Musings Of An Indie WriterSunday, November 16, 2008
Fran’s Sunday Ruminations: The Enemies Of Faith
WASHINGTON, D.C. — You better watch out. There is a new combatant in the Christmas wars.Ads proclaiming, "Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness' sake," will appear on Washington, D.C., buses starting next week and running through December. The American Humanist Association unveiled the provocative $40,000 holiday ad campaign Tuesday....
"We are trying to reach our audience, and sometimes in order to reach an audience, everybody has to hear you," said Fred Edwords, spokesman for the humanist group. "Our reason for doing it during the holidays is there are an awful lot of agnostics, atheists and other types of non-theists who feel a little alone during the holidays because of its association with traditional religion.1"...
Edwords said the purpose isn't to argue that God doesn't exist or change minds about a deity, although "we are trying to plant a seed of rational thought and critical thinking and questioning in people's minds.2"
The group defines humanism as "a progressive philosophy of life that, without theism, affirms our responsibility to lead ethical lives of value to self and humanity."
Last month, the British Humanist Association caused a ruckus announcing a similar campaign on London buses with the message: "There's probably no God.3 Now stop worrying and enjoy your life."
[Emphases and note-numbers added by FWP.]
Let's tackle the three emphasized assertions above in reverse order of appearance.
First, number 3: "There's probably no God." One aspect of the debate over the existence of a supernatural realm that enrages anti-theists is that there's no indisputable evidence either for or against the proposition. Their militancy is as unverifiable and unfalsifiable as any religious faith. Therefore, according to Porretto's Partition, it constitutes a faith of its own. (Beware: he who says that to an anti-theist had better have the number of the local ambulance service on speed-dial.)
So they fall back on the most fallacious of all pseudo-arguments: probability. But probability is a discipline of its own; it requires the ability, derived either from an analytical grasp of the phenomenon under study or a sufficient volume of experience with it, to estimate how often in a protracted series of trials the proposed event will occur. For example, we approach the question:
"How probable is it that this coin will come up 'heads' when flipped?"
...analytically by noting that the coin has two sides, that there's no measurable irregularity in the geometry or weight distribution of the coin, and that therefore, the probability is very near to 50 percent. He who doubts the analytical approach to the question -- perhaps our estimate of the coin's regularity doesn't satisfy him -- can perform a series of experiments: say a thousand coin-flips today, and a thousand tomorrow, and perhaps a thousand next Tuesday while eating lunch. His figures might vary from ours somewhat, in which case the argument will begin over whether his experimental series was consistently and accurately conducted, whether what's true of the coin he flipped might not be true of other coins flipped by other parties, and so forth.
In other words, assessments of probability worthy of respect require either analytical comprehension or substantial experience.
We have not the power to comprehend a proposed Being who, by postulate, stands outside Time and possesses complete control over the laws that govern our universe. Nor can we experiment on Him, nor sample His properties with the tools to hand. Therefore, the statement "There's probably no God" is completely inadmissible as a contribution to the debate. It has no substance, only form.
Now let's address number 2: "we are trying to plant a seed of rational thought and critical thinking and questioning in people's minds." This is pure arrogance. Many persons come to faith with the assistance of rational, critical thought. I am one such. I don't claim that one can reason one's way to God; by the arguments given above, that will forever be impossible. Rather, a combination of interior events -- inspirations, if you prefer -- and rational consideration of the objections to theism led me to decide that God exists, and that the Christian faith delineated in the Gospels is both rationally acceptable and ethically mandatory.
To question is human. God delights in our questions; that's why He made us what we are. Were His existence beyond all question, we would have no need for faith. Indeed, we would have no room for faith or doubt. But to question is not to deny, nor is an assertion that an untestable proposition must be false an intellectually respectable claim.
In this connection, it is particularly humorous to watch anti-theists preening themselves for their superior intellects. What they possess is superior arrogance, nothing more. They fail to distinguish among logic, evidence, assumption, and presumption, because to do so would compel them to grant respect to persons to whom they need to feel superior.
Finally, number 1: "there are an awful lot of agnostics, atheists and other types of non-theists who feel a little alone during the holidays because of its association with traditional religion." This is both nonsensical on its face and a dissimulation about the campaign's obvious target. Christmas is the most secularized of all the originally Christian celebrations. To enjoy it imposes absolutely no requirement for faith. Indeed, Christmas is situated where it is because originally, the classical Romans celebrated Saturnalia on that date, while the druids and other animistic creeds made ritual obeisances to the forces they worshipped, pleading for the Sun to be allowed to return to the world. There's no reason in our hyper-tolerant age for a non-theist to feel excluded from the festivities.
Science fiction writer (and adult convert to Catholicism) John C. Wright poses the most pointed of questions in the most pointed of forms:
Are you an atheist because you want to be loved and smooched and patted on the head, Mr. Edword? Or are you an atheist because you think atheism is TRUE and REASON DEMANDS IT?If you are not willing to be loyal to the truth, no matter the cost, then do not take up arms for the truth. If you are loyal, why count the cost? You want to be a rebel against the vast Christian majority, and also want the victory to be free, without strain, without bloodshed?
