timeimmortal

The professor who briefly appears in the segment, Denis O. Lamoureux of the University of Alberta, is a former theology professor whom I still keep in touch with. He was briefly quoted, as the Reader can see, in a discussion with Richard Dawkins on TVOntario’s “Agenda” program.

Dawkins has his opinions, and I have mine. What I wanted to remark on in the video is how trapped, how very stuck, Dawkins is in his view of the relationship between science and Religion as being a dichotomy. He cannot grasp that an excellent science would believe in God not out of some kind of desperation, but by conscious choice that emerges out of reasoned consideration. Dr. Lamoureux (or Dr. Dr. Dr. Lamoureux — he holds three PhDs, two of them in scientific fields) was an atheist for no small length of time.

Dawkins is so trapped in this dichotomy that he can’t help but attempt to pigeonhole Dr. Lamoureux by essentially declaring that Denis uses his religion to explain away gaps in the evolutionary process. Perhaps Dawkins can be excused for not having gotten to know Dr. Lamoureux as well as he should have — suffice to say that anyone who knows Denis knows that the last thing he believes is a “God of the Gaps” model of creation.

When Denis talks about God being “behind” the science, he’s not talking about a God who simply guides the process past the rocky spots and yet-unexplained gaps in its record. Instead, he’s talking about the sort of God I discuss in this article here — a God who created all things out of His endless love, who continues to pour our His love upon creation, and to whose love creation responds in a multitude of amazing ways…including the emergence of life itself.

Update: Welcome, WebElf readers!

A friend of mine once put to me an example concerning the orientation of hypothetical magnetic dipoles in a hypothetical box. From within the box, it appeared that the orientation of the dipoles was randomly shifting; from the outside of the box, it was apparent that no such thing was transpiring, as one could plainly see the small toddler with the magnetic toy playing on and near the box.

I tend to think of this example when people talk of evolutionary developments as being unpredictable products of mere chance. I do not contest that such things are unpredictable; I contest, very sharply, the notion that pure chance alone had a hand in the developments. We are inside the box; we cannot see if anyone is playing with a magnet outside of it. Perhaps, on that basis, we can be forgiven for reaching the wrong conclusion. Nevertheless, it’s still the wrong conclusion.

I say this to preface a mention of this rather fortunate discovery of direct evidence of evolution in action, because while I lament the attribution of the event to purely random chance, I nevertheless acknowledge that it’s an exciting discovery, and a bit of a shot in the arm for those who oppose the theory of evolution on some principle (especially my fellow Christians who do so):

A major evolutionary innovation has unfurled right in front of researchers’ eyes. It’s the first time evolution has been caught in the act of making such a rare and complex new trait.

…

Twenty years ago, evolutionary biologist Richard Lenski of Michigan State University in East Lansing, US, took a single Escherichia coli bacterium and used its descendants to found 12 laboratory populations.

The 12 have been growing ever since, gradually accumulating mutations and evolving for more than 44,000 generations, while Lenski watches what happens.

…sometime around the 31,500th generation, something dramatic happened in just one of the populations – the bacteria suddenly acquired the ability to metabolise citrate, a second nutrient in their culture medium that E. coli normally cannot use.

Indeed, the inability to use citrate is one of the traits by which bacteriologists distinguish E. coli from other species. The citrate-using mutants increased in population size and diversity.

…Lenski turned to his freezer, where he had saved samples of each population every 500 generations. These allowed him to replay history from any starting point he chose, by reviving the bacteria and letting evolution “replay” again.

…The replays showed that even when he looked at trillions of cells, only the original population re-evolved Cit+ – and only when he started the replay from generation 20,000 or greater. Something, he concluded, must have happened around generation 20,000 that laid the groundwork for Cit+ to later evolve.

Lenski and his colleagues are now working to identify just what that earlier change was, and how it made the Cit+ mutation possible more than 10,000 generations later.

In the meantime, the experiment stands as proof that evolution does not always lead to the best possible outcome. Instead, a chance event can sometimes open evolutionary doors for one population that remain forever closed to other populations with different histories.

Discoveries like this affirm my faith in God, I find, because they carry with them a profound sense of wonder and amazement at the subtle, yet profound, intricacies upon which all of creation is constructed. In a sense, I pity those who assert that God must have made things in the exact manner suggested in the Book of Genesis, because the God of such a literalist interpretation of the Bible is so much smaller, so less magnificent. The God who knows each created thing down to its tiniest detail, and (moreover) who envisioned and breathed into being each such detail is so much larger, and so much more personal as well.

And it is staggering, to me, to think that God still so loves the world that He is willing to again make the processes of His creation apparent in even the tiny bacteria of the lab; indeed, His love is poured out on them too, and they respond in magnificent ways to it.

Discoveries like this, to me, don’t speak of chance; they speak of revelation — natural revelation, to be specific. They speak of a God who continues to desire to reveal His ways and mysteries to an inquiring, open human mind. As David Warren and others have pointed out, the whole ideal of science — that rational inquiry will be rewarded by way of evidence and discovery — has at its core a very Christian sensibility, echoed in the words of Christ: “And I tell you, Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For every one who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.”

…but creating one in real life, especially a half-human, half-animal hybrid, is not morally sound, nor does it seem all that defensible on scientific grounds. Yes, I will grant that it is possible that some great new advance in medicine might come about because of experimentation on hybrid embryos, but so what? Imperial Japan made some great leaps in the field of medical research back in the 1940s, but their methods included grotesque experimentation on Chinese prisoners. The desired ends do not justify the means by which they are achieved.

David Warren, in fine form as always, puts the proper perspective on the issue:

The current British prime minister, Gordon Brown — the one who did not win the last election, and with any luck, will not win the next one — is naturally among the advocates of the legislation his government tabled. In campaigning for it, he has made shameless emotional use of his own small child, who suffers from cystic fibrosis. He would not himself recognize it as shameless, of course, for he is wallowing in confusion over ends and means. But using his own son, Fraser, as his exhibit, he has very emotionally declared that the creation of hybrid animal/human embryos for research purposes is “an inherently moral endeavour, that can save and improve the lives of thousands and over time, millions.”

…Gordon Brown was uttering an untruth. As even the leading “expert” advocate of the government’s measures — Lord Robert Winston, the English fertility specialist, politician, and television personality — has admitted, there is no pressing need for animal/human hybrid embryos. He had already said that the loss of the hybrid clause “won’t fundamentally alter the science of stem cell biology.” The research could perfectly well go on with adult stem cells, to the use of which there is no moral objection. Even the Catholic Church has contributed directly and materially to that research.

An emotional argument has thus been made, and accepted as perfectly legitimate, where “the end justifies the means.” But where an opponent of the evil means speaks “emotively” in defence of a moral absolute, he is dismissed as lowering the tone of the debate.

We are most certainly dealing with a moral absolute in this case. Our entire civilization (including e.g. all legal codes throughout the Western world) depends upon the sharp and unambiguous distinction between what is human, and what is not. We do not abandon this “front line” without inevitably lapsing into the kind of barbarism of which fascist-era Germany and Japan served as terrible warnings.

