Pooh's Think

In continuation of my analysis of the debate between Christopher Hitchens and Douglas Wilson, I argue that Wilson has adopted an attitude towards morality that is immoral.

 

Wilson makes clear in his introductory remarks that empathy and emotion play no role in grounding morality:  “If there is no God, then who cares?”  Without divine authority revealing some law-code on the matter, Wilson delights in the stoic detachment and unconcern he is sure he would offer in response to human suffering.  

 

This is at least the argument. The lack of a conceptual role for empathy and emotion in Wilson’s rhetorical agenda does not entail that Wilson in fact possesses no empathy or emotion. Although, one still has to wonder by the end of the debate. Can an intelligent person, whose own morality is firmly rooted in empathy and emotion, consistently and honestly state that empathy and emotion provide no grounds for human morality? I doubt this is possible, but even if it is, I am morally certain that this remains at least unlikely on a case by case basis. So we should have prima facie warrant for a small amount of suspicion.

 

I commented a couple years ago on Wilson’s review of Sam Harris’ book, Letter to a Christian Nation, and noted this same stance from Wilson. After a while, and after reaching the peak of my retaliatory endeavors in Moscow, I expressed my perplexity by posing the argumentative question: “Is Douglas Wilson a Psychopath?” I do admit that there was an element of literal inquiry involved in the asking as I considered the altogether separate evidence of Wilson’s violence towards me and the many other sheep that have been beaten by his sociological rod.   But now that I have read this debate, I want to ask a less offensive question.

 

Is Douglas Wilson a sociopath? There is a sense in which his moral argument suggests so, and I doubt I am the only reviewer of this debate to have the suspicion (I know for a fact I am not the only person who has strongly entertained the idea generally, based on other evidence).

 

Hitchens argues that many of the teachings of Christianity are immoral. But consistent with Wilson’s opening sentiments, Wilson just does not seem to care. At every step, Wilson remains silent on just this point. Hitchens puts empathy right on the table in each round and Wilson will not touch it. Hitchens questions the morality of the eternal torture of the dead, but Wilson changes the subject, refocusing attention on the sacredness of the Old Testament and bypassing the problem of hell altogether – a doctrine he is not shy in promulgating from his own pulpit. Even while defending the sacredness of the Old Testament, Wilson does not address any of the alleged atrocities Hitchens claims the Old Testament recommends. Rather, Wilson just says that Hitchens has no reason himself to give a damn about human suffering. If there is no God, everything is matter and motion and so “who cares? ‘On with the rapine and slaughter!’” 

 

Did Wilson really say that?  Yes.  Am I taking this out of context?  No.  Here  again is a balanced summary of the debate, although by all means, everyone read the short book for themselves.  But lest anyone become anxious over the living presence of just one militant mammal swinging from the trees in north Idaho, I remind you that Wilson has always been good at writing to certain kinds of religious crowds. Whatever Wilson’s real views on morality, there are many Christians who have enjoyed watching Wilson just ‘let Hitchens have it’ with this wisdom that comes down from heaven. That is the thought that should most disturb.

 

In round 4 Wilson wants to know what grounds Hitchens’ “fierce denunciations of various manifestations of immorality.” “I simply want to know. . . all I want to know is what book it is, and why it has anything to do with me.”  Indeed.  Perhaps Wilson really does not know. Our prima facie warrant is gaining a posteriori traction.

 

Hitchens would likely know about the trouble Wilson has gotten himself into over the years through the public exhibition of less than prudent amounts of empathy and humility (since the time of Pooh’s Think, Part 1, the situation has changed a good deal). But Wilson has provided Hitchens with everything he needs in this debate to justify the profoundly sober and just observation: “Your Christianity, in case you have not noticed, has actually made you a less compassionate and thoughtful person than, without its exorbitant presumptions, you would otherwise be.”

 

But Wilson only continues to offer perplexity.  On Hitchens’ account, Wilson claims, determining the rightness or wrongness of child rape, torture, slavery, or genocide may as well be determined with the flip of a coin without a divine authority:  ”what could be wrong with just flipping a coin?” Wilson thinks he has “not yet received anything that approaches the semblance of an answer.” I submit that the problem is not Wilson’s cognitive perplexity, but his moral blindness.