But this is only the overt thrust of the anti-God campaign. The covert purpose is to undermine the attachments of Christians. More specifically, it targets the efforts of Christian parents to school their children in the genesis of the holiday: the Incarnation of the Son of God in human flesh. Adult believers are relatively well armored against so crude a program, but young Americans, to whom the Gospel of Secular Humanism beckons in multifarious ways, are more susceptible.
Hypocrisy, arrogance, and self-pity rolled into one big, purulent ball doth not a cogent argument make.
But the Christian faith has more enemies than just the militant anti-theists. Most deplorably, some of those enemies are Christian clerics.
I've written before on this subject, but it's a bug-bear that refuses to die. These past few years we've had scandals of several varieties afflict the Catholic Church. In the years before that, there were a number of scandals pertaining to the high-profile "televangelists," several of whom were permanently disgraced by the revelations of their behavior. The Inquisitions were a particular blot upon Christendom, one which is still used to defame Christianity today. If you're willing to go back to the Renaissance Papacy, we can find a succession of popes whose behavior was so appalling as to compel the question of whether God Himself had turned His Face against the Church.
Today's specimen is the cleric who treats things sacred as of lesser importance than things secular. Clerics who use the pulpit to preach politics in preference to the Gospel. Clerics who downplay the absoluteness of the Commandments to keep from "frightening" their parishioners. Clerics who treat their own ethical preferences as inseparable from the teachings of Christ. In other words, clerics for whom the faith is merely a useful means to some other end:
Certainly we do not want men to allow their Christianity to flow over into their political life, for the establishment of anything like a really just society would be a major disaster. On the other hand we do want, and want very much, to make men treat Christianity as a means; preferably, of course, as a means to their own advancement, but, failing that, as a means to anything—even social justice. The thing to do is to get a man at first to value social justice as a thing which the Enemy demands, and then work him on to the stage at which he values Christianity because it may produce social justice. For the Enemy will not be used as a convenience. Men or nations who think they can revive the Faith in order to make a good society might just as well think they can use the stairs of Heaven as a short cut to the nearest chemist’s shop. Fortunately it is quite easy to coax humans round this little corner. Only today I have found a passage in a Christian writer where he recommends his own version of Christianity on the ground that ‘only such a faith can outlast the death of old cultures and birth new civilizations’. You see the little rift? ‘Believe this, not because it is true, but for some other reason.’ That’s the game. [C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters]
My parish is afflicted by one such priest. How many parishioners have flocked to his false banner, only God can know.
One more mini-rant and I'll close for today.
If you've been following these Sunday Ruminations, you might have noticed that they've not been as regular these past few weeks as they were before that. There are, of course, reasons.
First and least among them, I haven't been well. My health has concerned me for some years now, and recently it's taken a downturn. I speak not of some specific malady, but of my overall vitality, my ability to marshal my energies and attack large problems. As one's energies decline, one must adjust one's obligations and involvements, making certain always to put the former before the latter. Such adjustments come particularly hard to one used to being able to wrestle virtually any problem to the ground, and handle a prodigious amount of responsibility without strain. Among other things, the folks who've been leaning on you tend to resent the loss of their accustomed crutch.
Second, I've been in more doubt than ever about the suitability of my voice and my approach to religious topics. I'm a Christian -- "a serious Catholic," as Duyen recently put it -- and I prize my faith greatly, but that doesn't mean that I'm properly equipped to speak on its behalf. That's interfered with producing these Ruminations to an unknowable degree.
Third, and most important, I've been struck by the need to work on myself. A sincere Christian cannot speak of his faith or its dictates without simultaneously questioning how well he's been living it. In particular, this passage from Matthew has been much on my mind:
"You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous." [The Gospel According to Matthew, 5:43-45]
I have a very hard time with that. Intellectually I understand the force of it, for no man is irretrievable while he lives, and even the best of us can fail of our obligation of benevolence to one another. But it's harder to internalize it, and act on it, than it is to comprehend it.
One of the indicators of whether one is speaking necessary truths is whether one is being vilified for doing so. In the most dramatic Case, the Speaker was put to a torturous public death: excruciating in the exact sense of the word. By that standard, a Christian polemicist should rejoice at taking flak, as it means he's "over the target." But that doesn't guarantee that his response to denunciation and vilification will be in accordance with the teachings of the Redeemer, Granted, one must be superlatively strong to forgive one's torturers and executioners, as He did on the Cross. But forgiving the lesser barbs of the pretentious and malicious should be within human capability.
In closing: To all the foaming-at-the-mouth left-liberals, Obama worshippers, devotees of James Wolcott, and militant anti-theists who read these scribblings for their chuckle value:
- Merry Christmas, and may the miracle of the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, the Son of God and Redeemer of Mankind, fill you with joy and peace througout the holiday season and the year to come;
- In place of another electronic gadget, consider getting yourself a life.
May God bless and keep you all.