Alas, we already crossed this line, in 1967 in Britain, in 1969 in Canada, when abortion was legalized. The definition of what is human, that is extremely sharp in nature, was made legally vague. The sharp line in nature can only correspond to human conception. From that moment of conception, a woman is carrying a baby, not some inhuman “thing” that becomes “relatively more human” with the progression of time. Ignore that sharp line, and no other line can be drawn and held. By comparison, childbirth itself provides no precision whatever, for a child may be born many weeks prematurely, and still survive and flourish.

Evil ultimately only begets evil; that is why the Church constantly cautions against using evil means that good ends may come from it. Though the campaigners for abortion “rights” were doubtless driven by what was, in at least some of their minds, a desire to do “good” — in providing something that was, in their view, of benefit to women, and a tool of emancipation moreover — the ends they have achieved have far surpassed any gains that might have emerged.

Equality and suffrage for women good ends that have emerged from feminism, but these ends could have been achieved without abortion, and might even have been sweeter victories had history played out in that way. As it is, though, what gains feminism has made in terms of expanding the rights and role of women in society have been more or less counteracted — if not erased entirely — by the fact that our society, more than any other, objectifies women in ways that would have been unimaginable to our “patriarchal” forebears. It’s a common charge that the women of old were valued only for their ability to make babies. Even assuming that’s an accurate statement, it seems that in the modern day women are valued for even less than that — indeed, the ability of women to become pregnant is seen by many as something which needs to be corrected for. Our modern society regards women, essentially, as a means of consequence-free gratification.

And it should come as no surprise, then, that our modern, enlightened, post-Christian society thus regards human life in general as something expendable, and as something which can be tampered with willy-nilly at its earliest stages in pursuit of murky, uncertain, and rather unlikely scientific ends. Experimenting on embryos is, to be sure, different than experimenting on Chinese prisoners, but only in the sense that the embryos are at an earlier stage of development. The same disregard for certain categories of human life is still present. And creating human-animal hybrids does not remove that particular moral dilemma; it adds to it.

Update: Welcome, WebElf readers!

mike b writes in with his thoughts on the 31,000 scientists who recently put forth a petition rejecting the concept of anthropogenic global warming and urging the U.S. government not to adopt or ratify the Kyoto protocols or any agreement that is derivative thereof.

Simply put.

Why haven’t these scientists spoken up before? Because they quietly go about their day to day doing GOOD science. Good, refereed, peer-reviewed science. The Global warming people are shrill, loud, and misinformed….Earth History has demonstrated that neither climate nor sea level are constant, two important and completely erroneous precepts of the GW argument. Now we scientists are just fed up at the hot air.

I have to admit that I’ve always been skeptical when people raise alarms over the concept of climate change — given that I live in Alberta, I’m quite used to the idea, actually. The Earth’s climate is not a static thing, and it’s preposterous to argue against changes in it.

Now, the obvious rejoinder might be to point out that it’s not the fact that change happens, but the quality and nature of the changes that are happening that are the real issue for climate change alarmists.

Which would, I suppose, be a legitimate argument, if in fact there were real, demonstrably harmful shifts happening in Earth’s climate. There is not exactly a great body of evidence for this, and what little evidence may exist more or less vanishes with the observation that mike b makes above: when considered in the context of history, what changes have been observed are, in essence, normal. The Earth has had periods where its average temperature has been higher than it is now, and the Earth has also had periods where the average temperature has been lower than it is now.

Within recent history, the global average temperature is basically at where it was a decade ago, and that same average temperature is expected to drop. That drop will probably be followed, at some point, by a rise. That is because such a thing as the global average temperature, imprecise metric of the relative “health” of the ecosystem that it is in the first place, fluctuates over time. Climate does as well, and what fluctuations in climate have been perceived of late seem to be within normal parameters.

The alarmism over these apparent non-issues is not driven by good science as much as it is by groupthink and backslapping. Now other scientists, those not so interested in harvesting a few “green” dollars along the way methinks, are speaking out against the alarmism, and it’s a good thing.

We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December, 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind.

There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.

The list of only those scientists whose (last) names begin with ‘K’ has 1,495 entries. Correct me if I’m wrong, but that is a bit more than half the number of scientists who produced the latest IPCC report, no? And there are twenty-five more letters in the alphabet.

Related: It’s U.S. data, but April 2008 was fully one degree (F) colder than average in America, which makes it the coldest April on record in the last 11 years.

For those who labour under the delusion that science and religion are in some way opposed and/or irreconcilable, it might do well to take a look at history:

History shows that the natural sciences grew out of Christian culture. As the sociologist Rodney Stark has so convincingly shown (See especially For the Glory of God: How monotheism Led to Reformations, science, Witch-Hunts, and the End of Slavery), science was “still-born” in the great civilizations of the ancient world, except in Christian civilization.

Why is it that empirical science and the scientific method did not develop in China (with its sophisticated society), in India (with its philosophical schools), in Arabia (with its advanced mathematics), in Japan (with its dedicated craftsmen and technologies), or even in ancient Greece or Rome?

The answer is fairly straightforward. Science flourished in societies where a Christian mindset understood nature to be ordered, the work of an intelligent Creator. Science grew where people assumed that the natural world is intelligible and bears the handwriting of its author.

Far from being an obstacle to science, Christian soil was the necessary humus where science took root.

Christianity’s unapologetic support of science is borne out by the immense direct contribution of the Church to science itself. To take but one area — that of astronomy — J. L. Heilbron of the University of California-Berkeley has written:

“The Roman Catholic Church gave more financial aid and social support to the study of astronomy for over six centuries, from the recovery of ancient learning during the late Middle Ages into the Enlightenment, than any other, and, probably, all other, institutions.”

…

Just as the Christian church patronized the arts, so it vigorously supported scientific research. The caricature of an obscurantist, ignorance-promoting church simply doesn’t correspond to historical truth.

Some of history’s greatest scientists — Newton, Pasteur, Galilei, Lavoisier, Kepler, Copernicus, Faraday, Maxwell, Bernard and Heisenberg — were all Christians, and the list doesn’t stop there. Some important scientists, such as astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus, were actually Catholic priests!

Christianity is not against science, but against an absolutist reading of science. The empirical sciences cannot do everything, and hold no monopoly on knowledge and truth. Many important questions — the most important, really — fall outside the purview of science.

What is the meaning of life? How should people treat one another? What happens to us when we die?

No matter how long a white-coated scientist toils and sweats in his laboratory, his instruments will never reveal the answers to these questions. Science is the wrong tool for the job.

The saddest part, I think, is that this sort of thing was, at one time, obvious.

Guy links to, and distills, a list of notable Muslim inventions throughout history. What is telling, I think, is that most of the entries on the list all date back several hundred years:

Astrolabes: 9 inventions. The last one in the 12th century. Not 21, but 12!!!

Analog computers: 8 inventions, last one in the 15 century.

Globes: 3 inventions, last one in the 16 century.

Mural Instruments: 7 inventions, the last one is in the 11 or 12 century.

Other instruments: 6 inventions, the last one in the 11 century.

Aviation: 4 inventions, the last one in the 17 century. Two research projects were in the 20th century. Think about that one: of the tens of thousands of aviation research projects during the 20th century, they participated in only two and neither one is particularly notable.

