timeimmortal

As Mark Shea notes, the theological gap between Catholics and Protestants is, in one particular regard, quite wide. Whereas Protestant — especially evangelical — theology tends to focus on Scripture, verbal confession of faith, and the action of the Spirit, Catholic Theology tends to focus on contemplation, the human person, and (of course) Eucharist. To an evangelical, prayer is supposed to be a means of achieving something. To a Catholic, prayer is meant to draw us closer into unity with God.

And in a certain way, the difference between Catholics and Protestants can be abstracted in the difference between women and men. Evangelicalism and Protestantism0 tend to be a more masculine expression of faith, while Catholicism tends toward the feminine (no doubt inspired by the Biblical image of the Church as the bride of Christ). The misunderstandings we have of each other tend to follow the same lines.

Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that while Protestants and evangelicals tend to favour St. Paul as their example of witness, Catholics tend to favour Mary as the ideal Christian model (remember: Jesus can’t show us how to be a disciple of Jesus; only a follower of Jesus can do that). And of course, at the heart of the Marian example is her assent to God’s plan in her saying “let it be done to me” to the angel, when the angel announced that she was to bear the Son of God.

I think we can all accept it to be true that, were it not for Paul’s considerable efforts, the Gospels would never have reached the Gentiles. No earnest Christian could disagree with this statement. But far too many Christians disagree with another equally reasonable statement: that without Mary, Christ would not have been born; the Gospels, then would never even have come to Earth!

I’ve heard all manner of responses to this before, most of which tend to be variants on “oh, God would have just chosen someone else.” To such a speaker, Mary is merely a life-support system for her uterus, a hot-swappable piece of hardware that can be disposed of at a later date when no longer necessary.

It is odd to hear such a view espoused by supposedly “Biblical” Christians, because such a view plainly contradicts Scripture. We come back to Luke 1 again:

[26] In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth,

[27] to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary.
[28] And he came to her and said, “Hail, O favored one, the Lord is with you!”

Again, it serves to note that the term “o favoured one” is often translated as “full of grace”, and denotes that Mary herself was possessed of the sanctifying grace of the Lord at the outset. The specific term translated from Greek — kecharitomene — is the “passive participle of charitoo and means endowed with grace (charis), enriched with grace as in Ephesians. 1:6,…The Vulgate gratiae plena “is right, if it means ‘full of grace which thou hast received’; wrong, if it means ‘full of grace which thou hast to bestow’”. The translation of this word is undisputed across the broad spectrum of Christian denominations, and is a part of all common extant translations of the Bible.

In other words, we all agree on one thing, at least: Mary was indeed full of grace, and highly favoured of God. But the specific kind of grace she was endowed with was sanctifying grace, the salvific grace of God that is the basis of justification (c.f. Romans 5:20-21). We might thus construct a logical analysis thusly:

Premise: The Bible teaches that we are saved by the grace of God alone.
Premise: To be full of the grace of God is, thus, to be saved

Observation: Mary was full of the grace of God (c.f. Luke 1:28)

Conclusion: Mary, being full of grace (premise #1) is thus in a state of salvific sanctification (premise #2).

What does this mean? Well, for starters, it speaks to the uniqueness of Mary in God’s plan, and why no other woman would do. Mary was appointed, by God, for the task of bearing the Son. She was preserved from all sin by the sanctifying grace of God. And yet she was not an automoton; to the last moment, God left the decision as to whether or not she would bear the son in Mary’s hands; the angel appeared to announce the news to her, yes, but also to receive her consent (Luke 1:38).

And absent the consent of Mary, absent her saying “behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word,” we don’t have Christ. Not in the flesh, at any rate. We do have the Logos, the Word, the second person of the Holy Trinity. But we don’t have Jesus, the man who lived and who died, and who rose again to fulfill the Scriptures and bring salvation to all the nations.

Would God have simply chosen another, had Mary not given her assent? Is that to say, then, that another young, virginal woman existed who was already full of the sanctifying grace of the Lord? No, the very suggestion is absurd on its face, and the angel’s greeting makes it very clear that Mary has been chosen and called by name. Moreover, in the Magnificat (the name given to Mary’s testimony to Elizabeth, later in Luke 1), Mary confesses:

[46] And Mary said, “My soul magnifies the Lord,
[47] and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
[48] for he has regarded the low estate of his handmaiden.
For behold, henceforth all generations will call me blessed;
[49] for he who is mighty has done great things for me,
and holy is his name.

The Spirit desired us to know that Mary is blessed of God, and (moreover) that Mary is to be seen as, and called, “blessed” by every Christian. This is no interchangeable uterus-support system we are talking about here: this is a unique woman, solely chosen of God to give birth to the Saviour. Had she refused, there was no other.

