The view he puts forward is described in these two posts, if you’d like to peruse them for yourself (I’ll just quote a couple of relevant portions):

• http://atheistethicist.blogspot.com.br/2005/11/abortion-and-infanticide-part-i.html
• http://atheistethicist.blogspot.com.br/2005/11/abortion-and-infanticide-part-ii.html

The main issue

The first point of Alonzo’s argument looks as follows, and this is really what undergirds his whole effort. So if this falls, the rest falls:

There is no value without desire. A being or entity cannot benefit or be harmed in any morally relevant sense unless it has the capacity to want things, and the things it wants can be given or taken away.

I see at least three obvious problems with this statement…

1. How does human desire, all by its lonesome, “cause” a moral state of affairs?

In what sense does desire cause moral status? Is an agent’s desire for X a sufficient condition of X’s becoming morally obligatory? That seems fairly problematic, since then Ted Bundy would have been morally obliged to rape and murder women. But if desire for X is merely a necessary condition of X’s being morally obligatory, what is it that “completes the equation” and decides whether or not X actually is morally obligatory? And how does the mere desiring of something “make” it a moral issue? How does “S desires X” imply something like “S ought to do X”, or “T ought to X with respect to S”, or however it ends up looking?

2. How is “oughtness” not viciously circular for Alonzo?

This raises the question of what it even means to say we “ought” to do something under Alonzo’s view. Since he is a desire utilitarian (see the sidebar on his blog), he will probably say something like, “well, we ought to do X if X will promote human flourishing or prevent human suffering.” But that just pushes the problem back a step. Why, on his view, ought we promote human flourishing and prevent human suffering? He seems to have a vicious circle on his hands. You can’t build a system of ethics on a viciously circular assumption.

3. If Alonzo is right, there’s nothing wrong with castrating my son

Most fundamentally, the notion that people can’t be harmed or benefited in morally relevant ways without having the capacity to desire things which can be given or taken is just obviously wrong. By that logic, since my 2 year old son does not want to have sex, I am not harming him in any morally relevant way by painlessly castrating him.

Now, I assume Alonzo would not agree with that. (If he would, there’s obviously little I can say to him, but also little I need say to him—who is going to seriously listen to someone about the alleged lack of moral harm in abortion, when he also denies the lack of moral harm in castrating toddlers?)

So assuming Alonzo wants to avoid this ethically absurd conclusion about toddler castration, the only way I can see for him to do so is by modifying his position to say it is wrong to take away something a person may come to desire later. In other words, he would need to admit that removing the potential for something constitutes moral harm just as much as removing the thing itself. But that would put paid to his entire argument for abortion. If it is wrong to remove a 2-year old’s potential sex life, then a fortiori it is a heck of a lot worse to remove a fetus’s potential life in general.

So those are three basic but, from the looks of things, rather insurmountable problems which Alonzo needs to give persuasive answers to if he wants us to even begin considering his view.

Other difficulties

Alonzo also makes some other blunders. I’m not going to mince words about them—they simply show he’s not a good thinker. As such, we shouldn’t be inclined to take his ideas very seriously. Anyone can set up a blog with a grand-sounding title and pretend to be an expert, but it won’t do us any favors to pretend that means much. In fact, I hope you won’t think that I’m pretending to be an exert. I’m not. I just happen to be all right at spotting obviously bad thinking.

Here’s a sampling of some of his bungles:

1. Pain is not desire

A pain response is not equivalent to desire. The mere fact that a fetus can feel pain doesn’t suggest it has desires. The philosophy of desire is a complex and controversial field, but generally people tend to agree that S desires X if X appears good to S, or if S is disposed to take pleasure in X or act towards bringing X about, or perhaps if S’s attention is repeatedly directed toward considerations that seem to count in favor of X.

These all tend to hold that S must have some ability to hold X in his mind as an object of desire. A mere instinctual response is not sufficient. But it doesn’t seem a baby has the ability to hold anything in its mind as an object of desire until well after it has been born. It may instinctually want things, and instinctually act in certain ways to get them, but Alonzo has a lot of work cut out for him to get from there to saying that a fetus desires anything. You would think he would know that if he wants to seriously maintain this ethical theory of his.

Either that, or he needs to convince us that a mere instinctual response warrants moral status.

2. Modal confusion of d00m

what benefit comes to a person who, instead of being conceived and aborted, was not conceived at all? I do not see how anybody is made better or worse off by either action.

This is just inept. There’s an obvious, critical, categorical difference between the two situations:

1. A fetus exists. We can therefore coherently speak of its being made better or worse off by our actions.
2. A fetus does not exist. We can therefore not coherently speak of its being made better or worse off by our actions!

For Alonzo to admit that he sees no difference between (A) and (B) in terms of anybody being negatively or positively affected is simply for him to admit that he sees no difference between a coherent and an incoherent state of affairs. Not a very promising admission from someone who is trying to articulate a reasoned defense of abortion. And yet he goes on to use this embarrassing mistake as the basis of an argument:

I could look back and say, “If my mother had an abortion, then I would not be here.” Some people take this perspective, then harvest the horror of not having existed to manufacture a sentiment against abortion. I can just as easily look back and say that if my parents had not had sex, then I would not be here. This does not allow me to imply that their having sex on that particular occasion was their duty, and that they would have wronged me if they had not done so.

This comparison is simply absurd, for the obvious reason that while parents do owe duties to children they have (eg, a fetus), they don’t owe duties to children they don’t have!

Speaking of which…

3. Denying parental duties

I am grateful because this life that I have was their gift, not their duty.

This is where you see a lot of pro-abortioners go—they have to deny parental duties altogether to make abortion work as a coherent position. As soon as you admit that parents have duties, it is obvious that those duties extend at least as far as not killing their children, regardless of how old they are.

But if Alonzo has to deny one of the most fundamental moral intuitions we have to make his case, then his case is obviously not going to convince most sensible people. When it comes down to really thinking through the issues here, most people will vastly prefer to give up abortion than give up a fundamental, bedrock part of our social fabric.

In the end, he is still arguing for taking the life of a human being—a human child—and he is making the case on a foundation of sand. Now, I harbor no illusions about my chances of convincing him of his error. But in terms of his ability to make a positive case for abortion that will convince anyone who clings to what we know inwardly to be true about the actual nature of right and wrong…well, I’m not exactly quaking in my stylish yet affordable boots.

Related posts:

1. Useful thoughts for debating abortionists
2. A simple argument against abortion anyone can understand
3. Why don’t religious people mind their own business?

