(Guns don’t kill people…) But Without Them, You Look Pretty Silly Yelling Bang!

After the tragic shooting in Newtown, Connecticut petitions circulated calling for gun control, something the President acted upon quickly. Appointing Joe Biden, the President asked for some common sense gun control laws, and ways to stop violence, and the ability for criminals and mental patients to not have access to them. He asked for quick action, and now congress has begun having congressional hearings on the subject.

Wayne LaPierre once said, “Guns don’t kill people, people do.” It was an attempt to scare the general public into purchasing more firearms, equating violence with the person, rather than the tool. Unfortunately for all of us, it worked, and many people who had never been gun owners went out and purchased guns for the first time. There is a belief that guns are not the problem, and I hope in this article I can address that a little, give my thoughts as I have before, and try to address the real problems.

 

The Gun Nut

I’ve heard it a lot, repeated like the anthem for gun owners: “Guns don’t kill people, people do.” It drives me crazy anytime I hear it because it comes with an air of arrogance from most gun owners, that somehow they are defending our freedoms, or being freedom fighters, and defenders of the constitution by exercising their second amendment rights. The belief being that somehow, if people stopped buying guns, or using them, the second amendment would simply vanish. Not only is it arrogance to assume you are somehow protecting my rights, but egotistical, and self-centered, as if you are so important that God himself granted you this task.

What really gets me is the nature of the arrogant behavior, of what I would call “The Gun Nut.” I’ve accepted that there are people who live normal lives, get up, go to work, come home, eat dinner, go to bed, and get up in the morning to do it all again, and they own guns. They are normal responsible gun owning people. They don’t treat them like toys, they don’t bring them out and show them to their friends like it’s a new girlfriend, and they don’t rub them gleefully whispering, “My Precious!” But for every normal person who owns a gun, there is the antithesis, an asshole, a nutbag, who brings his gun out whenever the neighbor kids visit, or takes pictures with it, standing next to the Christmas tree, usually posing like some douchebag who thinks he is Rambo.

It is especially pathetic to see pictures of people on Facebook holding guns talking about how sexy they are, or where they’d like to stick it. You know who you are! Guess what guys, and gals. There is nothing sexy about a gun. It’s not a toy, you open on Christmas screaming your head off like a four year girl with a new dolly. It’s not a new car, you just have to take out for a spin. It’s a weapon, its sole purpose is to kill. That’s right people, forget the bullshit, forget the nonsense, stop convincing yourselves it serves some higher purpose. No, sadly, its only purpose is death.

Ever since the shootings in Newtown, I have had many conversations with people about guns, gun control, the constitution, and all the other stuff that comes with fucking with peoples toys. I saw a great quote the other day from someone that said: “Boys never really grow up, they just get bigger.” And it occurred to me, for most men this is absolutely true. I myself at times, act like a big kid, but I don’t run around with a plastic gun in my hand like I did when I was a child. What I realized is that most men have just upgraded, that they think no differently, having the mind of a child, guns were fun as a kid, and they continue to be fun now.

If this is true, and it most certainly is for most men, then why are these kinds of people even allowed to purchase a firearm? Is it simply because they are over 18 years old, so the law considers them an adult? I’m sure that makes the parents of every child shot by some moron with a gun feel a whole lot better. Now I understand the law, and I understand that when someone reaches a certain age, whether it be 18 or 21, the government gives them some privileges they would not have had as a child, although obviously in this case there are plenty of douchebag parents who put guns in the hands of small children. I recall the local news story of a small boy who was accidently shot in the face by an UZI-type gun when his father allowed him to fire it for the first time.

The gun having a tremendous recoil turned upside down in his hand as he fired, and he shot himself in the face. Do we blame the child? The parent? Apparently no one, as this was deemed to be an accident if I recall. And I wonder would this have been an accident if his father handed him a  bottle of Vodka and told the boy to drink it all? There of course, is something about guns that lead everyone to believe that if something bad happens, well it can’t be prevented, because we have to have guns! It’s nonsensical, because we don’t have to have anything. The right to keep and bear arms literally translates to the right to own and carry arms.

As I have said before, it does not say: The right to purchase a gun at Walmart, or the right to make your own gun and sell it, or anything of the sort. There is no law in our constitution that secures the right of a corporation to freely sell anything, but of course there wouldn’t be, since Thomas Jefferson himself was not a fan of corporations. No, in fact, the right of the people or militia to arm themselves is very broad, because you could take it to mean: to carry a grenade launcher, or a suitcase bomb. But I challenge anyone who thinks they have a second amendment right to carry a suitcase full of nuclear material, to walk into any federal building like all they have in there is a sandwich.

If you feel so strongly that you are entitled to keep and carry any kind of arm, then you should be able to arm yourself with anything, because according to the constitution, that’s what it says. Let’s not forget of course, that the only type of arm any person could easily carry himself when the constitution was penned was a flint lock pistol, or musket. And although the founders were short-sighted in some respects, in others I believe not so much.

 

The Comma

In the case of the second amendment, as I have argued before and will continue to, it isn’t everything. Let’s look at something like the first amendment, which is crystal-clear about its intent. Certainly if the founders wanted to be cryptic, it would have been easy to make that amendment open to interpretation, but they didn’t do that on purpose, because leaving the first amendment open to interpretation leaves it open to modification, to usurpation, and that would go against the Lockean ideal for which the constitution was based.

So why then would the founders make such an error as to leave the second amendment so open to interpretation that 200 year later, it is still a hotly contested issue for debate? They didn’t! It is only cryptic, if you need it to be, to ultimately serve a purpose. If your job is to sell guns, than you want the second amendment to be the holy grail of laws, like a commandment set in stone, handed to Moses, and brought down from the mountain. Because if the second amendment is open to interpretation, then it leads people to have to choose a side.

But I believe people are simply over thinking the issue. How simple would it have been for Thomas Jefferson to add an additional clause to the second amendment stating that the right of the people to the free access of firearms shall not be infringed. If such a thing had been added, the debate is over, but no such thing was added. Instead we have a comma. Frankly, it irritates me to no end that so much is made over a comma. So let’s have a discussion about grammar, because obviously it needs to happen.

First, during the 18th century grammatical use of the comma was almost always commonplace. It has very often been referred to as being “prolific and chaotic” suggesting that it was overused. Having said that many contend that this comma is so important that by its very nature it changes the central theme of the amendment, so let’s look at it.

 

“A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

 

So the comma can be used in several instances, for example:

1. To separate elements in a series, i.e: The man paid for his coffee, took the cup, and drank it.
2. The comma in use with conjunction, to connect to two independent clauses, i.e: The man was strong, but he couldn’t fight off the flu.
3. It can be used to set off introductory elements, i.e: Although the man being of sound mind, he gave his money to his dog.
4. It can be used to set off “added information,” or information that can easily be removed, i.e: Although the man has never flown before, a fear of heights he gained as a child, it will soon happen when his flight arrives.
5. It can be used to separate adjectives, i.e: The tall, dark, handsome, man boarded the plane.
6. To set off quotes, i.e: As the man sat in his seat he said, “This terrifies me!”
7. It can be used merely to express contrast, i.e: The tacos were so yummy, but messy.
8. And my favorite use, to avoid confusion with a pause, i.e:  Outside, two pennies lay in the grass. The confusion being apparent, if the comma is excluded.

 

So then what usage does the comma in the second amendment have if we are to adhere to grammar? Well let’s look at it again. First if this is ordinary grammar usage we can take the first and third commas straight out. And we would get a coherent explanation: “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” However, it was ratified with the commas, and there is an easy explanation why this is so.

The first comma– between "Militia" and "being"– forces the reader to search for a verb for which "Militia" is the subject. But we don’t get that verb until "shall not be infringed" at the end of the Amendment. The second comma– between "Arms" and "shall"– sets off the verb phrase "shall not be infringed" from the preceding language; it suggests that the subject for this verb phrase is not simply "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms." The effect being, "A well regulated Militia" to "shall not be infringed" is emphasized, thus the result is read as the right of militia to be armed cannot be taken away. – Yasky Brief, US v. Emerson

Now some would argue that if the over use of commas was commonplace than it doesn’t matter because if we take them away we still have something that states that the right of the people to bear arms shall not be infringed. But you must be forgetting the most important part, clause one: “A well regulated militia.” Because for that premise to be accurate, you must yank that out entirely, as it’s completely unnecessary to that interpretation.

If your interpretation is such that the amendment secures the right of the people to keep and bear arms, then the introduction of “A well regulated militia,” under example three of comma usage, is unnecessary completely, because as Tench Coxe, writing as "the Pennsylvanian" in the Philadelphia Federal Gazette, 1788 wrote: “…Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves?”

If we are to assume that it’s meant to be taken as such and there is no reason not to believe it isn’t, than the first clause again becomes entirely unnecessary to the rest of the amendment, and should only be reduced to: “ Being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” And if we read it like this, its interpretation fits a whole lot better with the NRA interpretation than what is actually in the amendment.

The problem we have with this scenario is that it would have been easy to do this, after all, its easier to read, less to write, and easier to understand. But the founders did not do this, Jefferson did not write it as such. Because of this, and the usage of proper comma grammar, we can deduce the introductory element: “A well regulated militia” is necessary to the overall amendment, and the first and third comma clauses are not meant to be separated at all. Because of this, and the fact that Thomas Jefferson was an accomplished author, lawyer, statesman, and teacher, we can assume he knew what he was doing with comma usage.

I would also ask everyone interested in knowing what a militia in the context of the 18th century, actually was, should read the Madison Resolution, June 8, 1789. As it clearly documents what a militia is, and it’s not a gun toting citizen, or an army of gun enthusiasts. It should be noted that these discussions were the initial beginnings of state ratification of the second amendment, and it’s clear in these meetings the defined intent of the militia was in the absence of a standing army, a group of armed, well trained, citizens would exist for the common defense of the people. So we know that it’s clear the intent was that a militia was necessary only in absence of a standing army for defense, and as I have already explained, and what is backed up in the documents, the militia being necessary would be allowed to be armed.