Mary’s “yes” to God was the first participation of a human being in the salvific plan of God, and was the first step by which our salvation was secured. She was the Mother of the Son. Mary, alone amongst all women, gave us Jesus, and only Mary, alone amongst all women, could have given us Jesus.

Had she refused the angel, we would likely all still be living under the Old Covenant. Food for thought.

The possibility exists for some interesting dialogue to emerge when one compares how different passages of the Gospels refer to Mary. And of course, we are a bit limited in our ability to discuss the marriage of Mary and Joseph, hampered as we are by the near-total absence of Joseph from the rest of the Gospel narratives, apart from what we learn of him during the accounts of Jesus‘ birth. And let’s be yet more honest, O Reader: can we, personally and individually, actually recall one word that Joseph has said which was recorded by the authors of the Gospels?

Anyhow, that wasn’t really a relevant comment, so let’s move on to the topic at hand. We’ve looked at the Annunciation to Mary, and we more or less ended that discussion with Luke 1:34, which is a rather pivotal Biblical verse in support of the idea that Mary remained perpetually virginal after bearing Christ. This is, of course, the verse in which she posed the question to the angel, “how can this be?”

We didn’t really move on to the angel’s response, though, did we?

[35] And the angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you,
and the power of the Most High will overshadow you;
therefore the child to be born will be called holy,
the Son of God.

The reason that I put this verse in this section of my analysis, rather than in the section pertaining to the Annunciation, is that this verse actually references a concept that can be found in the Old Testament. The concept of being “overshadowed” is a less-commonly used euphemism for sex, but to Jews living 2,000 years ago the word would have had that meaning. It’s a little like how we say people are “sleeping together”, when we really mean that they are doing something else that typically involves a) a bed, and b) not sleeping, at least not at the time.

But more than that, the concept of overshadowing — or, alternatively, spreading a cloak or a wing over someone — would have been understood by the Jews to refer, more specifically, to marital sexual relations, not just to sex in general. Consider Ruth 3:

[7] And when Bo’az had eaten and drunk, and his heart was merry, he went to lie down at the end of the heap of grain. Then she came softly, and uncovered his feet, and lay down.
[8] At midnight the man was startled, and turned over, and behold, a woman lay at his feet!
[9] He said, “Who are you?” And she answered, “I am Ruth, your maidservant; spread your skirt over your maidservant, for you are next of kin.”
[10] And he said, “May you be blessed by the LORD, my daughter; you have made this last kindness greater than the first, in that you have not gone after young men, whether poor or rich.
[11] And now, my daughter, do not fear, I will do for you all that you ask, for all my fellow townsmen know that you are a woman of worth.
[12] And now it is true that I am a near kinsman, yet there is a kinsman nearer than I.
[13] Remain this night, and in the morning, if he will do the part of the next of kin for you, well; let him do it; but if he is not willing to do the part of the next of kin for you, then, as the LORD lives, I will do the part of the next of kin for you. Lie down until the morning.”

The astute Reader will catch the meaning of Ruth’s statement concerning Boaz being “next of kin” (and if not, the Reader should look up Mark 12:18-27, in which Jesus is tested on a curious aspect of marital law in Judaism). Her meaning, in saying what she does, is that she desires Boaz to take her as his wife.

So let’s come back to Mary, overshadowed by the Spirit. The angel’s choice of words is, as I said, no accident, for it communicates a very important truth not only about the conception of Christ, but also concerning Mary’s sexuality as well. In essence, Mary became the spouse of the Holy Spirit — of God — when the Spirit overshadowed her; moreover, having been overshadowed by the Spirit, Joseph was actually forbidden to approach Mary sexually (c.f. Genesis 49:3, 2 Samuel 20:3).

For Joseph to have later had any sexual relationship with Mary which was legitimate and non-sinful in nature according to Mosaic Law (the extant covenant between God and mankind at that time, which both Mary and Joseph would have observed), Mary’s husband would either have had to divorced her or died. And since we know, from Jesus, that divorce is immoral in God’s eyes, and since we likewise know that God is not dead…it only makes sense to conclude that Joseph never approached Mary sexually. Consequently, we are again pointed in the direction of the conclusion that Mary remained perpetually virginal.