It’s still nothing to do with anyone other than the woman who wants the abortion.

The answer to this question is pretty obvious—once you realize the built-in assumption that whether or not a mother chooses to have her child killed is nobody’s business but her own.

Of course, this ain’t how pro-abortionists like to frame the issue. They like to talk about “reproductive rights” and a “woman’s bodily integrity” and so on. But this is just what people have been doing since the dawn of time to dehumanize anyone they want to kill: changing language to be as clinical and detached as possible, to obscure the real meaning of the words. For example, I don’t believe I’ve ever heard a pro-abortionist refer to the mother, rather than “the woman”. Or the child, rather than “the fetus”, or “the tissue” or “the product of conception”.

As regards “reproductive rights”, well, killing your child in the womb is no more a reproductive right than killing him outside the womb is a lifestyle right. It’s a reproductive choice to kill your unborn baby in the same way it’s a career choice to kill your toddler. Which is to say, if a child in the womb is a human being (and by definition it is), and if all human beings are created equal and have the right to life (which they are and do), then by definition there just is no such thing as a “right” to kill your child, regardless of its stage of development, and regardless of how annoying or inconvenient or problematic its existence may be.

In other words, to ask why Christians don’t just mind their own business because it’s nothing to do with anyone except the woman who wants the abortion, is rather like asking why Christians didn’t mind their own business because it was nothing to do with anyone except the man who wanted to own a slave. Or why Christians didn’t mind their own business (although tragically most did) because it was nothing to do with anyone except the Nazis who wanted to gas Jews.

If those seem like profoundly stupid questions, then so is the question of why Christians don’t mind their own business about abortion.

Related posts:

1. 4 reasons the consent argument for abortion is sociopathic
2. A simple argument against abortion anyone can understand
3. Useful thoughts for debating abortionists

Now, in one sense I think this is a non-issue. The objection doesn’t really get off the ground for at least two reasons:

1. Even if Christians are inconsistent here, that doesn’t make them wrong to oppose abortion. Perhaps they are simply wrong to support the death penalty. So that doesn’t defuse the pro-life argument.
2. The objection relies on a fallacy. Christians are concerned with unjustly taking a human life. But the death penalty is the taking of a human life precisely because justice demands it. So the objection trades on a pretty flagrant category error.

So this objection doesn’t do anything to shift the burden of proof away from the person arguing for abortion. But still, the death penalty is a pretty important topic, so Christians should have an answer to that. As Matthew observed,

If you have some New Testament passages you can point me to that you feel support the death penalty, I would truly love to hear them and your reasoning. I mean that with all sincerity. Quite frankly, it would allow me to respond to this criticism in a much more meaningful way. I could say “I agree with you, but many Christians look at Book Chapter:Verse which says such and such and feel that that means God supports the death penalty. Thus it is not inconsistent with a “pro-life” worldview.”

As it stands, when people bring this up and I don’t have an answer they feel they have somehow taken the moral high ground and it tends to end meaningful discussion of the real issue of abortion.

So I’m going to look at this from a couple of angles. The first is with regard to Matthew’s argument that “when Jesus said only the person who is free from sin can act as executioner that is exactly what he meant.” The passage he’s referencing here is John 8:3-11 (LEB):

Now the scribes and the Pharisees brought to him a woman caught in adultery. And standing her in their midst, they said to him, testing him, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery! Now in the law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say?” (Now they were saying this to test him, so that they would have an occasion to bring charges against him.)

But Jesus, bending down, began to write with his finger on the ground, taking no notice. And when they persisted in asking him, straightening up he said to them, “The one of you without sin, let him throw the first stone at her!” And bending down again, he wrote on the ground.

Now when they heard it, being convicted by their conscience, they began to depart, one by one, beginning with the older ones, and Jesus was left alone—and the woman who was in their midst. So Jesus, straightening up and seeing no one except the woman, said to her, “Where are those accusers of yours? Does no one condemn you?” And she said, “No one, Lord.” So Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go, and sin no more.”

1. Why John 8:3-11 can’t be used to build an anti-death-penalty theology

I think there are at least three big problems with building a theology against capital punishment from this passage.

A. The uncertainty of the passage’s authenticity

As the ESV Study Bible notes regarding John 7:53–8:11 (emphasis mine),

There is considerable doubt that this story is part of John’s original Gospel, for it is absent from all of the oldest manuscripts. But there is nothing in it unworthy of sound doctrine. It seems best to view the story as something that probably happened during Jesus’ ministry but that was not originally part of what John wrote in his Gospel. Therefore it should not be considered as part of Scripture and should not be used as the basis for building any point of doctrine unless confirmed in Scripture.

And I think Scripture elsewhere strongly supports the death penalty—so any appeal to John 8:3-11 is suspect from the outset, even if the exegesis is sound. That said, I don’t think the exegesis is sound—which leads me to my second objection…

B. The irregularities of the Pharisees’ conduct

The way the Pharisees go about applying the law here throws serious doubt on what principles we can deduce from Jesus’s response. They’re using this woman as a pretext to trap Jesus. So their concern is not with justice, but with injustice. One clear indicator of this—aside from the fact that it’s explicitly stated in verse 6—is that the law actually commands the death of both parties caught in adultery (eg Deuteronomy 22:22). Moreover, as I understand it, the people who were supposed to execute them were the wronged parties; not the religious authorities.

Yet the Pharisees bring only the woman to be stoned, and seem not to have produced any spouses willing to commence the execution. So it’s far from clear that we should take Jesus’s acquittal of this woman to mean that he is overturning the idea of capital punishment. It seems more likely he is overturning the notion that a mock trial is a valid way to execute someone.

C. It proves too much

The principle Jesus draws on for acquitting the woman is, “The one of you without sin, let him throw the first stone at her.” I think many people interpret that as something along the lines of, “Sinners aren’t qualified to judge other sinners.” That seems to be the kind of interpretation you need if you’re going to draw an anti-capital punishment theology out of this.

But surely God didn’t expect such a high standard when he laid out the law for Israel. Why would he sanction capital punishment at all if he knew no one was qualified to carry it out in the first place? (Indeed, if it would positively be sin for anyone to carry it out?)

Moreover, how could we have a judicial system in the first place if sinners aren’t qualified to judge other sinners? After all, this principle doesn’t just apply to capital punishment. If sinners are unqualified to judge other sinners, then presumably no one is qualified to sentence anyone for anything.

