Happy Feast, Dear Sister!

Today (for three more minutes) is the feast of St. Maximilian Marie Kolbe, the great Franciscan martyr commonly called the Saint of Auschwitz. If you are unfamiliar with the great saint, you can read about here.
 

I mention him because, since it is his feast day, it is also the patronal feast or name day of my dear friend Sr. Maria Kolbe O.P. I first met Sister in early 2011, she had just moved to Australia from the United States. She ministered to students at the University of Sydney and University of Technology, Sydney, for two and a half years before being transferred back to the U.S. At the end of last semester.

I had the honour of giving a speech at her going away party. One of the things I said about her was that she was, above all things, a religious sister, which made her a bride of Christ. This was one of the most notable things about SMK (as several of us, affectionately called her) she was a woman deeply in love with her divine spouse, who then helped to radiate and share that love with others.
 

I went on to say that, while that much was true of any religious sister, in SMK's case, it manifested in a specific way because she was not just a religious sister but a Dominican religious sister. As such, her sharing of God's love was reflected through the Dominican charism of preaching. Sister is a true preacher, not in the sense that she would get in people's face or brow-beat them, in fact she is usually very gentle, but she was constantly bearing witness to the faith that is hers. She is a very friendly person, open to everyone. Whether the person she was protestant, atheist, Muslim or whatever, she always showed a willingness to listen, a curiosity about the person and his or her beliefs, but also a strength in speaking about her own beliefs and the reasons for them.
 

She is a true daughter of St. Dominic, I am very proud to call her my sister and my friend, and I miss her very much.

Science, Philosophy and God

Noted Christian philosopher, Dr. William Lane Craig and atheist scientist, Prof. Laurence Krauss, will be debating at Sydney Town Hall tonight. I will be there. Richard Schumark, of the Centre for Public Christianity has written this piece, in anticipation of the debate.

I think Schumark (if you read this, forgive me, is it Mr. or Dr.?) makes some excellent points. For example, he points to the stupidity and downright intellectual laziness of imagining science and philosophy to be in competition. Science relies upon philosophical conclusions, you cannot, for example, perform an experiment unless you take the laws of logic as given, and those laws could not possibly be scientifically proven, they rellie on philosophy.

I think, however, that Schumark makes some arguments about the relationship between philosophy and science, that are more than a little wide of the mark. He writes:

“In the same way Craig’s claim is necessarily scientific in the sense that he marshals arguments for how all the available evidence points to the likelihood of there being a divine designer and creator.”

That may be true of some of Craig's arguments, but not of most of them. Take, for example, Craig's signature argument, the Kalam Cosmological Argument (not, I must stress, and argument I'm a fan of). While Craig does sometimes use scientific claims the bolster his second premise, the argument is not scientific at all. Schumark suggests it is because Craig “...marshals available evidence...” but marshalling evidence is not peculiar to natural sciences but to any rational activity.

Science is based on testable hypotheses. You put forward a scientific theory and then expect the world (or the particular part of the world you are experimenting on) to act one way if your theory is true and a different way if your theory is wrong. Classical theists don't claim the world would act differently without God, we claim that the world wouldn't exist without him. Our claims are no more subject to scientific testing than the laws of logic are.

Schumark, goes on to say that he doesn't think God's existence can be proven with full scientific rigour. If he means that God can't be proven by the scientific method, he's right, however, the claim of classical theists is that God's existence can be proven philosophically, and that these philosophical proofs are more, not less, certain, than scientific ones.

Schumark, however, seems to think that a God whose existence can't be certainly proved is plus for Christianity. He suggest that a God who left “hints” of his existence but no certain proof is more in keeping with a “personal and relational God.” He even quotes, with approval, philosopher Paul Mosser and arguing that this is exactly what we would expect of a God who values relationships first and foremost.

I have to say, I can't see why we would think that. I'm personal and I place a high premium on relationships and when I want a relationship, in either the friendly romantic, or any other sense of the word, with someone, I don't leave cryptic hints that I might exist lying around for that person to find. If possible, I generally walk up to them, say hello and introduce myself, thus, unless they have some reason to fear they are having a psychotic episode, they are generally left in no doubt of my existence.

Also, while Schumark doesn't explicitly say, I assume, given where his article is posted, that he is a Christian. In that case, I have to say that the God he believes in, the one leaving us with hints but no definitive proof of His existence, does not sound to me at all like the God revealed in the scriptures. In, for example, the first chapter of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, it is declared that God's existence is clearly revealed in creation, leaving unbelievers “without excuse.” It is to this clearly existing God that traditional Christian philosophy points.

I Have Some Cool Friends....

... And some of those cool friends write interesting, thought provoking stuff on blogs. So, in no particular order:

My fellow Campion graduate and philosophy nerd, Alexander Westenburg, has just started a blog. I don't always agree with him (he is, unfortunatly, a Platonist) but he always has something to say that's worth considering. I really like his first post, found here, and hope he will continue blogging.

Monica "MonJon" Johnson, is a theology student at Notre Dame and, in my opion, a very good writter. She's been writting a serise of posts on the rosary and I found her latest post particularly worthy of note.

Last, but by no means least, Laura McAllister is a fellow convert with whom I became friends as a result of reading her blog after MonJon posted some links to the same on FaceBook. Laura has, in my view, really good instincts, for all things Catholic. Her latest post on the liturgy is a must read.

Oh, and, speaking of Campion people who are, unfortunatly, Platonists, but who write cool stuff anyway, I really loved this piece, by Dr. Matthew Tan.

The Death of Christ Means Everything!

So, it's been a while, hasn't it? There are a few reasons I haven't blogged in a while, most of those having something to do with the fact that my health has not been the greatest of late. I've been spurred to blog again by this article, written by Islamic apologist Ijaz Ahmad, responding to remarks by Protestant apologist, James White. The article deals with one of the most important topics imaginable, the death of Christ.

For those unfamiliar with some of the relevant theology the Catholic belief, shared by Protestants and most of the Eastern Churches, is that Christ is one person but with two natures, these natures being the divine and the human. A less formal way of saying this, might be that in Jesus, there are two what's (God and human) but one who (the God-man Jesus Christ). It's important to understand that these natures were not, somehow mixed together, the divine nature remains eternally divine and the human nature is fully human, but these natures are united in a single person.

It is also important to understand that, according to Catholic belief (and again this Catholic belief is shared by protestants and others) the death of Christ was a death that affected the human nature, that is to say that His human soul was separated from His body. However, and this is absolutely crucial, while the death effected His human nature, it is not a nature which dies but a person. In this case, the person who died was God. Therefore, while the divine nature was not directly effected by the death, it is theologically accurate to say that, when Jesus died on the cross, God died.

It has to be said, Ahmad does a poor job of understanding this basic Christian teaching.

Ahmad quotes from The Catholic Encyclopedia, as distinguishing three, position, the Catholic, Nestorian and Monophysite views on the incarnation. I found it annoying that he did not tell us which article in said encyclopaedia (or even which edition) he was citing; doing so would have made it easier to check the context of his citation. He then tells us that in this context “Catholic” means “Trinitarian Christian.” This is quite wrong, both Nestorians and Monophysite's were Trinitarians as well; their heresies don't touch on the question of the Trinity.

