To Die For

“What does it all mean?” theists ask. Pure scientists believe the question irrelevant. Theism professes one God created the universe, intervenes in it, and sustains a personal relationship with humanity. Science doesn’t look for meaning. Meaning is irrelevant. Unless one embraces religion, nihilism is the default position. Meaningful or meaningless? Western culture is in conflict, and in the early 21st century, nihilism prevails. As I contended in last week’s column, many see the west as post-Christian and maybe they’re right.

Whenever a new principal came along, I’d get a visit. He/she would ask me about my “Beginnings” unit in which I outlined different explanations about the origin of the universe and  of humanity, comparing and contrasting the fading creation narrative and the prevailing big bang/evolution account. It was controversial, they said, and they asked me to drop it. I pointed to the Scopes Monkey Trial covered in the text, and that teaching about evolution was as controversial during the early years of the 20th century as teaching about creation had become in the later years. As the K-12 curriculum in our district existed then, only in a high school elective were some taught the Big Bang Theory. Only in Sunday school were some taught the creation story. Near the end of my career I had some students had never heard of Adam and Eve, for example.

The way Americans understood their origins affected how they perceived other issues, I argued. One principal told me he got flak from both sides: Progressives claimed I taught creation. Jehovah Witnesses complained I taught evolution. I didn’t teach either. I taught about both, and encouraged students to take a position. Some years we conducted formal debates. Students asked me throughout what my position was but I’d demur until the end. Then I’d tell them mine is the Catholic position under which the creation and Big Bang/evolution accounts are not mutually exclusive, but complementary.

Each principal relented and I went on with my Beginnings unit — until September 11, 2001. As part of a current events lesson, I was writing the word “jihad” on the board, explaining to students why Palestinian Muslim suicide bombers were blowing themselves up to kill Jews in Israel when Principal Joe Soraghan knocked on my door. It was about 9:15 am and he motioned for me to step into the hallway. Two planes had hit the World Trade Center, he told me, and that changed everything. Jihad had come to America.

Each September for the next eight years, I’d start with a unit on why we were at war — why radical Muslims wanted to kill American Jews, Christians and atheists. Instead of comparing and contrasting creation and evolution, we instead compared and contrasted Judaism, Christianity, and Islam — in that order, because that’s the order in which each was established — approximately 2500 BC, 1 AD, and 600 AD, respectively. All three share the same creation story. Abraham is a patriarch in all three as well. Christians believe Jesus Christ is the Son of God, but neither Jews nor Muslims do — and so on. We were at war because Muhammed instructed Muslims to convert the world to Islam — by the sword if necessary. That they did until early in the 20th century, and many were resuming in the 21st — and that’s why we were at war. It was the end of one controversial unit and the beginning of another.

Jews established the State of Israel after the Holocaust — which has ultimate meaning for them, and they’re willing to die for it. Radical Muslims deny the Holocaust and vow to wipe Israel, which they call “The Little Satan,” off the map — then destroy America, which they call “The Great Satan.” Those goals are meaningful enough that they’re willing to kill and die for them.

When Martin Luther Day came around in January, I’d quote what he said in a 1963 speech: 

“I submit to you that if a man hasn't discovered something he will die for, he isn't fit to live.” 

Then I’d ask each of my four classes if there were anything they would die for. Only about ten to twenty percent could think of anything. When I asked those few, they said they were willing to die for their families. One said he would die for his cat. Most couldn’t think of anything at all. Are they representative of the rest of America? How many of us have discovered something meaningful enough to die for in this age of existential nihilism? 

Existential nihilism (Wikipedia): “the philosophical theory that life has no intrinsic meaning or value. With respect to the universe, existential nihilism posits that a single human or even the entire human species is insignificant, without purpose and unlikely to change in the totality of existence.”

Having My Baby

Shannon Maureen Conley
Aspiring bride of ISIS
From World Net Daily

They want to go to Syria and have babies for ISIS. Young American and European women are sneaking off to terrorist-controlled Syria and the rest of us are baffled. “Why do they do it?” people ask. Why would they join ISIS? I don’t know for sure myself, but I have suspicions.