 

Transcendent Purpose

Jefferson was among other things a philosopher and aware of many of the teachings of philosophy. One of which is transcendence. Transcendent purpose teaches us that objects serve a purpose that can go beyond the purpose for which they are created. We have invented many things throughout our history, all of which were designed with a specific purpose in mind. Objects don’t merely appear without a purpose only to be given one. It is this extraordinary usage for which the philosopher would call transcendent purpose. Because for example a hammer could be used to open a bottle, rather destructively, however we invented a bottle opener to serve this purpose, thus the hammer’s purpose is to be a hammer: to imbed nails into wood, or other materials for the purpose of building something else. And the bottle opener, can I’m sure, be used to jab into the flesh of an apple or yank a staple from a piece of paper, but that is not its purpose.

It is inherent in the object the purpose for which it was created. A table is a table, and a chair is a chair, one does not sit on a table, for which a chair would serve its purpose. And so when someone repeats the statement so derisively coined by Mr. LaPierre, “Guns don’t kill people, people do,” they fail to understand the nature of the nonsense of such a statement. For what purpose do guns exist, if not to kill? Like the hammer, you could open a bottle with a gun, and like the hammer, destruction would ensue, however like the hammer, that is not its purpose.

When I talk to others who get defensive over the issue of guns and the second amendment, it is most often when I talk of banning something like the assault rifle that someone objects stating, “Banning guns won’t stop people from being killed,” which is usually followed with something like, “You could kill someone with a kitchen knife, should we ban all knives?” And again, these statements are nonsensical because although the knife can certainly be used to kill someone, that is not the purpose for which it was created. The problem that any gun owner should consider seriously, is not whether any other object can be used to kill, serving an alternative or transcendent purpose, but rather that a gun is used to kill serving the purpose for which it was designed.

Now what I have realized lately is that you cannot have a serious conversation with a gun owner about gun control, because like the blinders of a religious person, the gun being their God or false idolatry, gun control becomes like the science that is telling them evolution is real, the Earth is 4.5 billion years old, and there is no magic invisible sky daddy watching over them. They have no choice but to argue in a contradictory nature, because to rationalize the reality that they own something that was created to kill and that it could be used to kill, is too much, instead merely spouting off regurgitated NRA bullshit like its scripture.  If the gun is not meant to kill, but only meant to be for defense, than it has a transcendent purpose, however this fallacy presumes that you negate its original purpose.

In effect, the NRA would have you believe that bushmaster .223 semi-automatic assault rifle you own is equivalent to a cap gun that merely maims its victims. Now do I believe everyone believes this? Absolutely not, just like I know not everyone buys the bullshit that comes out of the mouths of creationists. There are plenty of people out there who know exactly what their gun can do, and are willing to do it, if necessary, and that is the crux of the problem, now isn’t it? Because one cannot have a serious debate about violence in relation to guns and with a serious face, state the necessity of guns as a means of stopping violence, when the ability to dissuade said violence is predicated on an act and mindset that is and would be violent.

So we are left with a problem, and it’s not one that anyone who owns a gun would like to talk about. That just the existence of a gun, creates an air of violence merely by its being, because its purpose is not and should never be consider transcendent, because a death caused by a gun, is a gun that has served the purpose for which it was created.

So what is the answer then?

 

Are You A Smoker?

I don’t believe you could get rid of every gun in existence without a prohibition that turns the gun into a public offense, as for example, public smoking has become. A well marketed campaign could be used to simply ostracize those guns owners into turning over their guns, or destroying them merely by the act of making gun ownership unsavory. If there people that can convince someone to buy a car they don’t need or a widget they’ll throw in a drawer and never use, and there are, then we can presume that in the right hands anything can become an object of public dissent. In a matter of a decade, gun ownership would go down to the point where you just never hear about it, or see them. But while supply and demand would certainly begin the slow reduction of gun sales, it would not stop the intent of a person who is crazy to walk into a store and still buy a gun.

For this we need laws, and that is what these hearings occurring in Washington now are meant to address. How do we make things safer for everyone without infringing on the rights of others?

I encourage people to watch these hearings as there is a lot of stuff from both sides, although Mr. LaPierre is particularly loony and by himself an argument for gun control.

I was particularly moved by the statement of former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who was shot in the head by a nutcase. With a lot of difficulty, in her brief statement, she made her words clear: “Speaking is difficult, but I need to say something important. Violence is a big problem. Too many children are dying. Too many children are dying. Too many children. We must do something. It will be hard but the time is now. You must be bold. Be courageous. Americans are counting on you.”

I was also recently appalled to learn that at the Legislative Office building in Hartford, hearings on gun control were being discussed, when a father of one of the slain children at Sandy Hook elementary stood and asked, “Why Bushmaster assault-style weapons are allowed to be sold in the state?” only to be heckled by some gun nuts. “The Second Amendment!” they shouted in response. Neil Heslin, the slain child’s father went on later to say, “There are a lot of things that should be changed to prevent what happened. That wasn’t just a killing, it was a massacre.,” holding a portrait of his dead son in front of him.

I have a particular problem with assholes with respect to someone who is grieving. Not only is it coarse, and crude, it is disrespectful beyond anything I could imagine. I am and have always been an atheist. I may take jabs at religion, but there are things I do not do, and one of them is most definitely being disrespectful to the grieving. It’s unconscionable that someone would do such a thing. In my life I have known many people who have died, and I have been to many funerals, much of them being in a church with a mass or other ritual for the dead. Never once have I ever laughed or cursed, or heckled someone for their beliefs during such a service, nor would I. Why? Because I’m a civil human being with thoughts, emotions, and empathy.

If these asshole hecklers had a child die from stomach cancer or something, would it be equally appropriate for that father to then heckle the asshole because his child died? “HAHA! Cancer! Seriously, who still dies from that?” It’s not nor will it ever be appropriate, and the fact that this even happened shows an utter disconnect these kinds of people have with reality, because in their world a piece of steel is more valuable than a human life, and as long as this is true, you can never have a serious discussion, because that requires that both sides are sane.

 

In Conclusion

In conclusion, the argument that gun nuts make, that argue the contention of rights over life, devalue the right of life, the only right for which there is complete absolution, as John Locke would say. We cannot address the notion of violence as a serious reducible thing without a reduction in guns, because by their very nature it is these kinds of people who harbor violent intent, whether they would admit to it or not. The two are synonymous, thus violence and guns are on equal footing, one exists because of the other, and one cannot be reduced without reducing the other.

With respect to reducing the nature of the violent man, more people need to be screened for mental illness, and these people should never be allowed to purchase a gun. And by that same token, a reduction of this would by its nature be a reduction in guns, because the violent nature of gun violence at the hands of the violent would become unnecessary, as such those acts of violence would cease, and those guns would also thereby cease.

You can control guns, and you can control violence, but its not something that can be fixed easily or quickly, and must be addressed seriously over the next few decades. If we are to be a nation of people who want to be known taking the moral high ground, we must first address our fascination with violence, because we cannot hope to convince the world that we are above reproach, and a nation to be admired, when we cannot protect even the most innocent of our population from senseless death, and a need to be violent.

 

“They say that 'Guns don't kill people, people kill people.' Well I think the gun helps. If you just stood there and yelled BANG, I don't think you'd kill too many people.” ― Eddie Izzard

Read More

The New Standard: Some Tips and Tricks of Web Design

I recently started helping build a website for a friend of mine, and I thought it might be fun to talk a little bit about web design, HTML5 and CSS. As with all modern web browsers, HTML5 and CSS are the standard for markup language used on the web today. The best part about it is that with the new elements that have been added thing that you could only achieve with scripting before are pretty easily done just with using the language the way it is.

The Website I’ve been working on for reference. In case you are interested, check it out: The Hunter Supply Outlet

The Old Days

In The Old Days you could build a webpage in a few minutes slapping just a few lines of code together. It wasn’t pretty but it never needed to be. Back when I first got interested in the Internet, most of the world wide web was covered in black text on a white background.

It was pretty basic, but it worked well because people never expect anything more. Soon, images became part of the web, and web pages were flooded with them, but not always in a good way.

The web started to look like a bad bulletin board system, with lots of advertisements, little content, and a whole lot of nothing. But standards began to emerge and people started obeying them, and real development began to take hold. Soon the web began to look amazing, and people took notice. It was no longer the ugly little place where you got your porn anymore, it could be used for some pretty amazing web sites, and now in the Web 2.0 years we have loads of competing browsers, but a standard that most of them stick to, and thus a designer can design most of his code once, and it will remain compliant throughout.

Of course this wasn't always the case, often times you would code something that worked great in Internet Explorer for example, and it would look terrible, or not work entirely in Netscape. But those days are pretty much gone, and with them a lot of the old code has become defunct. In this tutorial of sorts I will show you some simple techniques to brighten up your website with Cascading Style Sheets, and the newest standard of HTML markup code. Hopefully I can pass along some tips that will make it easier for even the greenest web coder to build something pretty nice.

Basic Tools

First you are going to need something to write your code in, I’d recommend getting a WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) editor. These editors will allow you to write the code in HTML if you choose, or design the site using a more manageable interface, one where you can see the elements as you put them in. The best kinds of editors are those that allow you to do both. My preference is Adobe Dreamweaver. Coming in at around $399, it can be expensive for your average person, especially someone who just wants to learn how to build their own website for the first time. However, it’s one of the more advanced editors I've used.

There are tons of free or low cost editors out there. Three free editors I would recommend are: Kompozer, Alleycode, and Amaya. The reason I use Dreamweaver is that I do a lot of coding that is not always in HTML, sometimes its in JavaScript, or PHP, and Dreamweaver easily allows me to transition into that. Also it’s one of the first WYSIWYG editors I actually used, having originally coded everything in Notepad or Vi, so I like to stick with what I know.

You are probably going to need some kind of image editing software as well. I use Adobe Photoshop for everything. This is also extremely pricey at $699 and can be terribly difficult for the average user to learn, however its without a doubt the most powerful image editing tool in existence. If you don’t have the $699 to fork over try: Gimp as an alternative, it’s free and it has many of the same features as Photoshop.

You’re going to need a webserver to test your code as well. Now you can purchase space just about anywhere, it’s usually inexpensive and you get a lot of it. GoDaddy comes to mind as a good choice, but Bluehost is also a nice hosting company. You can also run a local webserver if you are so inclined, however, remember, you will have to configure all the elements you might need to run your code. If you plan on basic HTML then a standard webserver like Apache should work just fine. Apache is really powerful, and you can configure it to load additional plugins that will make your website much more powerful, but it requires more complex configuration, so choosing the inexpensive hosting may be a better option.

