timeimmortal

I’m not a convert to Catholicism, so I don’t get deluged with emails urging me to revert to the “true”, “Biblical” faith that I abandoned by becoming Catholic. So in that way, I can’t relate to what Mark Shea is talking about in this article.

But in the web forums I post to, I am unapologetic and open concerning my Catholicism, and I find that on a cycle almost as predictable as the cycle of atheistic commentators here at Time Immortal, I am periodically deluged by well-meaning, if misinformed, fundamentalists urging me to abandon the false, man-made teachings of Rome in favour of true, “Biblical” Christianity and the inerrant, preserved Word of God that is the King James Version of the Bible.

And in such matters, I take Mark Shea’s response as my own:

Almost every other day, it seems, I will open my e-mail and find something like this specimen (culled from my “deleted” file):

Dear Mark, just came from your Web site and have some questions. It sounds like you were a “Protestant” before becoming a Catholic? I don’t know which church you were in but I have to question whether you were ever taught the Word of God there? If you had been in a church which taught the truth concerning Baptism according to the Word of GOD and not the “traditions of men” you would have learned that not only does baptism NOT save nor “grant justification” but it is ONLY for those who ARE BORN-AGAIN by the SPIRIT of GOD by placing their faith in the LORD JESUS CHRIST! It is to be symbolic of the new birth ALREADY ACCOMPLISHED by GOD as Romans 6 clearly teaches! PLEASE READ the Gospel of John and pray asking GOD to show you HIS TRUTH — HE LOVES THE WORLD and DESIRES TO SAVE the LOST — which we all are apart from the New Birth which IS FREELY offered to ALL! Please read and be saved! I will be praying for you in JESUS Name. Carolyn

You have to wonder what is going through the minds of people who write such stuff. What do they think they are accomplishing?

One is terribly tempted to reply: “The Word of God? What’s that? Never heard of such a thing. Is that, like, the Bible? We used to read something called a ‘Bible,’ I think, at our old Church. But that was an awfully long time ago.

“Boy, thanks for setting me straight. I have never ever ever heard before that Jesus Christ loves me and desires to save the lost with His free gift of grace! I always thought that I had to perform magical rituals to make God love me. But now that you have so thoughtfully set me straight, I see clearly that when that big black book we used to read in my old church-that-never-taught-me-the-Bible says ‘Baptism now saves you’ (1 Pet 3:21) what it means is ‘Baptism does not save you.’

“And thanks also for explaining that when Romans 6 says, ‘All of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death,’ and ‘We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life,’ this has absolutely nothing whatever to do with Baptism. I really appreciate your setting me straight on that as well.

“And finally, thanks for making me see that all that stuff in John 3 about being born again of water and the Spirit really means water and the Spirit are complete opposites.

“Golly. It is so good to finally — after all these years — have somebody who really teaches the Word of God clue me in. Who would have thought that all those years of studying . . . what’s that big black book called again? Ah yes! ‘The Bible.’ Anyway, who would have thought that all those years of studying the Bible could have left me so totally ignorant of what Scripture really means? Thanks ever so much for enlightening me.”

Yes, kind of facetious and tongue-in-cheek. But sometimes, that’s all one can do to respond to the misguidedly overzealous persons one encounters on this big, wide internet.

Stephen Boissoin himself writes in with a comment — and perhaps even a clarification — concerning the letter by him which was cited in this article.

Just so people are aware, that letter was not just some baseless anti-homosexual rant. The newspaper gave it the title and it was published in the middle of the heated gay marriage, hate crimes bill, gay school books being added to the public school curriculum yadayadayada debates all across Canada. Had the gay activist not pushed for so much and destroyed so many or my liberties, that leter would not have been necessary.

In my own Province, the gay group Alberta — PFLAG had received funds from the AHRC, the same group of thugs that prosecuted me, to promote their very biased agenda to young people that homosexuality was “normal, necessary, acceptable and productive and has been for thousands of years.” To top it off, a pro-gay teacher in my city, same guy who filed the complaint against me, was inviting a gay minister to come into the public school to teach what he called “the pro-homosexual interpretation of the Bible.” He refused to invite a minister that held the traditional view so as to ensure his students had a balanced presentation.

Enough was enough….that letter was written to open the Pandora’s Box. To get people thinking and asking questions about the present imbalance of ‘gay rights’ which are agressively hindering the rights of others.

That letter, though the cause of my present persecution, has done what it was designed to do and I thank God that I had the opportunity to stand for truth and do my part. Had [Darren Lund] not filed that complaint, the letter and my views would have been contained to my Central Alberta community and the debate would have most likely ended in 2002. Instead, the world has access to my letter and I have been provided with a global pulpit for six years going.

Blessings,
Stephen Boissoin

One could not, I think, ask for a better reason to speak out than Pastor Boissoin’s closing paragraph. The issue of homosexuality is a complex one, involving moral theology and natural law as well as many other considerations, and certainly the present progressive tendency to rush in “with guns blazing” to make homosexuality “mainstream” is very concerning. People should have a right to speak out about the issue from every angle, including the moral angle, and in defence of what could be called traditional sexual norms. As Chesterton noted, “progress is a comparative of which we have not settled the superlative”, and progress for its own sake has in all ages of history been ruinous to the societies that have sought after it.

We, as Canadians, should have the right to have heady, long-winded, and powerful debates about matters which affect the fabric of our society, which threaten to alter it in ways that may be destructive to it. We should have had that debate about divorce. We should have had that debate about abortion, common-law partnerships, and a whole host of other things which have chipped away, little by little, and the centrality of the family in stable society. We need to have that debate about homosexuality, if only to avoid repeating past mistakes. When people are silenced, the opportunities for such debates shut down.