Camera technology: 2 inventions, both many centuries ago.

Chemistry: 10 inventions, all during the 8 and 9 centuries.

Laboratory apparatus: 9 inventions, the last one in the 12th century.

Chemical industries: 21 inventions, the last one in the 9th century.

Industry: 27 inventions, the last one in the 12th century, except for shampoo in the 18th century.

Civil Engineering: 7 inventions, including one in the 16th century and, holy cow, one actually in the 20th century. We got one! Yes! There really IS an Islamic invention in the 20th century. Where’s the champaign?!

Clock technology: 16 inventions, including one in the 16th century and all the rest before the 12 century ended.

Industrial Milling: 14 inventions, all before the end of the 10th century.

Mechanical Technology: 18 inventions, and only one after the 12 century (it was in the 16 century).

Other Mechanical Devices: about 40, all invented centuries ago.

Medicine: 26 inventions, all centuries ago.

Military: 13 inventions, the last in the 16 century.

Navigation: 10 inventions (including such greats like “Mecca-centered map), the last one in the 17th century.

There are about a dozen other inventions listed, all of which are centuries ago.

Islam may be, as Shaukat Khawja (the blogger at RehmatPedia) assures us, “nothing but nature,”, but evidently that nothingness also applies to genuine intellectual and academic achievement. What technological sophistication seems to exist in predominantly Muslim nations is not the product of years or decades of intense, successful research as much as it is a demonstration of people rather parasitically living off of the academic capital of Western nations.
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Count Roland writes in with a comment on…this article, I think. It is, as he himself notes, mostly tongue in cheek.

But, O Writer, are you not a patriarchal Christian who follows the misogynist St. Paul’s God given ordinance to demand your wife be your servant as if you were the Lord?* It says it plain as day right there in Ephesians 5:23. Oh, I remember too that the righteous man Lot offered his daughters for rape instead of his male guests. And isn’t this husband, by listening to and helping his wife contravening Paul’s admonition that women are to be silent and listen to their husbands instruction? As a Catholic, how do you work with these texts and the matriarchal reprisals of secular culture? I can’t seem to think of a third way, can you?

One observes in the case of Lot that the angels of God — probably in response to Lot’s unjust action — quickly intervened to ensure that the whole family escaped unscathed. God corrects for when men — even righteous men — go astray, as all men do.

One piece of Scripture that I’ve seen a couple Catholic bloggers mention in response to this article is Proverbs 31:

An excellent wife who can find?

She is far more precious than jewels. The heart of her husband trusts in her, and he will have no lack of gain. She does him good, and not harm, all the days of her life.

She seeks wool and flax, and works with willing hands. She is like the ships of the merchant; she brings her food from afar. She rises while it is yet night and provides food for her household and portions for her maidens. She considers a field and buys it; with the fruit of her hands she plants a vineyard. She dresses herself with strength and makes her arms strong. She perceives that her merchandise is profitable. Her lamp does not go out at night.

She puts her hands to the distaff, and her hands hold the spindle. She opens her hand to the poor and reaches out her hands to the needy. She is not afraid of snow for her household, for all her household are clothed in scarlet.

She makes bed coverings for herself; her clothing is fine linen and purple. Her husband is known in the gates when he sits among the elders of the land. She makes linen garments and sells them; she delivers sashes to the merchant.

Strength and dignity are her clothing, and she laughs at the time to come. She opens her mouth with wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue. She looks well to the ways of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness.

Her children rise up and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her: “Many women have done excellently, but you surpass them all.” Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised. Give her of the fruit of her hands, and let her works praise her in the gates.

And indeed, my own thoughts in response to Ephesians is to admonish the person citing just 5:23 for being a narrow-minded fool with no ability to quote Scripture in its proper context. For indeed, if one reads past Ephesians 5:23, one quickly encounters St. Paul’s instructions for men. And indeed, if one considers the cultural context in which Paul was writing, the instructions to men are the more radical. It is not exactly new or novel to suggest to wives in a patriarchal society (such as the society of the Ephesians to whom Paul was writing) that women should be obedient to their husbands. It’s a very novel — indeed, radical — thing to suggest to men in that same society that they must love, in the most absolute and powerful sense, their wives.

And of course, if one reads a little further, Paul gives away the game by admitting that he is merely drawing on the cultural context of the Ephesians in an attempt to give an example of the relationship between Christ and the Church. Although he does end thusly: “however, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.”

How remarkably sexist!

(Actually, in the spirit of keeping one’s tongue firmly in one’s cheek, it would probably be taken as an intensely sexist suggestion if one were to say to the husband-bashing MSNBC columnist that she should respect the husband she has just finished trashing in print.)

As to whether there’s a “third way” about it, I do not know. Mind you, I suppose the question has to be asked: has the Christian way ever really been tried, honestly and in full alignment with the teachings of Christ and His apostles? Methinks the answer may be a resounding “no!”

But why does society seem so binary? science or Religion. Matriarchy or Patriarchy. Conservative or Liberal. Orthodox or Heretic (wait, there are some true binaries…)

Other than the obvious ease of such thinking. I think it is because we have lost the ‘and more’ that faith brings to the union of faith and reason. Reason is ultimately based in logic which, in general, has two truth conditions: T and F. There are logics with more than two truth conditions, but they are out of the experience of all but logicians. positivism reduces reality to the observable and the unobservable, but it tends not to remember that there are things which can be observed which just not have yet been observed and, more importantly, forgotten that the five senses, even with aids, are not necessarily the only modes of touching reality. Hubris, you have called something like this before.

Quite. And indeed, it is hubris.

A binary worldview has its uses, of course — Roland points to the distinction between orthodoxy and heresy, which is certainly binary. Equally, the distinction between right and wrong is, if we are honest, usually “cut and dried.” That does not mean that it is always easy to sort out the heretical from the orthodox, or the wrong from the right…but just because the way is difficult does not mean that there is really only one destination we should end up at if we strive to follow Christ.

*Of course I am facetious in this paragrapch and slightly in the next, but this seems to be a ‘teachable moment’ in which the proper use of Scripture as well as the beauty of recent Papal teaching on the subject of marriage can be explored.

Roland adds this to his email. I hope, to the good Reader, that the disclaimer on his part was not necessary.

Nicholas writes in to correct a mistake I made in this article, and to comment on it as well.

“[R]ecent discovery that the Amazon molly fish reproduces asexually”. Er, no. It was discoved in 1932. That’s why it’s called the Amazon molly, after the legendary female warriors. The news is the publication of a paper attempting to quantify how long it should have taken to become extinct, and wondering why it hasn’t.

http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2148/8/88

But I agree that human science is unlikely ever to explain everything. On the other hand, none of the big Religions explain anything. “This or that god did it” is not an explanation. It’s a cop-out.

I’ve corrected the origninal article, although I observe that the error did not substantially damange the point being made.

As to Nicholas‘ second point, in a way it is a cop-out to claim that God “did it” is a satisfactory answer to questions about origins, if in fact one is advocating God’s activity in contrast to what the evidence suggests took place (i.e. evolution). If one is preaching a dichotomy, then certainly one’s invocation of divine action is a cop-out.