Possible Objection #5: but Scripture mentions the brothers and sisters of Jesus! “Jesus’ brothers are mentioned in several Bible verses. Matthew 12:46, Luke 8:19, and Mark 3:31 say that Jesus’ mother and brothers came to see Him. The Bible tells us that Jesus had four brothers: James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas (Matthew 13:55). The Bible also tells us that Jesus had sisters, but they are not named or numbered (Matthew 13:56). In John 7:1-10, His brothers go on to the festival while Jesus stays behind. In Acts 1:14, His brothers and mother are described as praying with the disciples. Later, in Galatians 1:19, it mentions that James was Jesus’ brother. The most natural conclusion of these passages is to interpret that Jesus had actual blood siblings.”

Response to Objection #5: it should be noted that in Hebrew, there aren’t really notions of extended family; even distant relatives will get lumped under the general category of “brothers and sisters” (or “bretheren”, which might be a more accurate translation of the Biblical text).

Possible Objection #6: you silly Catholic! The Gospels were written in Greek, not Hebrew.

Response to Objection #6: quite correct. But the writers of the Gospels were themselves Hebrews, and would have imprinted their cultural biases onto the text they were writing, regardless of the language they were writing in.

Consider: if I am a priest standing before a congregation, and I greet “my brothers and sisters” in English, I am going to greet them in the same way if I switch to French. More importantly, just because I have switched to French does not mean I am in any way obligated to now be more specific in referring to the assembled people according to more precise descriptions of my relationship to them.

The fact that the Gospels were written in Greek is likewise meaningless, as far as this objection is concerned. The authors were Hebrews, and would have written as Hebrews, but in Greek. They would have used modes of speaking common to Hebrews, transliterated into Greek. And indeed, the Greek word adelphos, which is the relevant word here, does not always refer to same-womb siblings. Indeed, as Randall notes, the phrase adelphos “can mean same nationality (Acts 3:17; Rom 9:3), any man, or neighbor (Mt 5:22; Lk 10:29), persons with like interests (Mt 5:47), distant descendants of the same parents (Acts 7:23,26; Heb 7:5), persons united by a common calling (Rev 22:9), mankind in general (Mt 25:40; Heb 2:17), the disciples (Mt 28:10; Jn 20:17), [and] all believers (Mt 23:8; Acts 1:15; Rom 1:13; 1 Thess 1:4; Rev 19:10). In other words, just because certain people are referred to as brethren of Jesus, this certainly does not automatically mean that they were His first-degree siblings.”

And in fact, there are other parts of the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ life which further suggest that he had no brothers and sisters by Mary’s womb. Consider, for example, Luke 2:

[41] Now his parents went to Jerusalem every year at the feast of the Passover.

[42] And when he was twelve years old, they went up according to custom;
[43] and when the feast was ended, as they were returning, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem. His parents did not know it,
[44] but supposing him to be in the company they went a day’s journey, and they sought him among their kinsfolk and acquaintances;
[45] and when they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem, seeking him.
[46] After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions;
[47] and all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers.
[48] And when they saw him they were astonished; and his mother said to him, “Son, why have you treated us so? Behold, your father and I have been looking for you anxiously.”
[49] And he said to them, “How is it that you sought me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”
[50] And they did not understand the saying which he spoke to them.
[51] And he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them; and his mother kept all these things in her heart.

The context here suggests that Jesus was still an only child at age 12. If memory serves, it is commonly held that Jesus was in his mid-30s when he went up to be crucified, so it would stand to reason that if he had had any adult siblings present during portions of his ministry (which, again, the text of the Gospels would seem to imply), then one would expect that there might be early mention of such siblings, that some confirmation would exist that Mary and Joseph had given rise to additional offspring. This is especially true of the Gospel of Luke, which pays closest attention to the Holy Family.

Instead, we hear nothing of it. And coming back to what I noted before, about the objection that some have to the perpetual virginity of Mary based on the difficulty of believing that a Jewish woman 2,000 years ago could have been married and yet remained celibate, I might note that if we accept that objection as being true, we must also think it strange that Jesus had no siblings — at least, none that are mentioned — unto his 12th year of age.

Indeed, it would also appear that the residents of Jesus’ home town of Nazareth had not heard of Mary giving birth to and additional children even when Jesus had reached adulthood and begun His ministry. From Mark 6, we hear of this exchange:

[1] He went away from there and came to his own country; and his disciples followed him.

[2] And on the sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue; and many who heard him were astonished, saying, “Where did this man get all this? What is the wisdom given to him? What mighty works are wrought by his hands!
[3] Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him.
[4] And Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor, except in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house.”
[5] And he could do no mighty work there, except that he laid his hands upon a few sick people and healed them.
[6] And he marveled because of their unbelief.

