A Defence of Two Basic Principles (Part II)

Sorry that it's been so long, you can partly blame health and partly my lack of focus.

Last time I blogged, I made an introductory post on the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) and Principle of Causality (PC) and outlined where I intended to go. I said that my approach would be to start by considering the nature of axioms and then to attempt to establish that the PSR and PC should be considered axioms. For this post, I will attempt the first of these tasks (explaining what axioms are); my next post will attempt to make the case that the PSR and PC are axiomatic.

What are Axioms?

The basic function of logic and argument is to get from premises to conclusions. For example, if we start with the premises "All men are mortal" and "Socrates is a man" we can reach the conclusion "Socrates is mortal." Often, in a complex argument, our premises will be the conclusions from an earlier set premises. This process raises the question of where our first and original set of premises comes from.

These first premises are, in logic and maths, commonly called 'axioms'. Some philosophers use the term 'properly basic beliefs'. Axioms can't be proven in the ordinary way because, as I said, they are the original premises which all subsequent arguments depend on.

Common examples of what are often considered axioms, certainly things treated as axioms by Thomists, include the three laws of logic famously formulated by Aristotle ie. The laws of Identity, Non-Contradiction and the Excluded Middle.

Are Axioms Reliable?

Since axioms can't, in the ordinary sense, be proven, it might appear that they are arbitrary and that we can't have good reason for believing them true. I disagree. My position (I claim no originality here) is that there are axioms which we can know are true.

Thomists and other Aristotelians have traditionally argued that certain axioms are self evident. However, since many people have asserted that all sorts of things are self evident, there is an argument that helps establish the reliability of genuine axioms.  Put simply a principle can be regarded as axiomatic and true if that principle is such that it needs to be presumed for any knowledge to be possible and/or if the principle must be invoked to argue against it.

An example will illustrate my point. I once got into an argument with someone who argued that the basic laws of logic have no objective basis. His argument went as follows: "If the laws of logic had objective basis the development that we have seen in the sciences would not have happened. The development that we have seen in the sciences has, however, obviously happened, therefore the laws of logic have no objective basis."

Obviously his opening premise is highly debatable, but his argument has a more serious flaw than that. In making his argument, he was himself invoking the Law of Non-Contradiction. This is a basic point commonly found with Aristotle's basic laws, any attempt to argue against them necessarily invokes these laws, thus assuming their validity. This, for Thomists, helps to underscore the self evidence truth of these laws.

Some, of course, will object that while this demonstrates the necessity of such axioms for human thought, it proves nothing about their objective validity. The argument may go that, yes, for human thinking to work, we must assume these axioms are true, but that gives no reason to think they correspond to any objective reality.

On this view, mathematics, logic, and the like, which all depend on these basic laws, are not necessarily connected to anything objectively verifiable but simply the working out of what follows necessarily from these axioms which are, as it happens, necessary for human thought.

I would point out, in response, that if these laws have no objective validity, then we can't even know what follows from them. We might say that "If the Law of Non Contradiction is True then it follows that 2+2 = 4 can't be both true and false." But in saying this we assume the validity of that Law. If these basic axioms are not true, then the whole edifice must collapse, being built on sand.

If these axioms are not reliable, we can't even know that we have no good reason to believe them because that conclusion is it's self based on reasoning based on these axioms; the argument "We only have good reason to believe the things for which evidence can be put forward, but no evidence can be put forward for these axioms" is based on the laws of identity and non-contradiction.

Put simply, these axioms are self evidently true and ought to be believed.

A Defence of Two Basic Principles (Part I)

Last year, I had the honour of debating Travis McKenna of the University of Sydney Atheist Society on the question of whether God exists. I had nothing particularly original to offer, I defended the argument, which St. Thomas calls the most evident, namely the argument from motion. Travis responded in a way which, I'll admit, caught me somewhat by surprise, in that he directed most of his criticism on a single point, namely the Principle of Causality. Since then, I've been intending to write a series of blog posts on Causality, and it's related principle, the Principle of Sufficient Reason.

The Principle of Causality (PC) and Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) were once generally accepted as basic rules of metaphysics. Since the time of the Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711-1776) however, they've been highly controversial. I shall be arguing, however, that they are reliable principles from which knowledge can be derived.

Definitions

St. Thomas defined the PC: "nothing can be reduced from potentiality to actuality, except by something in a state of actuality." While I like this definition, it has a certain amount of baggage in that it's tied to some Aristotelian views on potentiality and actuality. Since I want to keep the discussion here relatively focused, for the purposes of this series, my definition of the PC shall be "Whatever is changed in any way is changed by something other than its self."

The PSR, like the PC has been formulated in a variety of different ways. For  the purposes of this series, however, we can define the PSR as this: "Whatever exists has an explanation for its existence either in its own necessity or in some external cause."

For some these two principles may seem simple common sense after all, in our common experience, things don't generally pop into existence without explanation.  Philosophically, however, simple common sense  is not enough. Even if we could, simply accept these principles as matters of common sense in describing interactions between things in our world, that would be insufficient to  justify the use of such principles in arguments for God's existence. After all, the fact of these principles holding good in this universe wouldn't prove that they hold in relation to something outside of the universe.

This Series

What I hope to show with this series, however, is that the PC and PSR have more than just common sense and empirical data behind them but are necessary truths about all possible existence. My plan is to start by looking at the nature of an  axiom, then by examining why the PC and PSR should be considered axioms, then by looking at some common objection.

 

Fighting Ignorance With More Ignorance

It seems to be an established tradition. Every Christmas and Easter, certain new outlets compete to outdo one another in making uninformed attacks on Christian belief. This year's winner has to be an article entitled "The Bible: So Misunderstood It's a Sin." The article appears in Newsweek Magazine and was written by one Kurt Eichenwald. Mr. Eichenwald sets out to explain how us Christian dummies don't know the real facts about the history and contents of the Bible. This is fair up to a point, there is a lot of ignorance, even among professing Christians about the book we hold sacred. If Mr. Eichenwald wants to correct this ignorance, however, it would be nice of him to get his own facts straight, something he clearly could not be bothered to do.