Ahmad continues to write: “Christ has two natures, his divine nature known as the Son and his human nature known as the flesh and blood of the Christ. If he died a physical death and this what is being claimed, then the flesh and blood of Christ died, that is the human nature died.”

This is very wide of the mark. “The Son” is not a name of the divine nature but of the whole person. The Bible affirms in numerous places that the man, Christ is the Son of God (Mark 15:39 being a good example). Further, the human nature is not merely flesh (that would be a variant of the ancient heresy of Apollinarianism) but a fully human soul as well.

Once this misunderstanding is made clear, much of Ahmad's argument can be seen to be off-base. For example, his claim that, since only the human nature died, John 3:16 is disproven, since the Son, he thinks, does not die, is shown to be a radical misunderstanding.

Also, Ahmad's claim that death would mean the breakup of the union between God and man are shown to be based on a misunderstanding. At death, the human soul separated from the human body but this involved no separation between the divine and human natures and only Ahmad's failure to grasp actual Catholic teaching obscures this.

You Can Do Better Than This

Those of you who have read my blog for a while will know that I'm something of a fan (for a certain value of fan) of the T.V. Show “The Atheist Experience”. While I obviously have big disagreements with the people running the show, I like the way in which they openly engage in dialogue with all comers. It has occurred to me that, if any of them saw the light, some of these guys would make good Dominicans. I also appreciate the fact that most of the hosts make an effort to fairly represent the views of those they are arguing against.

One of the exceptions to that rule is Don Baker, who co-hosted the most recent episode. Mr. Barker does a semi-regular section on what he calls “the failures of Christianity.” I've seen a number of these sections and quite frankly, he makes no serious effort to understand what Christians are actually saying.

His most recent section is on “The Failures of Scripture” and is found here. He spends most of his time reading from Thomas Paine's “The Age of Reason” and suggesting that this pamphlet presents unanswerable arguments against scripture.
 

Among these arguments is the claim that God wouldn't have given revelation in ancient Hebrew because words change their meanings so some of the words in the Hebrew Bible now mean different things than they once did. Yes, that's true, that's why we have translators and scholars. We are also told that it's ridiculous to believe in an Old and New Testament, since this implies that an all-knowing God changed His mind. Not the slightest effort is made to interact with the Christian belief that it was always God's plan to deal with humanity in successive dispensations. We are also told that, if Jesus of Nazareth had wanted to found a new religion with new scriptures, He would certainly have written it Himself or at least made sure it was written in His lifetime; how this is known, we are not told.

A somewhat better argument comes when it is pointed out that there was a human process, after scripture was written, of discussion and debate to determine which books would be accepted into the canon of scripture. This is a slightly more valid point; the process referred to was a real one, but Don Baker seriously suggests that anyone who believes the Bible is God's word must be ignorant of this process. This is simply false. For a Catholic, who believes in the authority of the Church, the role of the Church in canonising Scripture is frequently appealed to as an argument for the authority of the Church. Even among our protestant friends, while I disagree with them on this issue, it is simply not true that anyone with a knowledge of the history of this project lose their belief.

 

The silliest part of the whole argument, however, comes right towards the end. Mr. Barker quotes, uncritically, Paine's assertion that the New Testament could only have been written by people who believed the earth was flat. I really thought this particular piece of silliness had been thrown on the scrap heap long ago. The spherical nature of the earth was well known long before the time of Christ and was universally accepted throughout the Greco-Roman world by the time the New Testament was written. For Mr. Barker to recycle this rubbish is a sign of how lacking his critical judgement is when it comes to any argument against Christianity.
 

I can imagine some readers will suggest this rubbish is not worth the time to refute. In response to this, first, these guys have a substantial following and are worth responding to. Second, I like this show and want to like these guys and I actually expect better from them.

A Common Question

A protestant brother in Christ wanted to know how Catholics reconcile our beliefe that St. Peter was first Pope and our beliefe in Papal infallibility with St. Paul's rebuke to St. Peter at Antioch, which is recorded in St. Paul's Epistle to the Galatians. This is my reply:

 

Hey Jasawa and thanks for the question. :)
 

First, I don't think there is a clear Catholic teaching on exactly when St. Peter became Pope, but he clearly had that office by the time he presided at the selection of St. Matthias. So yes, by the time the event St. Paul describes in Galatians happened, St. Peter was Pope. And no, St, Paul wasn't wrong; Galatians is Sacred Scripture. If Scripture says Peter was wrong, then he was wrong. Actually, St. Paul's action is used by St. Thomas Aquinas as the primary example that one may, sometimes, correctly rebuke one's superiors.
 

So, does this contradict infallibility? I don't think so. To understand why, we need to look at exactly what infallibility is and also exactly what was St. Peter's error. Vatican I spells out the criterion for an infallible Papal statement, the criteria are actually quite strict. Wikipedia lists them here. One of the criteria is that the Pope has to be speaking in his capacity as pastor of the whole Church. So St. Peter could, theoretically, have been teaching heresy in the dining room at Antioch without contradicting this teaching.
 

However, I don't think we have warrant to conclude that St. Peter was teaching heresy at all. St. Paul writes:
 

11 When Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned. 12 For before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group. 13 The other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy, so that by their hypocrisy even Barnabas was led astray.

From this passage, it seems to me reasonably clear that St. Peter was, in fact, teaching the correct doctrine but, as a result of the influence of certain men, he was hypocritically failing to live in accordance with that doctrine. This undoubtedly reflects poorly upon the great man, but has nothing to do with infallibility at all.
 

I hope this helps.

Time to Get Out.

This isn’t an easy post to write. It involves implicit criticism of people who I like a lot, but it needs to be said.

Yesterday I chanced upon a recruiting stall for Notre Dame University’s ALP club. The stall was interesting to me for a couple of reasons. First, there was no picture of Kevin Rudd or any other ALP figure and nothing promoting the present government’s achievements. The only prominent picture was of Tony Abbot and the recruiting pitch seemed entirely negative. There was no “join us because we stand for these values” or “join us because this government is good”. The message, so far as I can tell, was entirely “join us to stop the bad things Abbot will do if elected.”

I’m no stranger to negative campaigning; I was an active member of the ALP in 1996, when a large part of the campaign message was based on fear of a hidden agenda which, the ALP claimed, a Howard government would implement. (Most of this fear, I should add, turned out to be quite justified.) Even then, however, a typical ALP stall featured a prominent picture of Paul Keating and/or the local ALP candidate and would have some positive material about what the ALP was doing.

The second thing of note was that, among the warnings which this ALP stall was giving about Abbot, one concerns his views on abortion. This is significant; another of my memories of the 1996 election, in the debate between Keating and Howard, the compare, Ray Martin, asked a question about abortion. Both Keating and Howard responded with their personal positions but both were at pains to stress that this is not a party issue and that MPs in both their parties were free to vote as their individual consciences dictated. Both men struck me as being at pains to downplay the issue as one that any voter should consider in voting for or against the government.

Up until now, that has been the accepted pattern. The liberal party has no position on abortion, the ALP, officially has a “pro-choice” policy but also makes clear that this policy is not binding on any member. Traditionally, when the issue did come up, both sides were content to do what Keating and Howard did in 1996; stress that it was a personal matter for each member and downplay it as an election issue.