But of course, that does not mean that God is not the artist behind all creation; it simply means that instead of adopting an “either/or” stance toward evolution and faith, one must adopt a “both/and” stance. Yes, humanity evolved, and yes, evolution was “guided” (if the Reader will permit the use of a somewhat clumsy term for it) by God.

Nicholas may feel compelled to argue against my having said that, and may feel the need to label even the “both/and” stance as a cop-out. And maybe it is. Equally, then, it is a cop-out to argue that evolution was unguided, which most atheists do.

As to whether religions explain anything, I think the first question that has to be asked is what we expect a religion to explain, and then what a religion really should explain. Galileo said it best, I think, in his letter to Christina, when he observed that the purpose of the Bible (and, by extension, the Church, of which he remained a faithful member until the day of his death) is to teach one how to go to Heaven, and not to teach one how the heavens go.

I think there is merit in looking to Scripture and coming away with the generalized understanding that God is responsible for all creation, but certainly there can only be folly in looking to Scripture and expecting to come away with a complete understanding of the methods and means by which anything — planets, plants, humans, whatever — arose. The Book of Genesis communicates important truths, but does so through the context of an origins legend.

Conversely, if one is looking at Scripture in the hope of better knowing the mind of God, or if one is seeking out the road to salvation, or if one is looking to discover what sanctifying grace is behind — and, indeed, enables and makes fruitful — a truly moral life, then religion has a lot to offer, and explains much.

Update: Mark Shea muses on a related topic:

in a universe governed by a supernatural God, it’s not at all odd to suppose that, now and then and for his own purposes, God may choose to fulfill the Harvard law of animal behavior and, under carefully controlled laboratory conditions, do whatever the heck he wants.

The main thing that irks materialists is that God appears to have no reverence at all for carefully controlled laboratory conditions. He eats with tax collectors and sinners, not to mention granting miracles to unkempt shepherd kids and French peasants with no standing in the community of those determined not to believe. He has the gall to miraculously heal people at Lourdes and cause the sun to dance before countless thousands and Fatima, but since these documented events are not sufficiently reverential of the rules of the scientific game, they are tossed out by the high priesthood of materialsts.

All this merely means that lot of reality is not subject to scientific examination. Science can (and does) take a look at miraculous claims. But even in the fact of something spectacular (like Peter Smith’s regrown eyes after they were destroyed by silver nitrate solution) all it can do is say, “Yep. The eyes sure are healthy. Don’t know why.” For the “why”, you need to apply to the nuns who asked for Mother Cabrini’s intercession. (By the way, I have a friend who actually had lunch with Fr. Smith.)

Some people, who mysteriously pride themselves for being “rational” reject supernatural explanations out of court, no matter how bleedin’ obvious the miracle is. That’s because they confuse “reason” with pig-headed committment to shallow materialism no matter what. I prefer to actually use my reason for thinking. So when a paranormal claim is shown to be bunk, I have no driving need to believe otherwise. But similarly, when a supernatural claim gives ever indication of being supernatural, I have no driving need to reject it.

Not all claims of the supernatural are claims of the divine. Some of them bear strong earmarks of the demonic. Unlike many moderns, I find nothing a priori ridiculous about that either. The Church’s ancient claim that there are non-corporeal intelligence (angels) and that the some of them have chosen to rebel against God has much to recommend it in both scripture and in human experience. So I see no particular reason to doubt it (beyond the knee-jerk materialism of the present age). I think such agents can have effect in our world and I think the wisest thing to do when you encounter a person of intelligence and good will who claims an encounter with such a being is to take them seriously, just as you would such a person if they claimed to see a plane crash.

The skeptical answer to all such claims is “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” That slogan is, to put it kindly, rubbish. Extraordinary claims require evidence. Period. It is extraordinary to claim that light is both a wave and a particle. But the evidence point to the fact that it behaves that way anyway. Physicists did not have to perform seven Herculean feats to show this. They simply had to show that light behaved like a wave and a particle. In the same way, the evidence for the Marian apparitions at Lourdes don’t have to consist of proofs so incontrovertible that every last person on earth is compelled to accept it. It simply has to be sound enough that it’s bloody hard to explain it any other way.

“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” is simply a psychological justification for saying, “I will refuse to accept anything that challenges my comfortable materialist worldview.” You can do that. But don’t insult my intelligence by calling it “rational”. Rational people follow the evidence where it leads. Pig-headed ideologues ignore inconvenient evidence…

I wonder, O Reader, if perhaps Nicholas falls into the category Mark Shea is describing above? There is, after all, a certain sort of person who confidently asserts that religion has nothing useful to tell us precisely because s/he refuses to regard as useful those things which religion does indeed tell and explain to us.

I remain convinced of the validlty of the theory of evolution in general, but I do think Vox raises an excellent point about the recent discovery that the Amazon molly fish’s asexual reproduction has seemingly not caused the species problems in its 70,000 year history — species that reproduce in this manner “normally” see introduced complex genetic errors that over time that will doom the species.

One thing that is annoying about evolutionists is the way that many of them declare they would be happy to abandon it if it were falsified. But every time a genuine falsification is produced, the theory is promptly respun sans substantive modification in such a manner as to dance around the previous falsification. Does anyone truly believe that a single TENS believer would abandon the faith if Haldane’s proverbial rabbit fossils in the Precambrian were found? There are many different reasons that the Molly fish may not, in fact, falsify the theory. But is there a single evolutionary adherent who will disavow it in the absence of those reasons? I doubt it…because it is first and foremost a matter of faith, not science.

Dr Myers, meanwhile, points out that evolution only requires 30 generations. So, now we’ve got a good falsification model for testing a hypothesis based on the theory. Given the reproductive cycles of rats, we can have conclusive proof or falsification of evolutionary theory within five years by seeing if we can turn rats into cud-chewing herbivores or not.

As I’ve observed before, the question regarding faith is not so much whether we believe as it is what we believe, and certainly many people do place a more or less blind faith in science. Joel recently gave us an example of this with his confident assertion that science had not explained everything “yet” — the implication, of course, being that in due time science might just explain everything for us, absolving us of every need to look to the supernatural/divine. That’s unlikely, of course, but some people do cling rather blindly both to the belief that science is able to provide all/the only explanations we might need, and that the methods of science are adequate to discover all that can be discovered.

Neither assertion is demonstrably true, and in fact both assertions are probably false. But there are more than enough people who blindly believe otherwise. Any time you’re banking part of your worldview on a “yet,” you are a person of some faith. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Where faith — whether in God or in science — goes wrong is when it confuses “yet” with hard, cold, facts.

More absurdity from the wacky world of Islam. Let’s review.

Muslim scientists and clerics have called for the adoption of Mecca time to replace GMT, arguing that the Saudi city is the true centre of the Earth.

Call by Muslims for the rest of us to do something nonsensical? Check!

Mecca is the direction all Muslims face when they perform their daily prayers.

Useless reiteration, by the reporting media outlet, of a fact that we already know and have heard ad nauseum? Check!

The call was issued at a conference held in the Gulf state of Qatar under the title: Mecca, the Centre of the Earth, Theory and Practice.

One geologist argued that unlike other longitudes, Mecca’s was in perfect alignment to magnetic north.