But silencing someone only works if a) you kill him or b) he agrees to be silenced. Pace what Ezra Levant noted previously, the one who speaks out anyway, in spite of being ordered to shut up, is something of a dashing rogue…and, as Pastor Boissoin notes above, it is precisely because he was initially silenced that he elected to speak out even louder, spreading his side of the debate much farther than it probably would have gone had events transpired even slightly differently.

It’s things like this which will, in due time, be the end of the human rights commissions — or, at least, the end of the role of HRCs as an office of censorship, both nationally and provincially. More and more, Canadians are beginning to wake up and realize that regardless of what the government says, human beings possess natural human rights that exceed those mere things which governments privelege citizens to do. These rights can’t be taken away by anyone short of God Himself.

So why not speak out? Why not act out? Like the Poles in the 1980s, the moral authority is not possessed by those who would demand order, censorship, and obedience to government stipulations and obscure tribunals. The moral authority belongs to the people who will not give up those rights which are theirs regardless of the government’s opinion. Let us not give that up.

Update: Welcome, Sleepy Old Bear readers, and thanks for the kudos, Stillman! I like that term of yours…”pansexual”. Mind if I borrow it occasionally for future use?

Meet the Update: Welcome, Steynians!

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.”

Another wave of atheists seems to be upon me; while I can’t quite set my watch by them, at least I can be assured that there will be periodic sources of content not related to doings on any other blog save this one, which I appreciate.

In this case, the amusingly-handled Aspentroll writes in with a few thoughts on this article.

“Atheism will endure, as it has for many ages now. But it will never dominate a free people, and in due course gives way to the spiritual. Falsehood must necessarily give way to truth in the end, or at least to a less severe falsehood.”

The word “atheism” above could be replaced by the word “Religion” or “Christianity” and the rest of the quote would be just as true.

Atheists believe that the Bible is a huge falsehood and to pattern your life on such a nebulous writing is in most cases dangerous. You cannot govern a country using the laws of the bible which seems to be what some “fundies” want. We would all be up in arms if Sharia Law was allowed in the US, because it is archaic and discriminatory against women and free thought.

Atheism, agnosticism and free thought is the only check and balance we have to keep overly zealous delusional people from taking over and spoiling what is a normal modern way of life.

Did the reader note the tacit suggestion that religious people are necessarily delusional? The footnote to this more recent article seems relevant to mention here.

A good first question I might ask is: what checks and balances exist to keep overly zealous atheists from taking over and spoiling what is a normal, modern way of life that, in the West at least (though it perhaps does not always realize it), benefits greatly from reserves of Christian moral capital built up over the centuries? History has demonstrated that those states which have made atheism an explicit policy of the state have inexorably become brutal and bloody-minded, and several examples of the trend persist to this day.

The Mark Shea article I cited previously addresses this point rather directly: it is within human nature to desire to believe, and when force of will fails to ensure that the populace does not stray back toward the spiritual, force of arms is a necessary recourse of the atheistic state. It might be easy to laugh this off as fallacy, but one observes that in the explicitly atheistic regimes in places such as the Soviet Union, Burma, China, and North Korea (an incomplete list of examples, but sufficient for our purposes) did have something of a penchant for murderously cracking down on spiritual movements and religions within their borders. Certain exceptions to the trend exist, of course, but only in those cases where the religion(s) in question — the Orthodox Church in Russia, the “Catholic” Church in China — has allowed itself to be co-opted by the state.

One possible objection is that the generally secular regimes in many Western nations do not actively persecute the religious faithful in their midst. While the statement about persecution is up for debate, it is generally true that secular Western states do not, at least, murderously persecute their religious citizens. But then, even in various Scandinavian nations, the secularism itself is not explicit state policy, and most of those states still acknowledge that there is a Christian aspect to their origins.

As to the quote of mine that Apentroll cites in opening his message, it should be observed that his attempt to gainsay it, in the first sentence of his response to me, really amounts to little more than saying “I know you are, but what am I?” Although it sounds more reasonable than that on the surface — heck, it even sounds somewhat rational — the statement itself can be revealed to be something of a patent falsehood, on several levels, upon closer examination.

First off, Christianity’s aim — and the aim of true religion (as opposed to the various false teachings one can stumble across from time to time*) — is freedom. And by freedom, I don’t mean being free “from rules of conduct or social constraints” (as the all-too talented authors of the character of Durandal in the Marathon series of games so eloquently word it). I do, however, mean being free “to understand, to imagine, to make metaphor.”

Freethinking, a misnomer if ever there was one, actually ruins freedom. “Freethinkers supposedly want “the pursuit of ideas for their own sake,” but no one pursues ideas simply for their own sake, but in order to understand, to act or to believe, or to have some combination of these. Men pursue ideas so that they may understand the world, and they seek to understand the world to have wisdom. Men desire wisdom in order to live well, and part of living well is to pursue and know the Good, and the Good is that which fulfills human nature and causes it to flourish. The desire to know is a natural desire, one implanted in us as part of our created being; we yearn to know and to enter into the unknown because we yearn for unity with the One Who desires that all things be united in Him. If no religion had ever caused men to live virtuously and flourish, religion would have disappeared ages ago. If no religion had produced saints and cultivated the finest aspects of human nature, very few would adhere themselves to it and even then it would only be the mad and obsessive. There is nothing interesting in rehearsing the catalogue of crimes that religious adherents have committed against each other, since men have always been slaughtering and oppressing one another and they have tended to do more of it when they are less in thrall to their religious tradition than when they are strictly obedient to it. What is remarkable is how much at least some religions have contributed to the civilisation and edification of men, which would hardly seem probable if they were not much more than elaborate exercises in self-deception and nonsense.”