This seems, on the ALP side, at least, to be changing. When Julia Gillard launched the “Women for Gillard” group, her speech made a point of stressing Abbot’s supposed opposition to abortion as a reason to vote for her (or at least as a reason not to make Abbot P.M. which amounted to the same thing.)

This has, or ought to have, implications for those faithful Catholics and other social conservatives remaining within the ALP. As I noted above, I used to be an ALP member. I am well aware that there are faithful Catholics and other pro-life individuals within the party. Many of these are people I respect; a few of them are good friends of mine. I came to the conclusion a while back that remaining in the ALP just wasn’t a viable plan for a faithful Catholic. I was, and still am convinced that the party was moving in a direction which would eventually lead to the remaining conservative elements in the party being squeezed out. I could understand, however, why many of my brethren in Christ thought otherwise and I respect those who have stood and fought within the party in a consistent manner. As I said, I have good friends in that group.

This election, however, I think the situation has changed dramatically. When Gillard gave her “Women for Gillard” speech, for the first time in living memory, abortion was being urged, by a leader of one political party, as reason for voting for the return of that party to government. How all the pro-lifers in Gillard’s cabinet did not immediately resign is simply beyond me.

If you are an ALP member and a faithful Catholic, or a pro-life person of any other kind, you need to be clear about this. You are no longer simply a member of a party which, on paper, has a pro-choice policy but, in practice, treats the issue as a matter of conscience, you are a member of a party which is making this a campaign issue and you are on the wrong side.

I understand the reluctance of ALP members to leave. For one thing, where will they go? The Greens are even worse on this and other such issues and I fully understand why they can’t stomach the liberal side. I think the DLP has at least the potential to be a real alternative, but I can understand why many are skeptical. Surely, however, staying in the ALP has lost credibility as an option.

PS. I’m aware that there are those who have doubts as to whether Tony Abbot still is as opposed to abortion as the ALP portrays him as being. I’ve avoided direct comment on that because it doesn’t seem directly relevant to the point of this post.

PPS. Some might respond that I am being unfair in treating a speech by someone who isn’t leader anymore and one poster by one university club as representative of the whole party. In partial response to this, I’ll say that this poster was put out by Australian Young Labor and seems to be part of a national campaign.

PPPS. If any pro-choice individuals read this post, it’s obviously not really directed at you. That said, I’d be curious to know how you feel about the pro-life individuals within the Gillard and now Rudd ministries.

Deconversion and Morality

The latest edition of Protestant apologist, James White’s semi-regular webcast The Dividing Line is on-line here. Dr. White devotes a considerable portion of this episode to this article, written by Rachel Slick, daughter of White’s fellow Protestant apologist, Matthew Slick, telling the story of her deconversion from Christianity.

White has quite a lot to say about the article and, in spite of the differences between his and my theology, I was surprised at how much of what he said I agree with and how much there is in what he says that I think Catholics can and should take to heart.

What I want to focus on, however, is this one section of Ms. Slick’s story. According to her, the crucial crisis leading to her renunciation of the faith happened as follows:


This changed one day during a conversation with my friend Alex. I had a habit of bouncing theological questions off him, and one particular day, I asked him this: If God was absolutely moral, because morality was absolute, and if the nature of “right” and “wrong” surpassed space, time, and existence, and if it was as much a fundamental property of reality as math, then why were some things a sin in the Old Testament but not a sin in the New Testament?

Alex had no answer — and I realized I didn’t either. Everyone had always explained this problem away using the principle that Jesus’ sacrifice meant we wouldn’t have to follow those ancient laws. 
But that wasn’t an answer. In fact, by the very nature of the problem, there was no possible answer that would align with Christianity.



On reading this section I was interested to hear White’s response. White begins dealing with this question at around the twenty minute mark of his podcast. I have to admit, I was surprised at how close White sounded to my own position. White, correctly, I think, remarks that Ms. Slick seems to think that morality is something that exists external to God rather than being a result, as White puts it “of God's nature and purpose.” I thought that was a good answer, or at least the beginning of a good answer, although I was a little confused about how exactly Dr. White understands the relationship between God's nature and His purposes. If Dr. White ever reads this, I'd be fascinated to hear his views in more detail and try to work out how closely aligned our views actually are.

Ms. Slick's question is related to an ancient philosophical problem, first raised by Plato in his famous dialogue, The Euthyphro. In that work, Plato asks whether certain acts are pious because the gods approve of them or whether the gods approve of them because they are pious. Applied to a monotheistic God, the question presents a dilemma between either a moral law which is above God and to which he is subject, or of morality simply defined by what God commands, with the implication that God could command whatever He likes.

To the best of my knowledge, no major Christian theologian or philosopher ever embraced the first horn of Plato's dilemma and affirmed a moral law external to God, to which He was subject. Certain theologians have, however, embraced the position known as voluntarism, essentially the second of Plato's options. Taken to its logical conclusion, and some have, indeed, explicitly, taken it that far, voluntarism holds that, while, as it happens, God has commanded humans love Him and love each other, He could equally have commanded us to hate him and hate one another. If he had done so, hate would have been a virtue and love a vice.

St. Thomas, however, and those who have followed him, reject the dilemma as a false dichotomy. For the Thomist, the basis of morality lies neither in something superior to God, or in something He arbitrarily decided but in who He, of necessity is.
 

St. Thomas distinguishes between four types of law: eternal, natural, divine and human. Describing, in detail, the meaning of these different types of laws and the relations between them is a topic for a book, not a blog post. What's relevant to Ms. Slick's question, (the one that supposedly can't be answered within Christianity) can be summarised reasonably easily.
 

The eternal law is an aspect of God. Since Thomists believe God to be absolutely simple, that really means the eternal law is God himself, viewed from a certain perspective. God loves and and commands love of us because that is what His nature requires, a nature that He could no more change than He could choose not to exist.
 

The divine law, refers to specific commands of God. As is well known, and as Ms. Slick notes, Christians believe that these commands have changed over time, at one time, God's commands prohibited His people eating of pork, today they don't.
 

As I said, explaining, in depth the reasons for these changes and the relationship between the eternal and divine law is beyond a blog post, but I believe, something of the relationship can be understood if we consider the rules parents make for their children.

Good parents have certain obvious aims in raising their kids. They want to keep them safe and do their best to ensure that they grow up into happy, healthy, well adjusted people. They probably also want to ensure a level of education and preparation for later life. Now, in furtherance of these goals, the parents will make rules for the kids, and some of these rules will probably be constant as long as the child is under the parents' care. For example, rules against anything unnecessarily dangerous, or against serious law breaking will probably be constant. On the other hand, some rules will very likely change over time: things forbidden a child of one age may well be allowed once the child is older, things not expected of a five year old may well be expected of a ten year old.

None of the above means that the parents are making arbitrary rules or that there is no consistent, objective principles. The objective principles are the goals that I outlined, but how those principles need to be applied will legitimately differ.

This is somewhat analogous (I don't claim the analogy is perfect) to the relationship between eternal and divine laws. The eternal law determines God's purpose in relating to humanity, but there is no contradiction between this and the suggestion that that purpose required different specific commands for different times in history.

So, this has been my day.

So, I’m guessing that there will be some people who’ll read this blog post and feel that it’s a little too much information. I thought long and hard about posting it. What made me decide to post, in part, was the memory of something I read a while back. Someone, writing at the National Catholic Register, I can’t remember who, suggested that one of the best things that we ordinary lay folk could do for the cause of evangelisation was to be honest about struggles in following Jesus.