Bogus facts and outright lies? Check!

He said the English had imposed GMT on the rest of the world by force when Britain was a big colonial power, and it was about time that changed.

Victim card played? Check!

The underlying belief is that scientific truths were also revealed in the Muslim holy book, and it is the work of scholars to unearth and publicise the textual evidence.

Reporting media outlet treats as credible a stance toward Muslim Scripture that would be derided in same media outlet were the subject some attempt at concordance between Christian Scripture and science? Check!

But the movement is not without its critics, who say that the notion that modern science was revealed in the Koran confuses spiritual truth, which is constant, and empirical truth, which depends on the state of science at any given point in time.

Unusual reasonableness on the part of the reporting media outlet in an effort to allow for the possibility that faith and science can be reconciled? Check!

I am going to have to remember that last sentence, though — despite my facetiousness, there is a goodly deal of truth to the statement. In conceding that, I am not saying that there is necessarily a conflict between spiritual and empirical truths — a truth and another truth cannot contradict each other, after all — but certainly the above is not a stance I am used to seeing in the media, which tends (at least where Christianity is concerned) to stoke the flames of the fallacious notion that a dichotomy exists between science and Religion.

Well, I see that Joel hasn’t linked to me since the last article he wrote, so I don’t know if he’s had anything more to say about my last response to him. And to be fair, I also don’t care; it’s nice to engage with people who come knocking on the door, but I’m not going to be bothered to go and chase them down once they depart the area. Joel is, of course, welcome to continue misrepresenting me in his impotent rage — in fact, I would expect no less.

There are just a couple loose ends I wanted to tie up for myself, O Reader, and some thoughts I wanted to collect in one place.

Firstly, Joel responded rather poorly when I suggested that in my view, atheism was a rather peculiar sort of Religion. In his reply, he suggested that the only reason I thought this was that atheism stated an opinion concerning God (or gods), and that because it said something about God it must necessarily be a religion.

Of course, this is an error I could have predicted Joel would make, given his insistence on seeing no particular differences between different religions or denominations thereof. Had he been a little more interested in scholarship in this regard, he would have known what I know, and would have been able to rattle off a good five examples of religious forms that involve no gods (singular or plural) at all. Taoism and Buddhism are perhaps the biggest examples (especially Buddhism, since atheists — Sam Harris, for example — do seem very fond of pointing it out as a deity-free religion), but other examples can be found in various forms of pantheism, panentheism, and Animism. It is quite possible to have a religion without also having a deity of any sort.

So obviously, O Reader, when I talk about atheism as a sort of odd, counter-intuitive quasi-religion, I am not specifically speaking of something which has an opinion on the existence of a deity. My categories are, as I explained, somewhat broader than that — I merely noted that atheism was a philosophical conjecture indefensible by any evidence or theorem (in other words, it has the same inherent weaknesses that my own religion does, if one employs only empirical categories). Atheism is not grounded in facts; it is a “belief” as surely as my own Catholic faith is a belief. Not that there’s any shame in that, of course — belief is an integral part of the human condition, and a key factor in (among other things) every relationship we are in, whether professional, friendly, or romantic. Things like love and trust are acts of faith.

And indeed, the question is not whether we believe, as the atheists would have it. The question is what we believe. We may not believe in God, and we may not believe in many gods. We may not believe that the Bible, the Koran, or the Torah contain the answers we are seeking after. But we may believe that science holds those answers (Joel seems to…). We may believe in reason. We may believe in rationalism. The point is: we all worship something, whether a transcendent divinity or our own wallet and/or genitals.

That is why truly, genuinely non-believing atheism (if it exists) can only, at most, be a temporary fad in the transition between Christianity and whatever belief system follows it down the way, whether that’s the same or another form of Christianity or some sort of paganism. Humanity can’t not believe; it’s in the very fabric of our being to worship. As I’ve noted, the only question is what we will worship. Will we worship what is true, or merely a simulacrum of the truth?

Grace read my responses to Joel over the weekend and noted that he — along with Nicholas, incidentally — seemed to be a very bitter person, and then one who was hurting. I can’t say I disupte the analysis, having read some of the personal entries on Joel’s blog; neither he nor Nicholas seem to be genuinely happy individuals. Moreover, there seems to exist in them a pervasive need in them to spread their unhappiness to others. This is, I have learned through bitter experience, a fairly common feature of atheists (or rather, of those atheists who care to speak up about their atheism) — they are not happy until all around them are unhappy.

And so, to both Joel and Nicholas, Grace and I pose the following questions:

1. What do you feel entitled to?
2. Why do you feel entitled in this way?
3. Why are you so angry/sad/bitter?
4. If you had to define happiness, what would it be to you?

Honestly, the more atheists write in to Time Immortal, the more I pray for them. And no, I don’t necessarily pray for their conversion (although I sometimes do). More often than not, I pray that God helps them with whatever it is that has saddened or embittered them, that they may find a way through it through His guidance, even if they couldn’t be bothered to acknowledge the guidance itself.

Such men as this are to be pitied.

Joel responded fairly quickly to my last post about him. He feels that I’ve missed the point. Interestingly, he doesn’t exactly do a great job of citing an example, preferring instead to approach it thusly:

He’s decided that I think all religions are the same.

Which is not what I said.

My point was that they are all equally crazy. Medicated or not, violent or not, oppressive or not. They are all people who hear voices from dogs. The difference in how far you must stretch believability between Scientology and Christianity is negligible.

(Actually, I think scientology is much more believable)*

I’m not sure how you can deny that.

Equally, O Reader, it could be argued that the statment above isn’t defensible either. It has not been conclusively established that belonging any Religion is a form of being “crazy.” That remains a matter of opinion (obviously not one which I, nor around 5 billion people world-wide — if not more — share).

As to the matter of stretching believeability, there’s still a gulf of difference between believing in Xenu and levels of mental proficiency, and believing in God and Jesus. With all due respect to L. Ron Hubbard, at least a few historical records (from different authors, even!) concerning Jesus’ life. Scientologist fiction might be interesting, to some, but it’s far harder to swallow and accept as factual than are the Gospels.

And the Gospels are better corroborated by external historical sources.

Before we get too far ahead of ourselves, let’s refresh our memories with what Joel said about schizophrenia:

For example, lets suppose I’m schitzophrenic. And I believe that the dog is talking to me telepathically. Would you see any real difference between me and the other schitzophrenic that believes the dog is talking to him vocally?

Now, Joel is kind of trying to have his cake and eat it too; he asserts that I am incorrect in saying that he thinks all religions are the same. And yet, what is he saying above? From here, at least, his statement would seem to be saying that in his view, there isn’t any tangible difference between the two schizophrenics; they are “the same” for all intents and purposes. Except that they aren’t, as he later assures us.

Which is it?

And as much as Joel chides me for missing his point, he has missed mine:

He thinks that, since I don’t believe in god, then thats a religion as well since, of course, it has the word ‘god’ in it.

That is similar to saying I have a significant belief that there is not a gorilla in my closet.

Now, I am not currently looking in my closet, so I suppose there MIGHT be a gorilla in there.

But I have zero reason to believe there is.

Thats one of the tragic mistakes most theists make. They believe that there’s a decision to be made. Do you believe in god or not, in short.