One point, in particular, that can be taken out of the above quotation is that “we yearn to know and to enter into the unknown because we yearn for unity with the One Who desires that all things be united in Him.” It is the result of no accident that science and discovery flourished in the Christian West after ending up misfiring almost everywhere else in the world (historically speaking). As David Warren notes, “[to] those who know some history, the modern sciences emerged in an unambiguously Christian milieu. They flourished, over centuries in the West, as the direct result of the Judaeo-Christian teaching that “God does not contradict Himself.” The whole notion of unalterable physical laws, and thus a universal order that will repay inquiry, is the product of a theological position unique to the West. It is a view that has been glimpsed in other civilizations, but could only be doggedly pursued in this one. Science was stillborn in all other civilizations.”

And the same is true of the wider concept of freedom. Nowhere else in the world, save in a West born out of Christendom, did the concept of human freedom, individual liberty, and human rights genuinely flourish. It did not, certainly, flourish in the Islamic world, nor in the castes of Hinduism in India, nor in any of the places where Buddhism took hold, nor in…any other place, really, save for the West that Christendom birthed. Indeed, the ideas that man should be free and that all men are “equal” is, ultimately, only defensible from within a teleological framework, and then a Christian teleology.

And in the numerous examples one could draw out of the 19th and 20th centuries, one can observe that in those regimes where atheism has, so to speak, become the law of the land, not only has human freedom been impaired and/or outright trampled on, but so too has science, to say nothing of human rights.

Now, I will grant that I stand in agreement with Aspentroll’s objetion to governance by “fundies” — fundamentalism leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Equally, though, I don’t think that society has any right to demand that a politician leave his Christianity at the door when he takes office.

Atheists are welcome to consider the Bible a book of falsehoods; I consider it God’s inerrant, infallible revelation to the world**. Who is to say which of us is right? I will grant that many, many people have a poor understanding of exactly what the Bible teaches, and fundamentalists seem especially prone to this unfortunate reality. But is it genuinely dangerous to pattern one’s life on the core teachings of Scripture? Exactly how terrible a place would the world be to live in if we all actually followed what Christ taught? Exactly how terrible a place would the world be to live in if everyone followed, as a bare minimum, the Ten Commandments and the Beatitudes, and patterned their lives on the concepts articulated therein?

I very much doubt it would be a perfect place to live in…but I’ve no doubt that it would be a much better world. But then, Chesterton had it exactly right when he noted that “the Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult, and left untried.”

I also agree with Aspentroll that it would be horrible if Islamic sharia law became the law of the land, in Canada or anywhere else. I suspect that Aspentroll, however, has temporarily taken leave of reason and erroneously assumes that because some types of religious law are brutal and evil, all forms of religious law must necessarily also be brutal and evil. It’s a rather common logical fallacy among atheists to assert this — Christopher Hitchens is particularly vulnerable to it.

The main problem with the assertion is that a thing may be true even if certain individuals don’t accept it as being true. This is easily understood in the case of the fundamentalist objection to e.g. the theory of evolution and the geological research that has revealed the approximate age of the Earth. Young Earth Creationism insists, passionately, that Earth is a mere 6,000 years old, and most creationists of this bent do not accept as truthful or valid the various discoveries made in the fields of geology, astronomy, and evolutionary biology (among others). That doesn’t mean that the theories and discoveries aren’t true, however.

The same is true in regard to atheistic assertions regarding religions. Aspentroll would hardly be the first atheist to look at, say, the evils perpetrated in the name of Islam and declare that all religions are murderous death cults obsessed with paedophilia and suicide belts. That might come as news to Buddhists, and indeed to most Christians, but not everyone can be counted on to let facts get in the way of good rhetoric, especially if it sells books with provocative titles. And yet, a more reasonable, rational person would notice that there are many critical differences between, say, Islam and Catholicism, visible both by a close analysis of doctrine and by taking an honest, objective look at the actions of the followers of each respective faith on a global scale.

As previously noted, the creature we call a human being is wired to be a believer, and the only real question is what said human being will believe in. We’ve seen this played out through history, and we see its logical consequences played out in that movement which denies this very aspect of human nature: atheism. In individual atheists like Sam Harris or Andre Comte-Sponville, we see the beginnings of post-atheistic spiritualism beginning to creep in. The same trend can be observed in Russia, in the wake of the collapse of an explicitly atheistic regime. It’s regrettable that the spirituality that such people are gravitating towards is, quite often, some new form of paganism (or “new” in that Roger Daltry “same as the old boss” sense of the word), although it is good that people are also finding, or rediscovering, the Church.

There seems to be a rather pernicious lie going around that religion and freedom are antithetical to one another; this is not completely true. It is true in regard to specific religions (e.g. Islam), but not in regard to the Christian truth. Indeed, it was a particularly Christian sense of telos that informed the very constraints, concepts, and ideals which enabled the West to value freedom. By contrast, the application of atheistic ideals as the formative values of a state has tended to be the true antithesis of freedom, of science, and of human rights.

And in perhaps the most amusingly ironic twist, I just realized that if I re-worded Aspentroll’s message to me and flipped the references to religion and atheism in every instance (and substituted the title of any New Atheist tract for “the bible”), the message itself would not only be a lot more truthful, but also a lot more historically defensible.

* this statement said with tongue firmly implanted in cheek

I was reading something that Babylon 5 creator Joseph Michael Straczynski said in regard to forgiveness. He was talking, specifically, about an episode of the series that dealt directly with the Catholic concept of atonement, and with forgiveness, and was commenting on how he had enjoyed writing something that he, himself, was so very much at odds with.

His being an atheist, Straczynski explains, means that he cannot believe in forgiveness, and cannot offer it.

And I have lost people. Too many people. Lost them to chance, violence, brutality beyond belief; I’ve seen all the senseless, ignoble acts of “God’s noblest creature.” And I am incapable of forgiving. My feelings are with G’Kar, hand sliced open, saying of the drops of blood flowing from that open wound, “How do you apologize to them?” “I can’t.” “Then I cannot forgive.”

As an atheist, I believe that all life is unspeakably precious, because it’s only here for a brief moment, a flare against the dark, and then it’s gone forever. No afterlives, no second chances, no backsies. So there can be nothing crueler than the abuse, destruction or wanton taking of a life. It is a crime no less than burning the Mona Lisa, for there is always just one of each.