There are many gaping errors of fact in this article, more than I'm going to be able to cover in one blog post. The biggest errors, however, lie in the fact that Mr. Eichenwald is apparently unable to distinguish between three important but separate issues. These issues all need to be understood, so I'll spell them out separately:

1) The issue of the transmission of the text, that is to say, we don't have the original bits of paper that St. Matthew, St. Paul, etc. wrote. What we have is copies, of copies of copies, and so on. This creates a challenge for the science of textual criticism to work out exactly what the originals said.

2) The issue of translation, once we've worked out what the apostles wrote, it's another question to translate their writings from the Greek of the New Testament and the (mostly) Hebrew of the Old Testament into the various modern languages.

3) The issue of canonicity, the question of which of the various ancient documents actually make up the New Testament.

All three of these are important issues and all three have an interesting history which the average Christian ought to know more about. To understand them, however, we need to be aware that they are separate issues, Mr. Eichenwald seems determined to confuse them. Early on in the article, for example, he tells us that nobody alive has read the Bible, all anyone has read is translations of translations of translations. This is not true, plenty of scholars have read the Bible in its original languages and those of us who read it in English usually read it in direct translitions from the originals. Eventually, the light dawns, Mr. Eichenwald has confused translation, with transmission; when he says "translations of translations" he means "copies of copies". In the next paragraph, he talks about the fact that which books belong in the New Testament wasn't agreed until the fourth century (actually debate continued until the fifth) but somehow confuses this with the issue of transmission. To be clear, it is a fact that, for example, the position of the Book of Revelation in the New Testament was debated until the late fourth century however this has no impact on manuscripts of the book that predate that period and nothing much to do with the question of whether or not we can know what Revelations originally said.

Now, lest there be misunderstanding, let me be clear, it is a fact that we don't have the original manuscript of any New Testament book. It is also true that the copies of copies that we do have contain numerous errors. This is a real issue about which Christians should do more to educate ourselves. However this education won't be helped by repeating the sort of basic errors that Mr. Eichenwald makes.

Mr. Eichenwald tells us that "None of this mattered for centuries because Christians were certain God had guided that hand not only of the originals but of all the later copyists." This is rubbish, divine inspiration of the copyists has never been a Christian doctrine. It is also false to suggest that Christians have only recently become aware of these issues. Textual problems were, for example, discussed at length by the third century work, the Hexapola, by Origen of Alexandria.

For those wishing to get an idea of how, in spite of existing textual problems, we can still claim good confidence that our bibles say what the original authors wrote, I would recommend The King James Controversy, by James White (yes, the same James White I recently took aim at for his comments on Rick Warren). If you want to get both sides of the issue at once, the same James White has an excellent debate with agnostic critic Bart Erhman (whom Eichenwald references in his article) on the question "Does the Bible Misquote Jesus".

As I said, it would take far too long to mention all of Mr. Eichenwald's errors but let me list a few:
He claims that the famous incident of the woman taken in adultery from John Chapters 7&8 was added by scribes in the middles ages. While it is almost certainly true that this story was not part of the original Gospel, it is very early, dating back to at least the fourth century (and probably earlier).

He also claims that the King James Bible is considered the "gold standard" for translations into English (it isn't, at least not by any mainstream Christian scholar) he claims that the KJV translation was made not from the original Greek but from a Latin translation (indicating he knows nothing about the KJVs actual history) and he claims that, at the Council of Constantinople, Jesus was proclaimed to be Father, Son and Holy Spirit (no, that wasn't meant as a joke.)

In short, Mr. Eichenwald is correct; a lot of ignorance does exist about the Bible. Christians should make an effort to better educate ourselves about the history of the Bible, we should be better aware than we are about the many issues related to the transmission, translation and canon of our Sacred Scriptures. Mr. Eichenwald, however, is simply seeking to replace ignorance with more ignorance.
 

Answers for an Atheist (Part VII)

I'm continuing my series of posts responding to Hemant "The Friendly Atheist" Mehta. You can find his original video here, the most recent post in my series here and my first post here.

#29 Does God speak to you?

Good question and a tough one to answer. I believe He has spoken to me directly at least once although I admit I can't be sure.

Most protestants, from what I can see, fall into two camps on the "God speaking to people" question. On the one hand, there are those who believe that God stopped directly speaking to people when the last apostle died or when the last book of the New Testament was written. My problem with this view is that I see no real evidence for this position in the Bible.

On the other hand, there are those who seem to believe that a Christian should expect God to be constantly speaking and giving personal revelation to them. The objection to this is pretty obvious, God can't really be behind all the many contradictory messages that people think they are receiving from Him. I once had a conversation with a woman, a member of such a group, who told me that her boy friend had recently broken up with her because (he believed) that God had told him to that he wasn't ready to be in a relationship and wouldn't be for some time. Less then a fortnight later "God told" the same young man to start a relationship with another girl and, in less than a month "God told" him to propose to her. Now, I hope it's reasonably obvious that, unless we assume that God was either mistaken or deliberately giving bad advice, then God could not actually have been giving all of these messages.

Catholics take something of a middle ground here. We accept that God can and does continue to speak to His people, but we tend to be wary of the claims that expect such revelations to be constant. Fortunately for us, we believe that God has given us a reliable guide in the form of the Church hierarchy which Christ has established. Therefore a Catholic who believes that God is speaking to him or her is best advised to approach a reliable priest and ask his opinion.

Our example here should be St. Theresa of Avila. St. Theresa is one of the great mystics in history and believed herself to have been directly spoken to by God many times throughout her life. It is significant, however, that St. Theresa never directly acted on these messages without first consulting with her confessor/spiritual director.