So I think the principle Jesus is drawing out here is not that sinners can’t apply the law. The law was given to sinners precisely so they could apply it. Rather, the issue in this case is that the Pharisees were not actually engaged in justice at all—merely hypocrisy.

(There’s also the fact that Jesus says in Matthew 7:2, “with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you.” I think there’s a pointed sense in John 8:3-11 in which Jesus is suggesting to the Pharisees that it would be much better for them if they did not seek the nth degree of punishment permissible by law, given where they’re headed on the day of judgment.)

2. Scripture supports capital punishment in both the Old and the New Testaments

The second angle to look at this from—and in some ways it makes the appeal to John 8 irrelevant—is to ask what Scripture says elsewhere about the death penalty. Matthew Lee seems particularly concerned with finding evidence in the New Testament, so that’s where I’ll spend my time. But I’d hasten to add that if God sanctions something in the Old Testament, we ought to sanction it also, unless we have good reasons to think it does not apply to our situation. And God clearly does sanction the death penalty in the Old Testament law—see for example Wikipedia’s list of capital crimes in the Torah.

Moreover, this is by no means an innovation for Israel. Rather, it’s an application of a principle of justice we see articulated very early on: namely, that the wages of sin is death (as Paul puts it in Romans 6:23). We also see this being worked out in terms of capital punishment way back in Genesis, when God names murder as a capital crime:

As for the one shedding the blood of humankind,
      by humankind his blood shall be shed,
for God made humankind in his own image. (Genesis 9:6)

So these principles really preclude us from thinking that capital punishment was just something intended for Israel’s particular judicial system. That’s actually the opposite of what we find, which is that capital punishment is a practical outworking of a theological principle which spans the entire Bible, and the capital laws given to Israel are just specific examples of this.

But let’s look at the New Testament. Romans 13:3-4:

So do you want not to be afraid of authority? Do what is good, and you will have praise from it, for it is God’s servant to you for what is good. But if you do what is bad, be afraid, because it does not bear the sword to no purpose. For it is God’s servant, the one who avenges for punishment on the one who does what is bad.

Immediately after instructing believers not to take personal vengeance (Romans 12:17ff), Paul goes on to remind them of the means by which God has appointed human institutions to act as his avenger on earth. And he specifically calls out the Roman military institution as an instrument of God’s law, singling out the sword as a tool of justice.

The sword, of course, is designed to kill. That is its purpose. It was the sidearm of the ancient world. Modern police wear pistols; Roman soldiers wore swords.

Now, I don’t think this passage is advocating soldiers summarily executing wrongdoers. Rather, it is emphasizing two things:

1. The individual soldier carries the threat of lethal force to uphold the law. Behind every law, no matter how innocuous, is the threat of lethal force. If you break that law, and you choose to resist arrest, it doesn’t take much to escalate the situation to the point of your death—and there is nothing illegitimate in the authorities killing you if that’s the situation you’ve forced on them.
2. The state, as an instrument of God’s authority, uses lethal force (represented by the sword) in the dispensation of justice. The Roman Empire was no stranger to the notion of capital punishment; execution was a common punishment, and often it was most unpleasant (they “popularized” crucifixion, for example). So Paul seems to be explicitly legitimizing the use of lethal force in the dispensation of justice, and saying that even an institution as corrupt as the Roman Empire still maintains law through this method on God’s behalf.

This general approval of the state as an instrument of God is reflected in 1 Peter 2:13-14, and also very notably in Acts 25:11, where Paul is defending himself to Festus against the Jews, who are bringing scurrilous charges against him. He says:

I am standing before the judgment seat of Caesar, where it is necessary for me to be judged. I have done no wrong to the Jews, as you also know very well. If then I am doing wrong and have done anything deserving death, I am not trying to avoid dying. But if there is nothing true of the things which these people are accusing me, no one can give me up to them. I appeal to Caesar!

So Paul is not contesting that there are indeed crimes worthy of death—indeed, he says he would not try seek to escape death if he had indeed committed such crimes. It is not because of the injustice of capital punishment that he thinks he should be acquitted, but rather because he is innocent.

These are the clearest places in which the New Testament speaks of capital punishment and the role of the state. And I think the conclusion they force on us is that, far from denouncing capital punishment, the New Testament assumes the same ethical principle as we find in the Old: namely, that the state has a right to use capital punishment in the administration of justice on God’s behalf.

Related posts:

1. Why don’t religious people mind their own business?
2. Useful thoughts for debating abortionists
3. A simple argument against abortion anyone can understand

This was a surprisingly interesting study for me, because what I found wasn’t what I expected. I had always thought that fasting was more of a cultural practice in ANE times that wasn’t really relevant to Christians today, and that there was no particular reason to think we should do it.

As you’ll see in the study notes, however, I think Scripture strongly recommends fasting for all believers—not just Old Covenant ones.

Should Christians Fast?
https://docs.google.com/document/d/19qU-5YhZvPb_dsszCek9Ca-35i8_15uSXcSh_-SOStU/edit?usp=sharing

1. Killing your children is wrong.
2. Your unborn child is one of your children
3. Therefore, killing your unborn child is wrong

1. Killing another human being to make your life easier is wrong
2. A fetus is a human being.
3. Therefore, killing your fetus to make your life easier is wrong.

Some other thoughts to have in mind

If you’re discussing abortion with someone, most people will agree with these statements but then try to deny the implications. Gently pressing them on their inconsistency can help open their eyes:

• Mothers should protect their children, even with their own lives.
• A part of your own body has your own DNA, not someone else’s.
• It’s especially wrong to kill human beings who are unusually innocent or defenseless or have a great deal to lose (ie, the chance at a full life), or when the killing is in cold blood (ie premeditated) or by someone who has been trusted to protect the one being killed.
• If a fetus is not a person, killing it denies it the chance to develop into a person. Denying this sort of potential seems obviously wrong — for example, if you toddler is blind and you can grant him his sight with a simple operation, it would be wrong to not go ahead and do that.
• How a human being is conceived makes no difference to their humanity. If a woman was raped and then conceived, that’s terrible—but how does the injustice done to her pass on a license for her to commit an even worse injustice against her child?
• If “abortion” is just a euphemism for “murdering your baby”, and murdering your baby should carry the death penalty, then why should we worry that making it illegal would lead to women dying from botched back-alley abortions?