So, here goes the guy in the psycho-killer mask making an attempt to do his bit for the new evangelisation.

I’ve mentioned, at least once before on this blog, I have a long-term mental illness. The experts disagree about the exact nature of this illness, but there seems to be a consensus that its trauma related. It’s something that’s been a part of me since at least my late teens, and, while the symptoms come and go, it’s always there.

The past week and a bit has been especially bad, and today has been worse. I’ve had a number of really bad flashbacks. I keep, uncontrollably, thinking back to horrible stuff that happened when I was young. I can’t control the thoughts, and the emotions which they bring. I’ve had a couple of these memories on a recurring loop video in my brain and I’m struggling to get some kind of control over this. Largely I’m failing.

Running through all this is the feeling that I am worthless. The thought of suicide has also been there, don’t worry, I’m not in any danger, and I know who to call if that changes, but the idea is there.

So, here’s the thing, how do I believe in a just and loving God in the middle of a trauma related episode. Part of me just wants to shout abuse at Him, although I know, from experience, how little that can help.  There’s a temptation to simply tell myself I don’t believe, that can last for about thirty seconds, but whenever I try to verbalise that in any way, I am reminded who I am.

A while back, I attempted to write a poem which processes some of what I experienced during periods like this. One of the things my poem emphasised, was my need to remember the fact that, however, I felt about it, external reality is what it always is, my feelings don’t change that.

Ok, so I believe, how do I pray? At the moment, my prayer-life pretty much consists of a declaration that I believe in Him, and an offering up of my messed-up brain. It’s nothing much, but it’s what I have.

And I’m truly grateful to Him that I have that.

Special Pleading and the KCA

The latest episode of The Atheist Experience is online. Towards the end of the show, they took a call, which you can find here. The call included a discussion of the claim (which I have heard before) that the various cosmological arguments commit the fallacy of special pleading.

For those unfamiliar, the phrase “Cosmological Argument” refers to a variety of arguments for the existence of God which seek to prove the existence of God as a first cause. Probably the best known version these days is the Kalam Cosmological Argument (KCA). The KCA exists in a variety of forms, but at it's most basic, it's premises are:

1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
2. The Universe began to exist.

From these premises, the conclusion is drawn that the universe had a cause. As I said, that's the basic argument. Most variations add premises to support the conclusion that the cause of the universe must be something recognisable as a God.

I must make clear, KCA is not my favourite version of Cosmological argument, but, for our purposes, it will serve as a model. The caller to the atheist experience mentioned his experience arguing with theists, their invocation of various forms of the cosmological argument. He said that he replied by asking who made God and they replied by saying that God, has always existed. The caller, host and co-host all agreed that this was an example of special pleading. I disagree.

The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy defines special pleading thus:

Special pleading is a form of inconsistency in which the reasoner doesn’t apply his or her principles consistently. It is the fallacy of applying a general principle to various situations but not applying it to a special situation that interests the arguer even though the general principle properly applies to that special situation, too.

For this discussion, the key part of the definition are the words “even though the general principle properly applies to that special situation.” The special pleading objection would, quite reasonably, apply to the popular caricature of the cosmological argument which has, as its first premise, “everything must have a cause.” As as been pointed out, however, numerous times, no actual theist philosopher has ever put this argument forward.

Some will suggest that to apply a principle, in this case needing a cause, to everything in the universe other than God is automatically a case of special pleading. Not so. There are close on seven billion people on earth today. Of those seven billion, any one of them who believes that he or she is current President of the United States is suffering a serious delusion, with the one exception of Barack Hussein Obama. This isn't special pleading in President Obama's case, it's because there is a real principle which would legitimately apply to any other person who thought they were president but not to the person who actually is.

The principle “whatever begins to exist has a cause” legitimately does not apply to a being which has always existed. Now, I have heard atheists attempt to defend the special pleading charge with the claim that, theists get around this problem by arbitrarily defining God as having always existed.

Two things need to be said to that: 1) Even if the claim were correct, that isn't special pleading it would be closer to the ad hoc rescue fallacy. 2) More importantly, the claim is actually wrong. The theist is here not arbitrarily defining God as something that always existed but rather pointing out that the argument, if true, necessarily leads to something which has always existed.

A final point, I'll reiterate that the KCA is not my favourite form of the cosmological argument and not one I'd use a normal apologetic context. If anyone wants to comment on this post, I'd appreciate you restricting your comments to the narrow question of whether or not cosmological arguments in general or the KCA in particular commits the fallacy of special pleading. Id' rather not have this turn into a free-for-all of criticisms of the argument.

Sigh!

So, it's been a while, hasn't it? In fact, almost a month. Sorry about that; I fear a number of factors, including poor health, but also including things like my own poor organisation have kept me from blogging for quite a while. I was spurred to get back to this by my discovery that John Shelby Spong has a new book out.

For those unaware, Spong is the retired Bishop of Newark, New Jersey, in the Episcopal Church, American branch of the Anglican Communion. For decades now, Spong has been one of the most prolific voices in advocating a form of “Christianity” which systematically denies just about every belief historically considered definitional of the Christian faith. Spong denies not only the inspiration and infallibility of the Bible and the historical nature of the virgin birth and resurrection of Christ, but even goes so far as to define God in such a way that would be incomprehensible to any kind of traditional theism. At one point in my theological/intellectual development, Spong was a hero of mine. What can I say; we all have periods in our lives we'd probably rather forget.

Spong's latest book is entitled The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic. I hasten to add, I haven't read the book, so this is not a review. It is, however, a response to this article, which Spong recently published in the Huffington Post.

Spong writes that his book is the result of five years of “intense” study of St. John's Gospel. He then lists six findings of his period of study which, he says, will upset traditionalists, ie. Anyone with remotely orthodox beliefs. These six findings are: 1) The Fourth Gospel was not written by the Apostle John or any other disciple of Jesus, 2) Jesus probably never said any of the things which the Fourth Gospel attributes to Him, 3) None of the miracles recorded in the Gospel actually happened. 4) Many of the characters in the Gospel never actually existed. 5) John's Gospel contains literary hints that it is not meant to be taken literally. 6) The Gospel frequently engages in exaggeration.

My first thought, Spong says these conclusions are the results of a recent study of the fourth Gospel, but they are, so far as I can see, things he has been saying for decades. I first read Spong close on twenty years ago and I'm pretty sure he was saying all of these things back then.

My second thought, the article talks about how traditionalist Christians who love the fourth Gospel would be surprised and angry with modern scholarship regarding said book. Well, here's one traditionalist lover of St. John who feels no such anger. I do, however, feel a certain annoyance that Spong seems to equate scholarship of the Gospels with scholarship that agrees with him. This is a common feature in Spong's writings and wonderfully illustrates Protestant apologist James White's point that conservatives read and interact with liberal scholars while liberals generally pretend that conservative scholarship doesn't exist.

Spong also seems remarkably blind to the fact that his scholarship is based upon a number of debatable philosophical positions. To give just one example, Spong's third “finding” that none of the miracles reported in the Gospel actually happened. I've read Spong, and others like him, on this subject before. The standard procedure is to begin your study of the biblical text with the philosophical assumption that miracles can't happen and then claim that your finding that none of the biblical miracles are historical events was based on your textual study. No it wasn't, it was the only possible conclusion because of the presuppositions you started with.