I want to close by stressing what I am and am not saying here. Obviously I don't imagine any atheist, on reading this, is going to be convinced of the truth of Catholicism. I what I do hope I can show, however, is that a belief in a Church hierarchy, established by God and empowered to teach for Him, at least gives those who believe God has directly spoken to them a meaningful structure to evaluate whether it really comes from God.

Dr. Kreeft's Bad Case For God. (Part II)

A little while back I noted this video by well known Catholic philosopher and apologist Dr. Peter Kreeft. In the video, Dr. Kreeft puts forward what he claims to be St. Thomas' argument from motion, for God's existence. As I argued here, it isn't, the argument he is putting forward is very different from any argument the Angelic Doctor would have made.

This point irritated me; Thomists have enough trouble with atheists misrepresenting and misunderstanding St. Thomas' arguments, we don't need those who are on our side adding to the confusion. Having said that, I'm sure St. Thomas would say that whether the argument Prof. Kreefts put forward matches the Thomistic argument is less important than whether his argument for God's existence is a good one. Unfortunately, I don't think it is.

As I noted last time, Kreeft states, correctly, that things move and also notes, correctly, that motion requires a cause. He then tells us that causes cannot be traced back indefinitely and that there must be a 'first domino' in the sequence. Why must there be a first domino? The closest Kreeft comes to answering this question is when he raises the possibility of the universe being infinitely old (at the 2:04 second mark of the video). Prof. Kreeft's response is, the universe isn't infinitely old because there is a scientific consensus that the universe is began with the 'big bang.'

I must note here, that I am not a physicist, but then neither is Prof. Kreeft. Among those who are, few seem to find this argument convincing. It's worth noting that Mons. Georges Lemaitre SJ, the priest who first formulated the theory strongly cautioned against using the theory in the way Prof. Kreeft is using it and Fr. George Coyne, former Vatican Astronomer has expressed similar views.

It's also important to note that while scientific consensus exists that a 'big bang' began our current physical universe, there is a diversity of opinion among scientists about what might possibly have preceded this 'bang.' When Prof. Kreeft says "We now know that all matter came into existence some 13.7 billion years ago." that's at best an oversimplification. While we know the present universe started that way, a variety of hypotheses exist about possible preceding causes for the state which produced the 'bang'.

Prof. Kreeft comes close to acknowledging this when he talks about the possibility of our universe being part of a multiverse and declares that, even if such a multiverse existed, it would still need a beginning. Why? Why could a multiverse not exist eternally in the past with big bangs creating new universes being triggered somehow by events in existing universes? If Prof. Keeft has an answer for this, he doesn't give it.

Kreeft then remarks that "Yet some atheists find the existence of an infinite number of an infinite number of other universes more rational than the existence of a creator..." This misses the point. There is no good evidence that a multiverse exists. It is however a possible explanation for the 'big bang'. As long as there are other possible explanations for the 'big bang', God is not the only explanation and, therefore, the 'big bang' is not proof of the existence of God.


 

Answers For an Atheist (Part VI)

Hey everyone, sorry it's been so long. My hope is that I'll be able to get into better regular blogging habits and have more regular updates here. Anyway, I continue answering Hemant "The Friendly Atheist"  Mehta's "78 Questions for Christians." The original post in my series can be found here and my most recent post here. I should add that a lot of the questions I'll be addressing in this post deal with the same basic issues as questions I've already addressed, so my answers will be reasonably short and accompanied with links to previous posts.

#18 What matters to God more: The quantity of people praying or the quality of their prayers?

The love and sincerity with which they pray; I assume that's what you mean by 'quality'.

#19 If quantity matters, shouldn't the most popular team always win the Super Bowl?

This question is not applicable, given my answer to the last question.

#20 If quality matters, why do people you love sometimes die no matter what you do?

I don't know. I really wish I did, but I don't. I go into this in more detail here. This raises the question of why bother praying if it all comes down to God's will, which I discuss here.

#21 Is it possible that your prayers have no supernatural effect and only serve to make you feel better?

I believe God has promised to hear and respond to our prayers and I believe He keeps His promises. However, even without that promise, I believe prayer would still be worth while, see the last link I gave for my reasons.

#22 Would you ever admit it if that were true?

If I was presented with good reasons.

#23 Is there anything in your life that makes you doubt God's existence?

Nothing that causes rational doubts.

#24 How would your life change if you had serious doubts about God's existence?

Since my religion is the essential guiding principle of my life, it would change in more ways than I could count.

#25 Was Jesus white?

No, and I really have no idea what the point of this question is.

#26 Why does God seem more likely to answer the prayers of a talented athlete than a starving child overseas?

I don't believe He does, although if you are asking why He allows the prayers of a starving child for food to go unanswered, see above.

#27 Why does God seem to hate Africa?

He doesn't, although if you are asking why He allows evils like extreme poverty to be so much more prevalent in Africa than Western Europe of North America, again, I don't know, but see my previously linked to comments on why I don't think I need to know.

#28 If a group of people came from (say) Africa to your community with the intent to convert you to their tribal faith, would you listen to them and take them seriously, or would you just dismiss them because they don't believe what you already believe?

If it was my practice to simply dismiss anyone who doesn't believe what I already believe then I never would have become Catholic. I shifted from atheism to a sort of liberal Protestantism and from there to Catholicism in response to dialoguing and listening to other people's beliefs and reasons for believing.

Ok, so that's a lot of questions covered in one post but as I said, a lot of it was repetitive. His next group of questions deal with some different issues so, Deo volente, the next post will be more detailed.

 

Answers For an Atheist (Part V)

Before I took my rather long break from blogging I had started on a series of posts responding to Hemant "The Friendly Atheist" Mehta's video "78 Questions For Christians." This is a (long overdue) continuation of said series. You can find the original post of the series here  and the most recent post here. This post will seek to build on previous posts in the series.