You are going to need a modern browser. This means if you are still using Internet Explorer 6, 7, or 8, it’s time to update. I personally use four browsers in windows for testing purposes: Chrome, Firefox, Opera, and IE. On my mac, I also use Safari. I wouldn't recommend Safari for windows, without the security of the mac, it’s been pretty exploitable, and having it is just overkill. My personal recommendation, and preferred choice is Chrome or Firefox, I use them both, although Chrome a bit more.

Also Chrome comes with a built in Inspection tool for looking at code, learn it, use it. You can alternatively download the firebug extension for Firefox.

A Basic Tutorial

Now that you have everything you need, let’s start out by trying some basic HTML.

Each webpage will need to be opened with an <HTML> tag and closed with a corresponding </HTML> tag. In fact, with the exception of a few, all tags must be closed. I will explain further along as I go.

So our initial page should look like this:

<html> 
<head> 
<title></title> 
</head> 
<body> 
</body> 
</html>

You will see in the example above I have opened four tags, and have closed four tags. These four tags are all you need to start your HTML page. The first tag is the HTML tag. This tag let’s the browser know that the language of the page is HTML. The second tag used is HEAD, and this tag let’s the browser know all the elements that describe the page. The third tag is the TITLE and it’s used inside the HEAD tag because it’s used to describe the title of the page. The fourth and final tag is the BODY, and it’s used to display all the content of the page. This is essentially the location where everything the viewer sees on the page, will be located.

You notice every one of these tags is opened, and then closed. If you forget to close a tag, the browser will not display the tag properly, and leave the tag open as text instead. In this case, as these are required elements of a page, it can render the page unreadable.

So this won’t really show you anything special about HTML, so we need to add something to this code to make it actually display content. So first we need a title. We accomplish this by placing our title in between the opening and close TITLE tags. And then we need something for the body, in this case, I will use a simple line of text to show you what it would look like. You will notice, text by itself requires no special tag, though there are some that can be used to add style.
Click Here to open, or Hover over to see a preview!

<html> 
<head> 
<title>This is our example title</title> 
</head> 
<body> 
This is our example body text. 
</body> 
</html>

You will notice in the preview that you cannot see the title, that is because the title is hidden from normal view, and can only be seen normally on the title of your browser window.

Now that we've created a very basic HTML page, we can add an image to see what that will look like. To do this we need to make use of the IMG tag. The IMG tag is self closing, and is one of only a handful that do this. Although it is unnecessary in pure HTML, I will add the closing / to it for conformity. I’m also going to use the BR tag to display a line break between the text and image. So it should now look something like this.
Click Here to open, or Hover over to see a preview!

<html> 
<head> 
<title>This is our example title</title> 
</head> 
<body> 
This is our example body text. 
<br/> 
<img src="examplebird.gif" />
</body> 
</html>

There is plenty of more you can do with the IMG tag like add height and width parameters, or make use of the alt parameter to add display text to the image search engines can read. But for this basic tutorial, its unnecessary.

The next thing you might want to do is add some color to your page, maybe either by adding a color to the background or changing the color of the text. Either is an easy change to make, and I’ll show you examples of both. But first you have to know a little something about how colors are handled with a web browser. The W3C standard require the use of HEX Code to display corresponding colors. You can find a list here. I’m going to make a change to the color of the text and the color of the body in the example below.
Click Here to open, or Hover over to see a preview!

<html> 
<head> 
<title>This is our example title</title> 
</head> 
<body bgcolor="#00FF00" text="#FF0000"> 
This is our example body text. 
<br/> 
<img src="examplebird.gif" />
</body> 
</html>

Now a webpage just wouldn’t be complete without some links. So the first thing to do is choose the color we want to use for the link color, then we can add a link to the body by either linking around text or linking around an image. I’m going to create links for both.  For the purposes of the example, I will also add the target parameter so you can see how we can open a link into a new window. The use of the A tag is used to start a link, the parameter HREF is used to reference the actual url itself, and the TARGET parameter is used to specify a target window. As you can see we close the A tag around the linked text or image we have created.
Click Here to open, or Hover over to see a preview!

<html> 
<head> 
<title>This is our example title</title> 
</head> 
<body bgcolor="#00FF00" text="#FF0000" link="#FF00FF"> 
This is our example body text. 
<br/> 
<a href="http://www.wwf.org" target="_blank"><img src="examplebird.gif" /></a> 
<br/> 
<a href="http://www.wwf.org" target="_blank">www.wwf.org</a> 
</body> 
</html>

That’s basically it to creating your own simple webpage. Now obviously there is a lot more that can be done, but this was just a simple tutorial on how to do it. Now I could spend a lot of time and a lot of writing to show you every single thing you can do with HTML but I’m going to reserve the rest of this article for the more advanced stuff like CSS, because its really the stuff that makes the web so beautiful today. If you are really interested in an in-depth lesson on HTML, I recommend W3Schools.com tutorials, as they have everything you will need to build your own website.

Cascading Style Sheets

Probably my most favorite part of the modern web are the CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) element. It is by far the best way to modify HTML outside of using a CMS (Content Management System) like Wordpress to manage your website. Don’t get me wrong, if you are going to blog, or require something that will constantly need to be updated, you should use a CMS. If you intend to have a hundred pages on your website, you should definitely invest in something that is a little more dynamic, because although HTML can be powerful by itself, it is very static in nature, even with the use of something like CSS.

Using a CMS that relies on something more advanced like PHP to power your site gives it that dynamic ability to change on the fly. But understand that it is not for the faint of heart. Learning PHP can be a handful, luckily something like Wordpress is fairly easy to use, because it has a backend dashboard that does most of the work for you. It’s essentially plug &play. But even Wordpress which is designed in PHP still relies on static code in the form of HTML and CSS that display its pages, because even though the pages are created dynamically, the code that is displayed is of a static nature.

So I’m not going to go any further into the use of Wordpress or any other CMS, you can Google that stuff and learn if you like. I’m here to talk about the Style elements.

So what does styling actually do?

Well the use of Style sheets can add a style to an element that already exists in HTML but may lack the ability by itself, or expand that style globally to all elements more easily.

In the example below, I’ll show you how to basically style text you are going to add to a page by adding the style to the <P> paragraph tag so applies style to all text within that element.
Click Here to open, or Hover over to see a preview!

<html> 
<body style="background-color:#C63;">
<h1>These are some styles and colors.</h1>
<p style="font-family:arial;color:#C9F;"> 
I've styled this text with the arial font in a light purple color.</p>
<p style="font-family:Georgia;color:#CCC;"> 
And here is the Georgia font on gray.</p>
<p style="font-size:12px;">This text is 12 pixels high</p> 
<p style="font-size:16px;">This text is 16 pixels high</p> 
<p style="font-size:20px;">This text is 20 pixels high</p> 
<p style="font-size:24px;">This text is 24 pixels high</p>
</body> 
</html>

That is a simple fun way to modify the style of text. But it gets even way more advanced than that. Text alignment is another thing I like to have fun with because it allows me to create a page that has divided sections that exist in all areas of the page. Without the ability to align the text element, text would all be aligned to the left side of the page. So even if you have an element that resides on the right side of the page, the text within that element may be aligned to the left within that DIV tag. By aligning the text however you want you can do some pretty awesome stuff with it. See how examples below of text alignment and padding.
Click Here to open, or Hover over to see a preview!

<html> 
<body style="background-color:#FFF;">
<h1>Now for some alignment!</h1>
<p style="text-align:left">As you can see this text is aligned to the left.</p> 
<p style="text-align:center">As you can see this text is aligned to the center.</p> 
<p style="text-align:right">As you can see this text is aligned to the right.</p> 
<p style="padding-left:160px">Now here I'm going to pad the text 160 pixels from  the left so it's not quite in the center.</p> 
</body> 
</html>

Another element you see used a lot is the text-decoration style, which specifies how the text will be stylistically displayed. Although this can be used to stylize normal text, it is more effectively used in linking URLs because it allows the user to create links that have no underline by default. You can also use the effect of coloring the link, a great replacement effect for the normal colored, underlined, HTML link element.
Click Here to open, or Hover over to see a preview!

<html> 
<body style="background-color:#FFF;">
<h1>Text Decoration</h1>
<p style="text-decoration:blink">Blinking(Doesn't work in Chrome)</p> 
<p style="text-decoration:line-through">Line Through</p> 
<p style="text-decoration:overline">Overline</p> 
<p style="text-decoration:underline">Underline</p> 
<p style="text-decoration:none">None</p> 
<a href="#" style="text-decoration:none;color:#F00">Undecorated Colored Link</a> 
</body> 
</html>

So now that you've seen some of the cool things you can do with CSS, I’m going to show you some really cool advanced techniques that you can use, as well as give you some tips and tricks on web designing with it.

The Good Stuff

Now CSS is seriously awesome, if you haven’t realized it by now. But I’m about to show you some of the coolest things you can do with it, you might not have even realized.

Gradient Effects

So you may or may not have seen this trick before, but its surely a good one and one of my favorite tricks to do with pure CSS. Creating gradient backgrounds used to be one of the toughest things to do, reserved mostly for those with an image editor like Photoshop, but now it can be achieved merely with a little CSS Code in the background.

The only issue you will note is that this feature is implemented differently in each browser type, yes slightly annoying, but it does work on all modern browsers. If someone manages to use a browser to view this without support, they will instead get displayed a violet solid-colored background. (If you are still using something like IE 6 or IE 7, get something more modern. You are denying yourself a vibrant web experience. And you probably cannot see many of these elements.)
Click Here to open, or Hover over to see a preview!

<html> 
<body>
<style type="text/css"> 
.gradient { 
background:#E01BD3;
background:-moz-linear-gradient(top,#00FF44,#F6FF00);    
background:-webkit-gradient(linear,left top,left bottom,from(#00FF44),to(#F6FF00)); 
filter:progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient(startColorstr='#00FF44',endColorstr='#F6FF00');  
color:#000000;  
height:auto;  
padding:50px;  
} 
</style> 
<div class="gradient" style="height:70%"> 
<h1>Background Gradient</h1> 
<p>CSS Gradient Green to Yellow</p> 
</div> 
</body> 
</html>

Text Shadowing Effects

So I know why I love these effects so much. It’s because again, these used to be relegated to image editing software like Photoshop, and now you can apply them to your elements with CSS. Like gradient, these effects no longer require expensive software to produce, and look equally as unique and amazing. Be warned, some of this may or may not work with Internet Explorer. To be sure, you should be using the latest version, version 10 anyway.
Click Here to open, or Hover over to see a preview!

