Time Immortal

The Curt Jester alerts us to a new advertising campaign being put on by the American Humanist Association:

Ads proclaiming, “Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness’ sake,” will appear on Washington, D.C., buses starting next week and running through December from the American Humanist Association $40,000 holiday ad campaign.

Though why believe in good? And if you are going to believe in good than was is the objective absolute you base good on, or is good just whatever you “feel” is good. If good is subjective, why not believe in a god if it makes you feel good?

That is really the question here — telling people to “be good” is all well and (ahem) good, but what is ‘good?’ What does the AHA mean by good? Upon what is their standard of what is good based? Is there a standard on which it is based? Or is what is ‘good’ left up to the individual to determine? And if so, on what basis does the AHA propose sort out what is good and what is not good when what is good for one person is detrimental to another, or in which what one person calls good is the opposite of what another calls good?

Indeed, why even tell people to be good? Good, bad, or ugly, if there’s no God or gods, what we do in this live does not matter a whit, so telling people to “be good” is, at best, pedantic, and at worst is imposing undue constraint upon them.

John C. Wright — who, like The Curt Jester, is a convert to Catholicism from atheism — notes the latent dishonesty at the core of the campaign, or at least at the core of the way it is being presented:

…

“We are trying to reach our audience, and sometimes in order to reach an audience, everybody has to hear you,” said Fred Edwords, spokesman for the humanist group. “Our reason for doing it during the holidays is there are an awful lot of agnostics, atheists and other types of non-theists who feel a little alone during the holidays because of its association with traditional Religion.”

To that end, the ads and posters will include a link to a Web site that will seek to connect and organize like-minded thinkers in the D.C. area, Edwords said.

Edwords said the purpose isn’t to argue that God doesn’t exist or change minds about a deity, although “we are trying to plant a seed of rational thought and critical thinking and questioning in people’s minds.”

Because, of course, rational and critical thinking is an exclusive province of the atheist camp.

In my own life, I just had a fan of secularism tell me this in all sobriety. When I produced examples and evidences to the contrary, he retreated to the posture of merely repeating himself without addressing any of the points raised. In other words, it was an dogma of faith with him, not open to dispute. Ironic, no?

Regarding the article, this is the part that gets me: “Edwords said the purpose isn’t to argue that God doesn’t exist or change minds about a deity.”

Oh, rubbish. That is exactly your purpose, and if it is not your purpose, you are a disgrace to the cause of atheism. If you are an atheist, you believe that belief in God is false, if not morally wrong, then it is your duty, your duty damn it (does that word mean nothing to you?!), to argue that God does not exist and to change minds about a deity: because all honest men must oppose what is false, and all virtuous, what is wrong.

But leave it to the agnostic Jeff Goldstein to give the tone-perfect remark:

It seems to me that “an awful lot of agnostics, atheists and other types of non-theists” should be able to deal with the crushing despair of other people celebrating things important to them without recourse to mobile billboards.

But then, maybe these truly are emotionally fragile types who need that kind of diesel-powered validation.

Ironically, what often cures such loneliness, despair, and feelings of isolation is the embrace of a higher power.

He said, trying hard not to smirk.

Which, I suppose, goes to prove Vox Day’s assertion that the majority of reasonable agnostics find evangelical atheists to be something of an embarrassment, and then rightly so.

Personally, I’d like to see more of this sort of advertising. How about during next Ramadan?

Oh, wait…that might get the AHA sued. So of course they wouldn’t do it.

A lot of Catholic opinion I’ve been reading has tended toward being rather glum at the victory of Barack Hussein Obama in the recent American presidential race…and with good reason, given Obama’s strong support for abortion…even for its most vile methods.

This is, after all, the man who promised to make FOCA into law if at all possible, and then as one of his first acts upon taking office. Not only would this legislation make partial-birth abortion legal again and remove the need for parental notification in the case of minors attempting to procure an abortion; there’s a very good chance that FOCA would also abolish freedom of conscience protection for doctors and nurses who want nothing to do with abortion.

For Catholics, that’s pretty much the definition of “problematic.”

But in spite of that, the general approach that I’ve seen on Catholic blogs and news sites has been to look on President-elect Obama with an air of charity and prayer. John C. Wright’s reflection that this is a time to set factions aside, in particular, resonated with me:

Let us reflect on the duties enjoined upon a free man under a republican form of government in these times; and next on the duties of a philosopher; and finally on the duties of a Christian.

First, our duty as citizens of a democratic republic is to affirm our loyalty to the will of the majority. The losers form rank and file behind the winners in a democracy. Everyone had a chance to vote; but the bargain is that you agree to abide by the outcome, and that agreement is implicit in the act of voting. That is the price you pay for democracy, my fellow sovereign citizens.¹ Anything less erodes the sovereignty of the people. We are at war, and we have a new Commander-in-Chief. During wartime is not the time to diminish the authority of the leadership. It is better, for the sake of obedience and cohesion, to obey a bad leader than to follow the fractures of party faction.

Second, the duty of a philosopher is to regard adversity with Olympian detachment, if not stoicism, and to offer that obedience to the laws that logic and right reason commands. Socrates drank hemlock rather than disobey the laws placed above him, and died with the dignity of a philosopher, the courage of a soldier. Do you wish to live a life free from the misery folly brings? Then you must study philosophy and temper your passions. Can no modern man follow the ancient models? Are we to be found wanting in such virtue, when the yoke of the laws under which we labor are so much lighter than this?

