Astrid’s Journal

This is truly ridiculous! Student gets F grade for mentioning God, it is said. The atheist professor had prohibited her from using the word in an essay on the role of religion in government. How would this be possible? When you permit a student to write a paper on religion, you should expect to find the word “God” mentioned in it, especially in a country where Christianity is so influential as in the United States. The country is “one nation under God”, they say, so if you want to do an essay on the topic of religion and the government, you’ll have to mention God, period. Besides, would other words, like Supreme Being, Divine, etc. do better? That’s making no sense.

I think this professor is doing a very poor job at separating his role as an atheist from his role as a professor, and furthermore, he’s reinforcing the stereotype of atheists as Christian-haters. I’m not an atheist, but I know many people who are. Some of them are quite suspicious of religion, and Christianity in particular - probably cause that’s the leading religion in their societies -, but they would not be so stupid as to prohibit people from even using the word “God”. It is not grounded on any sort of logic, and yet it makes it seem as if all atheists hate religion and religious people. It’s even having negative effects upon atheists, in the United States, that are already being discriminated against. Now Christians seem to have an argument to do so - that atheists ate discriminating, too. I see this as an unwise decision of this professor’s at best.

I’m getting so sick of people who contend that pro-life entails only being anti-abortion and anti-euthanasia. While this is true - pro-life means respect for every human being’s life -, I don’t see why this respect for life ends once a person is accused of having killed someone, or why respect for life is fine, only if this human being can support him/herself, ie. those pro-lifers opposing social security.

My country is being called a nazi country because four disabled infants have been euthanized and the doctor who did it wasn’t prosecuted, yet the same person that says that we’re nazis, supports the death penalty that means killing people who may or may not have killed someone. I don’t support criminals, but withdrawing them the right to life cause they have killed someone, is highly inconsistent. With the death penalty, we’re just showing that the government can do something it forbids - even, that this (killing) happens to make people not kill other people. So everyone except for the government has to respect human life? Then why not allow the government to introduce a new euthanasia programme, cause disabled people are a burden on society, just like criminals? Who was talking about nazis? I think that pro-lifers who support the death penalty are highly hypocritical.

The same conservative Christian I wrote about before is now claiming that homosexuality is wrong according to the Bible. Before I studied the Bible too extensively, I thought so as well, simply cause Leviticus says that homosexuality is wrong. However, if we had to follow everything that’s in Leviticus, every single person would be sinful as hell. One couldn’t wear clothes made of more than one substance, not have more than one crop on one’s land, not eat oysters and some other food, etc. The conservative Christian said that these are laws that applied to the ancient Jews and not now, and came up with other portions, like 1 Corinthians 6:8-10 and 1 Timothy 1:9-11. Well, there is speculation of the correct translation of these words, according to this article. The same goes for all other passages where the word “homosexual” is used. In some, masturbation used to be what Christians referred to, but relaxation with regard to the attitudes about masturbation may have altered the translation.

According to this essay, Biblical arguments should be used to accept homosexuality within the Church. I would agree - if liberal Christians are going to use non-Biblical arguments, their position will most certainly be rejected by the conservatives. I could tell the conservative Christian I’m debating with that homosexuality has been found to have a neurological basis, in a recent Karolinska Institute (Sweden) study, but that probably wouldn’t make it any more right according to him - perhaps behaviour therapy could alter this, as O. Ivar Lovaas and others wanted in the 1970s. Now I never liked Applied Behaviour Analysis, but it is even more wrong when the “problem” appears to be neurologically-based. Maybe, someday, homosexuality, now, can be “cured”? Not that I would favour it, but that’s making clear that it is as sinful as any other neurological deviation.

I am seeing some extremist Christians claim that all morals come from God, and specifically their God, or Jesus. They say that morals have to come from somewhere, since otherwise there would be no Absolute Truth and if there weren’t, nothing would be good or evil. Agreed, there have to be some universal values that all people in their right minds would subscribe to. Relativism is a difficult issue for philosophers today to deal with. I try to call on people’s conscience and their moral values to see that things like killing are wrong. Don’t we all hold a framework of values, though heavily influenced by our education and experience?

