Beyond Dogma: Can Compassion Exist Without Compromise?

It’s been an interesting week.

Still no movement on the pool. We’re waiting for the weather to clear long enough for the dirt guy to get in. The 10-Day Forecast at WUnderground looks promising for late next week though, at least as of Thursday.

Referers

A referer (sic), in web parlance, is the site that sends a web user to your site. If you were to click the link at the beginning of the sentence, which goes to Wikipedia, their logs would show bobmuellerwriter.com as a referrer.

Thursday afternoon I checked my logs as I often do and saw that ChatGPT appeared as a referer. That means there was a link on the AI site to my blog. I’m not sure what to make of that or if I need to take any action.

My reflex is to look into blocking links from OpenAI, but that gives a sense of closing the barn door behind the horse. I know this blog has been indexed by several datasets used in training large language models, and I mentioned a while back that one of my books has been used by MetaAI.

I probably won’t do anything. A Reddit commenter suggested it wasn’t in my best interest to block it, saying, “Everyone is scrambling to be found in LLMs and AI in general, and limiting training or discovery will definitely impact this.” I don’t much like that idea. It’s one thing to tweak your SEO settings so you rank higher in searches. But why do I want more LLMs to take my work without compensation?

On To Religious Stuff

Yes, here comes the atheist talking about religious stuff again.

A pastor friend of mine shared this on Facebook Tuesday.

You can still remain rooted in your core beliefs and convictions while walking in love, extending compassion, and offering grace.

The accompanying image was of one person washing another’s feet.

I get the point he was trying to make. At least I think.

I don’t agree with him though, or at least I don’t agree with the statement.

What if your core beliefs are something that most people find abhorrent? What if you believe that whites are superior to every other race? Would you be able to extend compassion to a black or brown or red woman? Could you offer grace to a brown man?

Aren’t you supposed to?

What if you believe that women shouldn’t work outside the home? Would you be able to extend grace and compassion to a woman who’s having problems in the workplace?

What if you believe that it’s okay to use government power to force people to obey your religious dogma?

Because when we get right down to it, the bible, in all of its iterations and interpretations and translations is just a collection of religious dogma. Some religions and denominations put more weight on certain passages than on others. Southern Baptists and Roman Catholics don’t believe that a woman should teach or preach, despite Paul’s statement that “God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then deeds of power, then gifts of healing, forms of assistance, forms of leadership, various kinds of tongues.” (1 Cor 12:28 NRSVUE). Paul had the opportunity here to place limits on who was allowed to do what, but he didn’t. That fell to whoever wrote the Pastoral epistles, which likely wasn’t Paul, according to most scholars.

This idea that you can still be yourself after deciding to let Christ rule your life seems antithetical to Christianity. He’s supposed to change you, to make you want to walk in love, extend compassion, and offer grace. That so many people today claim to follow Christ while limiting who they extend compassion and grace to is one of the many things that made me question so much about religion. If Christ demands certain things from his followers then does nothing when they refuse to obey him, then what’s the point of him setting down rules?

Einstein is reported to have said, “Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced.” I submit that laws that aren’t enforced are just as destructive of respect as those that cannot be enforced.

And don’t get me started on the idea of delayed punishment. Consequences have to be applied when the offense occurs or is discovered, not decades later.

Choosing Dogma Over Protecting Children

Washington State just passed (and its governor signed) Senate Bill 5375, “Relating to the duty of clergy to report child abuse and neglect.” The new law specifically added members of the clergy as “mandatory reporters,” requiring them to report child abuse and neglect. What sets the Washington law apart from many others is that specifically includes information gathered in confession.

The Catholic Church, claims the seal of the confessional is inviolable, and says that any priest who obeys this law will be excommunicated. No word on whether the Church will cover their defense bill for breaking the law.

Even more disturbing is that the Department of Justice is now investigating the bill, claiming that the new law could be a civil rights violation because it interferes with the right of Catholic priests to practice their religion. I’d like to know if DOJ is investigating the other four or five states that don’t excuse priests from mandatory reporting of crimes disclosed in confession.

I might have just a smidgen of support for the Catholics if their position was supported by literally anything that Jesus said. But as far as I can see, it’s not. Granted, I grew up Lutheran, not Catholic. But I don’t find anything in the bible that protects something you say to a priest and requires a priest to keep it secret.

The Wiki article doesn’t have any bible citations. It explains that the confessional seal was established at least as early as 1215. Pope Pius X taught that disclosure would be punished “both temporally and eternally.”

I wonder what church law says about someone who had the opportunity to prevent a grievous sin and didn’t. The bible mentions millstones in Luke and Matthew, though I’m not clear about the context of “little ones” in those references.

At any rate, without biblical support for this position, it’s just dogma, and dogma comes from man. Fallen, sinful man, whose best efforts at righteousness are no better than used menstrual rags (Isaiah 64:6, if you’re wondering).

Given its history of sex abuse, the Catholic Church should be ashamed of its efforts to protect the people who prey on children.

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