So, some more of Mr. Mehta's questions:

#13 Let's say you have an amputated limb, would prayer ever bring it back?
#14 If you've heard stories of amputated limbs ever growing back, how come there's never a camera around when that happens?
#15 How come no cameras are around when any miracle happens?
#16 If you had an exam coming up, which do you think would help more, prayer or studying for the test?
#17 If you prayed for me over YouTube right now, do you think I would know it somehow.

#16 is essentially the same issue as #9 and #12, my answer to those in my last post is my answer again here. As I said, I don't believe it's quantifiable.

My short answers to #13 and #17 are "Probably not, but it's possible" and my short answers to #14 and #15 are, "I don't know." Obviously, however, these demand longer answers.

This is, of course, all tied in with the problem of evil. If God loves us, why does He not automatically heal all illness and injury? If God wants all of us to know Him why does He not give us all the same undeniable experience He gave St. Paul on the road to Damascus or at least perform a few miraculous re-growths of amputated limbs on camera?

I hasten to add, I certainly believe in a God who has the power to regrow limbs in answer to prayer or to make Mr. Mehta (or anyone else) mystically aware that he is being prayed for, but, generally speaking, God does not do these things, why not?

As I said, I don't know, but how significant is my lack of knowledge?

In his Summa Theologica St. Thomas answers the question of how a perfectly good God can be reconciled with a universe in which evil exists by (quoting St. Augustine) arguing that God allows evil only in the knowledge that this will produce a greater good. (S.T. I Q 2. Art 3 rep. obj. 2). What good does God create that is great enough all these evils? What good does He create by allowing Mr. Mehta to not believe in Him when he could appear to him like He did to St. Paul?

As I said, I don't know, but I don't see that I should know. One of the obvious things about God is that, if He exists, He knows things I don't and is a lot smarter than me. Therefore, the fact that I don't understand some things He has or hasn't done is absolutely no reason to assume He has not good reason.

I understand why, on an emotional level, so many people find this unsatisfying, I do too. When I look at the world and see all the good people whose sincere prayers for life, health, an end to persecution go unanswered, I can't help crying out "God, WTF is going on!" I don't see anything wrong with this, indeed, the book of psalms as a number of what are called "problem psalms" whose main point is to demand an answer from God for why He allows such injustice.

While I understand, however, why the response is emotionally unsatisfying, I can't really see why it would be intellectually unsatisfying. If God exists He must be able to see factors, results, consequences of doing one thing and not another that are not obvious to us. There is surely, therefore, no reason not to believe that such a God could have perfectly good reasons for doing, not doing something, that are not at all obvious to us.
 

Dr. Kreeft's Bad Case for God (Part I)

Hey, I know it's been a while. You can blame my lack of posting mostly on my health which has been up and down a lot (please pray.) I was inspired to jump back into blogging today when someone posted a video by prominent atheist 'AronRa' responding to this video by prominent Catholic philosopher and apologist Peter Kreeft. Now, I have to say, I wasn't impressed by AronRa's efforts and plan (Deo volente) to do a post explaining why, but I wasn't impressed by Dr. Kreeft either. Dr. Kreeft is, as I said, a fairly prominent Catholic figure and lectures in philosophy at a Catholic University, you'd therefore expect him to have a reasonable grasp of the positions of the Church's most famous philosopher, St. Thomas Aquians. Regrettably, he actually helps perpetuate a number of misconceptions about St. Thomas' position, misconceptions that other Thomists like Edward Feser have been working hard to dispel.

After some brief preliminaries, Kreeft tells us that "...a good place to start [in rationally proving God's existence] is with an argument by Thomas Aquinas..." Actually, as St. Thomas would be quick to point out, this argument actually comes from Aristotle, but that's a minor point. More seriously, Kreeft tells us that that the argument begins with the observation that things move (they do) and that motion must have a cause (it must). So far so good but Kreeft then goes on to speak of the need for a first mover being like a first domino, causing the other dominoes in a line to fall. When attempting to give an explanation of why this cannot go back indefinitely Kreeft gives the an arument that the material universe has been demonstrated by science to have a beginning.

That is not St. Thomas' argument. When St. Thomas speaks of God as "First Mover" or "First Cause" he is not speaking about being first in a temporal but in a hierarchical series of causes. To explain the difference, consider a series of dominos. The first domino knocks the second one over which knocks the third over and so on. If the line of dominoes is long enough, then further dominos could be knocking each other over long after the first domino has stopped doing anything. In fact, with a line sufficiently long, you could wait for the first domino to knock over the second, pick that first domino up and throw it in the fireplace to be burned, and the rest of the dominos in the sequence would keep on falling. This is an example of what Thomists call a "temporally ordered" or "accidentally ordered" sequence.

In contrast, imagine a book, laying on top of a table, which is laying on top of a second story floor. The table is holding up the book, the floor is folding up the table, the first story walls are holding up that floor and the building's foundation is holding up the whole thing. In this circumstance the foundation is the first cause of everything being held in place in a very different way to that first domino, if the basement were to be removed from its place, the whole edifice would collapse. This is what Thomists call a "hierarchically ordered" or "essentially ordered" sequence of causes.

For Aquinas, God is the first mover in the same way that the foundation of that hypothetical building is the first cause of everything in the building being where it is. Dr. Kreeft makes very clear that he is not using St. Thomas' argument when he rhetorically asks (a little bit after the two minute mark in his video) "But what if the universe was infinitely old?" St. Thomas' answer is that it makes no difference; even if the universe were infinitely old, at any given moment God would need to exist to underlie whatever motion  is happening in that moment. In the same way, even if, hypothetically, we imagine an infinitely old building, the foundation would still need to exist, moment to moment, to hold the whole thing up.

This is not, however, the answer Dr. Kreeft gives. He attempts to give a scientific argument for the impossibility of an infinitely old universe. I will (deo volente) explain in a future post why I find his argument unconvincing, but for now I will just note that, whether good or bad, his argument is not the argument of St. Thomas.