So I cannot forgive. Which makes the notion of writing a character who CAN forgive momentarily attractive…because it allows me to explore in great detail something of which I am utterly incapable. I cannot fly, so I would write of birds and starships and kites; I cannot play an instrument, so I would write of composers and dancers; and I cannot forgive, so I would write of priests and monks and Minbari….

I read this yesterday, and it instantly drew to mind a previous response I had given to Nicholas, who had asked for examples of “sanctifying grace” that could not be explained away by attribution to natural causes. Leaving aside the fallacy inherent in the question, my answer, now as it was then, is that the act of forgiveness is an example of manifest grace that cannot logically be attributed to natural phenomena.

I would posit that the act of genuine forgiveness — and its being regarded as a good thing — cannot always be attributed to natural causes, for the simple reason that forgiveness in its most genuine form does not involve “forgive, but do not forget.” It is more complete than that, requiring us to both grant that we absolve the person who has wronged us and that we will not in any way hold it against them; in any future dealings with them, we will not anticipate the possibility of a repeated transgression.

I think the reasons this is counter-intuitive to nature should be obvious: the instinct to survive should motivate a person to either never forgive a transgression or to forgive the transgression but to treat the transgressor with hesitance in any future encounters.

And indeed, I can observe in my own life that there does seem to be a spectrum at work in people; I’ve noticed, both in my own family and in my wider circle of friends and acquaintences, that the degree to which a person is secular correlates directly to the degree to which they are willing to offer forgiveness to others for wrongs done against them. Certainly, JMS (above) reflects this in his own views which, while incorrect, do have the virtue of consistency.

Complete forgiveness means allowing oneself to again become totally open, and thus vulnerable, to the other, and to a repeat offence. In a purely materialistic/naturalistic framework, since vulnerability is something most human beings naturally attempt to avoid displaying, forgiveness should be non-existent.

And yet, people offer forgiveness in this way quite often. Not always, of course, but often. And to do so, I think, puts a human being far outside of his or her nature. A nun, shot in the back, falls to the ground uttering her last words: “I forgive, I forgive.” A Pope makes a point of visiting in prison the man who attempted to murder him, and offers him his complete forgiveness. A man, nailed to a Cross, begs that the crowd of his murderers be forgiven, for they did not know then the full magnitude of their actions. That’s about as contrary to “natural causes” as one can get.

This was on display again recently, given evidence by Sister Marie Curran in her testimony against the young man who, three years earlier, shoved her to the ground and stole her purse.

Yes, it’s a small example, but the actions of the good nun are telling.

Sister Muriel Curran faced the man who shoved her to the ground and ripped away her purse three years ago. She quoted Scripture. She thanked him for the guilty plea that spared her a trial. And she asked a Baltimore County judge not to send him to prison.

“There is possibility and hope — I believe in it, it’s what I’m about — in rehabilitation and a future,” the 78-year-old nun said yesterday, explaining that she has difficulty believing in a penal system that sometimes leaves criminals worse off than before they went to prison. “I’ve taught too many boys in my life not to believe that growth and change can take place.”

Police officers waiting for other cases listened in astonishment.

The defendant’s aunt and grandmother wept openly. Even strangers sitting in the courtroom sat spellbound and dabbed at their eyes. The veteran prosecutor handling the case fought back tears and later characterized the scene as “the single most profound thing I have ever heard in a courtroom.” And the convicted robber, Charles R. Dodson, 22, hung his bald and tattooed head as he tearfully offered apologies and begged for the forgiveness that the nun had already granted.

Ommitted from the above are the details of the injuries suffered by Sister Curran: five ribs broken, torn rotator cuff, bruises to her face and arm, and a gash above her eye — one of her arms no longer has its full range of motion, and she cannot live alone. And yet, faced with the man who shoved her — then a 75-year old woman — to the ground and impacted her life thusly, she hurried only to offer her complete forgiveness. One is sure that, were she to meet Dobson in the future, she would not do so with any hesitance or reservation — her forgiveness of him was complete.

That is spectacularly contrary to nature.

And indeed, the good Sister attributed her actions solely to the Gospel:

Reading from a card, Sister Curran quoted a letter in the Bible from the Prophet Jeremiah: “For I know well the plans I have in mind for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare, not for woe! plans to give you a future full of hope.” Turning to face Dodson, she said, “That is my hope for you, Charles. I would like to give that to you.”

She reached out to hand him the card. She then extended her arm again. And although the sheriff’s deputies assigned to the county’s courtrooms usually prevent anyone other than defense attorneys from touching a defendant, no one interfered as the snowy-haired nun in the navy suit and white blouse shook the hand of the tattooed man in a dirty white T-shirt who had robbed her three years earlier.

As a living witness to the Gospel and to Jesus, one would strive mightily to do better than Sister Curran. Christ came to bring forgiveness from sin, and bade us all to forgive one another as well. It is ludicrously hard to live up to that ideal, in no small part because it contravenes the natural inclination of the human heart to do so. And yet, people do forgive.

And out of that forgiveness springs all manner of incredible results, results that in many respects defy explanation. Were atheists truly correct in their assertions of God’s non-existence, one would think that the act of offering forgivness wouldn’t have anywhere near the power it would. That it does have that power should, I think, tell us something profound.

Update: Welcome, WebElf and Father Hosea readers!

But don’t take my word for it, O Reader. Rehmat says so, so it must be true!

US$5 million film depict Islamic view of Jesus, son of Virgin Mary - A great prophet of Allah, speaking parables and moving through soft light and angelic chants among a group of zealot and conspiring Jews (Pharisees). The narrative are borrowed from the Gospel of St. Barnabas, which was not cannonized as part of Christian Bible, The New Testament (NT). However, NT, do contain five books of Jewish Bible, The Old Testament (OT).