Parting thoughts about attitude

I don’t recall ever meeting an abortionist who genuinely seemed to care about the truth. I’m not saying they don’t exist; but I’ve only met ones who, a priori, regarded any attack on abortion as an attack on women (and themselves, if they are women). This makes it very difficult to converse with them. I am often reminded of 2 Thessalonians 2:11. Some suggestions for dealing with these types:

• Online, people are often watching but not getting involved. Although it’s hard not to get snarky at militant abortionists, it is better to show integrity, dignity, and sound speech that cannot be condemned. That way, you have a clean conscience, and when you are slandered your opponent may be put to shame.
• That doesn’t mean you can’t firmly point out where someone has failed to respond to your argument.
• In general, I think it’s better to completely ignore insults (including speculation about your motives etc), unless it is directly relevant to the argument you’re making. Such tactics are quite transparent to anyone else watching, but engaging with them tends to make you look insecure or petty, while ignoring them helps to keep a focus on the real issue (which is not you), while implicitly drawing attention to how little of substance your opponent is actually saying.
• If no one else is likely to see the conversation, shake the dust off your feet if your initial argument proves unsuccessful.
• Remember that not everyone who acts out does so out of malice. Many people are antagonistic because they have been taught to be. Some are antagonistic because they have had abortions, or been involved in abortions. Sometimes antagonism is a sign of a guilty conscience. Often guilty consciences long to be cleansed and anger is just a defense mechanism. Try to hold, as a principle of first importance, the notion that you’re talking to a human being with feelings, and not a computer screen that’s giving the wrong output. True, human beings are wicked. But also true, they are made in the image of God. This is true of both of you.
• Helping people to see that they’ve made a huge mistake (this is a huge issue after all) will eventually make them grateful to you, but in the short term it will make them dislike you. It will also take a lot of time.
• People don’t like having their minds made up for them. It is much better to ask them to draw a conclusion of their own, than to draw it for them. If they draw it, they will own it; if you draw it, they will instinctively try to deny it.
• The real issue here is ultimately not abortion; it is unbelief. Especially for post-abortive women, accepting that they murdered their baby is not a helpful conclusion without the saving forgiveness and restoration of the gospel. Be ready to share that too.

Related posts:

1. Why don’t religious people mind their own business?
2. 4 reasons the consent argument for abortion is sociopathic
3. A simple argument against abortion anyone can understand

(Incidentally, while most of my friends are Calvinists simply because they are the people I go to church with, Eliza is a very dear friend—which illustrates that although Calvinists and Arminians sometimes give the appearance of being constantly at each other’s throats, it is simply not so.)

Anyway, she commented that she takes the Bible literally when it says Jesus died for the whole world. And it seems to her that if God chooses whom to save, then Jesus’s death is wasted in respect to everyone else for whom he died.

I’ve written before about whether Jesus died for everyone whomsoever—you’re welcome to look around to find those posts. My view is he did, at least inasmuch as federal headship works by one human being representing all human beings. That’s how it worked for Adam—and if it isn’t how it worked for Jesus then the crucial comparison between Adam and him in Romans 5 seems to collapse.

So I agree with Eliza that Jesus’s atonement is quite sufficient to save every person ever—were every person ever to have faith. (Note my emphasise on the word “is”. Some Calvinists would say only that Jesus’s atonement would be sufficient to save very person ever, were every person ever to have faith. In other words, the scope of the atonement has to be retrofitted to the hypothetical, because in their view Jesus only died for those who will in fact be saved.)

But why think Jesus’s death is “wasted” if God chooses who to save? Eliza seemed to think that if unconditional election were true, then the atonement was in some sense frittered away for the people God reprobated to hell; whereas if people were able to choose salvation for themselves, then it wasn’t. I’m struggling to find some relevant distinction between Calvinism and Arminianism here that would explain why this is so. Here are a few ideas:

Parsimony

It could be a matter of economy. It would be gratuitous for Jesus to suffer for Roger if God will not save Roger.

But God not saving Roger is just a particular mechanism of a broader kind of situation: namely, Roger not being saved. And if Roger is not saved under Arminianism either, why is it gratuitous for Jesus to suffer for him under Calvinism, but not under Arminianism? Merely saying it is because God chooses to save Roger under one, but not the other, doesn’t explain it so much as beg the question.

(Also, how could Jesus avoid suffering for Roger, given the nature of federal headship?)

Ability

Maybe it is something to do with ability. That was the sense I got from Eliza in our brief exchange. It is wasteful if Jesus died for someone who cannot appropriate that atonement, because it makes the atonement pointless or useless for that person. I don’t think pointlessness or uselessness is quite the same as wastefulness, but this was a friendly conversation we were having, not a philosophically-rigorous debate—so when she said the atonement was wasted on the reprobate, she could well have meant it was in vain.

But again, it’s hard to see how Arminianism changes anything here. Even if we say Roger can appropriate the atonement, if he does not do so, and God knew in advance he would not do so, then surely it was pointless for Jesus to die for him? It seems quite reasonable to say the atonement was in vain for Roger if God knew all along that Roger would never appropriate it.

(However, in what sense can Roger appropriate the atonement if God has created a world in which he knows it is inevitable that Roger won’t appropriate it?)

Grounding the gospel

You could say that while the atonement was not efficacious for Roger, Christ’s suffering for him was not wasted because it made the gospel invitation possible in the first place. If Christ hadn’t suffered for him, God could not have called him to have faith, since there would have been nothing for him to have faith in. But that is exactly what a Calvinist like me says to a Calvinist who denies the universal scope of the atonement. So this line of reasoning doesn’t select for Arminianism; it merely selects against a specific kind of Calvinism which I don’t hold.

(However, it actually seems to select against Arminianism as well. Eliza’s implication seemed to be that Jesus’s suffering was wasted for anyone who did not at least hear the gospel message. A Calvinist doesn’t have to agree with that. So Arminianism seems to shoot itself in the foot here.)

Other…?

I can’t think of any other ways in which Jesus’s suffering is wasted if God chooses to save, rather than if salvation is up to us. But I’m willing to bet my imagination is limited compared to other Christians. So if you have any other ideas, chip in below.

I always make my notes available afterward—partly for the people who attend, partly for anyone else who is interested, partly so parents can check up on what I’m teaching their kids, and partly for anyone else who might want to run a similar study. (Someday soon I’ll write an article on how I do it and what I’ve learned.)