At first, Mark 6:3 would appear to imply that Jesus has direct familial siblings. But look at the text closely. Jesus is “the” son of Mary and Joseph, not “a” son of Mary and Joseph. We’ve already discussed how “brothers and sisters”, even in Greek, can refer to people of the same town or region, more distant relatives, and other people of familiarity to, but not necessarily directly related to, a person. But what’s really telling is how Jesus is singled out as the son of the Holy Family, not one son out of many.

But what really clinches the argument against Jesus having siblings born out of Mary’s womb is the scene at the foot of the Cross, in the Gospel of John. From John 19, we hear this:

[25]…standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Mag’dalene.

[26] When Jesus saw his mother, and the disciple whom he loved standing near, he said to his mother, “Woman, behold, your son!”
[27] Then he said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother!” And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home.

The description of who is assembled at the foot of the Cross is paralleled in Mark 15:

[40] There were also women looking on from afar, among whom were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salo’me,

[41] who, when he was in Galilee, followed him, and ministered to him; and also many other women who came up with him to Jerusalem.

This is echoed in Matthew 27:

[55] There were also many women there, looking on from afar, who had followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering to him;

[56] among whom were Mary Mag’dalene, and Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of the sons of Zeb’edee.

From John, we learn that Mary (Jesus’ mother) was at the foot of the cross, along with her sister (Clopas’ wife), and Mary Magdalene. From Matthew, we actually don’t hear whether Jesus’ mother is present or not; we see again Mary Madgalene, as well as the mother of the sons of Zebedee (whose name, we learn from Mark, is Salome). And we also see “the other Mary”, the wife of Clopas, who is actually the mother of James and John (who are elsewhere referenced as ‘brothers’ of Jesus).

In other words: the Bible itself confirms that the ’siblings’ of Jesus are actually not direct siblings of his, but rather are children of a sibling of his mother’s. This is also confirmed, for those who know a thing or two about Jewish familial customs, in Jesus’ handing over care of His mother to the beloved disciple. Had she had any extant, living children apart from Christ, they would have been charged with her care. Since, however, Jesus had no blood siblings, He gave care of His mother over to the disciple whom He loved.

Now, the Reader may be beginning to wonder why all this really matters. It’s a fair question, and a part of the answer is given by Christ directly when he gives care of Mary over to John, the beloved. “Behold your mother,” Christ instructs. It turns out that this is not just a commandment given to one man.

Nicholas has some questions.

The title of your site comes up on my machine as

STOP ERROR 0xC5FA721B or MEDIA_JIHAD_STATUS_FAIL (Time Immortal)

Do you happen to know whether this a glitch in my settings, or what? (I use the hated IE7 - sorry!)

I think there’s also a glitch in the link to the Hoffmann article.

By the way, I look at your site occasionally because your photos are wonderful, and you write well about matters that interest me. Usually, I strongly disagree with you. But if I only read things I agree with, I might as well be dead.

Also by the way, I think the gospels have some historical basis, though deciding exactly what’s history, what’s legend, and what’s myth, is difficult. Maybe I’ve got it wrong, but I thought that was what Hoffman was saying too.

Firstly, the site title is correctly displayed, O Reader, if in fact it reads as Nicholas is reporting that it reads. As far as I know, no Microsoft error code incorporates the term “jihad” into its error variable name. Moreover, as far as I know, 0xC5FA721B is not a valid hexadecimal error code in the Windows environment. Both the error code and the error variable name are of my own composition.

This is what nerd humour looks like. Periodically, I change the site title on a whim — this one is probably due for a change.

There was, however, a glitch in the link to the Hoffman article in my previous reply to Nicholas — Wordpress added a line-break after the URL, which I have now removed. The link should work now. Not that I particularly recommend the article, of course.

I am glad to hear that Nicholas enjoys the photos; quite a number of people tell me that, in fact. This is a bit of a tangent, of course, but I have offered in the past to make full-resolution (usually 3000 x 2000, except in the cases of panoramics) available to people who have written in concerning pictures I’ve taken.

It can’t hurt to make the same offer public, so please consider this notice of that offer. I don’t charge for pictures, so if anything strikes the Reader as compelling, simply provide me a link (either to the relevant Pic of the Day article or the gallery entry) and an email address to send the high-res version to, and I will get it sent out.

Moving on, while the opening parts of the Hoffman article could be looked upon as being an attempt to sort out history from fallacy in the Gospels, it quickly gets mired down in a discussion of contradcitions between the accounts and ends up more or less dismissing the historicity of Jesus entirely. The problem, of course, is that discussions of contradictions are entirely too subjective to provide a substantive basis for a rejection of the validity of the Gospel accounts. After all, any student of criminal trials knows that eyewitness testimonies often contradict each other to a certain extent (usually pertaining to side details). What is important in eyewitness testimony is that A, B, C, and D saw X do Y to Z. If A, B, C, and D can’t quite agree on the time of day, the number of bystanders, or whether X was wearing a sweater or a hoodie, that is okay, and in fact is to be expected.