Got that? The Pentateuche (the first five books of the Old Testament — Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy — which also comprise the Jewish Torah) are a part of the New Testament.

The stupid makes me laugh sometimes.

At least Shaukat, the blogger at RehmatPedia, is at least admitting that the Koran is based on false, erroneous texts (like the Barnabas “gospel”)! Still, does anyone else get creeped out at the fact that such a hateful Islamist bigot as Shaukat has nevertheless managed to secure employment at the Pickering Nuclear Generating Facility?

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

Update: Apocalypse: Shaukat responds!

Talmudic hacker, Ken, has questioned my statement that five books of Jewish Bible (OT) are part of Christian Bible.

The Old Testament (OT) has 39 books and the New Testament (NT) has 27. (There are 66 books in the entire Bible). Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy are the five books of OT, which were incorporated into NT – to show that Christianity is another extension of Judaism. However, the great majority of present-day Jewish population of world (13.5 million) don’t follow the OT – but Talmud, which was written by Rabbis over one century after the Crucification – and contains Jewish hatred toward Jesus’ his mother and rest of Christians:

Sanhedrin 106a . Says Jesus’ mother was a whore: “She who was the descendant of princes and governors played the harlot with carpenters.” Also in footnote #2 to Shabbath 104b it is stated that in the “uncensored” text of the Talmud it is written that Jesus mother, “Mary the hairdresser,” had sex with many men.

It’s hard to believe the guy who blogs at RehmatPedia is the same age as my wife, isn’t it? Based on the information he gives here concerning his date of birth, he should be on the order of 24 years old…nearly 25. Reading him, one would think he’s about ten years younger.

And he works in a nuclear power plant.

Anyhow, I love how in his attempt to clarify his blatant error, he has only reinforced it. Perhaps he has never actually opened the Bible to see the order of books in it, but were he to do so he would observe that the five books of the Torah — the Pentateuche — are the first five books of what Christians call the Old Testament.

The books of the New Testament begin with the four Gospels, proceed through various epistles and letters, and end with the apocalyptic texts of Peter, John, Jude, and Revelation.

Notice how he contradicts himself? He begins by asserting that there are 39 books in the Old Testament (there are actually 47, but nevermind that just right now), but then in the following sentence claims that the Pentateuche are “the five books” (in English, the use of “the” in that context is meant to suggest exclusivity) of the Old Testament.

So which is it, Shaukat? Thirty-nine? Forty-seven? Five?

Even more confusingly, he then goes on to assert that the sole five books of the New Testament, according to him, were then “incorporated into the [New Testament]“. So after narrowing the Old Testament down to five books, Shaukat then tells us that those five books were included in the New Testament canon.

So why even mention the Old Testament? Apparently, it’s empty!

Of course, Shaukat’s anti-Jewish sentiments are well known (how confusing, in light of his recent apparent conversion to said religion!), and bear no commenting on. But isn’t it lamentable, O Reader, how incorrect this young man in Ontario is about something which is so easily verifiable? And he works at a nuclear power plant?

My advice: if you live in Pickering, move. Based on what we learned from Chernobyl, it would be best to put at least 100 km between yourself and the plant.

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.

From his latest:

Ironically, while the Muslim societies have tolerated their members to study Jewish and Christian beliefs, more than the Jews and Christians will ever study Muslim beliefs — they’re not taught the rich diversity practiced and accepted as a “good sign” by the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) within Islam itself.

The above would probably come as news to the “Muslim society” of Saudi Arabia, in which no Religion save Islam has ever been allowed to erect temples or churches, and in which one can be arrested for merely possessing a Bible.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

Nicholas writes in with a response to…well, to what I assume is this article.

It is an interesting discourse, to be sure.

I agree with you that atheism is a philosophical position that cannot be proved beyond all possible doubt. But it can be proved beyond all reasonable doubt that all the gods so far postulated do not measure up to any reasonable standard of what a god should offer. Almost all of humankind has accordingly rejected Thor and Zeus and Baal and countless others.

If people honestly read the Torah, they are bound to conclude that YHWH is a depressingly human fantasy of a depressingly human god, if anything a nastier tyrant than Stalin. And if they actually read the gospels, they will note that Jesus’s recorded remarks do not contain anything that marks him out as decisively superior to other prophets, or to previous philosophers. (For example, in the Crito dialogue, Plato attributes to Socrates the stance that we should not return evil for evil.)

I’m going to interject at this point, simply because what follows is a shift of topic. Formulating a coherent response is not something I’ll struggle with either way, but it occurs to me that it will be easier for the good Reader if I respond to each charge at the moment it is made, rather than in a large final summation.

First, I observe that with what could be called depressing truth to form, Nicholas assertion that “all the gods so far postulated do not measure up to any reasonable standard of what a god should offer” is not followed up with arguments from evidence or reason in support of it. It may well be that no deity postulated until this point in history satisfies even a reasonable standard of what a god should offer, but Nicholas in no way details any examples of any supposed inadequecies of any particular deity.

Of course, the whole issue of a “reasonable standard” seems laughable to me — precisely what would constitute a reasonable standard for a deity to uphold? Who defines what that standard should be? Indeed, where in the human-deity hierarchy does humanity fall relative to God? Are we even in a position to demand that God conform his actions to what our definition of a “resonable standard” is? It smacks of hubris, and one cannot help but conjure in mind the image of a loinclothed man armed only with a spear criticizing as “destructively inadequate” the quantum torpedos of the USS Enterprise (NCC 1701-E).

It only follows that humanity is in any position to hold God to a “reasonable standard” if, in fact, humanity is “above” or “equal to” God. Of course, if humanity is “above” or “equal to” God, then humanity likewise has no need of God, but that’s beside the point. If, in fact, God is “above” humanity, however, then humanity is in no position to demand God behave according to any human standard since, by definition, the human standard is the inadequate one, and the ways of God superior to it. That’s not to say that we can’t complain, but if we do complain it must be understood that we will be doing so with all the reason and rationalism of a six-year old denied the right to begin watching a fourth hour of television by its parents.

