fundamentalist and evangelical, I think) point of view, all those who do not accept Jesus Christ as their savior will burn in hell. Saving their souls is the ultimate good, and letting them perish the ultimate bad. Islam itself-- a religion-- is a tool that hinders the saving of souls. Therefore, it's bad. (Or so the logic goes).

Is it a tool of Satan? Is it an evil bad? Amanda thinks that "Satan's influence just isn't necessary". Maybe. First of all, (bold words added in light of Amanda's comment above) I question Amanda's intellectual right to tell the evangelists "no, you think Satan's necessarily at work here, but you're wrong, it's possibly just bad luck". (After all, what does she know of Satan and why should they listen to her?). Second of all, in a world of omnipotent God, one of the most plausible solutions to "The Problem of Evil" (If God is good and all-powerful, why do people suffer in the world? Why does he let their souls be led astray?) is the existence of Satan. So I think that the idea that all of the really bad things in the world are caused by Satan isn't just logical, it's logically necessary to Christianity.

But I also think most of that is fairly beside-the point. The Christian evangelicals aren't doing anything that we think is evil, are they? I don't mean to delve into the relative religious faiths on this blog, but the only people who should think that peaceful Christian evangelism is wrong are those who believe that Islam is the only way to salvation. Those who think one way or the other is the only way to heaven should cheer on mightily for our team, doing everything we can to help our side (we could distribute banners, like at a basketball game). And those who think this is just a matter of semantics, that both sides or neither side is right, or that professing opinions on the "truth" of centuries-old-literature is a mostly harmless and entirely trivial pastime, should laugh a little bit and thank our stars that they're using chocolate cookies and not broadswords. We've come a long way.

Children:

Amy calls to my attention a sort of super-disciplinarian school run in Costa Rica that just dissolved once the kids learned they had a legal right to leave. It's terrible, of course.

But what disturbs me the most about the New York Times piece is how little anybody seems to blame the parents. On the one hand, some of the schools appear to have been somewhat deceptive. On the other hand, sending your child off into the hands of strangers without investigating their backgrounds, taking the time to check on your child's health and well-being, and sometimes without even heeding their letters home isn't just being lied to. It's criminal neglect.

First of all, those schools that did truly egregious things and those that willfully defrauded parent and child about the nature of what was going on should be prosecuted. But we shouldn't stop there. Any parent who can't show that he was fairly seriously deceived about some of the things going on here . . . we should prosecute.

Parents deserve quite a bit of latitude in deciding how to raise their children. Indeed, for the past 80 years, it's been a constitutionally-protected right (it's not just the liberals who make use of a "living constitution"). But surely this oughtn't extend to the right to subject one's children to some forms of torture, to irrationally imprison them, and so on, and surely it's not much better to subcontract one's child abuse.

If a parent decides to hand off their kids to an abusive babysitting service they find on the internet and don't investigate, shouldn't the parents' conduct be punishable too? With the right to fairly severe tyrrany over one's offspring comes the obligation to look out for them. At least until I lead a juvenile-rights revolution.

There are more words than just evil:

In response to Peter (directly below). He write,

" "Islam isn't an evil faith," Amanda writes. Isn't it? If one believes, as these missionaries do, that the only path to salvation is through Jesus Christ; if one adds to this a belief in eternal torment for those who are not saved, then how could a faith that leads billions away from Jesus be anything but a tool of Satan? How, within that logic, can Islan be anything but evil?"

I think within that logic it would be "incorrect" or "wrong."

"A tool of Satan?" No, sometimes Satan's influence just isn't necessary. Humans can mess up and posit incorrect conclusions about God perfectly well without his help.

Is dying a young baby, or in a place which no missionairies spreading the Gospel have reached an "evil" occurance, or is a travesty?

IF YOU REALLY CARED ABOUT ME, YOU'D SAVE ME FROM HELL: I'm afraid I must take issue with Amanda's reply regarding Christian evangelists' intolerance of Islam. Both the original New York Times article and Amanda's responses to it seem to me evidence of the extreme difficulty that secularists have understanding the internal logic of fundamentalism. "Islam isn't an evil faith," Amanda writes. Isn't it? If one believes, as these missionaries do, that the only path to salvation is through Jesus Christ; if one adds to this a belief in eternal torment for those who are not saved, then how could a faith that leads billions away from Jesus be anything but a tool of Satan? How, within that logic, can Islan be anything but evil?