This month we studied the charismata (which is a hefty topic; it ran rather long). I realize you may prefer to just read the notes right here on this page, but I create them in Google Docs for ease of sharing and editing; here’s the link:

Do Christians still receive the spiritual gifts?
https://docs.google.com/document/d/19UoaG8UzWuvLYMSPmUBZzodMFWKAJ3UorwqcnH5CJVk/edit?usp=sharing

Some key findings:

• Gifts of the Spirit seem to be identical to fruits of the Spirit, just with the emphasis on their origin rather than their use
• All Christians receive some gifts, especially the first gift we are all given—faith (I was concerned this Calvinistic-sounding discovery would cause an argument, but I think everyone was too focused on understanding the core topic to follow this tangent)
• There’s no indication that more miraculous gifts, like prophecy, healing and speaking in tongues, have ceased—if anything, the opposite
• The modern Pentecostal/Charismatic practice (and theology) of speaking in tongues is at odds with the biblical data; moreover, a great deal of linguistic research has verified it does not constitute genuine xenoglossia

1. Children need a school environment to develop proper social skills

Another way of putting this—and it often is put this way—is that homeschooling creates a restricted, artificial social environment, hindering social development, and making it harder for children to integrate into the “real world” as adults.

But, assuming we should want “optimal integration” with the real world, how does school prepare children for this? Here are some of the more prominent rules of socialization children must conform to at school:

1. Only socialize with people your exact age. This is built in to most schooling systems. Indeed, socializing with someone a grade below you is regarded as something we adults call a faux pas—in kids’ terminology, it makes you a loser. But where in the real world do we find this? I’m not aware of any examples. So rather than preparing children for integrating into the world, age segregation at best fails to prepare them at all in this respect, and at worst makes it more difficult for them to interact normally with people of different ages.
2. Society is divided into castes. School is strongly segmented into various social castes—so much so that we have cliched names for them: jock, geek, cheerleader etc. Children are divided by an instinctive social pecking order, largely due to innate characteristics like physical appearance, intelligence, and interests. These groups seldom socialize with each other, and even more seldom do so amicably. In fact, the higher castes routinely victimize the lower castes. But where in the real world do we find this? India, perhaps, with their Unclean. But in Western egalitarian society, this is considered antisocial behavior. So school at best fails to prepare children for integrating into an egalitarian society, and at worst undermines their ability to do so by entrenching antisocial habits.
3. People who are smart and work harder are worth less. In most cases, the more academic and studious a child is, the more he is ostracized and abused by the “ruling caste”. But where in the real world do we find this? Studious and academic people are generally well respected and earn the highest wages. So again, school seems to model the reverse of the real world—and does not prepare children for healthy socialization at all.
4. People who are strong and beautiful are worth more. This is the corollary of #3. Social status in schools is largely determined by physical attributes. But where in the real world do we find this? Perhaps you’ll find it in some areas of the entertainment industry—but even then it is far more attenuated. More importantly, most of us would think it was a bad thing. The only other obvious example that comes to mind is prison. So if school is really preparing children to integrate into society, it seems to be preparing them to be image-obsessed personalities and/or criminals—not the kind of people their parents would prefer.
5. Going to the authorities to redress a wrong is pointless and a sign of weakness. “Go cry to the teacher,” is a common taunt on school playgrounds. It’s a taunt of contempt because in the school caste system, having to rely on outside authority shows that you can’t stand up for yourself (regardless of how impossible that may be) and are therefore of less value as a person. It is also a taunt of mockery because bullies know very well that in most cases, abuse is dealt with inadequately by teachers, if at all. But where in the real world do we find this? Certainly authorities like the police are never perfect, but the only truly similar examples I can think of are, again, among the criminal element—in gangs or prisons. So school seems to be preparing children for antisocial roles in society, rather than for productive ones.

I think if you assess the social environment common to schools in a fair-minded way, you can’t help but conclude that it is not healthy, and in many cases is actively harmful. Just because school is considered a normal part of our society does not mean that its social environment is normal, or that it prepares us for normal social interaction.

But here’s something very interesting: despite all the social disadvantages of school, most people who went to school still manage to become normally-functioning members of society. So even if homeschooling has social disadvantages of its own, shouldn’t pro-schoolers expect homeschooled children to also adapt into society as easily as they did?

2. Bullying makes children stronger and teaches them to deal with adversity

People usually defend this by saying something like, “Well, bullying made me a better person, so while I would give my kids all the support I could, I wouldn’t want to remove them from that.” But even assuming you can know that bullying made you better—and how could you, not having access to the alternate reality in which you weren’t bullied?—here’s the same logic applied to other forms of abuse:

• “I was sexually abused by my uncle, and it made me a stronger person, so I think my kids should be sexually abused by their uncle too.”
• “I was beaten with a hose if I didn’t get an A in school, and it made me a better person, so I think my kids should be beaten with a hose too.”
• “I had a drunk father who beat my mother and deserted us when I was 12, and it made me tougher, so I think I should beat my wife and desert my kids too.”

There’s no difference in principle between these analogies and wanting your child to be bullied. And recent findings show there’s no difference in practice either: bullying has almost identical effects to physical or sexual abuse (see “Inside the Bullied Brain”).

Would you tell Child Protective Services that you were beating or raping your child so they would build character? Do you think that would satisfy them? Do you think the judge would be right to let you off a jail sentence because you thought your child would be stronger if you abused him?

Fact: statistically speaking, bullying does not make children better

Indeed, studies show that bullying causes permanent psychological damage in many children. Here are some findings to consider:

• According to the Crime Victims’ Institute, “Links have been established between bullying and physical and psychological health issues, violent behavior, alcoholism and substance abuse, sleeping problems, and even suicide” (“The Long-Term Consequences of Bullying Victimization”).
• People who were repeatedly bullied as children are nearly twice as likely to suffer from emotional or mental conditions as adults, and nearly three times more likely to suffer from eating disorders (ibid).
• Bullying is correlated to over a 200% increase in homelessness (ibid).
• According to findings published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, children who have been bullied have increased symptoms of depression, anxiety, and other psychiatric disorders—in fact, emotional abuse from peers turns out to be as damaging to mental health as emotional abuse from parents. (“Inside the Bullied Brain”)
• Bullying causes physical abnormalities in the brain. Specifically, the myelin coating which speeds up communication between brain cells is reduced in the corpus callosum of bullied children. This is the thick bundle of fibers connecting the right and left hemispheres of the brain. It is vital in visual processing and memory (ibid).
• Bullying impairs verbal memory, seemingly by altering how much cortisol (stress hormone) the body produces. There is evidence this may cause long-term damage to the hippocampus, which is involved in memory and emotion processing (ibid).
• And of course, some children physically abuse themselves as a result of bullying (one of my friends used to cut himself in fact); and a small percentage of children kill themselves to stop the bullying permanently.