Fundamentally, when I read Nicholas‘ statements above, I am left with the impression that Nicholas is bitter and/or upset with religion in general — his statement equating the Judeo-Christian God with Stalin certainly points to this. Likewise, his dismissal of Jesus’ teachings as nothing new illustrates, I think, a conscious desire to reject something about Christianity. Not that this comes as a surprise, of course. Atheism tends, as a rule, to adopt as its own the prevailing morality of the culture in which the atheist(s) in question reside, minus whatever proscribed activity the atheist(s) desire(s) to engage in (which usually is something to do with sex). I’ve heard all manner of arguments in this direction, from the sort that bemoan the fact that 25-year-old virgins still exist (Hans Machel) to those which argue that marital fidelity is a biological inclination that we need to rise above (Richard Dawkins).

Yes, others may have articulated similar sentiments to those that Christ spoke of, and perhaps that should be clue for us that some truths are universal. But equally, just because truths were articulated by other philosophers independently of Jesus does not mean that the teachings themselves were fully understood (if at all understood) apart from Christ.

Regarding the explicit statement that Plato attributed something akin to the Golden Rule to Socrates well in advance of Jesus’ life and death, I and others have observed that “[t]his is another sample of Thomas’ second objection at work. It boils down to saying the natural law is knowable to all, so we don’t need to believe that the natural law comes from God. The sleight of hand comes in when “God” is confused with “Religion“. So the atheist routinely speaks as though Christians believe that nobody had ever heard that murder or theft or adulter were bad until Moses “revealed” this and imagines it a great coup to announce that, in fact, people have always known such things are wrong. Apparently, the people who say these things have never read the story of Cain and Abel. If they had, they would know that this was no news flash to ancient Israel. Nor was it a news flash to Paul, whose entire arraignment of the pagans in Romans 1 makes it clear that the natural law is knowable by everybody and that the failure of the pagans (who never heard of the Ten Commandments) to obey the natural law was blameworthy. In fact, no educated believer says the Ten Commandments revealed the natural law. Rather, the point of the Ten Commandments is that they make clear to Israel who is the author of the natural law which humanity has known for time immemorial. It makes clear that the natural law is not a mere artifact of wind and weather which can be ignored when it inconveniences us, but an iron fact of our being put there by the author of our being.

Being ignorant of this elementary fact makes the author ignorant of another elementary fact, that Jesus’s Golden Rule was, in fact, often *not* understood in even the most rudimentary of societies long before it was enunciated by Jesus. That’s because the Golden Rule requires grace in order to be understood, much less lived. Judaism articulated the basic norm that all pagan societies, at their best, could attain: love your neighbor, hate your enemy. It’s the norm we still basically live by today. Jesus’ Golden rule implied love for enemies because it included enemies in the term “neighbor”. It remains, apart from grace, an impossible and (for the worldly) ridiculous standard. The notion that anybody — especially an atheist — would aspire to it is a classic example of the way in which atheists live off Christian capital.”

I agree with you also, Ken, that we all believe many things that we cannot prove. For example, I believe that I have free will to make choices, and even to act on a whim. But I cannot disprove the assertion that an entity with a complete understanding of human psychology could forecast my every choice, including what I thought was a whim.

Gods with all of the attributes frequently claimed for gods, cannot exist. For example, if I am right that I have free will, there cannot be any omniscient god. If on the other hand I am wrong, there cannot be any just god, if it punishes my predictable mistakes.

This is a curious thing for Nicholas to believe, given his atheistic stance. For really, it is only by first invoking a sense of telos that humanity can postulate that it has a will, especially one that is free. Fundamentally, and from a purely empirical standpoint, a human being is just a fleshy outer shell wrapped around a bundle of opportunistic chemical reactions that are partly random and partly a response to outside stimuli. There is no free will in that — these words that I am typing right now are a testament to nothing more than a churning electrochemical reaction taking place within my brain, and series of signals being transmitted through my nervous system. Indeed, my very theism is nothing more than either an expression of something within my genes (and therefore meaningless, and certainly no indicator that I am possessed of a will of any sort) or the result of a response to either a chemical/hormonal reaction within my body or an external stimuli (and therefore, again, meaningless).

Another problem with atheists, I find, is that they tend to be more fundamentalist in their conception of who God must be than even the most rigid, fanatical fundamentalist theists are. Note the sudden transition to strict either/or thinking in Nicholas‘ writing, O Reader — this was a predictable shift on his part. Now, to be fair, historical theology has given him some ammunition to work with, in postulating on the omnipotence of God. But as others have pointed out, “omnipotence” is not the best word to describe the nature and scope of God’s knowledge and power. Better terms would be “volipotence” and “voliscience“.

“The concept of voliscience describes a Creator who knows whatever He wants, whenever He wants, to the extent that the concept of time is even relevant to such a being. Not only does this concept not limit God, but it has the additional benefit of being far more Biblically accurate than the traditional concept of an omniscient God. In fact, if one thinks about the matter for more than five seconds, one quickly realizes that the concept of voliscience is far less limiting than the use of the concept of omniscience has historically proven to be. One might also consider the concept of volipotence to be of some benefit in better conceiving a rationally sound and Scripturally precise nature of the Biblical God, but it’s probably less necessary since the key stumbling point for most Christians and atheists alike here is not related directly to omnipotence per se, but rather their inability to distinguish between the capacity of omnipotence and the action of omniderigence.

The fact that there is no possible logical conflict between voliscience and volipotence only adds to the rational appeal of the concept in my opinion, although I regard the nominal theodictic conflict between omnipotence and omniscience to reflect thinking so shallow as to border on stupidity anyhow.”