If morality came from God, then each and every Christian (or Muslim or whatever) would be perfectly moral and each and every non-believer would be a total sinner. Not just because non-belief is a sin, but because he or she couldn’t possibly know any morals. Then, I’d conclude that all non-believers are killers, thieves, sexual offenders, and everything else considered immoral. As a non-believer - well, I’m an Idealist philosophically and virtually all Idealists believe in some Absolute Spirit, but not as in one particular religion -, I tend to disagree.

If ethics originated from God, and only those that claim allegiance to this God are truly moral, further, how can one know that this is true? There are so many religions in the world, so how do we know which one has the right morals? A conservative Christian I’ve been debating with, comes up with the reasoning that Jesus is worshipped by 1.9 billion people, that the Bible is the bestseller of the world, and that our calendar is based on Christianity. However, this is only because Christians were successful at missionary work, bringing their religion over the entire world. Furthermore, it is only *now*, in the last few centuries of the second millennium and the early years of the third millennium accoridng to the Common Era, that Christianity is the most common religion and the religion held by the most developed countries in the world (which is not to say that all underdeveloped countries are non-Christian). In the eight centuries before the Common Era and the first four centuries in the Common Era, the Roman Empire was considered the centre of the world, and, ironically, it collapsed shortly after it had universally adopted Christianity. I’m not saying that Christianity is wrong, I’m just saying that it’s chance that this religion is the most common one in the world at this moment.

Religion has always been an important part of culture, and hence, has influenced morality everywhere and throughout the ages. That is not the same as to say that morality comes from God, let alone this particular God.

Jerry Billings, in his article Ethics Without God, Or God Without Ethics, points out perfectly well how it is impossible to say that ethics come from God, cause firstly, many atheists and agnostics are also moral, and don’t need a God for that, and secondly, if morals came from God, one couldn’t judge without God that this God is the right God, so a non-religious person could never judge whether the Christian God, or any other deity, were a good God. That points out why it’s just chance that Christianity is viewed to be the good religion in large parts of the world, while it may just as well be any other religion or no religion at all.

It’s Gay Pride day, and that makes me feel a little weird. As a person having been in love with more than one woman, I have absolutely no problem with the GLBT community. I think gays are equal to heterosexuals, and they should have the same right to show their love and pride. They should also be able to call out against discrimination and violence based on an unimportant factor like what gender the person you love has. I’m all in favour of showing the world that as GLBT people, we’re just as right or wrong as anyone else.

However, I often feel a little disgust when I read about the Gay Parade in Amsterdam, which is often quite full of nudity. I have no problem with that, but it reinforces the stereotype of gays being dirty people, while they can be just as loving and moral as heterosexuals. Can’t the GLBT community just show its humanity, as Jon Carroll describes:

Very soon now, our nation will engage in one of its most festive and patriotic days of celebration. Picnics will be held, kids will race around, flags will be carried, fireworks will be set off. The day means many things to many people, but I like to think of it as a celebration of the First Amendment, particularly freedom of speech and freedom of assembly.

It is happening in this way sometimes, but too often I tend to associate Gay Pride with half-naked men and women on boats or in the streets.

Today, here, Gay Pride day emphasized the increasing rates of violence against gays. I think that in my country, GLBT people are mostly being accepted or at least tolerated, but there remain people who don’t accept same-sex love. I was shocked a while back when I found out an American journalist who happens to be gay had been attacked in Amsterdam. San Francisco and Amsterdam are probably most famous for being “gay capitals”. I feel very bad that this sort of gross miseries is still occurring here, where discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is illegal and same-sex marriage has been legal for over four years. I hope we can educate the public that gays, lesbians, and bisexuals are just as normal as anyone else, and that immoral behaviour is not by the grace of their sexual orientation.