If anything, I find that what few inconsistencies exist between the Gospel accounts add to the credibility of the accounts as a whole. Each approaches Jesus’ life from a different angle, and at the end of the day the exact count of women at the tomb is substantially less important than the fact that the tomb itself was empty.

I don’t usually cruise atheist websites all that much — few enough of them are designed well enough for my tastes, and at any rate I don’t much enjoy having to switch off large portions of my brain just to be able to successfully navigate through one irrational tirade after another. That said, for some reason I decided to check out the Rational Responders website. Their byline reads: “Believe in God? We can fix that.” And yet, reading through their list of ‘frequently asked questions’ (and some of the rest of the site), I was tempted to think instead of Chesterton’s remark regarding Ingersol: “almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian.”

If these “Rational” Responders are the speaking voice of atheism in the online realm, religious folks have nothing to fear. These kids — and really, that’s what the “Response Squad” seems to be comprised of: kids with parental authority issues — couldn’t rationalize their way out of a paper bag, as their FAQ list demonstrates quite abundantly.

But before I get into that, there’s a couple of basic form criticisms that I’d like to get out of the way. I’ve designed more than a few websites in the last few years, and the basic idea is that you want your site to show the telltale signs of being “under construction” for as little time as is humanly possible. For me, I prefer to have a site completed within a week of its going live (and preferably well before then; that’s why I use database-driven content management systems as much as possible, because I can develop them in a “sandbox” subdomain and then move them to the “live” site once completed with only a few quick settings changes).

The same goes for site content, which is why it’s positively shameful what sort of state the FAQ for the site are in. Yes, I know (and you’ll see it below, O Reader) that the list maintainer says that it’s still ‘in the works’ (so to speak), and I know that at present the FAQ are flagged as unofficial. That might be fine if the list was only a week or two old. But a quick glance at the FAQ page reveals that the list was posted on November 24, 2006, at 9:28 PM — that’s about a year and a half ago. That the list has been sitting unmaintained for that length of time tells me something, as a site designer, about how unimportant the maintenance of such a list is to the operators of the website. And even though there’s a long discussion thread attached to the initial FAQ posting, the fact that the top post has not been updated in roughly 18 months tells me all I need to know about how little care and concern the “Rational” Responders have for it.

Which would seem to go against their byline. After all, if they are committed to “fixing” people’s belief in God, one would think that site elements like a comprehensive, well-presented FAQ list would be a very important feature. But it’s not. And, what’s more, what content they do have in the list at present (and remember — it’s the top post that counts in site design; proper design dictates that any good material that emerges in subsequent posts on the subject should be incorporated into the top post) is…lacking.

Let’s fisk, shall we?

Title: My idea for the title so people get what we mean when we say RRS all the time.
RRS FAQ - Rational Response Squad Frequently Asked Questions

I wonder how long it took Voiderest to think up that inspired title?

Questions: I have a feeling a lot of this are just general questions for atheists so may not apply to RRS but I know we get the hypocrite and hate comments a lot. Feel free to add, comment, correct, or change things. This is just to get the ball rolling.

It’s either a very big or very unshapely ball, since in the 18 months since Voiderest attempted to get it rolling, it hasn’t really gone anywhere. Oh, some of the discussion which follows up on the initial posting is interesting, but it’s the height of both physical and intellectual laziness that Voiderest hasn’t been bubbling good content back up to the top post.

How can all of you hypocrites?

I guess they couldn’t think of a good answer. Which is a shame, because this is a pretty wide question with a number of examples. To enumerate only briefly:

• Whither morality?
• Why do so many atheistic moral theories (of the sort Sam Harris, for example, is fond of putting forth) end up predicating themselves on the assumption of a non-quantifiable external concept of some kind (in essence, a ‘divinity’)?
• If there is no ‘divinity’ and no ’soul’, then all we are is a meaty outer shell and some opportunistic chemical interactions. Given that, whither reason?
• Moreover, isn’t it the height of irrationalism to claim that the random chemical interactions in our brains that we call ‘thought’ have any meaning whatsoever, and are thus rational and capable of reason?