In my experience, it tends to be atheists who adopt the “either/or” stance; most theists I know tend to first approach things from a “both/and” perspective (for example: the dialogue between science and Religion). Now, I admit that I’m the victim of a somewhat biased sample; most of my religious friends are Catholics. And I further admit that where belief in God is concerned, it’s hard to take a “both/and” stance — if one doesn’t believe in God, one can hardly be said to believe in God, can one?

Still, in my experience, it is atheists who tend to prefer dichotomy.

To be fair, I have talked about atheism — being just one more entrant on the spectrum of beliefs — from an angle that suggests decision-making. And I do think that there is a decision to be made. But it is not whether to believe, because belief is an unavoidable part of the human condition. We are all believers, even if we aren’t all members of religions according to the dictionary definition of the word.

The question is what we believe. We may not believe in God, and we may not believe in many gods. We may not believe that the Bible, the Koran, or the Torah contain the answers we are seeking after. But we may believe that science holds those answers. We may believe in reason. We may believe in rationalism. The point is: we all worship something, whether a transcendent divinity or our own wallet and/or genitals.

That is why truly, genuinely non-believing atheism (if it exists) can only, at most, be a temporary fad in the transition between Christianity and whatever belief system follows it down the way, whether that’s the same or another form of Christianity or some sort of paganism. Humanity can’t not believe; it’s in the very fabric of our being to worship. As I’ve noted, the only question is what we will worship. Will we worship what is true, or merely a simulacrum of the truth?

And here’s the rub: we all believe in things that “the evidence” cannot explain. Joel’s atheism is no grounded in empirical realities than is my Catholicism, and I do hope that Joel can appreciate that just because something is not “seen” does not mean that it is not real; it may mean that we lack the means to see it. The point, then, is that atheism is as much a “faith” — in the sense of being a philosophical conjecture and a belief in a metaphysical reality (or, perhaps more correctly, the lack thereof) that cannot be defended from evidence. It’s not necessarily accurate to call it a religion, but neither is it wholly inaccurate to do so.

Consider:

I don’t actively think there isn’t a gorilla in my closet. It would be INSANE to think that I had to make a choice about whether or not there’s a big old beastie in my closet. The default position is for me to not believe in such a thing in such a place. Assuming that my bedroom isn’t part of the gorilla migratory pattern.

No one would say that one of my characteristics is that I believe my closet to be gorilla-free.

This is technically true. Equally, though, the fact that there is no gorilla in Joel’s closet does not mean that there are no gorillas. And the presence or absence, in Joel’s closet, of something we have the capability to detect with one or more of our five senses says nothing at all about the presence or absence of something we lack the capability to detect in the same area.

Nor, would anyone say, as a another example, that a significant trait I hold is that I don’t believe squirrels talk, or that my mother walks through walls, or that men rise from the dead.

These are, I think we can agree, aberrations from the norm. Without evidence to say that these aberrations are occuring, the default position is that they aren’t happening. But given that this is the default, the significant aspect is choosing to believe in them.

The norm is to not.

Of course, you can’t have these conversations with many theists because they believe there is evidence of god. No one has shown me any.

There is one word, I think, that applies to Joel’s beliefs here: Positivism. I’ve written about that many, many times, and see no need to re-hash prior content here. Suffice to say that if Joel’s atheism is based primarily on a lack of empirical evidence for faith, his atheism is weak indeed, and possessed of a fundamental illogic.

And as I have noted above, the fact that we don’t have evidence for a thing does not necessarily mean that the thing in question does not exist; equally, we may lack the ability to perceive or otherwise detect the thing. Certainly that was true of atoms until recently, and most stellar phenomena as well. Over time, we have developed methods of seeing those things, but other things yet remain unobserved: gravitational waves, for example, or the Higgs boson. Or, for that matter, extraterrestrial life. Perhaps, in time, we will observe these things as well. Then again, perhaps we won’t ever observe them directly.

The existence of a thing is independent of whether we have seen it. If there are aliens on some planet way out there in the depths of space, we don’t know it. But if we (and they) die out before either of us ever has the chance to meet the other, that does not mean that we both did not exist, does it?

Yes, there isn’t any hard evidence for the existence of God or Jesus — not anymore, at least, since Jesus hasn’t taken an Earthly stroll in nearly two thousand years. But then, if there were evidence, it wouldn’t be “faith,” would it?

They only thing they ever do is show examples of things we can’t explain…yet.

But they don’t like that last word.

These closing sentences of his illustrate, yet again, why Joel’s refusal to distinguish between different religions and/or denominations thereof hampers his ability to argue effectively. Methinks that he is too used to debating Evangelicals — personally, I take no issue with the word “yet” (as in, say, “Christ has not returned…yet,” perhaps?). It is, after all, just a word to describe a possible future.

Joel also seems to assume, erroneously, that a dichotomy exists between the sciences and religion, and seems to assume that given sufficient time, science will enable us to completely do away with religion. Obviously, I don’t share that viewpoint; there is no inherent contradition between religion and science, and in fact both are pathways of revelation. And as science continues to discover new and exciting things, I do not find my faith weakend — if anything, it is strenghtened as I become better able to comprehend the magnificence of the works that God has wrought.

We cannot know everything about how God works in the Universe, but it does serve to note that there is nothing to say that God, having built the Universe in a certain way, cannot effect his plans for the Universe and those living in it via the natural processes that are at work within creation. There is nothing to say that God didn’t forge humanity out of successive generations of progressively more complex lifeforms. Nor is there anything that says that God, having devised gravity, could not have used gravity to fabricate the stars and planets that now pepper the cosmos.

Atheists seem to expect that everything about God necessarily has to involve whiz-bangs and lightshows. It isn’t necessarily always so.

* perhaps this statement tells us all we need to know?

Joel writes in with some follow-up commentary to my previous reply to him. Once again, because it wanders a little bit over several topics, I’m going to break it up and respond in “interlinear” fashion.

So it took me a little while to figure out why and how our conversation had gone the way it had, and was very off-topic (as far as I was concerned). I believe that you and I have been having very different conversations.

I confess that this is possible, O Reader — very often, persons of opposite opinion wind up talking past each other, as opposed to addressing each other. In fairness, though, I think I have responded directly to everything that Joel has said, chiding him along the way for his refusal to engage — in any substantive way — the subject under discussion.

But if there has in fact been a digression (I confess that I do not detect it), let us see if we can perhaps get the discussion back on the topical “rails.”

A while back, Brian Flemming (a reasonably well known, on the web, atheist) took part in something of a debate on another guys website. The website in question was called something like “Ask a calvinist”.

The owner would have various people of different christian denomenations join him in asking each other 5 questions, and allowing each other to reply.

The guy certainly appeared to know his stuff.

Unfortunately, he was illequipped to debate Brian. Not because Brian was smarter or more informed or anything like that. Brian went in to, more or less, say that God doesn’t exist and Jesus almost certainly never existed (divine or otherwise).

The Calvinist went in to debate nuances of theology.

The two conversations just didn’t have a whole lot of contact in many ways, as you can imagine.