<html> 
<body style="background-color:#333"> 
<p style="background-color:#CFC;text-shadow:2px 3px 3px #000000;font-size:26px;font-family:'Times New Roman'">Drop Shadow</p> 
<p style="background-color:#3C0;text-shadow:-1px -1px 1px #fff, 1px 1px 1px #000;color:#993366;opacity:0.3;font-size:26px;font-family:'Times New Roman'">Embossed</p> 
<p style="background-color:#000;color:#fff;text-shadow:0 0 5px #fff,0 0 10px #fff,0 0 15px #fff,0 0 20px #ff2d95,0 0 30px #ff2d95,0 0 40px #ff2d95,0 0 50px #ff2d95,0 0 75px #ff2d95;letter-spacing:5px;font-size:26px;font-family:'Times New Roman'">The Night Life</p> 
<p style="background-color:#CFF;color:#fff;text-shadow:1px -1px 3px white, 0px -2px 6px yellow, 0px -2px 8px #ff8000,0px -8px 10px red;font-size:26px; font-family:'Times New Roman'">Flames</p> 
<p style="background-color:#9F6;color:#fff;text-shadow:0px 1px 0px #999, 0px 2px 0px #888, 0px 3px 0px #777, 0px 4px 0px #666, 0px 5px 0px #555,0px 6px 0px #444,0px 7px 0px #333,0px 8px 7px #001135;font-size:26px;font-family:'Times New Roman'">3D Text</p> 
</body> 
</html>

Icon effects

An interesting feature I have used before is Icon effects. You can link icons directly with their file type in CSS, or you can stylize lists. It’s a tool that comes in handy when you want to add something special to some otherwise ordinary text. There is a slight issue when aligning an icon to a list, if the icon is too big. The way to fix this I have found is to reduce the size of the icon to exactly 16x16px. Then it’s super important you remove the list-style by setting its type to none. If you do not do this, it will display the default type for the list, in this case being that its an unordered list, it defaults to a dot.

Another thing to remember is that the default style has to be removed, otherwise it won’t line up properly, image to text. When you use an image as a list icon, the image is always slightly higher than the text. This can be rectified by setting the background-position of the image. Once this is done, padding-left can be used to modify the text position. Doing this is tedious work, which is why you can use the numbers I've already figured out.
Click Here to open, or Hover over to see a preview!

<html> 
<body> 
<style type="text/css" media="screen"> 
a[href$='.zip'] { 
background:transparent url('images/icon_zip.gif') center left no-repeat; 
padding-left:25px; 
} 
ul.social { 
list-style-type:none; 
padding:0; 
margin-left:0;
}
.social li { 
background-repeat:no-repeat; 
background-position:0.1em; 
padding-left:1.5em; 
}  </style> 
<a href="foobar.zip">Foobar.zip</a><br/>
<ul class="social"> 
<li style="background-image:url('images/facebook.png')">Facebook</li><br/> 
<li style="background-image:url('images/gplus_variation2.png')">Google+</li><br/> 
<li style="background-image:url('images/twitter_old.png')">Twitter</li><br/> 
<li style="background-image:url('images/youtube_variation.png')">YouTube</li><br/> 
</ul> 
</body> 
</html>

Flipbook Effects

This is a cute little effect that works with most modern browsers, and it relies on almost entirely on the DIV tag, and how it is used to separate the content of the page. Basically, once you have your div tags separated, CSS is used to make each div colored separately, helping to define the separation between the tags.

By nesting the sectional div colors under the original flipbook, this allows us to create a default state for #flipbook, and a state for each #flipbook div that is nested beneath. All that is needed then is the hover effect added to the div to allow movement between the tags when the mouse is moved over it.

Lastly, the overflow:hidden property is used to clip and hide any content that is not the active div tag. While hovering over the link below will show you the page, only by clicking it can you fully experience the glory.
Click Here to open, or Hover over to see a preview!

<html> 
<style type="text/css"> 
#flipbook {width:500px} 
#flipbook div {height:50px;overflow:hidden} 
#flipbook div:hover {height:300px} 
#red {background-color:#FF0000} 
#green {background-color:#00FF00} 
#violet {background-color:#FF00FF} 
#yellow {background-color: #FFFF00} 
p {color:#000000;font-weight:bold} 
</style> 
<body> 
<div id="flipbook"> 
<div id="red"> 
<p>This is the color red. Hover over me to see what happens.</p> 
<p>This is the color red. Hover over me to see what happens.</p> 
<p>This is the color red. Hover over me to see what happens.</p> 
<p>This is the color red. Hover over me to see what happens.</p> 
<p>This is the color red. Hover over me to see what happens.</p> 
<p>This is the color red. Hover over me to see what happens.</p> 
</div> 
<div id="green"> 
<p>This is the color green. Hover over me to see what happens.</p> 
<p>This is the color green. Hover over me to see what happens.</p> 
<p>This is the color green. Hover over me to see what happens.</p> 
<p>This is the color green. Hover over me to see what happens.</p> 
<p>This is the color green. Hover over me to see what happens.</p> 
<p>This is the color green. Hover over me to see what happens.</p> 
</div> 
<div id="violet"> 
<p>This is the color violet. Hover over me to see what happens.</p> 
<p>This is the color violet. Hover over me to see what happens.</p> 
<p>This is the color violet. Hover over me to see what happens.</p> 
<p>This is the color violet. Hover over me to see what happens.</p> 
<p>This is the color violet. Hover over me to see what happens.</p> 
<p>This is the color violet. Hover over me to see what happens.</p> 
</div> 
<div id="yellow"> 
<p>This is the color yellow. Hover over me to see what happens.</p> 
<p>This is the color yellow. Hover over me to see what happens.</p> 
<p>This is the color yellow. Hover over me to see what happens.</p> 
<p>This is the color yellow. Hover over me to see what happens.</p> 
<p>This is the color yellow. Hover over me to see what happens.</p> 
<p>This is the color yellow. Hover over me to see what happens.</p> 
</div> 
<div style="float:none;clear:both;height:0;"></div> 
</div> 
</body> 
</html>

Rounded Corners

One of the coolest little tricks you can do with CSS is rounded corners on windows. Now of course this feature is supported differently by each browser, and you can forget IE, without external help in the form of a behavior file. I’m unsure if IE9 supports a built-in function for rounded corners, although I’m sure IE 10 will. But the trick to making this work is border-radius property that is now built-in to CSS3. Chrome and Safari use –webkit and Firefox uses –moz, but both support it. As far as I know, Opera 10.5+ supports CSS specifications directly and do not require the additional prefix to operate.
Click Here to open, or Hover over to see a preview!

<html> 
<style type="text/css"> 
div { 
border:2px solid; 
padding:10px 40px; 
background:#8CBF75; 
width:300px; 
border-radius:50px; 
}
.roundup { 
-webkit-border-radius:50px; 
-moz-border-radius:50px; 
border-radius: 50px; 
} 
p {text-align:center;color:#ffffff} 
</style> 
<body> 
<div id="roundwindow" class="roundup"> 
<p>Rounded Corners!!!!!</p> 
</div> 
</body> 
</html>

Some things to remember, and some helpful tips

• Always have a good grasp of the properties you are working with, its fundamental to understanding how everything will work together. So if you are unsure, study up, there is a ton of knowledge out there, and Google is your friend.
  
• Until you become an expert in coding, I recommend you always comment your work. I know it seems kind of lame, right? NO! Commenting is extremely helpful in determining your place, knowing where something should go, or just readability. It’s also very helpful to others who would like to know how your did something, or why you did it. If you are just beginning, it can be a valuable tool to figuring out how you did something, if you leave and come back.
  
• Now one thing I did not talk about, is inline coding. You will notice in all my examples, I've used it. I don’t recommend it. I only did it to show an example of what the code looks like. Instead, you should take all your CSS code, everything inside the <style> tags and instead create a .css file and link to it from within your <HEAD></HEAD> tags. I like to put all my CSS into one common file called common.css and link to it. An example of this would be: <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="css/common.css" />
  
• Try to make your code as compatible as possible. It should work with all modern browsers, I would ignore IE 6, 7, and 8, as they lack compliance and diverged off using their own markup at times. Newer versions of IE, especially version 10 are standard compliant, meaning code that works on Chrome and Firefox should work with IE 10 just fine. Having said that, test, test, test! Just because it works great in your browser does not mean everyone will be so fortunate.
  
• Now some people will recommend to you that you build code for older browsers, text-based browsers, or just the random 1%. Do it if you want, but remember it usually means doubling, or tripling, or even quadrupling up on code. So when I write something, I target around 90% of people, and hope that’s good enough.
  
• Try to validate your code if you can. You can do this by visiting the CSS-Validator run by the W3C. If your code is badly written, it can cause all sorts of problems for browsers, so validate it. It only takes a few minutes and it can be an invaluable resource.
  
• When you're building a website, try to keep everything well organized if you can. I find it makes things a lot easier to find. Keep all your images, scripts, and stylesheets in separate folders, and just link to them from your pages.
  
• When creating new style sheets, use grouping to combine elements that have the same properties and separate them with a comma. For example: h1, h2, p, div { color:#000000;text-align:center}
  
• Figuring out the height and width of particular elements can be frustrating, but take the time, do the math and remember that when calculating the width of something be sure to include the border, padding, and margins. Width constitutes the whole, not just the parts.
  
• Get opinions, its important. Knowing how easy it is for you to navigate your code is worthless, get friends or family to test your code and ask them how easy it is to navigate. If they have difficulty, chances are most people will. Not everyone is an expert, assume they are not, do not over complicate things when you don’t have to. Simplicity is often overlooked and under used. Whenever possible, do not intentionally use an element that does not bring value to your page.
  
• Content heavy sites are great for search engines, and people like them too, however giant blocks of text are hard to read if your color scheme is terrible. Validate your color contrast and fix any errors you find, of course you want to have way more elements than errors.
  