What kind of parent would argue that the risk of these documented outcomes is worth the “character building” that bullying supposedly produces? What kind of parent would argue that his children should be abused? An abusive parent. I think actually, on some level, the people who make the “bullying builds character” argument realize this—which is why they support efforts to eradicate bullying in schools. If bullying were indeed a positive feature of school, like a rite of passage, then they would encourage it instead.

3. Children learn best when taught by a professional

On the face of it, this is actually quite reasonable. It is certainly the least strange of the six reasons in this article. But when you actually stop to consider how much direct tutelage children have under homeschooling, and how carefully and lovingly their education can be tailored to their learning style—and then compare this to school—you’ll realize it is quite a strange reason.

But don’t take my word for it. According to the many studies of how homeschooled children perform compared to “normally” schooled children, the evidence is decisive: academically, homeschooled students trounce publicly-schooled students. Here’s a sampling of the results:

• In a survey of 11,739 homeschooled students in the United States, homeschoolers achieved an average of 89% in reading, 84% in math and 86% in science, compared to the national publicly-schooled average of 50% for each. That’s 34 to 39 percentile points higher than normally schooled students.
• When neither parent had a college degree, their children “only” got an A- overall (83rd percentile); when both parents had a college degree, their children averaged an A+ (90th percentile). More importantly, whether either parent was a certified teacher made no difference (ibid).
• A study from the Canadian Journal of Behavioral Science found that homeschoolers tested 2.2 grades higher for reading and half a grade higher for math than normally schooled children of the same age. In other words, if a homeschooler had to suddenly go to public school, he would be up to two years ahead of everyone else his age.
• According to an article in Time Magazine, homeschoolers are nearly twice as likely to be accepted into Stanford as non-homeschooled applicants, and at Wheaton College homeschoolers’ SAT scores average 58 points higher than non-homeschoolers.
• The same article reports that in 2000, homeschoolers scored an average of 1,100 on their SATs, 81 points above the national average; and 22.8 on the ACT, compared with the national average of 21.

Incidentally, many homeschoolers do receive at least some of their educations from professional teachers. Tuition is often “outsourced”, especially in subjects like music, or science and math at higher levels. And many homescooled teenagers take night classes or attend university classes for some subjects.

4. Children can only grow up properly and learn independence away from the home

Or put more bluntly, homeschooled kids are likely to have an unhealthy codependence on their parents. If this is true, I know of no evidence to show it. Young children in general can be quite codependent, but that doesn’t strike me as unhealthy—it’s a normal part of the parent/child relationship at that age.

Anecdotally, of all the young children I’ve met, some of the clingiest have gone to school, and some of the least clingy have been homeschooled. But I don’t attribute those characteristics to the kind of schooling they’ve received, since I have no good evidence that it is a deciding factor.

I’ve also met a good number of homeschooled teenagers—I run a youth worldview study, and most of the people who come are (or were) homeschooled. They are all quite well adjusted. I haven’t noticed any of them being overly attached to their parents. Indeed, for the most part they seem very confident and assured for their age, and have unusually good relationship with their parents compared to many normally schooled teenagers. That is probably more to do with the fact that they are Christians; but surely there can be no denying that many publicly-schooled kids turn out pretty rebellious and undisciplined. If that is the kind of independence public schooling fosters, I would prefer my children to have no part of it. But again, I have no evidence to suggest it is the schooling specifically which accounts for these kinds of behavioral differences.

5. Children can only adequately learn to deal with opposing worldviews in a school environment

Why? In fact, I’d be interested to see a survey comparing apostasy among homeschooled teenagers and public schooled ones. I suspect the public schooled ones would be far higher. Again, I have no scientific evidence to back my position here—although neither does the person making this odd claim—but in my own experience homeschoolers are much better equipped to analyze and evaluate alternative viewpoints than publicly schooled teenagers.

Do they have less immediate experience with alternative worldviews? Probably. But why think that is anything except a good thing? They have their entire adult lives to rub up against unbelief in its various forms. Cultivating their own faith first, in their formative years, rather than being exposed to the gross immorality I know from experience characterizes public school, seems like the better course.

Notice I’m not suggesting isolation from the world. I strongly oppose overly strict discipline, “protecting” children from even knowing about “unapproved” practices like sex, drugs, alcohol and some music. What I’m suggesting is that homeschooling is a more controlled environment from which children can encounter the world, and see that the various promises it makes about the pleasures of sin are entirely without merit.

6. Children need to be missionaries to non-Christian students in schools

Tim Challies for example has given this as one reason they public school their kids.

Honestly, I do find this a very strange reason to send your kids to school.

The great commission is not directed at children. It is not even directed at adults. It is directed at the disciples. Unless you think your children should be baptizing and teaching people, you are inconsistently applying Matthew 28:18ff.

This is corroborated by the fact that Ephesians 4:11 speaks of “evangelist” as a kind of office, given to the church in the same way as apostles, prophets, shepherds and teachers.

The only thing the Bible seems to require of all Christians is that they be ready to give a response for the hope within them—not that they go out and evangelize to unbelievers. Of course I fully support Christians who do evangelize, and if, say, a teenager felt convicted that he should be witnessing in a school environment then perhaps that would be appropriate. But generally speaking, expecting young children to take on the task of a specific adult role in the church seems, at best, an unjust burden on them. At worst, a good way to damage them spiritually.

For one thing, it’s quite presumptuous to think your young children are saved at all. So why think they are qualified or called to be evangelists in the first place? For another, even if they are saved, putting them into an environment where their views will result in ridicule and bullying is not only pointless in terms of evangelism, but positively harmful to their own psychological and spiritual health.

Now, you can retort, “Imagine what schools would be like if there were no Christians there.” But this fails on at least two counts:

1. I’m not suggesting the only Christian approach is to homeschool. I’m suggesting that being a missionary to other kids is not a good reason to public school
2. What if public schools were to lack any Christian influence from students? How is that a problem, and how is the problem your responsibility to such an extent that you’re willing to place your child at risk to solve it? Bearing in mind all the harm I’ve shown is inherent in schools, let’s take this logic a bit further with another example: Should we encourage our kids to join gangs, so the gangsters can benefit from a Christian influence? If you think there is something wrong with this idea, then perhaps there is also something wrong with the idea that Christian children must be salt and light to schools. If you want to influence non-Christian kids with Christian values, start with their parents. Don’t send your children to do the job of the church.