Third, the duty of Christian men is to obey the authorities placed above us. “Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation” (Romans 13:2).

My brothers in Christ, do we take these words of Holy Scripture seriously? As far as I know, there was no revised version of the Bible printed up during the Enlightenment that left out the inconvenient passage after the fashion of Luther scuttling the inconvenient the Book of the Maccabees. This verse was written in a century which also saw Imperial Rome persecuting Christians in the bloodiest fashion the ancient world knew — the faithful being torn to pieces by wild beasts as a popular entertainment, or tied to stakes covered in pitch and ignited as screaming torches for the amusement of the Emperor’s court. Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s was the command of Our Lord, who submitted to a kangaroo court, and who was handed to the tormentors appease popular tumult. Obama is not the Messiah, but neither is he Nero.

No less poignant than the above is the response of the Church herself, as Archbishop Donald Wuerl called upon Catholics to offer their prayers for the upcoming presidency of Mr. Obama, and that his eyes might be opened and his mind given wisdom as he takes on his role as leader.

And this is especially true of Obama’s pro-abortion stance; may his eyes be opened in Christ Jesus, the better to perceive the necessity of preserving the unborn — the most precious, fragile, and vulnerable of all people — from harm.

The point, I guess, is to do all things with grace, and if not with grace then at least with charity. As Obama’s fans and zealots denigrate and insult all those over whom they have emerged triumphant, our response must be to humbly submit to the guidance and wisdom of the Lord; if an unjust time is upon us, then we must confront it prayerfully.

I speak here in a tone which implies that I am thinking about this issue as though I were American, as though Obama were about to become my head of state. I am not, and he is not. But I am thinking in an air of unity with my brothers and sisters in the Church in the U.S., who must confront what is to come.

And for them, my prayer is charity, and grace.

(P.S. don’t miss Wright’s commentary on St. Barbara!)

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

1) in this, good Reader, conservatives must succeed, and then in a way that puts to shame, by way of demonstration, the raving madmen and madwomen on the Left whose very existence hinged — or seemed to hinge — upon casting Bush and Cheney as incarnations of pure evil and malice.

He’s been reading Cicero again. And, being a science fiction author, finds a way to relate it to modern cosmological theories and, in particular, Stephen Hawking’s hypothesis about time and space.

Stephen Hawking asks us to imagine the universe as a four-dimensional plane through which a four-dimensional sphere is passing. The first moment of contact between this hypersphere and hyperplane is the Singularity: as the sphere intersects the plane, the dot becomes a small circle becomes a larger circle, which represents our timespace continuum suffering Hubble expansion.

For Hawking, there is no such thing as before the Big Bang because timespace is represented by the expanding circle. One cannot speak of one second before the Big Bang any more than one can speak of one inch to further north of the North Pole.

The paradoxes of a cause of the first cause still exist in Hawking’s image, merely at one remove. If the hypersphere is drifting through the unimaginable medium of inter-cosmic nonbeing, what set it in motion? If there is such a thing as the state of being closer and farther from the hyperplane it eventually intersects, then there is something like time, or some sort of sequence of events. Where did this hyper-objects come from and how were they set in motion?

It answers nothing to say that these events proceed from no cause, because to assert that something comes from nothing undermines not merely science, but reason itself.

(However, let me suggest that a distinction can be made between Boethius’ answer and Hawking’s, because Boethius has a metaphysical underpinning to his answer that Hawking lacks. Hawking cannot explain how a natural event arose from a condition of pre-universe non-being-ness where nature had no laws because it did not exist. For a natural universe to arise from a non-natural pre-universe by a natural and mechanical process of physics is a paradox. The law that ‘Nothing Comes from Nothing’ cannot arise from nothing. For Boethius, however, a Necessary Being can perform an intelligent and deliberate act of will to create a universe where cause and effect can rule, without itself being bound by mechanical causation. The Creator of a universe can write into the foundations of that universe that ‘Nothing Comes from Nothing’ without Himself being bound by that law. There is no paradox to postulate a Supreme Being with the ability to create ex nihilo a large arena of timespace in which nothing can be created ex nihilo. To use an analogy, Susan Calvin of US Robots and Mechanical Men does not herself need to be bound by Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics.)

I’ve often wondered why I find this sort of thing fascinating, but there it is, and I love it. Wright has brilliance to spare, and is a prime example of the sheer philosophical power that erupts from a marriage of Catholic insight to cosmological analysis.

I would have thought by now that the media/Hollywood/the Left (but I do repeat myself, and then twice) would have reached a saturation point with regard to hatred directed at Sarah Palin…but it would appear that I am very much incorrect in that assumption.

They just can’t help themselves.

First up, there’s Matt Damon (yes, the actor) questioning whether Palin believes dinosaurs existed 4,000 years ago. The reason he’s asking this? Apparently, Mr. Damon cannot sort out fact from parody when reading things on the Internet — the only actual attribution of such a statement to Palin is found in an article that plainly states that it is comprised of FAKE quotes.

But in the pursuit of the election of Barrack Hussein Obama, any lie is pre-emptively forgiven, it seems. Who cares if it’s fake…is it accurate?

Well, no, it’s not even accurate. From what I’ve read, Palin supports discussion of alternative views about the issue, but doesn’t think that creationism — of any flavour — needs to be a part of the curriculum. In other words, she’s suggesting that a school should be allowed to be a school, and a place where ideas can be fostered and discussed, rather than simply taught and memorized by rote.