• With the use of styling, you can now use almost any font on your website. In the old days, you were limited by the fonts that windows supported, this is no longer true. Take advantage of the all the available free fonts on the web, especially in the Google webfonts. Through the use of the @import function in CSS or the standard link through HTML, you can now include a link to most web-accessible fonts, and just style with them as part of the font-family.
  
• If you must support IE specific styles, do so using the conditional comments <!—[if IE]> <![endif] –> You do not want to build an entire site and try to support all the differences in IE, so instead create a site using compliant standard styles, and then using the conditional comment, create a single style sheet for IE, and load it that way.
  
• When setting link states, the order must be maintained. For whatever reason, it’s a requirement so don’t forget it: a:link, a:visited, a:hover, a:active
  
• Understanding and remember containment height differences is important. Know that when you use CSS to specify a height of 100%, it actually refers to the container’s height, all elements within would then need to be specified to 100% as well. So the easiest thing to do is rather set the hierarchy of container height by specifying the outermost first like so: html, body { height: 100%} It’s also important to remember that the container should then be set to a minimum height of 100% as well to prevent overflow. Do so by specifying the elements with {min-height:100%}
  
• Use a CSS Reset style sheet whenever possible to help maintain cross browser compatibility. Doing this will reset all values to 0, so they may then be specified by your CSS.
  
• Mobile browsing is taking off, whenever possible try to support them by creating a style sheet that offers styles that can be browsed on a mobile platform.

Final Thoughts

Remember that designing a website should take you more than 5 minutes. Do not go into it expecting a masterpiece an hour later. It can take weeks, even months to develop a well designed site. As I suggested before, a CMS is a good solution if you need a dynamically updated content system, and there are many to choose from. You should also not discount the use of templates for making life easier. It’s often unnecessary to spend 50 hours coding something someone else has already done for you. If you find something you like, use it.

I should also say that the use of CSS to stylize your content makes maintaining a site a lot easier, if you contained the CSS to single linked .css files, as I suggested earlier, and it has the benefit of allowing you to make one code change, that has a global effect, so don’t discount its value. Global changes are much more effective than local changes, and anytime you can change one thing and have it affect the whole site, the better off you will be, because ultimately you will spend less time coding. But you should not go into this believing it will be easy, its not, if it were, everyone would be a web designer.

Read More

What Would Jesus Say…To The NRA.

Those of you who know me and read my writings know that I’m an atheist. But I thought it might be fun to have a little thought experiment about what Jesus might say to the NRA if he were real and wanted to have a talk with them. Recently as probably everyone knows there has been another mass shooting at a school that left 27 dead including 20 little boys and girls, whose lives were abruptly ended by a mentally ill young man with a semi-automatic Bushmaster .223 army style assault rifle with high-capacity magazines. What shocked the nation even more, was the response of the NRA.

While the nation was mourning the loss of these beautiful children, and the teachers who gave their lives to save many more kids from being murdered, the NRA announced they would be making an important statement. Political pundits began speculating what the NRA could be making a statement about? In light of the shooting, many had come out of the woodwork in favor of gun control, petitions began popping up, and many Americans even gun owners began asking the question: Maybe enough, is enough?

We know that after Columbine, the NRA remained steadfast in their opinion that Americans needed more guns. We know that after the shooting death of six-year old Kayla Rolland by a fellow six-year old student in Flint, Michigan, the NRA sent gun enthusiast and president of the NRA at the time Charlton Heston to respond famously: “From my cold dead hands…”

Since the massacre at Columbine High School in 1999, there have been 25 school shootings in the United States. Each a teacher or student is either seriously wounded or more often fatally wounded, and each time the NRA responds with: More GUNS!

Then on December 14th, 2012, Adam Lanza walked into Sandy Hook elementary school, in Newtown, Connecticut  with his Bushmaster .223 and  fatally killed teachers, the school principal, a school psychologist, and 20 first-grade six and seven-year old aged students, then killing himself. Lanza who had suffered from mental illness, tried to purchase the weapons at a gun store previously, but refused the background check. Instead, he went home took the weapons that his mother legally owned, shot and killed her, and proceeded to the elementary school.

Although America has suffered through many modern school shootings, and even the deaths of children, never so many, or so young, and it was this that began the debate on gun violence in America. So when the NRA announced it was going to make an important statement, many speculated that they would finally come out in favor of some kind of gun control. Those hopes were shattered when Wayne LaPierre, CEO of the NRA announced that the NRA would like to arm all schools with guns, increase gun sales, and make sure every American had at least one gun.

It was a little shocking in light of the events of the preceding days.

So I wondered with so many gun owners in this country, and almost all of them being Christian, what would Jesus really think about the NRA and guns in America or anywhere for that matter? It seems to me that the people who consider themselves Christians have no idea what religion they are subscribing to if they believe in the right of gun ownership. I think most Christians have never read their bible or they would know Jesus was not the man they imagine him to be. Although only Christians could see themselves with a bible in one hand and a gun in the other, Jesus would have none of that.

 

Who was Jesus?

Now remember, I’m an atheist, so this is merely a thought experiment, but it’s a good one because those who believe in this stuff, should pay attention to that holy book they put all their faith in.

According to the bible, Jesus Christ was born into a terribly violent world. King Herod the Great, the self-appointed Roman king of the Jews, according to the book of Matthew, ordered that all young male children be executed in the town of Bethlehem, an attempt by Herod to find and murder the newborn king of the Jews. What is known as the massacre of the innocents in Matthew 2:16–18, (don’t even get me started on the violent massacre of the children in the bible) is celebrated annually by the church today as the Massacre of the Holy Innocents.

So Jesus was born into this violence, he lived in it, he grew up in it, yet he rebelled against it, taught those around him to practice pacifism, and spoke clearly of his intention of violence.

Matthew 26:52 - Then Jesus said to him, "Put your sword back into its place;  for those who live by the sword, die by the sword.”

Jesus also spoke clearly of what he believed to be the importance of forgiveness, and to not resort to violence against sinners.

Matthew 18:21-22 - Then Peter came up and said to him, "Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?" Jesus said to him, "I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven..."

Wait a second, forgive your enemy? Do not use violence to solve violence?

Luke 6:27-32 - But I say to you that hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.   If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you?   For even sinners love those who love them.   And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you?  For even sinners do the same.

What the hell? Is this Jesus some kind of weak socialist or something?

Romans 12:17-21 - Do not return evil for evil. Avenge not yourselves, but rather give way to wrath; for it is written, vengeance is mine; I will repay, says the Lord. Therefore if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsts, give him drink: for in so doing you shall heap coals of fire on his head. Be not overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

So according to Jesus only God has the privilege of prosecution. Only God has the right to bring violence, that men do not have this right. But not only is he saying violence is wrong, he says we must treat our enemies with respect and decency, feed them if they are hungry, give them drink if they are thirsty. Clearly Jesus abhors violence, and believes in love and respect.

So the words of Jesus could not be more clearly understood, he did not like violence, he believed in non-violence, and even refused to retaliate against those who wanted him dead. That’s right, Jesus went to the cross, he didn’t strike them dead, or ask his father the Lord to do so, instead begging his father to forgive them.

Luke 23:34 - And Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

Surely, if it were God’s wish he could have struck dead all those who opposed Jesus, those who would wish his death, and those who would crucify him. But God did not do this, he allowed his son to be crucified, because Jesus refused to act violently in response to violence. His belief in non-violence is so strong, he gave his life for it.

 

What might Jesus think of Christians today?

If Jesus suddenly appeared, I imagine most Christians would run away in fear, knowing they created a religion around this man, created dogmatic ideologies, and then refused to stick to them. As an atheist I find it all very interesting, because I choose to live morally without a necessity of God as a basis for my moral sense, instead knowing the brain is fully capable of that without invisible deities to teach us the difference between right and wrong.

I imagine the catholic church would have a very difficult time remaining viable after Jesus steps in and fires all of them.

In Matthew 19:14, Jesus tells all: “Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.”

So Jesus basically states that children  should not be hindered, they are the property of God. So you think Jesus might have a few things to say to the Catholic church concerning their overwhelming attitude toward pedophilia in their own churches, and their intentional cover-up. It’s clear from their own actions the lives of these priests are more important than the lives of the children of God. So I wonder what the Pope might say to that, if Jesus had a little talk with him?

What I wonder Jesus might say to members of the Westboro Baptist Church who tried to picket the funerals of those fallen children, whose attitudes toward homosexuals, would be in direct opposition to the words of Jesus himself. As I have already shown Jesus believed in non-violence and pacifism, but he also believed in forgiveness, and non-judgment.

John's Gospel (7:53-8:11) tells the story of a women caught in adultery who was brought before Jesus. The religious leaders say to him, "The law commands that she should be stoned to death, what do you say?" Jesus bends down and draws with his finger in the dirt, and then says to them "Let the one who is without sin throw the first stone." One by one they all leave until he is there alone with the woman. Jesus says to her "Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?" "No one, sir," she answered. "Then neither do I condemn you," Jesus declared.

This is important, because Jesus believes that no one has the right to condemn anyone else, and further more Jesus himself, he who is in fact without sin, cannot. The text further states Jesus asks the woman to go forth and live without sin, something preachers would say tells us Jesus did not approve. However, this does not matter, in fact, it only goes to show that even if Jesus believed her life was sinful, he still could not condemn her, that intolerance was not tolerable, and as Jesus has stated love even your enemies.

How I wonder what Jesus would say to Christians who so strongly hold close their bible to their chest, while they fill their closets and basements with an arsenal of violent weaponry?

Though Christianity is founded on the principles of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, strangely the book of Abraham, the Old Testament is included in the modern Christian bible. Most people would see this book as the law of the Israelites, and the New Testament the book of Christianity, under which Jesus preached non-violence, pacifism, and tolerance of all. But even in the book of Abraham we find this clear quote of non-violence that applies here.

Isaiah 2:4 "And He will judge between the nations, And will render decisions for many peoples; And they will hammer their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not lift up sword against nation, And never again will they learn war."

Strange that such a passage would exist in the bible along more violence, but it does. And stranger still is the callous nature of those who devote themselves to Christian teachings, who do not follow Jesus, but even the words of God in this passage who clearly speaks of peace, and end to violence, and a dismantling of weapons. Wait a second? Dismantling of weapons? Yes, for this passage refers famously to the Swords to plowshares notion of peaceful disarming.