Incidentally, I’d be most curious to hear from people like Tim Challies just how much evangelism their children actually do at schools.

Other reasons to send your child to school

These six reasons are not the only reasons you might have to send your children to school. They are just what I consider the oddest (and wrongest) of the common ones. There are other reasons, and sometimes they are very good. For example, it’s highly unreasonable to expect a couple to homeschool if they are struggling to make ends meet and have to work two jobs. But in most cases, I think homeschooling is at least a good option. So if you have children and are thinking about their education, I hope I’ve given you something to consider. Don’t be shy to share your opinion in the comments.

Related posts:

1. 4 reasons the consent argument for abortion is sociopathic
2. Why don’t religious people mind their own business?
3. A simple argument against abortion anyone can understand

An obvious example is some kind of aggravated assault like rape. It’s hard to imagine a woman being unjustified in killing a rapist in self-defense.

But getting from justification for killing a rapist, to justification for killing a fetus (Harry), is not as easy as pro-abortionists make out. There are at least five insurmountable hurdles between there and here, and the only way to leap these hurdles is to adopt a sociopathic attitude toward Harry.

Seriously, sociopathic? Poisoning the well much?

You might think I’m being an extremist or alarmist or something by using this term. But I’m using it according to its technical definition:

A person with an antisocial personality disorder, manifested in aggressive, perverted, criminal, or amoral behavior without empathy or remorse.

You’ll note that’s actually the definition of a psychopath. I understand the terms are generally interchangeable, but that sociopath is now the more accepted one—and I think the better one because it emphasizes the social aspect of the pathology. In any case, this is what I mean when I say the consent argument ends up being sociopathic. I aim to show that if you accept that argument, then you are committed to behaving in a morally perverted, non-empathetic way toward Harry the fetus; and since you think there’s nothing wrong with your actions, you have no remorse either.

This might be hard to swallow, but I really am not trying to be an ass. If you disagree, and you’re a reasonable person who can consider the possibility of being wrong, then at least hear me out.

A slight diversion into the difference between emoting and reasoning

If you think I’m being outrageous or offensive, please let me point out a very important distinction. Being outraged or offended is not the same as being right. You might be right—but you might also be wrong. As they say, the truth can hurt. So I’d ask you to judge my discussion below not by how it makes you feel, but by how good my reasoning is.

That said, I think my position only sounds scandalous because, as a society, we have been brow-beaten into thinking that disapproving of abortion amounts to an attack on women.

But what if it doesn’t? What if the opposite is true, and approving of abortion is tantamount to treating women as sociopaths? Wouldn’t you want to know?

In my experience (I was once pro-abortion), if you put aside emotions and preconceptions to evaluate the evidence as logically as you can, it becomes obvious that the only way to justify abortion is to deny key ethical principles we all want to share. And I think that’s why pro-abortionists choose political correctness as their weapon of choice: it short-circuits real discussion, hiding how the pro-abortion position requires these terrible ethical concessions. I believe pro-abortionists are unable to show their position is reasonable, and so they have to make it politically correct instead—brow-beating abolitionists into submission through emotion and rhetoric.

Now watch closely. There is nothing up my sleeve. I want you to notice that even pointing this out, as I just have, is fodder for the pro-abortionist way of “persuading” others. When I say something like this, many of them will try to show how mean I am being. They will try to characterize me as someone who hates women and views them as nothing more than incubators. (I’m not making this up—see the comments thread on my article on LiveAction News for this exact accusation.)

But I am not trying to be mean. I’m trying to point out what’s going on so we can deal with it, without being blinded by inappropriate feelings of shame or guilt at holding a politically incorrect view. Mind you, even if I am being mean (which I’m not), that doesn’t make me wrong, does it? Oscar Wilde and Winston Churchill are renowned for their mean, right witticisms.

4 reasons the consent argument ends up being sociopathic

Note that I’m taking for granted that Harry is a human being, and that human beings have a right to life. I think both those points are uncontroversial, and in any case I’ve argued for them in the above-linked articles. Pro-abortionists will often concede this, and then use the consent argument to show that it is justifiable to kill Harry anyway—so that’s the context I’m assuming.

The argument is basically that if a woman does not give consent for Harry to impose on her personal liberties and bodily autonomy by occupying her uterus for 9 months, then she is justified in taking any means necessary to prevent him from doing so—which means removing him, which means killing him.

This argument fails for at least 4 reasons:

1. It ignores or denies implicit consent
2. It requires the use of disproportionate force
3. It ignores or denies our social responsibilities toward others in analagous circumstances
4. It relies on a non-existent distinction between modes of physical imposition

1. It ignores or denies implicit consent

In nearly all cases, the woman has already given implicit consent to Harry’s imposition, by having sex in the first place. She knows that sex is what gets women pregnant. And she knows that contraceptives are not 100% effective. (Even if she somehow doesn’t know these things, we don’t take ignorance to be an excuse for not accepting the consequences of your actions if you choose to engage in other kinds of risky activities—rather, we think you should have educated yourself properly first.)

But this being the case, it seems quite impossible for her to say she consented to have sex, but did not consent to the consequences of having sex—namely Harry. That is rather like saying that she consented to go joyriding, but not to spend 9 months doing community service after she accidentally drove through a fence. We’d rightly condemn an amoral attitude like that, because it denies obvious social responsibilities.

So given the implicit consent that goes along with having sex, we can see the consent argument fails immediately, with the exception of very rare fringe cases like rape. To deny this is to take an amoral, socially-destructive attitude that could rightly be described as sociopathic. (Note that I’m not saying someone who takes this attitude is a sociopath—only that the attitude is sociopathic.)

2. It requires the use of disproportionate force

I’ve already said a woman is justified in killing a rapist. But what about a less extreme situation, such as being groped? Surely that does not justify lethal force against the perp—nasty as he may be. We’d all agree not every case of abuse or assault permits killing the perpetrator.

This raises the question: is it justifiable to kill someone causing you discomfort and inconvenience (even if severe) for nine months? Is that really a reasonable or proportionate response? If you have been kidnapped, say, and your kidnapper (Pete) has confined you somewhere but otherwise not harmed you, and you believe you will be released again in 9 months, are you justified in killing Pete to escape? It isn’t at all clear to me that it is.