As a brief aside, at about the one minute, thirty second mark, Dr. Kreeft declares that "Science will never find the first cause, that's no knock on science it simply means that a first cause lies outside the realm of science." I happen to agree with this statement but my reason for thinking this lies in a fairly lengthy bit of reasoning which considers what qualities can be shown to be necessary for a first cause to have. Absent any explanation of this, Dr. Kreeft's claim sounds like a dogmatic assertion. I can well imagine an intelligent listener, unfamiliar with the theistic philosophical tradition hearing this and thinking something like "Why, when science has identified so many other causes, would we imagine that it can't find the first? This is simply God of the gaps reasoning."

Answers for an Atheist (Part IV)

I'm continuing my response to Hemant "The Friendly Atheist" Mehta's "78 Questions for Christians." This, is the original post and this is the most recent.

The first seven of Mr. Mehta's questions were on salvation. With question eight he begins a new series of questions on prayer.

#8 If you son or daughter were dying (and I hope that never happens) would you just pray for them or would you take them to the Doctor?
#9 And, if you say you'd do both, which one do you think has more of an impact?
#10 Whose prayers does God answer?
#11 And if it's ultimately God's will what happens, why even both praying?
#12 If you have cancer right now, what's going to help you more, drugs or prayer?

First, a brief aside, for Catholics, prayer has four essential purposes. In descending order of importance: adoration (praising God for His intrinsic glory), thanksgiving (of which the meaning, I hope, is obvious),  reparation (apologising and seeking to make up for our sins) and supplication (asking God for things) .

I note this because some evangelical protestants (I'm not suggesting this is true of all or even most, but those who do speak this way tend to be rather prominent) speak of prayer as if prayer simply referred to asking God for things. On Catholic belief (and, I should add, on the views of many protestants) this sort of prayers, prayers in which we make requests of God, are the least important kind. I realise that this doesn't answer Mr. Mehta's questions but it does, perhaps, put them in the proper context.

To answer these, it's important, once again, to state some basics of Catholic beliefs.

Catholics believe that God is both the ultimate cause of the existence of all things other than Himself and that He is also the ultimate source of all change that occurs in the world (This is the essence of St. Thomas' first two proofs of God's existence). So if I, or some hypothetical loved one of mine had a potentially fatal illness, it would be important for me to remember that God is the ultimate source of everything.

The upshot of this is that, if my hypothetical loved one does recover from his or her hypothetical illness, God is responsible, not in the sense that He will necessarily suspend the laws of biology with a miraculous cure but that God is the source of the natural laws  under which a cure will happen and is also the source of the intelligence of the men and women who will make the cure possible.

So, the answer to question #8 is that I would do both.

To answer #9 and # 12, I don't know and I don't believe it's quantifiable. God is all knowing. When God first laid down the laws of nature under which my hypothetical relative got sick and under which he or she will, deo volente, be cured, He knew I would one day be praying for my loved one's recovery. When He gave Louis Pasteur, Marie Curie and all the other genii of history who made modern medicine possible, their prodigious intellects, He knew I would one day be praying for the recovery of my loved one. So, Jason, are you really saying that your prayers were a factor in making Louis Pasteur as smart as he was? I don't know, as I said, I don't see how it could be quantified, but I don't see any a priori reason to reject the notion as impossible.

Having said all of that, even if I knew for certain that my prayers would have no effect on whether I or my hypothetical loved one recovered, I'd still pray. I'd do this because prayer is ultimately essential not as some means of changing God's mind but because of its effect on the one praying. In petitionary prayer I confess and remind myself of my status as a creature and my dependence upon my creator. This would be of value even if I were to be convinced that my prayers would make my desired outcome no more probable.

To answer #10, it depends what you mean by answer. God certainly hears and responds to the prayers of everybody. However I suspect that Mr. Mehta is asking whose prayers God grants. The simple answer is that God, who is, as I said, all-knowing, knows which prayers it will ultimately produce the greatest good to grant and He will grant those prayers which it will lead to the greatest good.

This leads, naturally enough, to question #11. Part of the answer is given above, even if I knew my prayers had no effect on what I was praying for, they would still be worthwhile. Having said that, I believe prayer does effect outcomes. How, a reasonable person may ask, is that possible if it all comes down to God's plan? A full answer to this would involve a lengthy discussion of providence, predestination and the exact ways in which Divine Sovereignty interacts with human freedom, a task beyond a simple blog post.

A short answer, however, is given by St. Thomas Aquinas. God, being all powerful, could, if He wished, have created a world in which He directly accomplished all His plans Himself. God, however, wanted to enable humans to be active participants in bringing about His will. Prayer is one of the ways in which we participate. As St. Thomas puts it, drawing upon St. Gregory the Great:

"For we pray not that we may change the Divine disposition, but that we may impetrate that which God has disposed to be fulfilled by our prayers in other words 'that by asking, men may deserve to receive what Almighty God from eternity has disposed to give,' as Gregory says " (S.T. II-II Q. 83. Art. 5. c.f. I Q.23. Art. 8)

I will, (Deo volente) continue with this at some point in the reasonably near future.

Answers for an Atheist (Part III)

I'm continuing my answers to Hemant "The Friendly Atheist" Mehta's video "78 Questions for Christians". The video I'm responding to can be found here and the previous parts of this series are here and here.

#5 Should a kind hearted atheist be forced to go burn in hell for all eternity?
#6 What about any non-Christian good person, should they be burning in hell?
#7 Could you be happy in heaven while someone you loved was burning in hell?

#5 and #6 have already been partially answered in my first part of this series. As a Catholic, I don't believe that non-Christians of whatever sort automatically go to hell. Having said that, there is no getting around the fact that Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular does call upon people to believe, and we do think that belief, or unbelief has at least the potential to impact where one might be spending forever and I can well understand why many people believe this is unjust.