The notion that one must necessarily be an atheist/agnostic in order to be rational or a person of reason is, I think, perhaps the biggest hypocrisy in light of the fact that the very idea of reason is meaningless absent some notion of telos. Because the plain fact of the matter is that, if the secularists are right and if a human being is little more than a meaty outer container for an internal stew of random or hormonally-driven chemical reactions, why should human beings choose to sacrifice even a moment of the fun- and pleasure-driven “get what you can while you can” hedonistic ethos that is the highest moral reasoning of a purposeless existence for something so banal and demanding as a baby? It is in the “reasoning” of atheism and godlessness that humanity finds the strongest justification for its own extinction — why let something so taxing as procreation get in the way of an endless succession of Friday night romps and Thursday afternoon trips to the shoe store?

Moreover, how can we even say — rationally, and from reason — that human beings, being (in the secular view) little more than a meaty outer container for an internal stew of random or hormonally-driven chemical reactions, are even capable of reason? That seems to be one of the most irrational faith claims yet made, even more irrational than the notion that if in fact there is a God, He sent His only Son to Earth to die and rise again for the forgiveness of sins. At least it makes sense that a deity, if one of such power as the Judeo-Christian God did exist, could arrange for such a set of events to transpire. Reason from randomness? Not so much.

Allowing for the base assumption of the existence of the deity, the claims that follow from that assumption are reasonable. Conversely, by allowing only for the base assumption that humanity seems to have arisen randomly, and that human beings are just animals — some muscle and some bone, and a slough of random chemical interactions — it is wholly irrational to claim that reason even exists, let alone that human beings are capable of grasping at it.

Why do you hate Christians so much?
We don’t many members have confused their love for them, I wouldn’t but I’m too mean to tell people I love them. Now the high volume of claims you see on Christianity here is due mainly to the fact it is one of the larger Religions in the world and one which most of use encounter in some form most of the time. The people on the radio show are American and as such have to deal with the effects on an almost daily bases. If another religion was on top you would see more stuff on them. Also we do address other religions. Links (Threads about other religions here?)

Another form criticism — 18 months later, Voiderest is still too lazy to provide actual links to substantiate his claims.

To be fair, I don’t think most atheists hate Christians (although some that I have met do nurture a deep-seated hatred of all religious folks), but I do think most atheists hate God, or at least hate whatever misinformed notion of God informs their thinking about His non-existence. That’s a far more serious issue.

And the plain fact of the matter is that, when it comes right down to it, atheists — regardless of their professed non-hatred of Christians — seem to have no problem denigrating Christians as irrational and superstitious. They seem to have no problem likening raising a child in, say, the Catholic faith to an act of child abuse. They have no problem demanding that a religious politician not allow his religious convictions (which should, if he is serious about his faith, be the most important thing in his life) to influence his policy-making and voting.

Maybe it’s not hatred…but it certainly isn’t love either.

What if your wrong?
Pascal’s Wager is shit. Link (Answer.com article?)

Once again, Voiderest can’t actually be bothered to link to any effective rebuttal of Pascal’s Wager. Of course, since I’m critiquing form in this paragraph, I should also point out that he doesn’t actually answer the question either. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think is a great tool for evangelism. It’s a valid question, to be sure, but is too often misused by Christians.

The thing is, Christians cannot say with 100% certainty that God exists — we believe that He does, with a great deal of conviction, but we cannot say that there is a 100% certainty that we are correct in that belief (not if we are honest with ourselves, at any rate). Equally, atheists cannot say with 100% certainty that God does not exist — they believe he does not, with a great deal of conviction, but they cannot say that there is a 100% certainty that they are correct in that belief (not if they are honest with themselves, at any rate). Ultimately, only a direct encounter with the divine can confirm the divine to exist with 100% certainty, and for most human beings that’s not something that is likely to happen during their lifetime.

In that understanding, Pascal’s Wager is an interesting and valid question, not as a precursor to an attempt to convert, but as a challenge to the integrity of a person’s particular belief about the existence/non-existence of God. Basically, the Wager asks whether — because we have each wed ourselves to a particular belief about God’s existence — we can accept the potential consequences of our beliefs. Can a Christian accept that he might be wrong about God? Can an atheist accept that she might be wrong about God? Can a Christian, in being wrong, accept that he will find no heaven, nor any hell, upon death? Can an atheist, in being wrong, accept that she may just find a heaven, or a hell, upon death? In either case, is the conviction with which the particular person’s belief is held both sufficiently strong, and sufficiently rational, that the person who holds that belief can both concede the possibility of being wrong and accept that there may be a price to pay (or no price to pay) for that error?

In short, the Wager is a test of how honest each of us is in our commitment to what we each believe about God.

Additional thought: Of course, none of the above begins to address the fact that Voiderest, again, doesn’t even properly answer the question. It’s quite surprising that a supposed rationalist would answer such a question as Voiderest does, rather than replying with a succinct, but on-topic, answer — for example: “Then I guess I’d be wrong. But then, so might you be.” Of course, for such an answer to occur to a person, said person would have to have a shred of intellectual honesty, which is not a trait I normally associate with any person who self-identifies as an atheist (although I’m willing to be charitable to self-declared agnostics).