 

Further, “fierce denunciation” seems to be an inaccurate description of Hitchens’ rhetoric. Consider Hitchens’ fiercest denunciation in god is not Great:

 

I do not set myself up as a moral exemplar, and would be swiftly knocked down if I did, but if I was suspected of raping a child, or torturing a child, or infecting a child with venereal disease, or selling a child into sexual or any other kind of slavery, I might consider committing suicide whether I was guilty or not.  If I had actually committed the offense, I would welcome death in any form that it might take. This revulsion is innate in any healthy person, and does not need to be taught.

 

Child rape is here a prototype for evil, and rightly so. Creative predatory behavior of this kind is one of the darkest realities the human heart has yet devised (Orwell’s imagination has perhaps made some advances with the kindly O’Brien). But now please consider the Southern Poverty Law Center’s report on Douglas Wilson:

 

Doug Wilson, pastor of a radical church in Moscow, Idaho, and co-author of an infamous booklet describing antebellum slavery as an easygoing “life of plenty,” has always seemed to project a persona of smug and self-satisfied arrogance.

. . . Wilson is back in the news. This summer, the Moscow-Pullman Daily News published a story on “rumors” that Wilson, who controls an extreme-right religious empire in Moscow, and his New Saint Andrews College had tried to “cover up” serial sexual molestations by a college student — molestations of very young boys and girls carried out over several years. Although the newspaper quoted none of them, many people were angry that Wilson had failed to notify families in his Christ Church for eight months after Steven Sitler confessed to him in March 2005. One church family with young children had boarded Sitler, and others welcomed him as a visitor in their homes (Sitler molested one 2-year-old girl in a similar visiting situation in Colville, Wash.). Critics complained that Wilson’s lack of action had eliminated the possibility of identifying other victims in the community.

. . . .When details of the matter came up on a local blog run by a disgruntled Wilson follower [you know, that creep pooh bear at www.poohsthink.com], part of the pastor’s response was to liken the blogger to “a sucking chest wound.”

. . . What may have been most remarkable about the entire affair was Wilson’s role in the case of Sitler, who he ministered to after Sitler was caught. Wilson wrote the sentencing judge in Sitler’s case, describing him as “most responsive” and “completely honest” and asking that criminal penalties be “measured and limited.”

That might seem like an understandable request coming from a man’s pastor. But Doug Wilson is no normal pastor. He is a biblical hard-liner, a man who in numerous books and speeches is quick to advocate the most draconian punishments of the Old Testament for all kinds of offenses, some quite minor. And that applies to the Sitler case directly, judging from what Wilson wrote in his 1999 book Fidelity: “When we are dealing with young children who are abused by adults (pederasty, child porn, etc.), the penalty for those guilty of the crime should be death.”

Except, apparently, when Pastor Wilson decides otherwise

 

In response to this report, Wilson wrote a post called Brazenly Lied About.  Of course, there are no lies in the report. In fact there are no factual inaccuracies or overstatements to my current knowledge. The furious public subterfuge this public announcement provoked from Wilson generated a series here at Pooh’s Think over 40 posts long, but this series produced no evidence for a single retraction (I would link, but my database has been hacked and destroyed). There are a few mitigating facts that the Law Center could have mentioned if the report’s goal was something other than a judicial argument for Wilson’s immoral approach to morality, but these details are justly omitted given the space and scope of the report as far as I can tell. This is one of the most balanced reports from the Law Center on the Kirk in my opinion, and I have gone on record saying so.

 

What we see here is the full extent of Wilson’s inversion of what I consider genuine morality. Hitchens is not in favor of the Old Testament’s draconian punishments and yet wishes the death penalty on himself if he were ever found guilty of child rape – perhaps even if he was simply wrongly accused. He likewise reserves ‘evil’ for precisely this sort of anti-social, violent, and predatory behavior. In round 6, Hitchens argues that he is simply forced to call ‘evil’ those enemies who would destroy him or society. But Hitchens explains the problem Wilson has with evil close to home:

 

[Y]ou apparently adopt the immoral and suicidal doctrine that advocates forgiveness for those who would destroy us. Please take care not to forgive my enemies, or the enemies of society.  If I have to call such people ‘evil’ (and I find I have no alternative), I do not deduce peaceful coexistence from that observation and do not want you being tender to them when it is my or my family’s life that is at stake.”

