A few months ago, the NY Times covered a symposium of scientists who were trying to bury religion once and for all (good luck with that).
The "highlights" were:
1) A biologist showing slides of babies and fetuses dying from terrible diseases and/or deformities, and stating, prompting viewers to wonder how a benevolent god could allow such things.
2) An astronomer showing slides of supernovas and comets, and saying, roughly, "This is FAR more wonderful than any story or account I've ever heard of God."
I almost wondered if those two scientists ever met or tried to reconcile their visions. Which story are we to believe- "The universe is so horrible and evil that there couldn't be a God," or "The universe is so wonderful, who needs God?"
“I almost wondered if those two scientists ever met or tried to reconcile their visions.”
Interesting observation about the two scientists, and their not-so-brilliant arguments reminded me of “the time has come to set aside childish things.”
"The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference." - Charles Darwin
If I'm not mistaken, Mark, this is a garbled quote from Richard Dawkins, not Charles Darwin. It's from The Blind Watchmaker, if I recall correctly.
Everything is the fault of our God, who doesn't exist.
Everything is the fault of our God, who doesn't exist.
Your post is rather one-sided; it almost has me convinced that no Christian folk have ever attempted to de-merit the beliefs of Atheism, and that Atheists are hell-bent on "attacking" Christianity just for the hell of it.
Speaking as a socially-inept git, this underscores the narrowness of your viewpoint. The attacks have and continue to fly from both sides, and to simply ignore that fact is stupid.
That being said, this is YOUR blog not mine, and you're entitled to your own little agenda setting just like every other blogger out there. 
Astorian,
Good job at cherry-picking the weakest arguments for Atheism and Agnosticism!
The biologist you cite brings up the "problem of evil" which is something you'll find in any Freshman philosophy text. The astronomer is using an appeal to emotions, a logical fallacy.
Frankly, I think the arguments for Atheism (at least the kind to which I subscribe) are largely irrelevant. The burden of proof is not on me, the skeptic, but on you, the believer. Nothing I believe to be true is taken on faith; everything is weighted with logic, evidence, and proof.
"The biologist you cite brings up the "problem of evil" which is something you'll find in any Freshman philosophy text."
So not in a Freshman Bio class?
The burden of proof is not on me, the skeptic, but on you, the believer. Nothing I believe to be true is taken on faith; everything is weighted with logic, evidence, and proof.
Except the law of non-contradiction, which you have to take on faith like everybody else.
Only a fool who has lived an unexamined life believes that he takes nothing on faith. You take many things on faith: among them the efficacy of reason.
If I'm not mistaken, Mark, this is a garbled quote from Richard Dawkins, not Charles Darwin.
So much for trusting in human tradition. 
If you can't trust the Atheist bric-a-brac store, who can you trust?
LOL!
"Nothing I believe to be true is taken on faith; everything is weighted with logic, evidence, and proof."
Prove to me that your mind exists.
"Except the law of non-contradiction, which you have to take on faith like everybody else.
Only a fool who has lived an unexamined life believes that he takes nothing on faith. You take many things on faith: among them the efficacy of reason."
Them's fightin' words!
Actually no. Those sound like the pedantic words of someone trying to justify his faith.
Perhaps I take the efficacy of reason on faith, but if the rules of reality were to suddenly change I'd be more than willing to accept them Lord willing.
However, you and your ilk see what you believe rather than vice versa. How would you be able to accept it if your God appeared to you in a form you didn't expect?
Anyway, this is getting far to philosophical for me; I'm a realist, not a philosopher. I live in the moment, because that's all I have.
The attacks have and continue to fly from both sides, and to simply ignore that fact is stupid.
He wasn't ignoring it. He was pointing out the athiest propensity to attack Christianity in one direction and then at the same time attack it for a completely contradictory reason.
If I show that a miracle claim is scientifically possible, it is scientifically possible and therefore not a miracle. If I present a miracle claim that cannot be validated by science, then it didn't happen. Ergo, miracles don't exist.
It's easy to prove yourself right when you don't have to maintain any consistency.