Secularists need to really try to understand what people like Pat McEvoy, a high school secretary who sees Somali immigrant children as conversion opportunities, mean when they say things like this:

She says she felt an obligation to save them from an eternity in Hell.
"If I had the answer for cancer, what sort of a human would I be not to share it?" Ms. McEvoy said.

Of course, understanding fundamentalism doesn't mean we should tolerate all its logical extensions. Conversion by the sword is a rational response to the problem of unbelief; it is also unacceptable. I'm less worried about cookies and free meals. The problem, of course, lies in legitimating that line-drawing exercise. How big of a tent should we pitch? If we knew that, probabilistically speaking, parents indoctrinating their children with fundamentalist beliefs lead towards either violence or democraticly enacted restrictions in liberty, would that be grounds for taking action? (Note to self: read John Tomasi's and Stephen Macedo's books on the subject over the summer.)

Ah, but would the the Evangelicals were better informed:

I admit, I have not attended these seminars at which Evangelical Christians learn to spread the Gospel to Muslims. Had I been there, I would have been able to learn for myself first hand what the Muslim faith is like from someone who has been a missionary in Lebanon, who can "prove[] Islam was regressive, fradulent, and violent." I would likely to continue to believe that most Muslims are, like most people, good at heart, but I would have learned -- the horror! the horror! -- that they are "deceived by a diabolical religion."

Alright, enough of that. Although my post earlier today didn't show it, I do actually have sympathies and respect for people who believe in a faith and, truly concerned for others who are not of their faith, attempt to mission to them. Particuarly in the more secular parts of American society, it's not an endeavour that's going to win you points in a popularity contest. However, I think there are better and worse ways of going about it. And yes, Amy, "kindness and courtesy" are good. My downstairs neighbors in my apartment building this summer were a pair of 19 year old Mormon missionaries. They introduced themselves, "Hi, we're from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, we're here to mission to the people of Chicago, we'd like to explain our faith to you, our door is always open." They were friendly fellows and I did end up talking to them, but about matters like why it was the landlord couldn't bothered to fix the broken screen doors and dryer. Importantly, though, their approach was not based on false knowledge or presumptions. They knew they were LDS and I was not; they did not assume rashly about me.

If these profiled Evangelical missionaries had based their rationale for conversion around the idea that Muslims do not accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour, the holy begotten Son of God, then I would not be troubled. It is true that Muslims accept Jesus as a prophet. This fact underscores a legitimate and significant theological difference. If you believe that accepting Jesus is necessary for salvation, then a person's non-acceptance of Jesus becomes a motive to convert them to Christianity.

What troubles me about these missionaries is that they teach and propagate what I believe are falsehoods. I don't question that some of the students truly believe what they have learned about Islam. Islam isn't an evil faith. I'd much rather hear Bush talk about is as "a peaceful religion that has been "hijacked" by extremists." I sigh in annoyed sadness to read, "The Koran's good verses are like the food an assassin adds to poison to disguise a deadly taste," writes Don Richardson, a well-known missionary who worked in Muslim countries, in "Secrets of the Koran" (Regal Books, 2003). "Better to find the same food, sans poison, in the Bible." The prostletizers are operating on mis-information. That bothers me. I can laugh at the tip "Don't bring them to your church, because they will misunderstand the singing and clapping as a party," because I find it ridiculous that one group of adults presumes another group can't distinguish between a religious ceremony and a party. But I can't laugh in general at well-intended ignorance. It reminds me of the pavement on the road to hell.

* an emailer notes: "A similar thing occurred all through the 1990s as evangelical Christians flew to Eastern Europe and Russia to convert the godless Orthodox Christians. The refuge of post-rational religion is fervor mixed with disdain for the religious beliefs of others."