 

If one wants predator Sitler’s email address he need only flip a page or two in the Kirk’s current directory from precisely where you can go to obtain the email address of one of his rape victims. And the Kirk still has a public page on their web site to this day prattling on about Sitler and the “victims” in the Kirk.  Way to protect those victims Wilson!  Another fresh batch of expendable human shields to dodge the political bullets.  Perhaps the Kirk should fashion a monument dedicated to Sitler, inscribed with the words: “The great sinner that both God and Pastor Wilson forgave.”

 

Sitler’s form of predation involves premeditated manipulation and psychological torture that leaves behind life-long effects, and the evidence suggests that this kind of person cannot be completely reformed. Perfect place to set aside the law of Moses if you ask me. On every other matter the Pentateuch is right on, no doubt. Or perhaps this is consistent with the law of Moses. Did those ancient barbarian priests really want to nark on a bit of child rape here and there?  After all, priestcraft has not gone morally down hill over the last 3000 years has it?

 

Wilson cannot find any grounding for morality outside of the Old Testament’s ‘standard’ of law-code and has mercilessly granted the morality – the rightness, the goodness – of the institution of slavery and the death penalty as the maximum possible punishment for any act of adultery or homosexuality.  And Wilson did grant, in writing, that child rape should also result in the death penalty. Yet when pure ‘evil’ greets the young children within his flock, Wilson shows a wonderful, unique glow of empathy, toleration, and forgiveness. Moses quickly becomes gentle Jesus on this one issue.  Perhaps there are some human conditions Wilson does have a capacity to empathize with after all. 

 

I note that it would have been in Wilson’s political interest that not all of the rape cases be discovered, and so I wonder: is this bizarre behavior from Wilson the same mechanism we have discovered in the Roman Catholic church regarding systematic child rape? Without some kind of abstract, authoritarian standard, some “law-code” as Wilson himself calls it, why not?  Why care? If there is no grounding of human morality that is innate, rooted in basic empathy and emotion, then why not even set aside the authoritative law-code when it suits you if God is just an imaginative construct you use to build a religious community in north Idaho?

 

Enough said. But you will have to excuse me. I am not done. As one who has been treated with a good deal less empathy and justice from the hands of Wilson than has predator Sitler, I can only marvel at how wonderful it would have been for me in the Kirk if, instead of publicly stating that Douglas Wilson ‘lied,’ I was rather just found out to be raping the young children in Wilson’s church. Pastoral protection from the violence generated against me would have likely led to a good deal less post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) than Sitler has suffered from. But wait. Does someone suffer from PTSD at all after getting his fill of rape, forgiveness from his social group and family, counseling, and some jail time away from the responsibilities of one’s own household and the world?  I would think that PTSD would require something more along the lines of psychological maiming from your friend, teacher, counselor, political guardian, pastor, and Big Brother while everyone in your social universe stands and looks on – either applauding or shrugging their shoulders in feigned ignorance.  I take it that Sitler receives the regular church email?  This was denied even to my wife, who never raised a finger or spoke a word that made a single Kirker the least bit uncomfortable.  Ah, the morality of the law-code as wielded by the priesthood.  

 

Hitchens therefore labors to no avail. All reference to empathy and compassion – whether direct or indirect – does not even begin to address Wilson’s questions. Wilson reserves vengeance for those who break his code of loyalty, not for those who break young girls. Wilson has “not yet received anything that approaches the semblance of an answer.”  Why not just flip a coin?  What is the difference? “I simply want to know. . . all I want to know is what book it is, and why it has anything to do with me.”  Hitchens politely assumes the best and does not suspect “that without celestial sanction, you yourself would be unrestrained in your appetites and careless of other people.” We will never know, perhaps. But at least we know that with celestial sanction, Wilson not only would be, but has been unrestrained in his appetites and careless of other people. But I guess that just is Hitchens’ anti-theist argument.

 

 

Posted by metzler on Thursday, March 26, 2009, at 6:12 pm.
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