John Farrell
It certainly is Dawkins rather than Darwin, tho' it's from "River Out of Eden" (1995, p.133).
best wishes,
Edmund@Political Scientist
Alphonsus,
That's one of the stupidest things I've ever heard. Go look up solipsism and you'll realize there are no good arguments for or against it; it's a problem of perception versus "knowing".
"That's one of the stupidest things I've ever heard. Go look up solipsism and you'll realize there are no good arguments for or against it; it's a problem of perception versus 'knowing'."
So I have no reason to believe that other minds exist? Do I have to take it on faith, then?
"However, you and your ilk see what you believe rather than vice versa. How would you be able to accept it if your God appeared to you in a form you didn't expect?"
Like a burning bush or something?
Let's look at it this way; I have no reason to believe the mind exists beyond a complex construct of neurons, organic tissues, proteins, etc. If I don't believe in souls, why would I?
I have some idea that I do indeed have a brain because I'm human last time I checked. Since other humans have brains, it's very likely I do to--though some people on this comments thread seem to doubt that judging by the questions I'm getting.
I believe other minds exist only in the respect that these other minds are also constructs of other human brains. There is no real way for me to prove to you that I have a soul, and there is no real way for you to prove to me that you have a soul.
"Like a burning bush or something?"
Maybe. How would I know?
Perhaps I take the efficacy of reason on faith
There's no "perhaps" about it. You do. The law of non-contradiction is and must be accepted on faith because it cannot be either proved or disproved, but merely assumed (i.e., taken on faith). You rely on it to do all your reasoning. And when you declare that you take nothing on faith, you demonstrate that you are among the legions of rationalists who worship the intellect more than use it.
How would you be able to accept it if your God appeared to you in a form you didn't expect?
Given that I'm a convert to the Catholic faith from an agnostic pagan background, I can tell you: by grace and by cooperation with that grace. Do recall that becoming Catholic involves accepting the rather crazy-sounding proposition that God *does* appear to us in a form we didn't expect, first as a man and now as the Blessed Sacrament. If you assume that's easy to buy, I gently suggest you read the New Testament and see how easily the contemporaries of Christ found it to buy. The end of the story gives you some idea of how counter-intuitive it was for the people who put him to death.
Anyway, this is getting far to philosophical for me; I'm a realist, not a philosopher. I live in the moment, because that's all I have.
It's curious to me how often people who announce their commitment to reason and the intellect flee the conversation when they are asked to use the intellect and not simply worship it.
I will take your refusal to pursue my point as an acknowledgement that, yes, you were wrong to claim you "take nothing on faith" and a confession that you now see how foolish a claim that is.
Excellent progress!
Okay, if what you say is true about the law of non-contradiction (with which I am unfamiliar) then I submit; I do take this on faith because I must. Everybody must.
Thus, if I recant my statement that I take nothing on faith and say that I take mostly nothing on faith then would I not be guilty of this "worship" (such an awful word!) of intellect?
Frankly, I find the argument a little hard to stomach. I'm not trying to pick apart every little belief and definition, because it's not pragmatic or feasible! It's not that I'm retreating, it's just that the minutiae that constitutes understanding every little thing about what is "reality" and "knowing" something is dull and impractical. Like I said, I'm not a philosopher. I don't pretend to be.
I do agree that practically speaking nobody can "take nothing on faith". This is hardly an argument for taking many things on faith, which is what I was attempting to state.
Also, Mark, I am curious to learn how you decided to be Catholic. Would you be willing to share your story?
Toast:
So you take it on faith that you have a mind because you take it on faith that you have a brain. And you take it on faith that when your brain generates an epiphenomenon you call "reason" this is "good" and even "true" while you take it on faith that when it generates an epiphenomenon called "faith" this is "bad" and "false".
One wonders why you attach such sentimental importance to one set of purely physical chemical processes and irrationally de-privilege another set of purely physical chemical processes. Do you likewise exalt combustion as "superior" to fossilization? Or is it only about chemical processes in your own skull that you have this fetish?
It's not that I'm retreating
Of course it is. And that's not a bad thing. When you've taken a wrong turn, the smart and rational thing to do is turn around. So I applaud you for having the humility to do so.
I do agree that practically speaking nobody can "take nothing on faith". This is hardly an argument for taking many things on faith, which is what I was attempting to state.
