Time Immortal

Nicholas — the same one as before? If so: my goodness, an atheistic trifecta! What a month! — writes in with some additional commentary on this article (and possibly this one as well).

It wasn’t Chesterton. See http://www.chesterton.org/qmeister2/any-everything.htm

[Well, not Chesterton directly, although he doubtless would have agreed with the statement! -- Ken]

And it’s not true. I know many Christians who also believe in homeopathy (for instance) [So do I -- my wife is one of them. They believe in it, in my experience, because it has demonstrably worked in their lives (which is not "belief" at all -- one need not believe in something that has been demonstrably proven). Certainly that has been the case with Grace; homeopathic remedies saved her life. — Ken]. And many atheists who are also skeptical about Astrology (for instance). On the other hand, the Father Brown stories are delightful.

As to the main point, I completely agree with you about the dangers of SatNav. Drivers who rely on it are most unwise to abandon any attempt to master map-reading, and do seem to lose their common sense as well. Bit like negotiating the moral maze, really. We have to work it out for ourselves, using what I would call the consensus of people of good will, and I guess you might call the natural law? There isn’t a MoralPS, either in the Bible (as I guess you would agree?) or even in the traditions of the RC Church, as I know you would not agree.

Utterly trivial point, but I guess you would rather get it right: a theodicy is an (attempted) excuse for a (postulated) benign God, in the face of the continual suffering of many life forms on this planet. Look it up in a dictionary, or the Catholic Encyclopedia, if you don’t believe me.

I realize, O Reader, that I tend to take the shortcut of using the term “theodicy” when describing the rather trivial atheist objection to faith that is more properly called the “problem” of evil (or, alternatively, the “problem” of suffering). That it’s a non-issue for Christians doesn’t yet seemed to have registered with proponents of atheism, especially in the online realm, but that’s neither here nor there — they are, after all, welcome to their ignorance. I see no need to make “excuses” for my faith; it is quite defensible without having to resort to any sort of desperate denials and dodges.

Still, I trust that my meaning is clear enough — certainly, Nicholas seems to have caught it.

As to Nicholas‘ remark about MoralPS and the lack thereof, I of course would disagree. Certainly there is a very concrete moral system articulated in the Bible, beginning with Mosaic Law and later re-shaped in Christ by the later authors of the New Testament. Of course, this is simply a formal articulation of a fundamental intrinsic morality — natural law — that has been woven into the fabric of creation. And the doctrine of the Church takes both sources together in its articulation of what it means to be “moral.”

In other words, there is certainly a form of MoralPS, as Nicholas would term it. Not unlike a GPS unit on the dashboard of a car, however, people are free to obey or ignore it at their whim (and, possibly, at their peril). Equally, people should double-check each “source” against the others, much as how a GPS unit should be checked against a map and against real-world observation of the facts on the ground. And finally, it serves to note that not everyone has a GPS unit in their car, in the same way that teaching pertaining to true Morality (that is: Catholic Christian morality) has not yet been brought to every person on Earth, nor has every person to whom it has been brought elected to adopt its use. This is a concept I cover elsewhere.

Which is not to say that the morality itself is incorrect. No, it is simply to observe that some people are wrong. Not that the revelation of human incorrectness should come as any shock — we all screw up, and then quite often. And certainly, our willingness to trust technology more than it deserves to be trusted is but one example thereof.