So how could any Christian instead willfully arm himself? Does he not understand the words of Jesus, who speaks of non-violence? Or the Words of God to command disarming? Clearly something is out of whack here.

 

Words for the NRA

I want to for a second clearly juxtapose the biblical slaughter of innocents against the events of Sandy Hook elementary, for as Joseph and Mary, and many others with them, celebrated the birth of newborn son Jesus, many fathers and mothers cried in terrible grief at the murder of their children at the hands of King Herod. And so do we cry with parents of those children slaughtered in the horrible events of that massacre at the elementary school, people like the NRA, and gun toting whackos, joyfully glee and defend their right to bear arms, to own vices of tremendous violence, in spite of the deaths of those children.

Even before all these children were placed in the ground, the NRA began calling for more guns. So what might Jesus say to this?

Wayne LaPierre said, “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”

Since we know Jesus preached non-violence and love thy enemy, we know he might not be too happy with such a statement. Because violence begets violence, only peace begets peace. One of my favorite quotes is from Martin Luther King, Jr. and he eloquently states:

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy.

Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it.

Through violence you may murder the liar,
but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth.

 
Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate.
In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes.

Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.

 

In a time when children see violence everywhere--in their homes, on the streets, on television, violence is everywhere it seems--now more than ever children need a safe haven, a place without violence, a place where kids can just be kids. Yet under a nation ruled by the NRA Mr. LaPierre would have you arm every teacher, and police every school, turning every school into a prison.

Because let’s get this straight people, if the NRA would have its way every one of these:

 

Would instead look like one of these:

 

The bible refers to in many passages a sense of false prophecy and false idolization. But if much of the bible is philosophy and metaphor like many contend, and not literal translation, then what can we assume from this. That believing in people who tell others they know what God wants is false, sounds great, but if it merely metaphoric than we can observe from it something entirely different. Misdirection is the notion that someone would have you believe something else instead of what they don’t want you to believe, and if we look at the context of the bible in these passages and the messages of false anything, then we see the metaphor.

When LaPierre stood before the press and told people that it wasn’t guns that were the problem, it was violent video games, violent movies, and violent media, it seemed somewhat coherent. After all, there are violent video games, movies, and news. But let’s not be fooled, because if he’s right the numbers should bare this out. So let’s take the number of deaths from gun violence compared to violent video games, movies, and news and compare them. So let’s see more than 12,000 people die each year in the US from gun violence, and zero die from video games, movies, and the news.

But wait a second, Mr. LaPierre said it was the games, not the guns that were the source of violence? If this were true I’d expect that the XBOX would be responsible for at least 13,000 deaths a year, but not even 1? No one has ever hit someone over the head with a game disk and killed them? If it’s happened, its never been reported.

Misdirection is the name of the game, and I think if Jesus were to have words with Mr. LaPierre he might say: “Really? Video Games? But not the guns, they don’t kill people?” He might wonder if Mr. LaPierre consulted the bible before he tried to convince others that the false idolatry that is the firearm, is a violation of God’s law. That’s right, it’s a sin bitch. It’s not even one of the stupid ones that men said God hates like eating shellfish, or hating homosexuals, no according to Moses, it came from the words of God himself.

Jesus who we are taught is the son of God, but an avatar of God himself, thus Jesus is God in human form. So obviously when Jesus is born he is surrounded by Angel bodyguards, and where ever Jesus goes he is surrounded by his entourage of secret service-like men willing to take a sword or two for him, right? Wrong! Jesus was certainly born into a violent world, where violence was the solution to violence, but he never preached such a thing, he never walked with an army of loyal soldiers of God, or punished those infidels? How easy would that have been?

None of that happened, and as it turned out with no army of bodyguards, Jesus was taken into custody, and crucified. But still, he did not hold it against men, he did not hate them for their crime, he loved them and asked that no violence be brought against those who condemned him. Seriously, this guy really lived non-violence. So what makes you think that Jesus, and God--if we are to believe that his sacrifice affected his father--would support this notion of violence can only stop violence, when we know Jesus believed directly the opposite?

When the romans come for Jesus, to bring him to his execution, one of his disciples raises a sword and strikes one of the men. Jesus scolds his disciple and heals his persecutor by touching him, saying to his disciple, “Put your sword away, those who would live by the sword would die by it…there is always another way.” Matthew 26:52.

This lesson is supreme because Jesus is clear, and its fundamental to why the NRA, and the gun lobby, is simply wrong. Jesus was clear, violence does not reduce violence, it only increases it. Put the sword away, in the time of Jesus sword violence would not be reduced by the sword. And to Mr. LaPierre, gun violence would not be reduced by the gun. So when Mr. LaPierre says that the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun, he is clearly wrong, and if you believe in the teachings of Christianity, it is in defiance to God.

Some might say that guns are needed to kill those who would otherwise do the same.  There is a term for this: Redemptive violence, though you may have heard, its merely a myth. Because as it would seem, the idea is that violence against those who commit violence is necessary, or divine, after all you may have heard the idiom: “Eye for an Eye, and a Tooth for a Tooth.” Those who would support the stance of the NRA, especially Christians would use this as a means to show that it’s biblically approved violence, thus arming oneself against violence could be nothing short of God’s justice.

But Jesus himself thought this quip senseless, and spoke of it in Matthew 5:38-48 when he says unequivocally, “You’ve heard it said ‘an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth… but I tell you…” He states that if someone were to take something from you, give it to them, and give them more. If they wish to do you harm, let them, if they must, do them no harm in retaliation. He isn’t anymore clear. Jesus believes there is always another way. Killing to show that killing is wrong, is equivalent to trying to prove abortion is a sin, by blowing up a clinic full of pregnant women.

There is never any doubt to what Jesus believed, and though the bible is clear about: “thou shalt not kill,” if this were really a Christian nation, and the center of all Christian values, why does the bible not mention at any point the idea that “the right to bear arms” is a divine right? I mean, if it were truly God given, or even presumptively important at all, it would be mentioned, if obviously not by firearms, but armament at all. Obviously if your right to protect yourself even by sword, were important, one passage could be found to tell it, yet no such passage exists.

 

And now some important perspective about the second amendment…

People who believe in the second amendment, and refuse to even consider gun control, should consider a few things.

The constitution guarantees each person the right to own and carry weapons. It does not grant the people of this country the right to make them, import them, or otherwise get them. There is no amendment that says, the right of the people to buy assault rifles shall not be infringed. In fact, I feel it necessary to give context to the second amendment, and try to dispel some of the misconceptions that seem to exist around it.

An argument I continue to hear from the right and especially Tea Party nutcakes is that armed citizens are necessary to prevent governmental tyranny. The problem with that is its nonsense. For one, if the government wanted to shake up this country and impose drastically less libertarian laws upon us, no gun would stop this. Our government has in its possession an arsenal unlike anything you could imagine, along with an army of elite soldiers trained in effectively removing threats if necessary. Not to mention any uprising would be seriously curtailed by a carpet bomb dropped from an F-22 flying overhead.

Get your heads out of your asses, your gun, even that assault rifle would be ineffective in stopping a government like ours from not only taking away your liberties, but shooting you and taking away your guns if they wanted to.

It should also be noted there is only one reason the second amendment even exists at all, and it has nothing to do with tyranny. It has everything to do with protecting the government from civil unrest, what???

After the liberation of the United States from England we were as of yet really unformed, and quite a weak nation without any kind of structure. On several occasions after the war, Washington speaking to some of the founders clearly talked about his anger and fear of civil unrest that while they had won their liberty from England, that it could be undone at home if not careful consideration be taken to protect it. Adams and Jefferson met on several occasions to discuss this, for they knew that it would be the people now that would demand new power, for until this point none had existed.

The first clause of the second amendment was directly written for this reason: A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State.

Consider for a moment that there were no police, that only the army could protect the government, so a ‘well regulated’ militia would make sense, because like the police of today (or national guard), they are a perfect example of what such a militia would be. But then there is the second clause: …the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

The problem is one that only those infatuated with guns can’t see, this clause isn’t separate from the first. It should be read as one. Remember again that men like Jefferson, and Adams and all the other founders were wealthy land owners. The necessity of a well regulated militia was more important and sensible than the notion of arming every citizen. It is then we can presume more important to have a militia (police) that can protect those who need protecting, than to simply give every citizen a gun, and say, “Let shit happen as it must!”

We also know as a fact that while Jefferson believed in arming individuals, he did not approve of violence as a means to solve anything, nor did he believe that arming everyone was necessary. He wrote as much several times over the years. His indifference to war was well established, and the notion that arming everyone equally would somehow guarantee peace is pure ignorance, and even those who clearly show an ignorance themselves would never agree that Thomas Jefferson would be one of them.

The founders have been long since dead, and their real intentions are gone from us now, and all that is left is speculation and assumption, and wanting. We as a society must be better than our predecessors.

Those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it - George Santayana

We can continue to take two steps backward, or we can be contrary and take one step forward. I began this article by trying to show Christians that the symbol for their religion would not support this idea of armament, that violence was ugly to Christianity, and I believe I have done that. Having said that, as I have mentioned I am an atheist, and believe that none of this should be necessary to know that guns are bad, that violence begets violence, and that peace cannot be made at the end of a sword. I am a man without religion but it should be profoundly notable that unlike most Christians, my morality is not structured around the existence of a God.

I thought that it’s an incredible statistic that more than 12,000 people die every single year in the US from gun violence (violence committed against a human, by another human using a firearm). For every 100 people in this country there are 90 firearms. This is important because with only 5% of the entire population of the Earth being in the US, we have more than 50% of all guns in this country.

There are currently more places in America to purchase a gun, than there are to purchase food: There are 51,438 gun retailers and 36,536 grocery stores in this country. For a little perspective, there are only 14,098 McDonalds restaurants in the US. In 2010, 5.5 million guns were manufactured in the US and 95% of them were sold in the US, but another 3.3 million were also imported. High-capacity magazines with no actual advantage, other than increasing the amount of humans killed are sold legally. Assault rifles with no actual use other than murder, are also legal.

We can choose to be a nation of violence, or choose to be a nation of peace. Violence does not beget non-violence, only peace can do that. The answer to gun violence can never be, and should never be more guns.