Rights for Kids

Given Will's attitude towards parents and education, I'm surprised he hasn't been all over this story about an uprising of mostly American teens at a harsh private school in Costa Rica. While I generally think that parents should have a fair degree of say in the education of their children, it disturbs me very much that parents can send children out of the country, and hence beyond the reach of American child abuse laws, if they so choose. It does seem that most of the parents were unaware of the severity of the school, but I'm not sure to what extent that should excuse them in these circumstances, or what is the best way to prevent such incidents in the future. Thoughts?

Evangelicals being Evangelical

Amanda seems upset that not everyone is as exquisitely culturally sensitive as she would like. Apparently it bothers her that groups of like-minded people are sharing advice on how to convince another group of people of the error of their ways. Now, if Evangelical Christians were proposing that Muslims be converted at the point of a gun, I too would be upset. But the methods they are proposing include conversation, hospitality, and chocolate chip cookies. What on earth is wrong with this? Isn't this exactly how we want people to go about persuading others of the potential error of their ways? Or does Amanda think there's something inherently coercive about chocolate chip cookies?

Perhaps it's the one-sided nature of these sessions that bothers her. But if a group of pro-choice activists gathered to discuss the various ways that the pro-life position could be refuted without also including a graphic description of the abortion procedure and a short presentation by an abortion survivor as to why getting an abortion was the greatest mistake of her life, would Amanda be upset? And if the presentation were to conclude with the advice that potential converts should not be taken to a pro-abortion rally, but rather invited over for dinner and discussion, would she think that made things better or worse?

Tolerance should mean exactly what is seems to mean to these Evangelicals--that all people should be treated with courtesy and respect, no matter how erroneous or detestable one finds there views. It should not mean that one is required by the PC police to shrug one's shoulders and get on with life rather than attempt to convince others of the error of their ways. What good, after all, is a marketplace of ideas if people don't visit it to hawk their wares? Be they the New York Times preaching evangelical urban liberalism, or the Southern Baptist Convention preaching evangelical Christianity, we should be pleased to see them addressing their opponents with kindness and courtesy, and displeased to see them doing so with coercion or contempt.

Religion:

Responding mostly to Amanda's concerns about proselytizing in the middle east, but also to my brief concern about religious currency, Brian Ulrich emails to say (among other things):

Why can't we just let Iraqis develop strict secularism on their own if they so choose, rather than trying to shove down their throats a constitutional clause we only tenuously follow ourselves (In God We Trust, and all that.)

"Justice" meted out:

So the mostly final punishments have now been meted out in the Glenbrook North hazing saga. The seniors are expelled but can graduate anyway, receiving their diplomas if they perform various amounts of community service. Juniors are suspended and still have to take their final exams. 31 seniors and 20 juniors were punished, and all but three of the seniors have signed waivers agreeing not to contest their punishments.

For the reasons I've already recounted in the Chicago Maroon and on this blog, I think that the school's choice to punish the seniors was probably misguided, and that its decision to punish the juniors definitely was. There may be some rationale to suspending out-of-school-bullies in order to allieve an in-school climate of intimidation. That offers little support to the choice to suspend those who were being bullied.

Schools often punish both people in a "fight" because they don't know who started it. But the school ought to decide whether what took place was a "fight" in which case it oughtn't exercise its dubious jurisdiction, or a more one-sided "intimidation" (regardless of who fought back), in which case it might be a good idea to punish the intimidators, (though I think more concern ought to be shown to ensuring they receive due process).

And a quote from the Chicago Tribune article:

He said the seniors who signed waivers were actually getting off easier than the juniors who were hazed. "The seniors get to skip finals and keep their grades," Soskin said. "The juniors are suspended, then have to be back in time for finals."

God:

Does U.S. Currency constitute an establishment of religion within the meaning of the First Amendment? If not, why not?

Deciphering:

The Supreme Court released one of the cases I've been eager to see, Chavez v. Martinez. The case dealt with whether a defendant's right to be free from self-incrimination in a criminal case was violated if police questioned him without Miranda warnings, but never charged him with a crime

If you thought the lower court decision in BCRA or the web of opinions in Virginia v. Black was confusing, I bring you . . .