Famously, the life cycle of the Ichneumonidae, and much else, such as the facts that almost all life forms on this planet produce more (often hugely more) offspring than survive to maturity, and the doomed young often die in terror and pain, prove that there is no benign and omnipotent god.

Given that the Bible — especially the New Testament — is full of examples of ways in which suffering and death are shaped into pathways by which God’s glory is revealed, and given that some of Jesus’ teachings even go so far as to point out the role that death and dying play in God’s plan for His creation, the charge that any incidences of suffering and/or death in nature somehow disprove the idea of a benign god is specious and inconsequential…as has been discussed on this site a goodly number of times. Nicholas in particular would do well to remember that he’s been “thwumped” on this issue before on this very site.

These facts are consistent with the existence of any number of cruel gods, including C S Lewis’s “cosmic sadist”. They are also consistent with gods who have only limited powers and bungle important things. I am not atheist about such gods, but I choose (I think!) not to believe they exist, because there is no positive evidence for their existence.

I have long maintained, O Reader, that most strains of atheism are, at their core, built up around some manner of positivism, and certainly that has always been the case with Nicholas‘ atheism (as evidenced here). What is interesting is that he is willing to consider his personal opinions about the relative “cruelty” of the function of the natural world as evidence against the existence of the supernatural, and yet is unwilling to consider things like unexplained healings following in lockstep with prayers of intercession to the saints (Padre Pio in particular!) and other attested miracles as evidence in favour of the existence of the supernatural.

It’s not exactly a rational way of looking at the world, discarding the evidence one doesn’t like and improperly using as evidence that which is, on closer examination, not really evidence in support of one’s point at all. That things like predation, diseases, and often-lethal environmental pressures exist in the world tells us nothing about the intentions of any hypothetical creator; they merely tell us that within creation there are several extant hierarchies and concrete realities. Bigger animals and smaller animals exist, and some bigger animals eat some of the smaller ones. Different environmental forms exist, and sometimes environmental changes or events can have devastating results because — let’s be honest — any time there’s any sort of dynamism on a scale as large as the crust of a planet, there is bound to be the potential for a dramatic release of energy.

And to it all, we can honestly say: so what? Nature is designed by something way beyond human comprehension to begin with; should it be any kind of surprise, then, that we do not always understand the ways and means with which it operates?

You can call this sort of atheism a religion if you like, but it’s rather an eccentric use of the word. In the usual use, I think, religions always include elements of the supernatural, and of ritual. Even a stripped-down version of Buddhism includes mystical elements such as the denial of the self. And, as far as I know, all forms of modern Buddhism as actually practised include rituals. Tibetan lamaism includes all manner of weird spirits and deities.

This is mostly true, although it serves to note that many atheists — Sam Harris being perhaps one of the more prominent — draw upon Buddhism as an example of an “atheist” religion (Harris himself practices some “rituals” — including, but not limited to, meditation — of the Buddhist religion). And at any rate, certain forms of Taoism are almost completely free of supernatural concepts, unless one counts the concept of “peace” as supernatural.

As to whether the “denial of the self” can be counted as “mystical,” I leave up to the reader. Self-denial in various forms infuses many aspects of secular culture (dieting, for an easy example) without seeming to stray into the realm of mysticism, after all.

In contrast, I don’t admit to worshipping anything. I accept modus ponens because it works. I accept the evidence of randomised double-blind trials of drugs, because they have given us drugs which work. But I don’t sing hymns to modus ponens or the smallpox vaccine, or make them burnt offerings.

Employing a touch of Nicholas‘ logic in reverse, I observe that many drugs can and do produce all manner of rather horrifying side effects, including (in some cases) death. Clearly we can posit, then, non-benign (if not outright cruel) intent on the part of pharmaceutical researchers?

Yes, I’m being facetious.

Nicholas is correct in that he does not admit to worshipping anything, and indeed he probably does not ritualize even those things which he does worship. But my contention is that we all worship something — even sex or money — and this contention stands. When I posed a set of questions in the article I linked to at the beginning of this posting, Nicholas responded thusly:

1. What do I feel entitled to? The rights set out in the European Convention of Human Rights.
2. Why? Because this convention is largely common sense, and has been incorporated into the law of the country I live in.
3. Why am I so angry/sad/bitter? What makes you think I am any of these?
4. If I had to, how would I define happiness? Aristotelian eudaimonia, laced with Epicurean pleasure in hugs, snow, and music.

I observe a sense that the law, and in particular human rights legislation, is sacrosanct. After all, the first question asked what Nicholas felt entitled to, and the fact that he answered it as he did is instructive.

If we honestly think about it, we as human beings are entitled to nothing, whether God exists or not. This is especially true if we assume God does not exist, because at that point all we can claim to be entitled to is what we can hold on to until someone stronger, faster, or otherwise “bigger” comes to take it away from us. Appeals to common sense hold little sway in face of the “cruel” laws by which nature operates…and equally, not everyone recognizes things held to be commonly sensible.

But Nicholas feels entitled to these human rights all the same. At the same time, he has in the past argued that an entire category of human beings — the unborn — do not necessarily deserve the same comprehensive protection of their human rights. But for Nicholas, his being protected by those and other legal conventions is sacrosanct. It is his entitlement.

So I leave it here to the Reader: what, exactly, does Nicholas worship, even if not in a way that involves formal ritual?

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.

You know, I am constantly amused by the way that atheists just seem to land on my doorstep. I realize that I tend to be pretty vocal in my criticisms of that particular philosophical conjecture/quasi-religion, but nevertheless I am still amused and the intermittent train of individuals who feel the need to stop in and say something.