How can you be agnostic and atheist?
Link (I’m think Ask the Atheist would be good.)

Voiderest evidently couldn’t be bothered to even try with this one.

How can you say there is no god when you can’t prove there is no god?
Bigfoot, fairies, celestial tea pots, Zeus, etc.

I think this is the most disappointing response from the supposedly “Rational” Responders — if, O Reader, you ever needed a picture of intellectual laziness, this would be it.

A quarter of all Britons think that Winston Churchill is a mythical figure. That is to say that one in four British folks honestly believes that Churchill was just another chapter in the epic tale of English cultural mythology, alongside King Arthur and St. George’s dragon. He was another Hercules in their mind, no more real than the tooth fairy or Zeus ever was.

Listing off an arbitrary set of mythical figures is not a sufficient reason to claim that Winston Churchill never existed, and it is likewise an insufficient reason to claim that there is no God, nor any divinity. To be fair, Winston Churchill is reasonably well documented in various historical records. But then, there is also historical evidence that Jesus existed as well — most historians and biblical scholars reject the Jesus myth hypothesis (which is a hypothesis that the “Rational” Responders, incidentally, promote).

Which is why this response, in particular, is disappointing. Any rational person should be able to understand that s/he cannot simply defend the belief that there is no God by saying that there was never a Zeus or a tooth fairy, anymore than a Briton could defend his or her belief that there never was a Winston Churchill by means of the same argument. That the “Rational” Responders have let this particular entry sit in the top post on their FAQ list for about 18 months already is, frankly, both shameful (for them) and telling.

Doesn’t religion have a place for a purpose for life and morality?
If by purpose you mean it gives you a safety blank and by morality you mean a arbitrary set of rules made over a 1000 years ago, maybe. Also Link (Ask the Atheist)

I don’t know why atheists insist on clinging to their comforting belief that religion is a “safety blanket,” when even a cursory reading of the Gospels demonstrates otherwise. Luke 21, anyone?

I choose Christianity not because I need a cosmological hug, but because it is hard. I choose it because it does divide me from friends and family, because it does earn me new enemies (and also new friends), and because I may well suffer persecution one day for being a person of faith.

Comfort? There’s no assurance of that, because my salvation is not something I can say, with 100% confidence, that I have won. For all I know, I could be headed for a big loss…but I choose Christianity anyhow, because it is divisive and because it isn’t easy to be one. If I wanted to live the easy life, I’d be an atheist…and then I wouldn’t have to care about being nice to people, or about having sex before marriage, or about being faithful to my wife…because all I’d care about is “the now”. If there’s no God, and no final judgment, and (really) no ultimate arbiter of morality, then I’m on the hook to compose and uphold my own morality in whatever way and form suits me best, right? And who can really tell me that I’m doing something “wrong”?

Seriously…any atheist who attempts to argue from the “religion is just a comfort blanket” angle betrays his or her own ignorance in sufficient quantity as to turn any further discussion into nothing more than sport on my part. It is passages like Luke 21 that I think of when I dismiss — casually and off-handedly — the claims by atheists that the “problem” of evil in the world serves as an effective argument against the probability of the existence of God. Likewise, passages of this sort are the reason I laugh (heartily!) when atheists tell me that no Christian has ever given them a satisfactory answer to that supposed “problem”.

The fact of the matter is that most (if not all) atheist authors who have prognosticated on the issue of an atheistic morality eventually have to resort to the invocation of something external in order to justify the moral reasoning they are advancing, because they have to get around the fact that absent at least some sense of telos, morality is relative to the individual and therefore left in the hands of each individual to determine — thus, nothing can truly be said to be “wrong” (or they go the route of Provine and argue that things like morality and free will don’t really exist at all, and that punishing people for “crimes” is unjust).

Only in a teleological framework can we find both the rhetorical footroom and the actual justification for stating that some moral concepts are universal; in a purely materialistic framework, any overarching morality can be dismissed as meaningless, especially since all this moral “reasoning” is just the outcome of a few opportunistic chemical reactions in the brain anyhow.

Have you even read [insert holy book]?
Someone here probably has if it is a more mainstream religion, but even if we haven’t we would probably still classify it as irrational if it has a god belief in it.

Here’s another disappointing one from the “Rational” Responders. Do you see it, O Reader?