To explain why I believe Catholic belief is, in fact, just, I need to explain a bit about what Catholics believe. Central to Catholicism is the belief that God is the source of all truth, goodness, beauty and love. I've read and heard a lot of atheist critiques of Christianity where the one making the critique seems under the impression that we regard hell as some arbitrary punishment and heaven some arbitrary reward that God has chosen to inflict or grant to those who break or follow His rules. That's not the Catholic view at all.

In Catholic belief, the essential nature of heaven lies in the possession of the "Beatific Vision". This means that we will directly see God as He, in His essential nature, is, enjoying perfect communion with that source of love, goodness and beauty.

By contrast, hell consists primarily in what is called the pain of loss. By this, the Church means that the damned will know, with clarity, that they were created for the purpose of enjoying the perfect happiness that comes from the beatific vision and that, through their own choices, they have eternally lost that chance.

With these definitions in mind, I think it can be seen what I meant about heaven and hell not being an arbitrary reward or punishment for following or not following certain rules. Heaven, the beatific vision, is the logically necessary consequence of a person embracing the sort of relationship that God wishes us to have with Him. Conversely, hell is an equally necessary consequence of consciously rejecting that relationship. On the subject of hell, let me add this, Satan and the other fallen angels are in hell, they are direct creations of God who rejected Him with a full knowledge of what they were doing. I do not claim to know how many humans might be there with them, nor who they are. I do not even know with certainty whether any humans are there; I fear there are, but I hope there may not be.

I think the above clarifications will help to show why it is just that belief will have some effect on where one spends eternity. Now, to be clear, I am not saying that all atheists, or non-Christians generally, are going to hell, that's more than I can judge. I am, however, saying that, the person who is given an opportunity to know that God exists but resists this opportunity out of pride or an unwillingness to give up some sin or for some other unworthy reason, is deliberately putting his or herself on the road to the same place as the fallen angels. (Please note! I am not saying that this is the case for all or even most atheists. Absent a supernatural window into my neighbours' hearts, I can't even say with certainty that it's the case for any atheist.)

This applies, not only for atheists but for those of other religions. In arguments I've gotten into and things I've seen written in various places, I frequently encounter the assumption that, if God cares about relationships, this means he won't care what specific beliefs people hold. This strikes me as pretty silly. Generally speaking, if a person is in, or wishes to be in, a relationship with another person, that person wants to know as much as possible about the other person. If Catholicism is true, then the things about God's nature which the Catholic Church teaches must also be true. If a person truly wants a relationship with God, he or she will want to know those things. Again, this is not to suggest that all non-Catholics, or non-Christians are on the road to hell. What it is to suggest is that if someone is given the opportunity to know that Christianity/Catholicism is true and rejects that opportunity out of pride or unwillingness to submit to some difficult Church teaching, that person is, in fact, rejecting a real relationship with God.

Having said all this, I think I can give reasoned answers to the questions above.

#5 - No, I don't think a truly kind hearted atheist should go to hell. I do, however, think that such a  hypothetical atheist, in order to be truly kind hearted needs to want his or her fellow human beings to know the truth and needs to want to know the truth his/herself.

#6 - No, I don't think a good non-Christian person should go to hell. However, once again, to be truly good, this hypothetical person needs to be concerned about and open to the truth.

#7 - I found this the hardest question to answer. I have to admit, I feel the force of this objection and a big part of me wants to agree with Mr. Mehta and say no. I've said already, I want all of my fellow human beings to go to heaven and, obviously, this is a fortiori the case for my family and friends. I sincerely hope the none of the people I know and love will end up in hell. I have to say, though, that if it happens, yes, I could be happy. I don't believe any earthly happiness, however multiplied, could compensate for the knowledge that a person I loved was undergoing eternal torment. However, as I said, heaven is not just earthly happiness multiplied and then made eternal. Heaven is the direct vision of the source of all goodness. Given this, yes, I believe I could be happy knowing someone I loved was suffering in hell, given that I would also know that this was the result of his or her own choice.

I will, Deo Volente, have more answers to Mr. Mehta in the near future. I will also answer the question which Fr. John F. was kind enough to leave in the comments thread of my last post.

Answers for an Atheist (Part II)

This is a continuation of my response to Hemant "The Friendly Atheist" Mehta's video "78 Questions for Christians." You can find the original video here and the first part of my response here.

Mr. Mehta's fourth question is "Should a killer who genuinely repents be able to go to heaven?" As with his third question, I find myself responding, "It depends what you mean."

First, I'll answer a question Mr. Mehta probably wasn't asking, but some might, does such a person deserve heaven? Does he or she have any right to go there? The answer to this, of course, is no. A murdered doesn't deserve heaven, but then, neither does anyone else. The Christian belief is that heaven is an eternity of happiness beyond what any person could deserve. (Actually, heaven is more than that, Deo volente, I'll go into more detail on what it is in a future post, but this will do for now.) The Christian belief is that everybody in heaven is there because God gave them a gift that they could never, of their own efforts, earn.

I suspect, however, that what I've written above doesn't really answer the question which Mr. Mehta intended to ask. I imagine the question would be something like "Is it morally acceptable for God to grant such a gift? Surely, for someone to commit such a crime and then go heaven forever is wrong." 

I have to begin by saying that I feel the power of Mr. Mehta's point. I can understand the feeling that those who commit such crimes shouldn't be let into heaven. Indeed, it's harsher than that; my religion not merely offers the possibility of heaven to murderers, rapists, child molesters and others, but it tells the victims of such people that they should desire the repentance and salvation of the one who offended against them. I can well understand why so many people find this offensive.

I'll also say that I find the response of some evangelical protestants that justice is served because Jesus was punished in the place of such offenders unsatisfying. The idea of justice being satisfied by another person being punished in the culprit's place, however innocent and willing the other party might be, is not obviously reasonable.