I’m not a believer in faith, for a better term, I have no faith in it. What I do have faith in, is human stupidity, because thus far it’s the only thing that hasn’t failed to entertain me or let me down.

I’m in no way a Christian, but I have lived my life more Christian-like than many Christians I know, and who like to tell themselves they are Christian. Just believing in Christ doesn’t make you a Christian. By that rationale, anyone who believes in Christ even a serial killer, or if you believe in Satan, would be a Christian. It’s not merely the belief, it’s the following, the strict dogmatic teachings that make you Christian, though as I have pointed out, I believe in most everything he believed in, and yet I’m no follower of Christ. But if you do than it should be overtly apparent that Christ would abhor this nation.

He consistently taught that we can disarm violence without mirroring it, and that we can rid the world of evil without becoming the evil we abhor. Jesus truly believed that only love cures hate, and in the words of the late John Lennon, “All you need is love…”

Read More

The Moral Question

I often hear from the religious side that morality is objectively founded in the existence of God. In this article I will attempt to put to rest this issue of moral objectivity, as well as the notion of “deity” requirement for moral behavior. I will also try to explain some of the science that helps delineate the source for morality, its nature, and why its important whether you believe in a God or not. It is often a matter of contention that morality without God cannot exist, that atheism per se has no need of morality, an argument I will attempt to artfully disassemble.

Objective Morality: Is a God necessary to understanding its value?

When speaking to people about morality, I often get into a debate that leads to the question of objective, rather than subjective, or relative morality. This is trigged by the belief of most Christians that an atheist who cannot believe in objective morality has no foundation for a belief in good or bad. That if our morals are not objective—meaning behavioral rules that are without diversity, than what’s to stop a person from establishing his own set of morals. An example of this might be a man who believes its ok to murder children, because it makes him feel good to do so.

If these rules are not objective than there is no real defense to the relative notion, and maybe Christians are right. However, even if this were true, it still does not lead to God or any other deity as a source of objective morality. The claim can be most often made that objective morality works because it has authoritarian backing. This means that we establish rules around someone who governs us in someway. Now this is somewhat true, after all, when a police officer requests to see your driver’s license it is his authority that convinces you to show him respect.

So Christians would then take the leap to the “ultimate authority,” thus God is injected, and if we take our instructions from less than godly figures who just happen to be authoritative over us, than we must also accept that the word of God being the “ultimate authority” and so where could those morals really come from, after all, it is implied in “ultimate” the source is known. So for Christians that authority is God, and it is there they believe that morals come from, objective not because they feel these behaviors but more so because of a book, or belief in the failure of these morals.

So then its easy to see where they are going with this argument, because as Christians they believe that a book (God) has told them to follow his word and not commit sin, and doing otherwise will result in eternal damnation. So here we have morality, forced, but still morality in some sense and certainly objective if the word of God is meant to be the “ultimate authority.”

So when the Christian attacks the atheist with a question of moral source, if not for God, it is with a sense that without a God to be that “ultimate authority” there is no reason that choosing right over wrong holds value. To put it another way, if I do not fear eternal damnation because I lack a belief in God, than what is to stop me from just picking the first random person I see every morning and hitting them on the back of the head with a hammer, what is there to stop me, if not the threat of punishment from an all knowing, all powerful God?

I would answer such a question by stating the obvious: Governments have long established authority over the domain of morality and punishment from committing acts of violence against one another are at least a certainty, in opposition to what is only a possibility of punishment if a God exists. Having said that, even if punishment alone were in fact a deterrence for violence, which it most certainly is not, than its still difficult to argue the notion of morality as one of a religious source, because if the premise for morality for which Christian belief were true, then prisons would only be filled with atheists.

Instead, prisons are filled with a vastly diverse group of individuals whose only commonality isn’t their abject disbelief in a deity, but rather their predisposing condition to commit acts of violence against others. And of course prisons are filled with all sorts of criminals, those who commit violent crimes, those who do not, those who commit crimes without a victim, and even those who have committed no crime, but are merely a victim themselves of a flawed justice system. This is not the time for debating such issues and I will refrain from doing so further in this section.

What this really boils down to is whether morality can be objective, if there exists no authority to impose such constraints? I believe that it can. There are various ways to get to this without too much effort and I will try to explain this now.

Most of us would agree that murder is wrong. Most of us would agree that the rape of a child is wrong. Most of us would agree that beating a little girl into submission for the crime of literacy is wrong. Most of us would agree that shackling chains to a person’s leg and falsely imprisoning them is wrong. But why? What is it about these examples, and the thousands of others I could have used, that allows all of us to all draw the same conclusions? Is it eternal damnation? The threat of punishment from an authority? Certainly not, after all, these are merely examples, thought experiments to draw conclusions. And even if they were not merely examples, they were actually taking place right now, unless you are taking part in them, there should be no fear of reciprocation. So what is it?

If morality is merely fear of authority as established by biblical doctrine, or even imprisonment by a government, than it surely only applies when participation occurs. So therefore, none of the examples I have given you should afflict your sense with more than a passing thought, but you know as well as I do, that the suggestion of such acts causes distress of your senses, and so morality is something more than mere authoritarian nature.

If you are a normal human being with a normally functioning brain and you are asked to picture in your head the rape, torture, and strangulation of a seven year old girl at the hands of a sadistic child killer, as jury members are often asked during these kinds of trials, or asked to view pictures, your normal functioning brain will feel terrible distress at the thought of such a crime, and worse still at the perception through your eyes of having to view such graphic images.

If such morals are merely relative, than anyone looking at these photos might not feel anything, or may feel something but find no fault in what they have seen. Rationality however, tells us this isn’t so easy, that we do feel, we do not want to think or see such things, nor would we ever want to commit them ourselves. But then is that again because we fear reprisal? Or is it something else?

I believe morality can be objective whether it holds to authoritarian standard or not, whether such an authority is based in religion or governance. We all possess within each of us the knowledge of what is right and what is wrong, and because of this, it is intrinsic to humanity. So it is quite easy to see why intrinsic objective morality is essential to human development, human survival, and even human suffering. And as I will try to explain further, suffering is essential to understanding the question of morality.

The Moral Argument: If not for God, for what reason would we need morals?

This for me is a conundrum for which little time needs to be spent, and it’s a simple and irrefutable example. I am the leader of a tribe of people. I need food collected in the way of hunting, and gathering. I am also going to need someone to cook the food that is gathered. We need bowls, plates, utensils, instruments with which to eat the food with besides our hands. After we are done eating we need a place to sleep, so we need people to build homes that each of us can use to shelter us. Winter is coming, so we need clothing, since our naked bodies won’t survive the harsh conditions. Our children need to be taught how to continue the ways of the tribe so they can grow up and continue to keep the tribe growing.

We must all work together socially, to reach an end that justify the means of getting there. Now we continue to work together because it is beneficial to do so. However, what would happen if suddenly one of the males of the tribe decided he didn’t want to share his hunted meat with another, so he jabbed a blade into his skull? In fact, he jabbed the blade into the skull of one of our cooks, and now we are with one less cook, making it harder to feed everyone each night. What if that man decided he wanted to have sex any woman in the tribe he wanted to, and forced himself upon any of them without restraint?

Now you can imagine that long ago before laws were established just such a thing may have been a possibility, and in such a case what would have been done? Ok let’s imagine instead this man is a psychopath, he enjoys murdering people, and systematically begins murdering members of the tribe. If nothing is done, this man will eliminate the valuable members of your tribe, and soon your tribe will die off.

Without morality, then civilization isn’t even possible. So for example when you consider the first hominids to use tools and build fire, homo erectus, somewhere between 300,000 and two million years ago, you can understand evolutionally how it would make no sense that they could get from that point to homo sapiens if they lacked morals. These people lacked any civilization and relied heavily on the tribe mentality, and so its hard to imagine a situation where humans could have developed civilizations if the social necessity and moral development were lacking causing these people to hunt each other down and kill one another.

Now that’s not to say that murder did not exist as I’m sure it did, and we must distinguish murdering from simple killing. Animals kill each other, but you would never contend that a lion who kills a zebra has murdered that zebra, and so we must make this distinction because its evident. But looking back to such a time before literacy, and rational language, pervasive beliefs like deities would have been secondary to nature, and so the idea of morality could not have been founded in a notion of punishment by a deity, and so we most look for a more realistic source for such a contention.

In civil societies its even easier to comprehend the moral dilemma because laws are often established that protect one person from another. These laws of course come from societal moral definitions and constructs, but understandably from the minds of individuals with morality, not from a place of the supernatural, or through some other extreme. Such laws are simple to understand from the standpoint of the individual. I am a person who would not like to be murdered today, so I am in favor of establishing laws that help protect me from this.

I am not a woman, but males could be raped as well, but rape is intolerable for the same reason murder is, no one, male or female wants to be raped, so we have established laws to protect people. In all fairness, the protections granted presuppose the condition of the individual committing violence, or their will to do so. In a sense such laws do not really protect you from harm, but merely act as a reasonable way to protect others from further harm. Thus if an individual murders your neighbor, and is arrested, than he can’t very well murder you, thus you have been protected.

Our laws are really the moral compass for a nation, established to protect everyone with equal discretion, and maybe prevent crime against individuals through authoritarian punishment. Now going back to the arguments of objective morality, this would seem to support the notion that authoritarian punishment has some assemblance in the creation of morals, except that it does not explain as I have said why crime happens at all in the first place. If authoritarian punishment was sufficient, than it alone would be enough and morality would be unnecessary.

Instead people coexist peacefully all over this world, with or without the fear of punishment. So explanation of this is either that morality is innate in us, objective as it is, or it is not. It would seem that dissuasion of deism as an establishing principle in morality is easy and concise if even one atheist is found to have never harmed another person. If this is true, and of course it is, than we must toss aside the notion of deity-based morality requirements and look elsewhere as a source for moral doctrine.

The Moral Mind: A Look into The Moral Center of The Brain

Located toward the back of the brain where the temporal and parietal areas of the brain come to together is an area of the brain called the right temporoparietal junction (TPJ). This area of the brain is essential to the moral decision-making sense of the brain. In terms of importance, a damaged TPJ can result in an inability to make moral choices. In a study done at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology(MIT) researchers fired heavy magnetic signals at this area of the brain and then subjected individuals to an array of questions involving moral dilemmas. In all cases the individuals were unable to make the right choices.