THOMAS, J., announced the judgment of the Court and delivered an opinion, which was joined by REHNQUIST, C. J., in full, by O’CONNOR, J., as to Parts I and II–A, and by SCALIA, J., as to Parts I and II. SOUTER, J., delivered an opinion, Part II of which was for the Court and was joined by STEVENS, KENNEDY, GINSBURG, and BREYER, JJ., and Part I of which concurred in the judgment and was joined by BREYER, J. SCALIA, J., filed an opinion concurring in part in the judgment. STEVENS, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part. KENNEDY, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part, which was joined by STEVENS, J., in full and by GINSBURG, J., as to Parts II and III. GINSBURG, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part.

Accordingly, I would affirm the decision of the Court of Appeals that a cause of action under sec. 1983 has been stated. The other opinions filed today, however, reach different conclusions as to the correct disposition of the case. Were JUSTICE STEVENS, JUSTICE GINSBURG, and I to adhere to our position, there would be no controlling judgment of the Court. In these circumstances, and because a ruling on substantive due process in this case could provide much of the essential protection the Self-Incrimination Clause secures, I join Part II of JUSTICE SOUTER's opinion and would remand the case for further consideration.

Convinced that Chavez's conduct violated Martinez's right to be spared from self-incriminating interrogation, I would affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals. To assure a controlling judgment of the Court, however, see ante, at 11 (KENNEDY, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part), I join Part II of JUSTICE SOUTER's opinion.

Re-Paneling:

A few days ago I posted about appellate panels in the 7th circuit, asking why they kept the identity of the judges secret until the morning of the hearing, and whether other circuits had the same practice (Amy's responded with a Noble Lie theory, and I responded to that).

Stuart Buck writes to tell me that the 11th and 5th circuits do indeed release panel information ahead of time. This makes the "Noble Lie" theory even more curious, in my view. Or is it somehow a necessary response to having both Posner and Easterbrook on the circuit?

Disturbing: Can't you people just learn to respect each other?

The NYT has this report on evangelical Christians converting Muslims, "Seeing Islam as 'Evil' Faith, Evangelicals Seek Converts'. The courses train the missionaries to be nice, friendly, hand out copies of the New Testament and chocolate chip cookies. Right. What's the motive?

"Evangelicals have always believed that all other religions are wrong, but what is notable now is the vituperation.

"The Koran's good verses are like the food an assassin adds to poison to disguise a deadly taste," writes Don Richardson, a well-known missionary who worked in Muslim countries, in "Secrets of the Koran" (Regal Books, 2003). "Better to find the same food, sans poison, in the Bible." This month, he is scheduled to speak on Islam at churches in five American cities."

Yup. Perhaps if I believed the Southern Baptists and the other evangelical churches when they said that their way is the only way to salvation and all other paths lead to eternal torment, I'd be a bit more sympathetic to their cause. I just find it hard to respect their missionaries when some of the advice they learn in conversion school includes tips like "Don't bring them to your church, because they will misunderstand the singing and clapping as a party."

Insufficient Cures:

Judge James Robertson has a suggestion for helping to mitigate the politicization of the judiciary:

It is time for Congress to consider amending the Judiciary Act to provide once more for just a single category of judges below the Supreme Court. Call all these jurists simply "Article III judges" or U.S. judges. Most of the time they would sit as trial judges, but for, say, three months a year they would be assigned to appellate panels. Congress could require a minimum of five years' trial court experience before an Article III judge became eligible to hear appeals.

The payoff, for Congress, for the judiciary and for the American people, would be the virtual elimination of partisan politics from the judicial appointment process -- or at least the dispersion of political fire across a broad field of nominees, none of whom could be assigned to an appellate case until after five years (and then only periodically). The concerns that have given rise to the political obstruction of judicial appointments in recent years would melt away.

SPAM Crusade:

The Conservatism Blog continues its tirade against Spam. He simultaneously applauds an email-confirmation adopted by Earthlink and applauds California's Spam liability rules. As I think I've said before (but will continue to harp for a little while), private methods of controlling access to one's own email address seem immensely preferable over content-based government regulations on what email may be sent to whom. The fact that the former methods (Earthlink's email-confirmation) are becoming both popular and effective should just drive the point home.