Let’s flip it around and pretend for a moment that I’m a young earth creationist who firmly believes that the Earth is no more than 10,000 years old, and that evolution is a scientific fiction. And let’s pretend, O Reader, that you ask me if I’ve ever read any modern texts on evolutionary biology. And let’s pretend, O Reader, that I dismiss your question thusly: “I think some of my friends probably have, if it was a book by a more mainstream author, but even if they haven’t we would probably still classify it as fiction if argues from the assumption that evolution is a valid scientific theory.”

Don’t laugh: I’ve had people tell me that.

The fact of the matter is, it’s intellectually lazy, not to mention academically dishonest, to condemn outright as “irrational” something which one has not taken at least a few steps to familiarize oneself with. And I’m sorry, but setting up straw-man misunderstandings of who and what God is, and then rejecting those, does not count either. Simply disagreeing with a core assumption of a text that is relevant to the debate is not sufficient grounds for rejecting or avoiding the text in question; relevance, regardless of our personal tastes and opinions, is relevance, plain and simple.

If one wants to denigrate the theory of evolution, one should first read up as much as one can about the theory and the various evidences that have been presented in support of it. Yes, there is a risk that one might find one’s mind changed about the invalidity of the theory — but that is the risk in any debate, isn’t it? Likewise, if one wants to denigrate a religion, shouldn’t one be expected to have made the effort to familiarize oneself with the holy book, and possibly some of the derived teachings, of that religion, rather than open one’s mouth and be confirmed as an unprepared fool?

Doesn’t [insert holy book] prove there is a god?
No, all it proves is that this one god idea exists, yes there are more then one kind of god.

This might be the sanest and most reasonable statement in the entire “Rational” Responder FAQ section, and I honestly hope there are very few Christians today that are dumb enough to ask a question like this one. That’s not to say that holy books don’t play an important role in the search for what is true (and not true) about God, of course.

I can’t speak to other religions, but it would seem to me that the mystery of Christian faith distills to one fundamental issue: which sources of historical testimony that describe Jesus one accepts or rejects. Most people accept the various Roman records, or the writings of Josephus and others, as factual. So really, the issue can be further distilled:

Either one accepts the Gospels as historical, albeit eye-witness, accounts of the life of Christ, or one does not.

If you’re a Christian, then you accept that the Gospels are — in addition to being powerful, message-communicating texts — eye-witness historical narratives about the life and works of Jesus (as a general rule). If you’re not a Christian, and especially if you’re an atheist, then you reject the Gospels as being such (again, as a general rule).

I realize that I’m over-simplifying a bit, but in a certain sense that’s all the debate between atheist and Christian distills down to. That Jesus existed can, I think, be safely said to be beyond debate. So all that the embrace or rejection of faith in Christ comes down to is whether or not one accepts the historicity of four books that purport to be eye-witness historical narratives about the life and acts of Jesus, who is called Christ. And just like the various bits of evidence presented in support of, for example, evolution, each person needs to look at the evidence and decide whether to accept it or not, and whether or not to shape one’s beliefs according to the results of that decision.

Don’t communist prove we need religion?

Evidently, being a “Rational” Responder means that one can dispense with proper grammar. Once again, Voiderest was evidently too lazy to answer this one. Pity, too, given that the various communist regimes — all officially, by law, atheist — have been the most murderous regimes in human history, far exceeding the worst that even Islam, for all its abysmal violence, has been capable of.

How can you be so un-American?
1. Not all of us on this forum are American.
2. America was founded has a secular nation so we are no more or no less American then the religious. Link (Ask the Atheist)

Again we see a failure to actually provide a link in the 18 months this list has been online.

More to the point, America is a secular nation in some respects…but it is not an atheistic nation (that is, while it does not have a church-derived government, it does not reject, in either its laws or its Constitution, the possibility of God’s existence. Indeed, I believe the current wording of the Constitution tends toward the opposite view, does it not?).

Moreover, anyone who has, say, thumbed through George Washington’s diaries will note that while America was not founded as a church-run nation, there can be little doubt that the inspiration for the legal and moral framework upon which the Constitution was founded was grounded in the best of Judeo-Christian intellectual and moral tradition.

That said, I don’t think it’s un-American to reject the idea that God exists — indeed, the American ideal of freedom pretty much ensures that whether one believes God exists or not, the important thing is that one is free to make such a decision for one’s own self.

But on the flip side, then, one must likewise be free to practice one’s faith, if one chooses to be a person of some religious faith, free from obstruction by others. That means that atheists and the ACLU have to stop telling Christians to cover up crosses, or cease praying before civic meetings if the majority of attendees are religious people of any kind, or refrain from holding Bible studies in schools during spare time/lunch breaks…and then in unused rooms.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

After all, religious folks are no more or less American than atheists.