This study is important because it explains how perfectly normal individuals who have never committed an act of violence or any crime for that matter in their lives, have suddenly done so out of the blue, after experiencing some kind of brain damage to this area. There have been cases of people who have never harmed a sole in their life, suddenly raping a minor, or beating someone with no reasonable explanation.

Aneurysms in this area have also been shown to cause deep moral issues in individuals that have resulted in criminal activity after a long life of normalcy. Can we simply ignore such things? So I pose to you a question: If such a brain were damaged through no fault of their own, would this person be responsible for making a choice that could have gone no other way? If you establish that morality is just brain chemistry, something science has and can, and it can be easily shown that it can be disrupted, something science has and can, than the choices we make are they really our own, moral or not?

It begs a more interesting question, if our choices are as chemical in nature as the morality of said choices, than what choice do any of us really have, especially considering that you may regard yourself as good person who would otherwise never harm a person, and through no fault of your own your TPJ becomes damaged, and you murder someone?

It’s easy to assign blame to others, but when it affects you, its not as easy. It’s also more difficult to imagine that you might hurt someone if you have never done so before, but it happens all the time, and people just like you never imagined they could do such a thing.

Researchers in Zurich in a study, began looking at the brain trying to discern altruistic behavior, and not surprising activity involving this behavior seemed centered on the TPJ area of the brain. This points to a causal link between morality and altruism, because in at least someway, functionally, the brain uses the same area to handle these functions.

It would of course make sense that these areas are linked, because altruism is a sense of empathic need, of which morality in some way plays its part. Those who lack empathy, lack altruism because they see no value in helping others, they lack the ability to empathize with their situation thus they are incapable of doing the right thing. Now that is not to say that they won’t do the right thing, don’t be confused by that, those who have this kind of behavior also have a higher self-worth, in direct opposition to altruism.

Narcissism fuels these ends by allowing acts of good will, only when it serves the needs of the individual. For example, if a person committed an act of violence and was being chased by police, he might help the old lady cross the street, if he believed that by doing so it would lead the police to look elsewhere for the criminal who committed the violence. This should not be confused with an act of morality however, because the choice to make a good decision is only moral if it is done so because you belief it’s the right thing to do. In contrast, such an individual would likely walk past the old lady in any other situation.

This really brings me to another topic of which I find interesting and others may find disturbing, but I am compelled to bring up. It is important because it brings up notions of control, and the illusory nature of it. I feel its something that needs to be talked about, and discussed because its implications are so important. It is merely a matter of the mind, but an important one.

The Moral Answer: The Man behind The Curtain, or Who’s Driving this Car?

No subject I talk about more than this, brings about such heated debate with people, than the notion of illusory choices. The idea that free will exists only as a constructive notion, but lacks any real participation in the decisions that we make. It’s important to know that all of the choices that we make are certainly our own, but in knowing this, we must understand what that really means. As conscious creatures in a perceptive world, we make, or think we make choices all the time. Our choices, are sometimes simple: chocolate or vanilla, windows or mac, good or evil.

But we never question whether the choices we make are truly conscious. We assume they must be, after all, we make a decision and live with it. But science is beginning to reveal some interesting things about the brain, and one of them involves an area called the parietal cortex.

What is interesting about this part of the brain is that it is responsible for taking in much of the brains sensory information and processing it. During experiments done on this area of the brain using magnets, a person could be forced to wag his finger, or stomp his foot, or do other things with his body that normally would require some thought.

Its an easy assertion to say that stimulation of the brain could cause action, however its important to mention, this kind of stimulation only affected parts one would normally consider to be voluntary. Thus you raise your arm when you want to, it does not simply happen on its own, therefore such an action is considered voluntary, a result of choice.

What becomes important about this research isn’t that someone can force someone else to wag their finger, but rather that voluntary motion becomes involuntary upon interference in brain function. This would suggest that all functions can be manipulated, and if this is true, than the notion of free will becomes illusory. More important, is that brain scans taken during a study on free will have shown that there is a small delay between the time we act and the time we become conscious of it. Because of this, it leaves no doubt to this fact because it means the brain is making choices for us because those choices enter our consciousness.

So now that I have established that choice is illusory, then we have to examine morality in regard to said choice. Because although choice is illusory, morality is not, since we are conscious of the differences between right and wrong, as well as empathize with those who have been wronged or will be. So now that we understand that our decisions are just made for us, what happens in the mind of someone whose choices are made, but made without a moral sense, made say in the damaged part of the TPJ. This produces quite a problem for those who believe criminals should be punished, after all, if the choices made were not their own to make, and they ended up being amoral, how can we punish them for a choice they had no real choice in making?

The serial killer who lacks empathy for his victims, who was born with a less than functioning moral center, while dangerous, is as much a victim of circumstance as those who he has killed. It has been suggested by many that if we are truly unable to find such individuals responsible for their crimes, than what are we to do? Will they simply not just kill again if given the chance? Most certainly they will. So then what is the answer? I believe the answer to this question isn’t punishment, but containment. For it has never been suggested by me that those who commit violence against others should not be prevented from doing so again, only that they should not be punished for something they cannot control and have no responsibility in.

Estimates are that there are between three and four million psychopaths living in the US right now, some commit terrible acts of violence others do not. But they all lack the ability to make moral decisions, and they will all kill someone if forced to. It is important to know that these people are your neighbors, your boss, your lawyer, someone you work with or know personally. They don’t come off like everyone else, but they don’t act like someone you’d expect to be a murderer. The capacity for murder isn’t within everyone, despite what you may have been told.

You may have heard that anyone can kill, and in someway this is true. But not everyone has the capacity to murder someone else. That is a very specific kind of action, requiring careful planning, and execution, but more importantly a lack of empathy, because its this lack of empathy that allows an individual to not understand their sadism. Sadism is the ability to be overly cruel, cause pain, and harm others with the intention of gratification, sometimes and especially sexually. But those who have empathy cannot be sadistic, because to cause pain to others causes pain to oneself, and this is contrary to what the sadist feels.

Much like the feeling you might get when you eat a piece of your favorite chocolate, the sadist feels by causing pain to others. Unfortunately, there is no treatment for a lack of empathy, and those without it, would tell you they would not want treatment. Imagine for a minute that you did not suffer when someone you knew died, or you saw pictures of murdered children, and instead that which caused you pain instead made you feel good, now this last part might make you cringe because you know where this goes, but for those who were born without empathy, they do not have this foreknowledge, for them this is normal.

If we begin to look at morality in this sense, in the same sense as hair color, or eye color, or that extra toe, or overbite you have, then we can begin to understand that like our choices, its as natural to have or not have, and thus out of our responsibility. You should no more blame the psychopath for his lack of morality than you would want to be blamed for your red hair or brown eyes, and again though I suggest that criminals should no less be locked up for their crimes, punishment is not the answer. Understanding and treatment are really the only things we should be doing to help these individuals.

Now of course there is no real treatment for psychopathy, but not all psychopaths as I have mentioned actually murder other people, which means that while they lack morality and empathy, they do not lack necessarily intelligence or fear, and its possible that such a person could be reasoned with, or even taught to understand right and wrong.

This is where you do a double-take. Because while a person without morality will not be able to make a good moral decision, it does not mean they cannot be taught the differences. The problem with the psychopath is that they simply don’t care either way, so this implies that if a reason be given that makes them care, then you could dissuade violence from occurring. This is evident in many psychopaths who have had a good upbringing raised by good parents, and have had a good education. These psychopaths tend not to hurt other people, but most of them do not know why.

This can be attributed to the fact while nature has seen fit to give them a bad set of genetic circumstances, nurture has provided them with everything they need to be useful to society, and part of that is not harming others. Because of this fact alone, we already know that even if you lack the brain function of moral decision making, you can be taught to at least know if what you would be doing is right or wrong, and once you become conscious of this fact, nurture can take over, and hopefully stop any violence.

Although this has yet to be tested effectively, some scientists using magnets wondered if conditioning could be used to force action, or better yet, force inaction. Research has already been performed on subjects who have compulsive personalities, or compulsions like smoking, or OCD-like behaviors. Subjects were asked to recall something they are specifically compulsive about, and while doing so they were subjected to intense magnetic pulses. After six weeks of treatment some subjects no longer had these compulsions.

This would seem to suggest that we indeed can affect the mind, and such a tactic if it were ever used on a criminal would be an interesting study, because it might be shown that someone who has a compulsion to kill, or rape, or even think sadistically, could be conditioned to not have these urges. Furthermore, it suggests that long after the study ended, these compulsions did not come back, smokers stopped smoking permanently for example, and that is very promising for those in need of such a treatment.

This of course brings up a moral question of its own: If we begin to interfere in the minds of others, at what point are these no longer the same people?

A killer who is no longer a killer, is he really the same person? And in what sense can we rationalize altering a person’s mind so they are no longer recognizable to even themselves?

More importantly, if the person who committed that crime, is gone in mind, can the body be punished?

If the true reason for imprisoning people for their crimes was the protection of society, than wouldn’t a subject whose ability to commit violence having been removed, be unjustly imprisoned if he could be proven to never commit such violence again?

I believe that our justice system is horribly flawed because it punishes people for committing violent crimes for which they may be incapable of doing otherwise. We severely punish those whose defective brains cause them to commit the most heinous crimes through no fault of their own, while we slap those on the wrist or lightly punish those whose intention it was to never commit a crime, but did so anyway. Now I’m not suggesting that accidents should be treated in court with more vigor, in fact, I think even less is needed. True accidents, are accidents and should be treated as such, and no punishment should be needed.

However, it cannot be easily excused that some people even with a moral sense, commit crimes, maybe not violent, but still harmful, so long as they are unable to have to empathize with those affected. This is often the case with bankers, people on wall street, and others in charge of money. People in these positions often commit terrible crimes affecting lots of people, but for which they have no need to empathize, because they deal entirely in money, not people.

Not that it is impossible, but its harder to steal from someone in person than to simply take it out of a faceless bank account. And if ever there were cases where punishment were needed most it would be in just such these cases, because these are people who have a moral sense but do the wrong thing anyway, and unfortunately for all of us, these crimes are given the lightest sentences, though they often do the most harm.

Read More