So, what can I say in response to this? To begin with, I have to note one substantial difference between Catholicism and Protestantism. The Catholic Church teaches that there is a difference between eternal and temporal punishment and that, temporal penalties may remain to be paid even after eternal punishment is forgiven. Put simply, this means that, some form of punishment may (and usually will) remain to be undergone. This is why Catholics believe in Purgatory, a place where repentant sinners who die with some degree of temporal consequences for their sin unpaid will undergo a period of purification.

This is a substantial difference between the Catholic and Evangelical Protestant views. On the view held by most Evangelical Protestants, a person could commit any number of horrible crimes, evade capture for his entire life, sincerely repent on his death bed and go straight into paradise. On a Catholic view, such a person would very likely still have payment for his sins to undergo after death before he is admitted to heaven.

While some may find the above answers Mr. Mehta's objection, I can well imagine that others will reply that, no matter how much penance and purification, no matter how long someone spends in purgatory, there are some crimes so terrible that a person guilty of them should never be admitted to heaven. While I certainly sympathise with such a position, I can't agree with it. The reason I can't agree is this: I've done some pretty bad things in my time, nothing as bad as murder or rape, but I've hurt people, including people I care abut. As I said, I've never done anything like murder and I'm pretty sure that most of my fellow human beings, if they knew everything I've done, would agree that I've done nothing that can't be forgiven.

However, while most of my fellow human beings may agree that I've done nothing unforgivable, my entrance to heaven depends not on what my fellow human beings think, but on what a perfectly sinless and holy God thinks. Once that Holy God decides that some sins will be beyond His forgiveness, I have no confidence that He will draw the line where I'd like it to be drawn.

Update:  I have now written a response to the question asked by Fr. John F. in the comment thread below.

 

The Failures of Don Baker

The latest episode of The Atheist Experience TV show is on-line. Co-Host Don Baker had done yet another of his "Failures of Christianity" series. I've complained about Baker before and, in this episode, he has certainly gotten no better.

Baker devotes the beginning of the episode to talking about "The Dark Ages." I want to stress, Baker's rant was not an off the cuff response to a question, it was pre-prepared, so he had ample opportunity to fact check. To give a full list of his factual errors would take a long post indeed. Some of these claims are popular myths which have long been refuted , such as the claim that Christians burned the Great Library of Alexandria. Had Baker simply bothered to read the Wikipedia article on the destruction of said library he'd have recognised what rubbish he was talking.

Other claims are simply bizarre, Baker actually claims that Christians of the middle ages persecuted Zoroastrianism. Yes, you read the correctly. How Baker would get around the small problem of no Zoroastrian communities existing within Christian lands during the middle ages, I'm not certain of.

Even when describing real atrocities, Baker shows a horrific lack of attention to details. Take, for example, his discussion of the crusades. Now, there is no question, a lot of horrible things were done by Christians during the Crusades, and it's fair enough to criticise this. Baker, however, can't seem to wrap his head around the basic history of the Crusades. He notes. accurately enough, that there were six major crusades, but then says, eventually, they captured Jerusalem. Actually, the first Crusade captured Jerusalem, the second failed to hold it and the remaining four were failed attempts to retake it. In other words, even when describe an actually failure, Baker can't be bothered doing a simple Google search to get the details right.

I mention these three examples, those with more time and patient could list many more. My question, however, is this, how does Baker get away with this? This is by no means the first time, that he's made factual claims this wide of the mark. The show is sponsored by the Atheist Community of Austin, Texas, which I understand to be a reasonably large organisation. Surely there have to be people in the ACA who would know enough history to know that Baker is frequently wrong. Alternatively, there must be people who, hearing one of Baker's bits, will think it sounds interesting, doing a quick Google search and discover that Baker is wrong? Have none of these people tried to talk to him? If they have, does he care?

This matters because people on the show frequently call creationists and others to account for their failure to do basic research. If people want to be consistent however, they need to hold their own side to the same standards.

Answers for an Atheist (Part I)

About three weeks ago, Hemant Mehta, aka "The Friendly Atheist" posted a video entitled "78 Questions for Christians."  I have to admit to being a little bit impressed about his ability to fit so many questions into such a brief video. Obviously, answering the questions will take longer than asking, I'm not going to be able answer to answer all of them in one blog post, but, let's see how we go.

His first three questions are:

#1. Is Anne Frank burning in Hell right now?
#2. How about Mahatma Ghandi?
#3. Is Fred Phelps in heaven, because he believed in the divinity of Jesus.

My short answers to these three questions: "I hope not", "I hope not", and "It depends what you mean."

Longer answers: I assume that Mr. Mehta is asking these questions having in mind the widely held evangelical protestant belief that anyone who has explicit faith in Christ is going straight to Heaven upon death and everyone without such faith is going to Hell.

I have to admit, as a Catholic, I found this a little annoying. Obviously, there are a huge number of different Christian positions and Mr. Mehta can't be expected to respond to every Christian belief in a short video. I would think, however, that in a video labelled "78 Questions for Christians" he'd show at least some awareness of the beliefs of the world's largest Christian denomination.

The Catholic Church acknowledges the possibility of those who are, for whatever reason, unable to fully grasp the truth, either because they never heard it or because, for some reason, they were unable to accept it, can, in fact, be saved. When Pope Francis, publicly spoke of the possibility of atheists being saved, many people treated this as big news and suggested that it represented a major break from his predecessor. This just isn't true. Benedict XVI, on numerous occasions, spoke about the possibility of atheists being saved. This point can't be emphasised enough, Benedict XVI, frequently cited as an example of a strict, conservative Pope, said atheists can go to heaven.

Some will claim that, while Benedict is by modern standards, a conservative pope, that, even a modern conservative is liberal by pre Vatican II standards. Prior to Vatican II the Church certainly would have affirmed that people who don't believe in Jesus go to hell. Respectfully, those people would be mistaken. A good case in point is the famous "Boston Heresy Case." In the late 1940s, the famous Jesuit, Leonard Feeney, accused Richard, Cardinal Cushing, Archbishop of Boston, of heresy, in part because of Cushing's statement that it is possible for Jews to go to heaven. The Vatican investigated and, in a very significant letter, the Holy Office came down of Cushing's side. This happened four years before John XIII's election to the Papacy.