Why is it that so many people seem to read only the information they can use to support their standpoints on important issues? I mean, I came to my position on abortion (pro-life stance) after reading this article, a thoroughly pro-choice paper on abortion. Why is it that no-one seems to be able to do this as well?

I’m currently having a discussion with a fellow pro-lifer on the topic of euthanasia as it happens in the Netherlands. Well, you know how folks keep calling the Dutch folk nazis cause euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide are legal here. I oppose its legislation, but I oppose it based on the facts: that such a policy fails to protect people against their own “wishes”, when alternatives may be present (especially with mental suffering), that the allowing disabled infants and children to be euthanized with parental permission (the Groningen Protocol, adopted by one hospital in 2004) is not acknowledging the rights of these children to live, and that withdrawing life-sustaining treatment from disabled people will lead to cruel death and that it doesn’t acknowledge their right to life. However, comparing our situation to that of nazi Germany will distract us from the facts and true grounds for the debate and get into stupid nonsense flaming.

What also totally annoys me, is that people use the fact that involuntary euthanasia (aka murder by someone who happens to be a medical professional) is happening here, to build their comparison to nazis on. Well, this is happening everywhere. Think of Jack Kevorkian (aka Dr. Death), who may have killed 130 people, in the U.S. and Robert Latimer in Canada. So now the state of Michigan, where Kevorkian lives (and now is serving in jail), is suddenly a nazi state?

Also, the number of involuntary euthanasia cases is sort of biased, since it also includes those cases where the patient was unable to consent and cases where the patient asked to die, but there was no formal request. While I disagree with this sort of practise occurring, it does not support the idea that there are so many cases of involuntary euthanasia here. Besides, the number is lower than in other countries, where euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide are illegal.

Mind you, I oppose euthanasia and assisted suicide in any way. I oppose it happening and I oppose its legislation, but I oppose the actual situation and don’t care about horror scenarios of what might happen if we slide further. If the situation were only immoral if it reached nazi proportions, what would we complain about now?

I got my diploma today. At 3:00 PM, the ceremony started. Some folk from the parent council first congratulated us, and then the principal called each of us to be spoken to and receive our diplomas. It took very long and it was warm, but it was still interesting. I’ve a last name with a W, so I was nearly to the end of the round of speeches. So that left me plenty of time thinking about what the headmaster would say. Dad had been confusing about what he thought the headmaster would want to say about me - basically, whether it would be an eulogy on all the school and I had done so I could make it despite my special needs, or a normal speech about the cool stuff I’d done at school, or anything in between. I would not want him to talk all about my blindness, but I hoped he wouldn’t intentionally avoid the topic. I hoped it would be similar to the way I did my yearbook page - I did mention my blindness, but I also wrote about just “normal” stuff. Well, the headmaster addressed my love for debating, my profile research on British Idealism, Rome, and the books that kept arriving late and computers that crashed, so he didn’t avoid my disability, but didn’t focus on it too much, either. Really cool! I later found out he’d wanted to do a special needs blah-blah speech, but he was persuaded into not doing so.

After the ceremony, we received some things like diploma, testimonial (what activities you’ve done except for regular class, in my case the Model European Parliament and last April’s debating contest), and the like, and some presents. We went outside and chatted some more and had a drink. I chatted some with my English teacher, and he didn’t even remember my having had a five on my final report in ninth grade. Worse yet, for a few weeks I had a four as my grade average. So cool that the only subject I ever had a four for as my grade average is the one I’m going to study. How things can change. I’ll likely miss some of my teachers and fellow graduates.