Now before you disagree, think carefully about this. I know it’s natural to have a kind of bravado about these situations. We’re inclined to automatically exaggerate our own rights, and our own willingness to assert those rights in hypothetical situations. But as you may know from events in your own life, when push comes to shove we are actually much less assertive than we pretend we’d be. We tend to back down and feel the infringement on our rights is not as important as we built it up to be in our minds.

So let me ask you honestly: can you really see yourself taking a machete and hacking Pete to death in order to escape? (Most abortions involve a similar kind of physical destruction of the fetus.) Or would you think, when given the opportunity, that only a sociopath could actually go through with it?

The importance of intent

Perhaps you’re unconvinced so far. Maybe you think you would hack Pete up, and be justified about it. So let’s go further now, by talking about how intent strongly affects what kind of response is appropriate to an imposition on our rights or autonomy.

In the examples I’ve suggested so far, Pete is intentionally imposing on your body, while you have done nothing at all to bring on the imposition. But what if he were imposing unintentionally? And what if it were your intentional action that had caused his unintentional imposition? What if, through no fault of his own, he was unaware of what he was doing and helpless to prevent it, while you had caused the problem in the first place? Would you still feel justified in killing him?

Surely not. Surely someone who could do such a thing without remorse would rightly be considered sociopathic? Even in a situation where the imposition was brought about by a third party doing something awful to you, it’s obviously not right to kill Pete in response—he is as much a victim as you are. As the old saying goes, two wrongs don’t make a right.

Yet some pro-abortionists are adamant, almost vindictive, about killing Pete. I wonder if, as with the prisoner’s dilemma on the ferries in The Dark Knight, they are all talk. If Harry were a another adult, or a child, thrust helplessly into the situation, would they really be able to kill him to defend their bodily autonomy and personal liberty? I think very few people really would—at least, I hope the pro-abortionists’ bark is worse than their bite, because if not they actually are sociopaths.

3. It ignores or denies our social responsibilities toward others in analagous circumstances

Although the problems I’ve discussed so far are pretty damned problematical, I think this one trumps them all. Yet it is largely glossed over by pro-abortionists.

Let me give an example. Imagine you’re in a plane, and you crash on a desert island. The only other survivor of the crash is a baby.

It seems extremely clear that although you have not consented to look after this baby—indeed, it is a significant imposition given your limited supplies and lack of preparation—you are nonetheless under an obligation to do so simply by being put into that situation. We would unequivocally condemn you if, instead of caring for the baby, you left it out in the sun to die of exposure or starvation. That is unquestionably sociopathic behavior. And we would especially condemn you if you took a machete and hacked the baby to pieces, or drowned it in the sea, arguing that you were justified in doing so because you had not consented to look after the child.

Now, if even a stranger has a responsibility to a child that cannot fend for itself, how much more does its own mother have such a duty when it is even less able to fend for itself? To deny this maternal duty seems plainly sociopathic—an ethical price so high that if you pay it to claim that abortion is “ethical”, your claim ends up saying nothing like what we take it to mean on face value.

4. It relies on a non-existent distinction between modes of physical imposition

Why is it unacceptable for a woman to be imposed on via direct physical means, such as a fetus living inside her (or Judith Jarvis Thompson’s violinist being grafted onto her), but not via indirect means, such as having to prepare meals for her child, work to provide for him, drive him from place to place, care for him when he is sick, and so on? Both are obvious impositions on her personal liberty and her bodily autonomy. (Indeed, doesn’t the latter sound very much like indentured servitude?)

You may say the difference in the case of pregnancy is that she has no other recourse. Once Harry is born she can adopt him out, or have willing family members help her, etc. But my desert island analogy seems to put paid to that idea. It’s not permissible to kill someone just because you can’t fob your responsibility off on another person.

You may say the difference in the case of post-partum children is that, by consenting to give birth, the mother implicitly consents to everything which follows—even things like terrible diseases where she will be forced to give up great personal liberties and bodily autonomy for Harry’s sake. But this response immediately backfires by conceding my previous argument #1: that by consenting to have sex, the woman implicitly consents to everything which follows, including Harry’s conception. You can’t eat your cake and still have it, too.

And in fringe cases where sex is nonconsensual, the desert island analogy comes into play again. If non-consent doesn’t justify killing a human being in a similar situation post-partum, why should it justify it in utero?

We should reject the consent argument because it makes mothers into sociopaths

I think just one of the problems I’ve raised is alone sufficient to show how the consent argument is sociopathic. But when we combine them we get an insurmountable cumulative case. Rather than justifying a woman in killing Harry, the argument actually condemns her. To kill him because she does not consent to him “occupying her body” clearly qualifies as sociopathic behavior.

In all the analogies pro-abortionists give, the perpetrator is acting maliciously (sometimes by proxy, as in the violinist argument) toward a woman who did nothing to merit his actions against her. But even if this were accurate, killing him seems a staggeringly disproportionate response—it isn’t reasonable force at all. Yet in the vast majority of pregnancies, the “perp” is in fact acting helplessly toward a woman precisely because she caused him to do so! And moreover, she is not simply “a woman” and he is not simply “a perp”—rather, she is his mother and he is her child, with all the duties and responsibilities that entails. Denying these maternal duties, far from being enlightened and freeing, seems sociopathic. And finally, since there’s no obvious moral difference between a fetus imposing on a woman’s autonomy and liberties, and a toddler doing so, the consent argument implies that a woman is justified in killing her toddler for the same reasons as having an abortion.

Related posts:

1. A simple argument against abortion anyone can understand
2. Why don’t religious people mind their own business?
3. Useful thoughts for debating abortionists

But is it not odd that so many people celebrate a holiday called Thanksgiving, yet give no actual thanks?

I suppose this lack of thanksgiving is because, if we do give thanks, we must first know to whom we are giving it. But since all the things we tend to be most thankful for—prosperity, material gains, events of the past year, and so on—are things outside the control of any human being, the only obvious person we can thank is God. But most people either don’t believe in God, or don’t believe he is involved in their lives in such a way as to merit their thanks.

So what strikes me is that one of the classic ways to think of irrational behavior is as behavior that goes against what you believe to be true. To take a very simple example, it’s obviously irrational to go to the corner store to buy M&Ms if you believe the corner store does not sell M&Ms.

But this seems to be exactly the kind of thing many Americans do at Thanksgiving. They celebrate a holiday in which the aim is to express thanks for their blessings—when they do not believe there is anyone to thank. So they seem to be engaging in some kind of cognitive dissonance or intellectually dishonest behavior.

At the very least, their celebration of the holiday lacks character. They are celebrating because it is a holiday, rather than because of the holiday.