Brian: God doesn’t exist and there’s no reason to believe he does and…
Calvinist: I believe that God’s love is based on…

Anyhow, while our two conversations may not be THAT far apart, I do believe there’s a significant gap.

1. A number of times I’ve said I was speaking specifically about the situation in the U.S.. However, I’ve also said that my views on this extend globally. My only area of personal experience of is in the U.S.. Hence I focus on that.

Reciprocal to what Joel notes above, I have said that I consider the global picture preferentially to the more localized picture, and try to keep my “area of expertise” at a higher level than merely national, because there is no way to accurately comment on religion if one cannot consider the global picture (because Religion in America and religion outside of America are often very different things).

Perhaps this is not fair, and perhaps it is not conducive to a proper flow in conversation. But the fact of the matter remains that if one is going to comment on religion, one cannot simply comment on a local flavour only, and I will not stoop to doing so. I realize, then, that I am placing an expectation on those who write in, but equally I do not apologize for doing so — if we cannot respond to a call to challenge and better ourselves on a daily basis, we are not really living, are we?

2. While you see a distinction between various sects of christianity, as an atheist I simply don’t see those as significant. Honestly, the difference in theology between almost any two religions is virtually meaningless to me. I don’t see a massive difference, in many ways, between the basis for christianity and the basis for scientology (I see scientology as rather repugnant in that it is determined to scam as much money out of the pockets of its followers as possible. I can say many bad things about many christian churches etc., but credit where credit is due, they are all trying to give away salvation for free). All I care about is how those theologies then interact with the rest of the world. You may say that Islam is a much bigger problem, but any religion, it seems, can be easily twisted into violence. Islam is a problem with that today. The crusades and
inquisition used christianity. Oh, and at least in the U.S., it wasn’t that long ago that christianity was being used as a justification of violence against doctors.

One observes that while one or two rogue fools decided to take it upon themselves, ostensibly in the name of their Christian faith, to hunt down abortion doctors, the vast majority of Christians in America (and elsewhere) — even the ones who were themselves vocally pro-life — spoke out against the killings. Not that I expect this to matter to Joel, who seems interested only in painting with an extremely wide brush, but to any rational person it should come as a significant point. Yes, people have attempted to use religion as an excuse for their hatreds and particular evils in the past, and people likely will continue to do so. That doesn’t prove anything about the truth or validity of the religion as a whole; it merely demonstrates, in keeping with what the Bible observes in many places, that religious people are sinners too.

Not exactly the most shocking revelation, that.

But more importantly, Joel’s refusal to see a distinction between different Christian denominations — or, indeed, between Christian and non-Christian religions (!!) — is foolhardy, and I would even venture that it renders most of what else he has to say virtually meaningless. There is no logic or reason in the statement at all.

“While you see a distinction between various sports, as an non-sports fan I simply don’t see those as significant. Honestly, the difference in rules and methods between almost any two sports is virtually meaningless to me. I don’t see a massive difference, in many ways, between playing golf and playing football…”

Reasonable? No. Rational? No. Logical? No. Relevant? No. Indeed, were someone to come up to us and say that to our face, we’d laugh them out of the sports bar (and rightly so). Perhaps the Reader will think me heartless, but I am of no particular mind to let Joel slide simply because he is discussing religions instead of sports. The fact that he cannot engage the debate over religion in so basic a way as to acnknowledge the differences between religions and denominations thereof smacks of a kind a lazy arrogance. And yes, I realize that once again I am placing an expectation on those who write in, and again I do not apologize for doing so — again: if we cannot respond to a call to challenge and better ourselves on a daily basis, we are not really living, are we?

I submit to Joel that if he is not willing to engage the discussion at a sufficient level of academic honesty as to demonstrate even a basic ability to differentiate between different religions and denominations thereof (especially since I am willing to differentiate between “strains” of atheism — i.e. Richard Dawkins‘ atheism as compared to that of Sam Harris), he should not engage in the discussion at all.

Quite frankly, his refusal to engage steeps all his statements in a fundamental illogic and a willful falsehood.

3. While you may believe that the control christianity exerts in the U.S. is not, as I believe you put it, sinister, I beg to differ.

Every atheist does, don’t they, O Reader? And yet most atheists laugh it off when someone points to the rather disproportionate tendency of the ACLU to go after Christians. A curious double standard, no?

I have no idea what it is like in Canada, but the ‘christian right’ in the U.S. exerts a disproportionate amount of power and is very interested in breaking down walls between church and state. How do I
know this? Because their leaders come out and say it.

I observe, as I am sure the Reader has likewise done, that no supporting links accompany this assertion Joel has made. Curious.

That’s not to say that I’m giving the “Christian right” a pass; I too can think of a few glaring errors. But then, I can think of some rather shocking stuff that high-profile atheists have also said. And while Sam Harris is not a politician, and does not hold office in the U.S., his assertions that disagreeable elements in society (including believers, most likely) should be dealt with by way of deadly force, if that is what is necessary to bring about his desired “end of faith,” is far more concerning than any pronouncement I can think of that Bush et. al. have made in recent memory.

How do I know they have so much power? Because one of our two political parties panders to them endlessly. The other party just sucks up to them some.

I agree with this statement, O Reader. Mind you, pace Inigo Montoya, I do not think this statement means what Joel thinks it means. After all, if we examine the current contenders for the next presidential election in the U.S., we observe that it is the two Democratic Party candidates — Barack Hussein Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton — who have been playing the faith card really heavily. On the Republican Party side, the only remaining candidate is the candidate who has discussed his faith the least, winning the party nomination over an ardent Mormon and a former Baptist minister!

Indeed, looking at the track record of recent Republican governments, I see no real evidence of pandering to religious sentiments, with the one notable exception being the opposition of the Bush government to embryonic stem cell research. But then, embryonic stem cell research has, after a decade, shown no real promise, while Shinya Yamanaka at Kyoto University has demonstrated that skin cells can be modified into any other type of cell, thus providing a technique to achieve what stem cell research supposedly promises to achieve, but without the need to destroy fertilized embryos.

On most other issues I can think of — torture of prisoners and abortion are easy examples — the American government hasn’t done anything in particular to pander to Christian sentiment (unless one counts the banning of the partial birth abortion method as a major concession to Christian demands, which would be foolish to say given that nothing was done to diminish the number of abortion providers or, indeed, the number of abortions performed). This blogger keeps a pretty comprehensive list of examples.

I swear, my maxim about Rome and Caesar gets a little bit more accurate every day. Muslims see Jewish conspiracies around every corner. Atheists obssess over the looming Christian theocracy that never seems to materialize, but is always So! Very! Close! And yet the examples always seem so…trivial.

It is an era that many of these groups come out and say is a time for christianity to take over the government and make gods kingdom here in the U.S..

All I can really say to this, O Reader, is…”meh.” “Meh,” because even if some nuts-for-brains Evangelical gets into office and takes it upon himself to try and build the New Jerusalem on American soil, he will fail, as surely as the Romans failed to rebuild the Temple. Every human scheme to prematurely usher in Paradise on Earth, whether headed up by evangelical Christians or secular utopian socialists will fail, as surely as such schemes have failed in the past.