When Spong attempts to defend his philosophical claim that the miraculous is impossible, things get embarrassing really quickly. His standard claim is that, before Newton, people could believe in miracles because they didn't know that nature worked in accordance with fixed laws but, now that now we know better. This is rubbish. The post Newtonian world certainly knows more about the details of the laws by which nature works than our pre Newtonian ancestors, but the fact that nature works according to fixed laws was as well known to Plato and Aristotle as is it today. Indeed, as C.S. Lewis pointed out, the very notion of a miracle implies the idea of such laws, if we didn't know the laws of nature exist we couldn't recognise a violation of such laws, which would really make miracles impossible.

If any apologetically minded Christian has more time and money to spare than I have, he or she would probably do us all a favour by purchasing the book and writing a critique of it. Even if I had the time and money, I don't think I'd have the patience.

On Being Same Sex Attracted and Catholic

I remember, years ago, sitting, minding my own business, but able to overhear a conversation between two fellow Catholic, one male and one female. The female mentioned a guy who regularly attended the same Sunday mass as her to whom she was attracted and from whom she she had thought she was picking up a “vibe” indicating that the attraction was mutual. Over time, however, she thought she had dropped some pretty clear hints which he didn't seem to pick up on or at least he wasn't showing any interest. The one she was talking to replied “maybe he's a fag.” Her response was “he can't be a fag, he's Catholic.”

I'm a practising Catholic. I accept, to the extent I understand them, all the teachings of the Magisterium of the Church, including the currently very unpopular ones on human sexuality. I'm also attracted to people of both genders.

My intention here is not to debate the merits of the Church's teaching on these matters, I've done that in other forums and I'm sure I'll do so again. What I want to talk about here, however, is something different.

The other day, Catholic Apologist, Mark Shea, had a post at the National Catholic Register dealing with certain issues relating to same sex attracted Catholics. I think Shea's article is a good one and I'd recommend everyone read it. I also recommend that you read the discussion underneath in the comment thread. One question that a few people raised could be phrased like this: “Ok, being same sex attracted is not a sin, but why do same sex attracted Catholics need to make a point of identifying themselves.”
 

A number of good reasons were raised in answer to this question, I'd like to raise one more reason, we need, to a certain extent, to identify ourselves and make ourselves visible because of the people I mentioned in the first paragraph. Those people weren't of ill-will, when I made clear to them how offensive I found what they had to say, they were apologetic, sincerely as far as I could tell. But what they said stung, sending the message that same sex attracted people aren't practising Catholics, aren't part of the Church. I've heard this, and worse, from a lot of well meaning Catholics. Other same sex attracted people have even worse stories to tell.
 

I dislike the term “homophobia”, which, as has been pointed out by many before me, literally means fear of the same. I dislike even more the way in which the label “homophobic” is frequently applied to any person who defends the traditional Christian teaching on the immorality of homosexual acts. Having said all that, homophobia is real. Acts of bullying towards people who actually are or are perceived to be same sex attracted are real. Uncharitable speech and behaviour by people, including by Christians, towards same sex attracted people are real. These things are real and they do a lot of damage to our fellow human beings. They also bring disgrace upon the cause of Christ and get in the way of the preaching of the gospel.

I don't advocate same sex attracted Christians announcing our attractions on our t-shirts, but we do need to be willing to talk about it and to identify ourselves when appropriate because we need to bear witness to fellow Christians.

A Few Quick Links

First, last week, I mentioned philosopher, Dan Fincke's appearance on The Atheist Experience. I said that Fincke had mentioned a particular post on his blog as a good starting point to understand his thinking. Here is the post in question and here is a critique of it by Prof. Edward Feser which says essentially what I would have said but he says it a lot better.

Second, I was saddened to hear of the passing of Fr. Andrew Greeley. For a number of years, I read his columns with considerable regularity; it would be an understatement to say that I didn't always agree with him, but I did frequently find him interesting and engaging. I was touched to read this tribute to him by his fellow Chicago priest, Fr. Robert Barron.

Third, having, in my last post, criticised Jimmy Akin, I'd like to recommend this post of his on prayer.

Finally, speaking of theistic evolution, have a read of this.

Just one Evolution

Jimmy Akin is a Catholic Apologist who I'm generally a fan of and who has written a lot of stuff that I have found very helpful over the yeras. Having said that, I think this article, which he wrote recently is more than a little off-base.

Mr. Akin attempts to examine the debate on the origins of the human species. He notes that views on said question fall on a broad spectrum and divides that spectrum into four groups: Creationism, Intelligent Design, Theistic Evolution and Atheistic Evolution. He does acknowledge that the spectrum could be divided in other ways but says that “... it seems that, today, most participants in the origins discussion would say that they advocate one of four major positions.”

I have to say, I doubt this very much. I am a theist (I believe in God) and I am also a person who accepts the overwhelming scientific consensus that evolution happens. I reject the label “Theistic Evolution”, however, because I don't see the two issues as directly related. This isn't to say that I see no link, I'm philosophically convinced that the very existence of scientific laws requires a certain metaphysic and that metaphysic implies a God. This however, is a philosophical question. The question of whether or not humans are evolved from other species is a scientific one. To lump a person's positions on the two questions together seems arbitrary and silly. People's beliefs about physics are not divided into those who believe in “theistic gravity” and “atheistic gravity”, there is just gravity.

Lest I be misunderstood, let me repeat myself; in saying that the two subjects are not directly linked I am not saying there is no link at all. As I said, I'm convinced that the very existence of scientific laws requires a certain view of reality and that view of reality, if consistently applied, leads to God. Alternatively, I am aware that many atheists see the regular structure of the universe as doing away with the need for a God.

Having said the above, I'm quite confident that, if you asked the majority of practising evolutionary biologists, by which I mean people actually studying evolution, they would tell you that they and their colleagues, whether theistic or not, are all studying the same process and believe in the same evolutionary process. There is no such thing as theistic or atheistic evolution; there is just evolution.

p.s. There are other things in Mr. Akin's article that I disagree with. If anyone writes a critique of some other part of his article, send me a link, if I agree with it, I'll happily post the link.

Short Break

Hi everyone (or after my last post, should that be everypony?) . Just a brief not to let you all know that I won't be blogging for the next few days. Prayers for the study that I'm supposed to be working on would be much apreciated.

Thanks for reading me.

Talking About Ponies

Hi, my name is Jason, I’m 37, I’m male and I’m a passionate fan of a show targeted at pre-teen girls. About two years ago, friends of mine, told me that I really needed to watch the cartoon My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. I was, skeptical at first, but they were insistent and I decided I should at least give it a try. Within a month I had joined the growing tribe of the Bronies (a portmanteau of bro and pony).

To give background, My Little Pony is a range of toy ponies made by Hasbro Toys. They first appeared in the 1980s and have since gone through four major incarnations (known as “generations” by the fans.) The cartoons which accompanied the third generation ponies have been widely derided as essentially just extended infomercials for the toys with boring stories and nothing resembling character development (the one gen three episode I could bring myself to watch certainly supported this conclusion.) When, in 2010, Hasbro released the fourth generation of ponies, they took the radical step of hiring people, most notably Lauren Faust, of Power Puff Girls fame, with actual experience making quality children’s television. The result has been a show which not only charmed its target audience but won for its self a wide number of fans of all ages and given rise to talk to “the Brony Phenomenon.”