I just found out that the AMA opposes legislation that would ensure disabled people are not refused life-saving treatment. Such legislation would mandate doctors to offer life-saving treatment to those who cannot make their wishes known, except when they’ve previously let known what they want. It would forbid withdrawal of food and water from people like Terri Schiavo. Some folks said that they didn’t want politics to intervene in the doctor/patient relationship. That is just not making sense at all. If politics weren’t involved, doctors could do whatever they wanted in the name of a doctor/patient relationship. In my opinion, I don’t know why doctors would be any more capable of deciding whose life is valuable and whose is not than the general public. They can, of course, more accurately judge in what state a patient is - although with people like Terri that appeared to be very difficult -, but doctors have no better ethics than anyone else.

As I said while commenting on the Charlotte Wyatt case, I don’t think any legislation would be needed here - doctors withdraw treatment seemingly if and when they want to, and they just somehow convince the family to agree (and with people like Terri, this would be easy, as there would be enough Michael Schiavos to agree). Still, as with Charlotte Wyatt, why can the doctors make such decisions any better than the parents or other relatives? I have no idea why this legislation would be intervening in the doctor/patient relationship, if there even is any, in cases like this. Of course docs don’t want politicians to get involved in the way they treat their patients, of course not. A killer who happens to be a doctor would be eager to say this is in the best interest of the patient. Sure. I may be getting too far, but the statement about politics getting involved does connote these images to me.

Maybe, indeed, as some people have said about the Netherlands a while back, we should all carry badges saying: “Don’t kill me, please.” I tend to think this is a little over the top, even here, where euthanasia and physician assisted suicide are quite legal, but it is heading this way if doctors can now decide for themselves and without intervention if patients failed to make clear their living wills.

I went to the guide dog school today for its open house. When we (Mr. De B. and I) arrived at 1:00 PM, we started out with a walk. We could walk with real guide dogs, which I considered quite weird since I assumed they would be distracted if they had different people work with them. But the instructors, who deal with the dogs everyday, gave the commands and I could just hold the handle. It worked very well eventually, though at first I was a bit nervous. One thing that I noticed that’s really advantageous about a guide dog versus a cane, is that a dog will lead you around obstacles, while with the cane you have to feel for them, and when I miss one or think I do (which is quite usual since I’m not a competent cane user) I often get distracted when I for example see a shadow and think it’s an obstacle. The guide dog I handled, walked pretty fast, but that’s cool since so do I. The instructor had asked who walked pretty fast, and so I said I did and so I could walk with this dog. At one point, I even found myself walking too fast for the dog, smile.

Then we were also led around the dog school, which was quite interesting. They currently have 41 dogs in training, which is quite much. The kennels are quite large, by the way. In the end, we could ask questions, and it was quite cool. By the way, a woman also told about her experiences with a guide dog, which sounded so interesting.

Mum sounded really enthusiastic as I came home. She’s always had a dog so she loves them. I used to fear dogs, but I like them quite a bit now, and have been thinking about perhaps getting a guide dog sometime for a while. Maybe when I’ve settled in Nijmegen I’ll consider it.

Astrid

Terri Schiavo’s remains were buried yesterday, fifteen years after her death, if we have to believe Michael Schiavo. Can we now decide when we think that our loved ones (?) have gotten in such a state that we don’t consider them to be with us anymore? February 25, 1990 was the day Terri Schiavo collapsed and fell into a coma, but if Michael had any care for his wife, he’d list March 31, 2005 as the day of her death. That would even support his “keeping his promise”, which he is said to have inscribed in the grave. Now I never liked Michael Schiavo’s attitude anyway, but this is just ridiculous! Shouldn’t a grave be a tribute to the deceased? But Michael Schiavo is making it a tribute to himself. Sure, if he is right, he kept his promise to Terri, but then he shouldn’t have to show this to the entire world on her grave.

Of course, what also pisses me off, is that he *didn’t* inform Terri’s parents and siblings of the burial. They may not have had the same views on Terri that he did, and in a way, may have been unethical to her (if she truly didn’t want to live), but there is no reason why Michael Schiavo has any more right to know about the burial than Terri’s parents do. It just all perpetuates the arrogant, self-centred, careless image I had of Michael Schiavo.