ISIS recruiters use social media and promise money for babies, but it can’t be the money. Why not just become a surrogate mother for an American woman who either cannot or doesn’t want to bear children? It’s got to be something else.

Samra Kesinovic, 16, left, and Sabina Selimovic, 15
pregnant with ISIS babies in Syria
From World Net Daily

The women are promised a jihadi husband, but it’s hard to see the draw in that either. These guys are evil. They cut heads off children, Christians, and other innocents. They use women as sex slaves. Their new husbands may at any time become “martyrs” in the holy war against us infidels, but that seems to be an attraction. A British woman tweeted “Allahu Akbar, there’s no way to describe the feeling of sitting with the Akhawat [sisters] waiting on news of whose husband has attained Shahadah [martyrdom].” There’s always another jihadi willing to marry and impregnate them, I guess.

Austrian teens Samra Kesinovic and Sabina Selimovic in a photo they posted online (World Net Daily)

Looks like they’re attracted to men who would offer themselves in violent death for a cause they believe to be greater than themselves. Is that a contrast to the European and American men they know over here? It would seem so. I remember quoting Martin Luther King to my public-school students on his holiday in January: “If a man has nothing he would die for,” King said, “he isn’t fit to live.” Then I asked students if there was something for which they would be willing to die. Most said, “No.” Only a few said, “Yes - for my family,” or “Yes - for my country.” That surprised and dismayed me at the time. It doesn’t surprise me now, though I’m still disillusioned. America has changed. What would MLK think of our young people today?

“They are selling them [US women] this mystical sisterhood of going to the caliphate and being able to be a Muslim in this idealized, utopian society,” warned Mia Bloom, a professor at the center for terrorism and security studies at the University of Massachusetts. “They are targeting these young girls in a very predatory way – the way child sex abusers target young children.”

What does it mean to be a woman in America when there’s no such thing as American exceptionalism anymore? During President Obama’s first year as president, he was asked about it at the NATO Summit. His answer? “I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.” In other words, there’s no such thing. If everyone’s exceptional, no one’s exceptional. Multiculturalism has been pounded into these young women all their lives. All cultures are equal. Europe and America with their Judeo-Christian roots are no better than the Middle East with its Islamic roots.

Do these women crave a solid culture, or meaning? Are they unable to find them in the west today? If they ask, do they hear some nihilist explanation like: “What’s meaningful for you may not be meaningful for someone else”? They might be told to question whether they’re even women. Western progressives who dominate academia claim there are more than two sexes now. It’s not just male and female anymore.

Progressives push the idea of a “gender spectrum” onto children beginning in kindergarten. There are more than two sexes. You may think you’re a male or a female, but you can change. You can choose your sex, they claim and Obamacare will pay for surgery and hormone treatments if you want to be something else. Homosexuality it immutable, but male or female is optional, they claim.

Shannon Maureen Conley (circled)

American and European men have been joining al Qaeda and ISIS for many years. More than a hundred Americans are fighting there now and more than 2000 Europeans. Some of the Americans have been allowed to return here and the FBI says they’re “under surveillance.” After the Tsarnaev brothers experience at the Boston Marathon, that somehow fails to inspire confidence. Photographs of ISIS in Washington, DC have been shown online. When CNN’s Jake Tapper was reporting from Ferguson, Missouri on the Michael Brown shooting, someone flashed an ISIS sign behind him.

Salma Halane, right, and her sister Zahra
From Minnesota, believed to be in Syria now

The first American women to join ISIS were Somali immigrants from St. Paul, Minnesota. That was disconcerting, but might be understood in the sense that they were already Muslim, had not assimilated, and had been radicalized. But when Shannon Maureen Conley, a registered nurse from Denver, was arrested at the airport on her way to ISIS-controlled Syria to become a “slave of Allah,” Americans were shocked. Austrians were too, when Samra Kesinovic, 15, and her sister Sabrina, 16, went to Syria and devoted their lives to ISIS. They’ve since called their parents back in Europe to report they’re both pregnant and neither will be going back.