Season Three Spoiler Warning. All of this is background to this article by blogger Amanda Duncil. Ms. Duncil criticizes the conclusion to season three as well as the soon to be released Equestria Girls spin-off movie and related toy line.

Concerning the conclusion to season three, in which mane (misspelling intentional per fan convention) character Twilight Sparkles becomes a Princess, Ms. Duncil writes:

I didn't know that the ultimate end goal of learning was to suddenly become royalty. I'm still somewhat concerned that it sends mixed messages to little girls. Implying that all girls want to grow up to become princesses is destructive… I was under the impression that My Little Pony wanted to shake gender barriers, not reinforce them.

I can see where she is coming from, but I think her concern here is a bit misplaced. Twilight doesn’t become a Princess through the standard means of marrying a Prince (actually, that trope is reversed; her brother becomes a Prince by marrying a princess who earned her royal title.) nor by the other fairytale means of discovering that she is a king’s long lost daughter. Twilight’s royal title is bestowed up on, not by any pony laws but by reality itself. Actually, for someone unfamiliar with the show, the term “princess” is misleading. In Equestria, royalty is apparently not a matter of blood or even of purely political authority. When a Pony reaches a sufficient level of virtue and magical ability she transformed into an alicorn, a pony with pegasus wings, a unicorn horn and enhanced mystical control over reality. The Princesses of Equestria are not merely political rulers; they are responsible for such tasks as ensuring the sun and moon rise and set. What happened to Twilight, while it is called “becoming a princess” would more accurately be described as a sort of quasi-deification. (So, Jason, how do you, as a Catholic, feel about such obviously pagan themes in children’s entertainment? I’m fine with them, but that’s another post.)

I feel much more sympathy with the concerns which Ms. Duncil raises over the upcoming Equestria Girls movie. I’m looking forward to the movie and expect it to be fun, but I think it’s reasonable to feel uneasy about the images of the mane characters which we have seen thus far. I’m particularly unhappy about the look of Rainbow Dash. For those unfamiliar with the show, Rainbow is a tom-boy, indeed, the ultimate tomboy. Take a look at the Equestria Girls picture linked on Ms. Duncil’s page, I’m not seeing anything remotely suggestive of the personality I’ve come to know and love.

I’m still hopeful the movie will be worth watching, but I agree this raises cause for concern.

An Intersting Argument about Ethics.

The latest episode (no. 817) of The Atheist Experience was an interesting one. The show is usually devoted to answering calls from whomever happens to call in. On this occasion, however, about half the program was taken up with a pre-arranged call from an atheist philosopher by the name of Dan Fincke. You can find the relevant section here. I'd never hear of Prof. Fincke before but, after hearing what he had to say on the show, I went over to his blog “Camels with Hammers” and, after reading for a bit, I added his blog to my list of those I plan to read regularly.

The Prof. seems to have a double mission, on the one hand he wants to convince his fellow atheists to embrace objective morality, on the other hand, to convince we theists the objective morality can exist without God. This a subject of no small interest to me and I was interested to here his views. I, of course, will be attacking his arguments from one side, I believe in objective morality but don't think it can be meaningful without God. I suspect, however, that many of my atheist friends who reject objective morality will agree with at least some of my disagreements with him
 

Before commenting on what Prof. Finke had to say, I have to note, at several points during the program I felt a strong desire to throw something at the show's co-host, Martin Wagner. For example, at at 7:40 minute mark, Wagner states that “Christians” not some or many Chrustians but Christians generally, when we argue for objective morality, “always” his word, always, claim that such things can't be gotten to rationally but require divine revelation. Mr. Wagner, if that;s what you think Christians always argue, I'd ask you to do some reading on the natural law tradition in Christian moral thought.

Mr. Wagner then goes on to tell us that many Christian apologists, he explicitly mentions Willaim Lane Craig, openly encourage disdain for reason and argue that reason and evidence have no value in getting to truth. Now, I'm sorry, I'm no fan of Dr. Craig, but Mr. Wagner's characterisation of his views is either shockingly ignorant or an outright lie. Craig is known as an evidentialist apologist, as someone who seeks to show that evidence and reason lead to the Christian faith. I could go on, listing Mr. Wagner's incredible distortions, but this is supposed to be a blog post about Prof. Fincke.
 

The central part of Prof. Fincke's argument, if I understand him correctly, come between about the eleven and sixteen minute marks. His argument stands on two main points. One of these is formal consistency. He argues that, just as we can't believe what we see to be contradictory, so there are certain acts which are contradictory. The argument seems to be that, if we attempt to hold others to a standard but fail to live up to that standard ourselves, we would be aware of an inconsistency. There are any number of arguments I could make to this, but I'll confine myself to this reply: I agree that we would see as inconsistent to hold others to a standard and fail to live up to it ourselves, but that simply begs the question of why we should seek to hold people to such standards in the first place.

The second prong of Prof. Fincke argument has to do with the fulfilment of various powers.
According to the good Prof. We have certain powers, our intelligence, our our capacity for technology, our capacity for enjoyment. He thinks it is self evident or something we would all intuitively recognise that we should seek to maximise these powers in order to flourish. Now, in many ways, this seems very close to the Aristotelian and Thomist position. I certainly agree that developing our human powers is a desirable thing. Having said that, I don't think this is self-evident and it isn't intuitively obvious, nor is it clear to everyone. My belief in the moral desirability of developing these powers is based on certain metaphysical beliefs which I assume Prof. Fincke doesn't share. (If he does share them I'd love to here how he reconciles those with his lack of belief in God.) Absent those metaphysical beliefs, many people will in no way see the desirability of developing such powers as obvious, indeed plenty of people seem quite content to drown those powers in drugs and alcohol.
 

Prof. Fincke ended his call with a recommendation to check out his blog and recommended one particular blog post of his. I had originally planned to include comments on that post in this post. I decided, however, that it deserves a response of it's own. God willing, I should get to that in the next few days.

Movie Review: Epic (which actually is)

This past Saturday, I saw Epic, the new movie from Blue Sky Studios. First off, in case there is any confusion, this is a movie marketed at kids. I am a firm believer in C.S. Lewis' dictum that a children's story which can't be enjoyed by adults is a bad children's movie. Second, everyone should read this review, by Stephen Greydanus; I don't agree with everything he says, but he says a number of things rather well.

I have to say, on the whole, I loved this movie. On the other hand, there were a few things I hated, including one which bordered on unforgivable.

Mild Spoilers from here on: The basic story: a forest is the seen of an on-going epic struggle between the heroic leaf-men (a bit like a cross between the Jedi and Tolkien's rangers) who seek to preserve the life of the forest, and the boggans, who seek to lay the forest to waste. Humans are unaware of this partly because sides take care to conceal themselves from “stompers” as they call us and also because both sides are only inches tall.

Near the forest lives an eccentric professor who has destroyed his career and his marriage with his monomaniacal determination to prove these creatures exist. His ex-wife has just died, and his teenage daughter Mary Katherine (she prefers MK) is coming to live with him. On the relationship between the two, I have nothing to say, read Mr. Greydanus, he says it all.