And that’s assuming that such a person ever takes office in the first place. Ralph Nader has a better chance of winning a two-term presidency than does any sufficiently misguided Christian have of carrying out any sort of utopian enterprise. And to act in almost paranoid fashion in response to the misguided musings of a minority of American evangelical Christians is…well…paranoid. Irrational. Delusional, even…as surely as all the conspiracy theories surrounding Zionism or the Illuminati are delusional.

That, my friend, is the country I live in and the battle we fight.

Indeed, O Reader…open war has been declared in the streets of America.

These groups truly do try to subvert the will of the American people and they truly do not care what the Constitution says (not that our current administration seems to care much about that either…).

Nor do many atheists, O Reader.

I mentioned before the example of Cartese, which was the online handle of another atheist in the service of the American military, who openly advocated for the government to step in and declare all religious people mentally incompetent and unfit to own property/drive cars/vote. Whither the Constitution? Other atheists lobby for a complete removal of all Christian symbols from the public eye — not just on governmental buildings and the dollar bill, but on private property as well. Whither the Constitution then? A court in the U.S. just compelled a private business owner, a Christian photographer, to pay restitution to a client she refused to do business with (the client in question was a lesbian seeking a photographer for her “wedding”). Whither the Constitution? Sam Harris is on record as saying that unwelcome elements in a new, faithless society might have to be dealt with via the use of deadly force. Whither the Constitution?

More importantly, in all examples: whither the will of the individuals affected? Does will even matter to an atheist? Or is William Provine the more correct when he denies that free will even exists?

Coming briefly back to Cartese, I notice that as this conversation has progressed, Joel’s tone has begun what I should call a predictable shift away from tolerant discourse toward intolerant paranoia. To his credit, he at least began at the level of tolerant discourse, unlike some others that I have debated on this blog. But to his detriment, he is letting something darker and much uglier show through now.

Pity.

And yes, it is organized, and deliberate, and self-conscious, and yes, it IS sinister.

The regular Reader will remember Rehmat, who says much the same thing about Jews as Joel is saying about Christians in the above sentence. Not coincidentally at all, I consider Joel’s assertions to have about the same credibility as I do Rehmat’s. I trust the intelligent Reader will see why.

Honestly, I don’t think people in western countries realize what goes on here in the U.S.. If I recall some recent polls and studies, the U.S. is one of the most religious, industrialized nations. People don’t realize that, every day, there is an organized effort to get the book of Genesis taught in science classes.

Perhaps the Reader will think me callous, but I really can only look on this issue with a bit of a “so what?” attitude. Oh, that’s not to say that I’m a raving Young Earth Creationist; in plain point of fact, I think that particular school of thought is mostly bunk. But equally…so what? So people are trying to get the Genesis stories taught in science classes. It would hardly be the first time that metaphysics has intruded into the realm of scientific education — one recalls Eugenie Scott’s campaign to see removed from biology textbooks the assertion that evolution was a random, unguided process. Scott is herself an atheist, but at least she could recognize that it was beyond the scope of science to decide whether or not evolution was an “unguided” process, and that the inclusion of the statement in a widely-used textbook was careless, problematic, and unfair.

And frankly, atheists have to be willing to stand up and assume a goodly measure of the blame for enforcing the conflict model in the relationship between science and religion. My God, but do they have to assume a measure of the blame! After all, post-Enlightenment atheism latched on to things like the theory of evolution as proof — proof! — that religion was bunk and God a mere fiction. The likes of Thomas Henry Huxley did more damage than good when they latched on to Darwinian theory and established a conflict model as the dominant mode of the relationship between two fields of study that need not have ever been in conflict.

(Interestingly, the Church never really saw a problem with evolutionary theory, noting that a truth and another truth cannot contradict; Catholicism, in particular, has always left it up to individual Catholics to decide whether they accept the reality of biological evolution, and the tone of the Church’s official statements has always recognized the theory’s probable validity. Protestantism, on the other hand, went in two directions, with some Protestant denominations taking essentially the same view as the Catholic Church, while others decided to push back.)

Can we really blame some evangelical Christians for biting back at people who would abuse a scientific theory by drawing a metaphysical conclusion (i.e. the non-existence of God) out of it?

I am a Catholic first and foremost, but I see no fundamental conflict between my faith and my education in the sciences. I wholeheartedly accept that God is the creator of all the Universe, and I wholeheartedly accept various evolutionary theories, be they concerned with biological evolution or stellar evolution.

They don’t know that doctors hide medical options from their patients (not simply refuse to
give them these treatments, but actively hide the options) because of religion. They have no idea how thoroughly christian dogma has invaded our society.

I might point out to the good Reader that modern American society has not been “invaded” by Christians — this is but paranoid rambling on Joel’s part — any more than it has been “invaded” by white people. America — by which I mean the United States of America, the extant nation in its present form — was founded, colonized, and peopled by people who were, for the most part, Christians! They are not the invading cultural archetype; they are the prevailing cultural archetype. And it should come as no surprise, in a nation where over 70% of the population professes some manner of Christian belief, that the government of America should occasionally hint at Christian influence.

That’s called “representative government” O Reader, and I am led to believe that, by and large, it works very well. God forbid that a government which purports to represent the people of the land should in some way share the beliefs held by a significant majority of the populace!

As to whether doctors hide medical options from patients, I again observe that Joel has been lax in citing sources to corroborate his claim. Perhaps it does happen; if it happens in a manner which endangers the patient, that is immoral. I can understand a doctor refusing to perform a procedure he or she might consider immoral (i.e. sex-change operations, abortions) — refusing to discuss treatment options may well be a different ball of wax.

But sadly, I have no data to work from, and cannot speculate any further on the matter. Perhaps Joel will be good enough to furnish us with some additional information, although given the downward trend in the tone of this conversation, I find myself doubtful that this will prove to be the case.

(don’t even get me started on the fate of Madeline Kara Neumann)

The Reader may think me cold and heartless, but I fail to see what the death of a child of parents who were es has to do with a systemic conspiracy perpetrated by the religious in American society. This is why I keep stressing to Joel, and to others, the importance of being able to tell one’s apples from one’s kiwi fruits.

For example, here is a Catholic blogger decrying what happened to poor Madeline. Personally, as a Catholic and as a human being, I am disgusted at what happened to this young girl, whose parents forbade her from receiving life-saving treatment because of the peculiar tendency of the cult to which they belong to refuse different forms of medical treatment, including blood transfusions. I can’t abide that aspect of the JW movement, and consider it immoral when it jeapordizes the life of any person, young or old.

The Catholic Church has not promulgated any doctrine forbidding treatments of this nature to its members, and for good reason — Catholicism does not set itself in opposition to the sciences, including medical sciences; it understands science as an alternative vehicle for learning what God seeks to teach to the world (we term it “natural revelation”).

I am routinely derided when I (somewhat jokingly) point out that the nation-states which have been the most murderous throughout history have been those nations of the 19th and 20th centuries which have made atheism the explicit policy of the state (i.e. China, North Korea, the Soviet Union when it was still around). It is not fair, I am told, to tar and feather all of atheism based on a few rather glaringly large bad apples. Perhaps it is not…but then, it is even less justifiable for Joel to attempt to tar all Christians with the bad decisions of two members of a pseudo-Christian cult, i