I mean, really: if I am just a deluded theist, why not leave me to my delusions? Of what profit is it to debate with me, when the subject of debate is something that any atheist will state doesn’t even exist (i.e. a deity)? Why do atheists waste so much breath on the denial of this God in whom they most certainly do not believe, and whose existence they very readily deny. Why deny it at all? If, as Joel asserts, religious folks are akin to schizophrenics claiming that the dogs are talking to them, why bother to tell us that the dog’s voice isn’t real? Arguably, we can’t help it (being deluded) and probably won’t listen anyhow (being mentally ill).

For whatever reason, though, the poor dears feel the need to comment. Providing illustration to this observation, Nicholas had something else he wanted to add regarding my last response to him.

Let’s keep it simple: the old technology of signposts. We come to a fork in the road. One way leads to Edmonton, the other to Calgary. The signpost says right for Calgary. (And let’s also suppose that no local yobs are in the habit of turning signposts round.) Is it right for Calgary because the signpost says so? Or does the signpost point right because that’s the way to Calgary?

That, of course, is what Plato was getting at in your least favourite of the dialogues, Euthyphro. Is (for example) feeding the hungry good only because one or more gods are alleged to have said so, or are there reasons why feeding the hungry is good? If there are reasons, then we don’t need any gods as a basis for our moral choices. Note that this argument says nothing about the existence of one or many gods. It just says that the alleged guidance of one or more gods cannot be a moral basis for moral choices.

Moreover, the god YHWH was, in my opinion, according to the alleged records of its moral guidance, frequently grossly immoral. And many of the recorded sayings of Jesus are, in my opinion, also misleading moral guidance. Joseph Hoffman, for example, puts all that much better than I can. See http://www.spinozaslens.com/libet/articles/hoffmann_lettinggoofjesus.htm.

Nicholas demonstrates a very careless inattention, given his invocation of the tired Euthyphro argument. It was a good argument back in its day, when the dominant religion of the day was polytheistic and the notion of the love of the gods for what is “moral” was substantially more subjective given that different gods in the Greek Pantheon loved different things, often in ways which were contradictory. Euthyphro is more or less irrelevant in a monotheistic framework in which the internal contradictions of the Pantheon, on which the dilemma is so focused and dependent, simply do not exist.

Moreover, Nicholas is careless, O Reader, because he evidently didn’t bother to check and see if I’d had anything to say about Euthyphro buried in the archives. As it turns out, I’ve had a fair bit to say about the subject (see here and here, especially — moreover, see this and this by author Theodore Beale), and can confidently say that I’m not particularly worried at its implications to both my faith and my worldview.

The central question of the Euthyphro dilemma is, of course, Morality: is X moral because the gods love/command it, or to the gods love/command X because it is moral? Socrates had a field day with this. And to be fair, it kind of works within the context of the Pantheon (although, as Theodore Beale demonstrates at the above links, it can also be assailed and discredited purely from within that context), given that someone like Hera would be apt to love — and view as moral — different things than someone like Hades would. That’s fine.

Within the Christian context, however, the solution to the dilemma is a bit simpler: “yes.” Is something moral because God loves/commands it? Certainly. Does God love/command something because it is moral? Definitely. This works, principally, because God is the creator of all things (unlike, if memory serves, the various members of the Pantheon) — as the sole author of the whole of the Universe, God has created morality itself, and separated what is moral from what is not. This is both built into the fabric of creation and recorded as instructions, because humanity — empowered with free will — has need of both formal and natural revelation in coming to terms with, and in fostering its understanding of, God’s plan. That is why when we are taught, in the Bible, that marriage is the moral context for the use of the gift of sexuality, natural law and evidence from the world bear that conclusion out. There is a unity between what is taught and what is seen. God has both called us to moral living and made all the Universe in such a way that the living which He calls us to is moral.

To answer Nicholas more directly, however:

• Calgary is to the right.
• It is good to feed the hungry.

I trust the Reader notes what is going on? Nicholas is trying to sidetrack the discussion with dodges and pseudo-justifications, and in fact these are irrelevant. It is good to feed the hungry, plain and simple. Yes, Jesus commanded it, and obviously He did so because it was good. But equally, God (one in being with Christ in the Trinity) made humanity to be a social animal that values community and the well-being of members of the community; it is within our nature to care about the well-being of others. And so, both from within and without, what is moral is to feed the hungry.

As to the morality of God, I am not going to engage Nicholas in any substantive fashion, because we will end up talking past each other. I will agree that in the Old Testament there are a lot of times where we — merely human — might look askance at the recorded acts and commands of God and wonder at their correctness. Equally, however, we must remember that God does not see things as we do, and that if there is any truth to the “alleged records of its moral guidance” then there is also no chance at all that we mere humans will have any hope of comprehending the ways and means of the Almighty. Personally, I’m thankful for that, O Reader. For if God saw humanity as we humans tend to see it, I submit that He’d send us all into the pit of Hell with nary a second thought.

God is love, as Pope Benedict XVI recently reminded us in his encyclical Deus caritas est. And that is the first category we must employ when looking at the actions of God in Scripture. We may not be able to understand a particular action as one of love, of course, but whose shortcoming is that? God’s? Or ours?

Nicholas is, of course, welcome to dismiss as questionable the moral teachings of Jesus. Curiously, though, he simply states this as a matter of fact, providing no examples. I suspect that is because it is hard to argue that there exists any superior moral standpoint to “love your enemies.”

Finally, while the Hoffman article was interesting, it was also uncompelling (as, I have found, are most things that argue from the perspective of Jesus not being a historical figure). The fact that people doubt that Jesus was real doesn’t come as any surprise to me, given that a quarter of Britons think Churchill was a myth. I’d be willing to bet that over on this side of the Pond, more than a few people share that same thinking. And that should be instructive to us: large swathes of our society have relegated to the category of mythical a man whose accomplishments and shortcomings are well-documented, and who walked this Earth a mere sixty or so years ago. That people are weak-minded enough to similarly doubt the factual existence of historical figures that lived a thousand years ago, or two thousand, comes as no surprise, and is in fact to be expected.

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 grea