timeimmortal

Samuel Skinner evidently objects to this article. Mr. Skinner has written in before, but I’ve never known him to go off half-cocked like he does below.

Wow… I always thought believers carried about what they believed and what they said- the whole “truth” thing.

Still, I have to hand it to you- you manage to attack truth AND to declare Chrsitianity to be true. Make up your mind! If “people are a religious species” than you don’t care about truth. If you focus on “Christianity will prevail” than you DO care about truth.

Well? Truth or Christianity?

Hmm.. do I count as a fan of Dawkins? Cause I am more of an Ignersol guy myself…

Just for reference, O Reader, Colonel Ingersol would be one of the men that Chesterton credited with his becoming inspired to convert to Christianity. I trust that Richard Dawkins needs no introduction.

As to the dichotomy that Mr. Skinner is attempting to establish between Christianity and truth, by assuming that there is a dichotomy in existence between two of the statements made in my previous article. I think the source of his erroneous assumption is that he looks at my statement that “humanity is a religious species” and thinks it false, which of course gives him the basis with which to declare that I “don’t care about truth.”

This would be a straw-man argument, O Reader.

That’s not to say that I don’t regard humanity as being a religious species — indeed, we are. At every turn, and in every age, humanity has sought after a deeper understanding of the supernatural, from our primitive understanding of the divine through powerful acts of the natural world, to the present revelation of God as Trinity that is the utmost truth of that realm which is beyond our own. The question, for humanity, has never been whether we shall believe, but what we shall believe, and that remains true even today, even in regard to those who profess atheism.

Because even atheists have their beliefs. The aforementioned Richard Dawkins would have us believe in science. Daniel Dennett would have us believe that the randomly-evolved chunk of meat situated a few inches behind our eyes is capable of rational thought as an outcome of random chemical and hormonal interactions. Sam Harris would have us believe in Buddhism, more or less. It’s not necessarily a case, in such instances, of seeking after the supernatural…but it’s still acting out the human impulse to believe.

Humans are designed to believe. That’s one truth.

We’re designed to believe because there is a supernatural divinity “out there” that desires us to believe in it, and which has fashioned us with the capacity to believe*. That’s another truth.

Christianity is the final revelation of the nature of that divinity. That’s another truth.

Christianity, being the final revelation of that divinity, will prevail. That’s one last truth.

And there’s no conflict between any of those statements, those truths…especially not between the first and the last.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

* a number of atheists tend to adopt the stance that religious belief is a form of mental illness. Given that most human beings have been and are religious, and given that humanity has been designed to believe (as evidenced by the fact that in every age, humanity has pursued belief), it seems more reasonable to suggest that those who are passionately atheist are either suffering from some form of mental illness, or else struggling under a genetic/evolutionary defect of some kind.

~ by Kenneth on May 21, 2008.