The leaf-men are servants of a Queen Tara, the source of life in the forest, without the Queen, the leaf-men can't do there jobs and the forest is doomed. Tara is beautifully animated and drawn and there are a number of scenes which show her the centre of a wonderful pageantry. She is the perfect embodiment of what the queen of a mystic realm should be... until she opens her mouth, at which point I begin to wonder if anything could be more seriously deficient in gravitas. There is one scene when the (oddly named) leaf-man general Ronin kneels before her, every inch the archetype of the valiant, yet humble warrior, the queens response is to make fun of him. Modern Hollywood, it seems, can not to hierarchy or gravitas.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, there is an ambush, involving boggans, M.K. Who happens to be passing by, is mystically shrunk to the size of a leaf-man and, next thing we know, M.K., Ronin, a young leaf-man name Nob and two comic-relief gastropods are on an epic quest to save the life of the forest.

Mr. Greydanus, and a number of other critics, have criticised what they see as the lack of individuality in the main characters. I feel I must disagree. It's true, these are not the deepest or most well-rounded characters I've seen, Mr. Greydanus' phrase is “generic archetypes”, but, here;s the thing. I think they are such good, solid, realisations of their archetypes. Ronin (aside from his name) is the embodiment of what a brave, loyal warrior ought to be, Nob captures both a wonderful free-spirit and the journey of a boy reluctantly embracing the duties of man-hood. M.K. Is harder to describe in archetypal terms, but her banter with Nob frequently reminded of similar banter between Han and Leia.

Slightly less mild spoilers. I said earlier that, when Tara spoke, I wondered if anything could be more deficient in gravitas; unfortunately, the movie answered my question. About midway through the film, we come to the house of Nim Gallu. Nim is,the librarian who keeps the scrolls of knowledge which record, in full, the history and wisdom of the forest. I was prepared for such a character to be eccentric, even for him to be played for a certain amount of comedy. What we got, however, was just awful; a jazz singing glow-worm played by Stephen Tyler. Seriously; memo to the script-writers, the keeper of wisdom is an archetypal figure deserving of way more respect than this.

Heavy Spoilers: The film climaxes in an appropriately epic battler in which M.K., with some help from her dad, manages to save the day. I have to say, however, I was annoyed by one thing. Ronin, who had earlier sacrificed himself to enable the others to get away, and was left fighting for his life against impossible odds, suddenly turns up at the last minute to battle the head boggan. This was vaguely reminiscent of Gandalf in Moria, but there Gandlaf's sacrifice and return had a fundamentally transforming effect on him, as well on those around him, here it just seemed mindlessly deus ex machina. I was especially annoyed because, when Ronin seemed dead, I thought it a bold move for such a central and likeable character to be killed that way. I know, I know, this is a kid's film, but I think a battle of this magnitude needed causalities on the good side as well as the bad.

The movie had some real faults, typical really of the culture in which it was made, but I still liked it. If the story-telling doesn't exactly break new ground it was, for me, a reaffirmation of the value of traditional themes in storytelling.

How not to Evangelise.

I'm a Christian. I'm also a sufferer from a long term mental illness. I can remember one day, many years ago, when my depression was unusually bad; I was walking through the Central Business District in Canberra when I was approached by a fellow who mentioned that I looked like I was unhappy. He went on to tell me that he was a pastor at a certain church. I won't name the church, but the senior pastor (presumably this guy's boss) was, at the time, a fairly well known name in Canberra’s evangelical community.
 

The gentleman told me that he could see I looked unhappy and assured me that, if I would simply embrace Jesus, he'd take away my depression, just like that. I didn't particularly feel like discussing theology at the time so I just smiled politely, thanked him, took a leaflet from him and went off to get some lunch. (If my memory serves, the lunch cheered me up considerably.)
 

I thought about this today, for the first time in a while, while watching the most recent episode of the T.V. Show The Atheist Experience. You can find the episode here.

At approximately the twelve and a half minute mark of the episode, they receive a call from a gentleman who identifies himself as an atheist and as suffering from long term depression. As he tells it, various Christian friends and family who knew he was an atheist before this and never made any particular effort to convert him have suddenly started using is depression as a way to tell him that he needs God and blaming his depression on his atheism.
 

Now, obviously, I have to offer a caveat here that I haven't heard what his friends actually said to him and don't know their side of the story. Having said that, if they really have been blaming his depression on his atheism or suggesting that embracing Christianity will make it all go away then they need to wake up and discover reality. Christians suffer from mental illness, Christians get depressed.
 

I'd love to say that the behaviour of this gentleman's friends was an isolated incident, but I think we all know I'd be lying. I've met too many Christians who seem to think in this way. I also wish, as a Catholic, I could say that this sort of stupidity was confined to evangelical protestantism. Sadly, while thinking of this nature seems to jibe well with the prosperity gospel embraced by a certain for of evangelical, we Catholics are not immune it. I can well remember a Catholic telling me that they couldn't understand how any Catholic could be depressed because we are called to rejoice in the Lord.
 

I should also add, while I don't know exactly what his friends have and have not said to him in the past but, if he is accurate in saying that his friends never tried to evangelise him until the issues with his depression arose then the co-host of the show was probably fairly accurate in describing them as opportunistic (word I won't say.)

Word to the wise, my fellow Christians, embracing Jesus does not grant you automatic immunity from all of the crap that comes with being human. To suggest that it does makes us look like idiots. It also makes us look like jerks.

p.s. On a semi-related note, my friend Karl Hand recently had a post on unhelpful ways to evangelise. While I'm not sure if I agree with everything Karl says, I defiantly think he raises some points worth pondering.

Book Review: "What Every Christian Needs to Know About the Quran" by James White

I've just finished reading James White's newest book, What Every Christian Needs to Know About the Quran. James White is director of Alpha and Omega Ministries, a reformed protestant apologetics ministry, and is an elder of the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church of Phoenix, Arizona. I'll admit to being something of a “fan” Pastor White; on the many issues on which he and I agree I frequently find his work incredibly helpful; on the issues where he and I disagree I generally find his arguments among the most challenging to overcome and argue against. This book falls, largely, into the first category and certainly is one that I found very helpful and which, I imagine, I will be returning to many times in the future.

One note that should be made, the book's intended audience is made clear in its title. If you are a non-Christian considering reading this book, you should realise that it is not really written for you. This is not to say that such a reader will get nothing out of this book; if you are a Muslim wishing to understand why Christians reject what you believe to be God's word or if you are neither a Christian nor a Muslim but have an interest in inter-religious debate, then you will almost certainly find this book of interest. Such readers, however, should be aware that they are not the target audience of this book. (Although, keep in mind, this advice comes from an adult male whose current favourite T.V. show has a target audience of pre-teen girls.)

It should be added, if you are looking for a neutral or “dispassionate” discussion of the Quran, you should look elsewhere. This is not to say that the book is dishonest or unscholarly, but it is very much the work of a Christian apologist whose aim is to make the case, to Muslims, for the claims of

Christianity and to assist other Christians in doing the same.

I'm aware of a review of the book on Amazon which argues that the book would be more accurately called “What Every Christian Scholar Should Know About the Quran.” In this person's opinion, the book is too complex for the average lay reader. I disagree. I think a reasonably intelligent person without any scholarly background in religion should be able to understand what is being said. Having said that, I will give this warning, White does expect his reader to be able to follow an argument over the course of a chapter; if you are one of those people whose response to any argument longer than a page is “tl:dr” then this book is probably not for you.