If the above is insufficient, it is worth noting that, Bld. Pius IX, a man frequently cited as an example of one of the most reactionary Popes of the 19th Century, in his 1863 Letter to the Bishops of Italy defended the possibility of those who, through no fault of their own, could not accept Catholicism, being saved.

So, to answer the first two questions, I have no idea where Anne Frank or Mahatma Gandhi will be spending eternity. I hope that they are in heaven, I have the same hope for all my fellow human beings. What I can say, however, is that I reject the idea that because they died not believing in Jesus, this automatically means that they are in hell.

To Mr. Mehta's third question. I have no idea where Fred Phelps is. As I said above, I would hope for all my fellow human beings to be saved and, yes, that includes Fred Phelps. My hope that Phelps may be in heaven is strengthened by the reports that indicate he may have had a change of heart before his death.

Having said that, if Phelps is in Heaven, it is not just because he believed in the divinity of Christ. Catholics reject the protestant doctrine of salvation by faith alone. So, I have no difficulty at least acknowledging the possibility that someone can die believing in Christ's deity and go to hell. As St. James said "Even the demons believe, and tremble."

Having said the above, fairness to my protestant friends requires me to add that, most protestants do not equate faith simply with believing in the deity of Christ and so they would agree that belief in Christ's deity does not necessarily mean a given person is saved.

So, my, brief answer to Mr. Mehta's first three questions, I hope all three of the people you name are in heaven, but I really don't know.
 

Mr. Repzion's New Direction

I was both interested and rather touched by this video posted by atheist "vlogger" (a term I dislike) Daniel "MrRepzion" Sulzbach, MrRepzion is, obviously, some I have my fair share of disagreements with, but also someone with whom I have a few things in common: we seem to share a few of the "nerdier" fan activities.  More importantly, he's talked a lot about his history with mental illness and a lot of what he has to say on the subject of his struggles has struck a real cord with me.

MrRepzion begins this latest video with the words "I really hate being a perfectionist." I definatly relate. I think a large part of my mental health problems are related to perfectionism. There are various things both in the past and now which I could have done or could be doing but which, when I attempt to do them, I find myself paralysed by the fear that I won't do them perfectly.

After this opening admission, MrRepzion goes on to describe the way in which he feels he has been discussing religion in the wrong way. He says that he feels that his previous videos attack religion have come across as far too hostile. I have to say that I'm not certain I agree. I've seen a number of his videos and haven't found him overly aggressive. I've certainly seen worse. He goes on, however, to say that, while he still intends to make videos about religion he doesn't want to continue with such a polemical tone. His aim, he says, will be to take a more nuanced approach, exploring, for example, the reasons why people become religious.

I have to say, this former atheist convert to Catholicism is very keen to hear of MrRepzion's change of emphasis. I don't know what exactly his plans are but I'd be very excited to interact with him on this subject and I hope other Christians will likewise by interacting with his material in a positive way.

"Knowledge" About Mark's Gospel

 

As the old cliche goes, “A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.” This is true for a 

number of reasons. One reason is that, when we half know or half understand something, 

we tend not to just accept that we half know or half understand it, but to 

make up “knowledge” to fill in the gaps and convince ourselves that we understand 

more than we do. 

 

As an example of what I’m talking about, there seems to be a growing misconception 

among a number of atheists concerning the longer and shorter endings of the Gospel 

According to St. Mark. The misconception its self, isn’t a huge problem, but the fact 

way it seems to have formed in some people’s minds is. Let me hasten to had that, 

while, for this example, I’m picking on my atheist friends, I have little doubt that many 

examples of similar folly could be found on my own side.

 

For those unfamiliar with what I mean by longer and shorter endings of St. Mark; St. 

Mark’s Gospel has sixteen chapters and the final chapter has twenty verses. The 

vast majority of scholars, however, would consider that only the first eight verses 

were part of the original gospel with the remaining twelve being added by a later 

scribe. The shorter ending of St. Mark does not contain any description of the risen 

Christ appearing to His followers. This fact makes it unique among the Biblical Gospels; 

the longer ending, as well as the other three Gospels all do contain such narratives. 

It is important to note, however, that the shorter ending, does clearly affirm the 

resurrection happening. The shorter ending describes a group of women coming to 

the tomb of Jesus, early on Sunday morning, finding the tomb empty and being told 

“You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth. He is not here, he is risen.”

 

A large number of atheist, however, seem to have heard this fact, but only partly 

grasped it. The upshot of this is that, in past few months, I’ve had several atheists 

inform me that Mark’s Gospel, as originally written, contains no mention of the 

resurrection and, at least one of them, as gone so far as to conclude from this that, 

at the time of the Gospel’s writing, belief in the resurrection was not part of Christianity. 

I’m pretty sure that none of these people are lying; they believe what they are saying. I 

think that, what has happened, is that they have heard it said (truly) that most scholars 

believe the original version of Mark’s Gospel contains no accounts of appearances of the 

risen Christ and, not fully grasping the important distinctions, concluded that this means 

that it contains no mention of the resurrection.

 

This error, by itself, would be harmless enough. The problem is that many will then 

go on to claim something like “people who think the original gospels contain an 

account of the resurrection obviously aren’t aware of modern scholarship like I am.” 

Even when, I point out to such individuals the fact that, actually, the shorter ending of 

St. Mark, the one universally recognised as being part of the original gospel, does include 

the clear affirmation that "He is risen.", this is sometimes dismissed as "Silly Christians
not even knowing what scholarship says about your own book." Actually, quite a few of
us do know. The difference is we are interested in knowing the details of what that
scholarship says, not just a few points we can cherry pick.

 

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.

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.

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.

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.