The first three chapters give a brief introduction to the Quranic text and the history of the Quran's being written. The real polemic begins with chapter four. In this chapter, White looks at the Quran's handling of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. White's argument is clear and, it seems to me, compelling: the author of the Quran seems to have believed that the Trinity meant worship of Allah, Jesus and Mary as three separate Gods. By the time of Mohammed, the actual Christian teaching was well defined and, even assuming this doctrine to be erroneous, one would expect God to know what that doctrine was. From this, we can reasonably conclude that the Quran is not the word of an omniscient God.

The next several chapters consider a number of different subjects but all make arguments similar to that advanced in chapter four. These chapters consider topics such as the crucifixion of Christ, the relationship of the Quran to the Gospels and the alleged prophecies of Mohammed in the Bible. In each chapter, White argues that the Quran makes claims about history, Christian belief and the Christian scriptures which simply will not stand up to scrutiny.

At this point, I should mention one place where the differences between Catholicism and Protestantism substantially effect the argument. Chapter seven deals with the question of salvation in the Quran. This is not really the place to go into the long standing differences between Protestant and Catholics over soteriology but I will say this: White lays out what he calls the arbitrary role of God in pardoning whom he chooses in Islam, and contrasts this with the Reformed Protestant view of God pardoning the elect because Christ has been punished in their place. White argues that Islam gives no grounds on which a holy God can forgive sinners while still allowing His justice to be satisfied. As I said, this is not the place to go into such question in depth but I must add that I think, to many readers, it will be less than obvious that justice is truly satisfied in the punishment of an innocent, even if willing, victim.

The final two chapters deal with the alleged perfection of the Quran. Chapter ten examines the evidence that the Quran, contrary to orthodox Islamic claims, was influenced by apocryphal Jewish, Christian and even gnostic legends while chapter eleven gives a brief over-view of the early history of the Quaric textual transmission. I found chapter eleven one of the best parts of the book and think White did an excellent job showing how many difficulties are raised in claiming, with any degree of certainty, that the Quran we currently posses is what Mohammed originally wrote.

 

All told, I think this is a fine book which I would recommend to any Christian seeking to better share his or her faith with Muslim neighbours.

Parental Rights and Common Good

Apparently, as I type this, the Parliament of NSW is debating changes to public health legislation which will lead to mandatory vaccination of children. This provoked a considerable controversy on the FaceBook wall of a friend of mine (I imagine it provoked controversy in other places too) and, surprisingly enough, I was drawn into the fray.

The debate centered around two separate questions: first, does vaccination actually help or harm public health and, secondly, even assuming vaccination aids public health, is it acceptable for the state to coerce parents on this matter.

I avoided part one; I’m a philosopher, not a doctor and not a public health expert. On the second issue, however, I had a bit more to say. Now, I can imagine that many of my friends who are utilitarians/ consequentialists will find this an easy question. I however, am not a consquentialist; I think parental rights are a real thing and they need to be respected. On this occasion, however, I agree with the consequentialists in their practical conclusion. I think the value of vaccination to the common good is such that the state may legitimately over-ride parental claims in this matter.

I’ve laid out my reasoning on this matter below. Before I give it, however, I need to make a couple of a couple of points: I’m not, at this time, interested in debate on natural law theory versus consquentialism. If you are a consequentialist, or an adherent of any other school than natural law, please view the following as an exercise in “what if”. Second, while the effectiveness of vaccination and the lack of any significant risk thereof are premises of my argument, I’m not much interested in debating those either. Once again, if you are one of those people who disagree with the near universal consensus amoung actual health practitioners who regard vaccination as a good thing, treat the below as a “what if.”

One final point, the views, expressed in this post, are my own and not necessarily the views of any group I may be affiliated with.

1)      Parents have a universal duty to not needlessly endanger the lives or health of their children.

2)      Citizens have a universal duty to not needlessly endanger the lives or health of their fellow citizens.

3)      The state has a legitimate interest in legislating to ensure that people meet their duties under (1) and (2) above.

4)      While the duties under (1) and (2) above are universal, the exact nature of what constitutes “needlessly endangering” may legitimately vary from situation to situation.

5)      If, within a given society, there exists a certain technology such that said technology is easily available, that the use of said technology does not involve any significant cost or risk to the user and such that the use of said technology will lead to greatly reduced risks to the lives or health of others, then failure to make use of such technology violates either (1) or (2) above.

6)      From (1) – (3) above it follows that, if, within a given society, there exists a technology which meets the criteria given in (5), then, the state has a legitimate interest in compelling the use of that technology.

7)      In 21^st century NSW, vaccination does, in fact, meet the criteria given in  (5)

8)      It follows from (6) and (7) above that the state of NSW has a legitimate interest in compelling the use of vaccination.

Back to Blogging

Ok, so, I set up this blog almost a year ago, intending to post regularly and I've let the year go by and posted nothing. I apologise.God willing, it's my hope that I'll be able to get into a routine of at least semi-regular posting, but you never know.

What finally spurred me back into the attempt to blog was reading this article by Ms. Mary Elizabeth Williams. On one level, I have to congratulate Ms. Williams, like Peter Singer, she has at least this to be said for her, she is a lot more consistent than many on her side of the political divide. However much I disagree with her, I have to at least congratulate her for her honesty in facing up to the rather obvious fact that a foetus is a life, indeed a human life.

In attempting to reconcile this acknowledgement with her “pro-choice” position, she argues that all life is not equally valuable and that the life of the mother is more important than the life of the foetus she carries.

My first thought in response to this was that, if you are going to argue for the greater value of one life over another, you should seek to lay out in detail a criterion by which such value will be determined; Ms. Williams never really does this, or even, so far as I can see, attempts to do so. This matters.

Let me offer a hypothetical scenario. Imagine a person who is working in a job of considerable national importance; let's further imagine that this person has a large family to support. Now, let us further suppose this person is in need of a heart transplant and is facing death soon if a compatible donor is not found and that the normal sources have failed to find a match. To add to this, let's imagine that a person with a compatible heart has been identified; he or she is unemployed, no job prospects and no close family.

Would Ms. Williams decide the second persons life was worth less than the first and support putting him or her to death (painlessly of course) so this his or her heart can be harvested? I feel reasonably confident she would not, but, having told us that lives are not of equal value, I doubt she could consistently defend this position.

My second thought was along a different line. Even if we accept that the life of the mother is more valuable than the life she carries, that is still not a justification for abortion in most cases. I can understand (though I would still disagree with) a view that says that the life of the mother is more valuable than that of her child and therefore abortion must be allowed where continuing the pregnancy would threaten the health of the mother. It must be noted, however, that these are a very small minority of pregnancies. If a woman does not feel she can be a mother, there is an alternative open. In any developed country I'm aware of (certainly in Australia) the number of couples wanting to adopt a child is far larger than the number of children available to be adopted. Under such circumstances, even if it could be established that a woman's life is more valuable than the life she carries, that would justify abortion in only a small number of cases. To justify the rest, you would essentially have to show that the life of the foetus is less valuable than nine months of inconvenience to the woman in question.

In short, Ms. Williams is to be congratulated for her willingness to face up to the reality that her “pro-choice” position involves ending human lives. Her attempts to justify this, however, simply will not stand up.