I'm not making a case for taking some random collection of "many things" on faith. I'm simply saying that people take things on faith all the time and very often that's because it's the most rational thing to do. Your blunder is assuming the faith and reason are enemies, so you habitually talk as though conceding any ground to faith is, to that degree, the embrace of irrationality. My point was to try to get you to see that this is a false alternative. It is foolish to place faith in things that are contrary to reason. But the Faith does not propose things that are contrary to reason. It only proposes things transcend mere reason.
Would you be willing to share your story?
Way too long and complex to fit in a combox. But the short answer is, "I came to the conviction, first, that Jesus was who he claimed to be and, second, that the Catholic Church was what it claimed to be."
toastisyummy--
Mark Shea is more than willing to share his story. Look up his books on Amazon.com...
"One wonders why you attach such sentimental importance to one set of purely physical chemical processes and irrationally de-privilege another set of purely physical chemical processes. Do you likewise exalt combustion as "superior" to fossilization? Or is it only about chemical processes in your own skull that you have this fetish?"
Am I really guilty of doing this? How so? I merely stated that I believe I have a brain and that it is responsible for my consciousness because it seems like the most plausible thing to me. It's not that I'm married to this particular belief--it just makes the most sense. I have yet to see anything that more solidly affirms another theory.
"Your blunder is assuming the faith and reason are enemies, so you habitually talk as though conceding any ground to faith is, to that degree, the embrace of irrationality. My point was to try to get you to see that this is a false alternative. It is foolish to place faith in things that are contrary to reason. But the Faith does not propose things that are contrary to reason. It only proposes things transcend mere reason."
I think either I misspoke or you misunderstood me; I don't think of these concepts as mutually exclusive. After all, the law of non-contradiction is just something one must agree on to use a system of logic. And this is not something that you are solely responsible for me coming to realize; I've gone through enough of life and schooling to know that you need axioms upon which to base logic, language, etc. Otherwise how would we communicate?
These are good points, Mark, but somehow I think a bit of mutual misunderstanding is getting in the way of a purely congenial discussion. No offense. That being said, I do see more clearly where we agree and where we disagree, which is important for any discussion.
Nothing I believe to be true is taken on faith; everything is weighted with logic, evidence, and proof.
You can't even buy a can of food at the store without taking it on faith that what the label says is inside the can is what actually is inside the can.
You can't even celebrate your birthday without taking it on faith that the day your parents told you you were born is actually the day you were born. Even the birth certificate comes from heresay evidence, really.
You can't even argue against the existence of God without taking it on faith that the conclusions that your intellect has reached about the existence of God aren't the drooling mutterings of a madman.
See where I'm going with this?
Matteo:
True. Probably the book closest to what Toast wants to know is Making Senses out of Scripture. However, it's not really a conversation story. The only place I have told that story is on a fourth tape that is included with three talks on Making Senses Out of Scripture. I've never put it in writing (though I probably should, one of these days). You can get the tapes here: http://www.mark-shea.com/books.html
Sean,
Clearly we disagree on a definition of faith. When I was discussing faith earlier, I was referring to the belief in something for which there is no evidence or proof.
When I take a can of soup off the shelf in the grocery store, I have a reasonable expectation that the contents are more or less what is indicated on the label.
It's reasonable to expect that I was born on the day I believe to be my birthday, because my parents have told me and it is the date on my birth certificate as you said, and it is the most plausible date because of these things; I have had no indication that it would be another date.
And even if you fervently disagree with me, since I'm capable of following your reasoning, coming up with a fairly cohesive response, and answering your question, there is some evidence (perhaps scant) that I'm not a drooling madman. (And, if I recall correctly, I haven't yet presented an argument as to whether God exists.) Thus, unless I become a drooling madman before or in the process of making an argument about God, I have a reasonable expectation that this will not be the case.
I see where you're going, but I think we just misunderstand each other.
Matteo and Mark:
Thanks for the info! If I have the time I'll look into these things.
After all, the law of non-contradiction is just something one must agree on to use a system of logic.
No. It's something we absorb into our bones before we've ever heard there was some supposed conflict between faith and reason. We don't "agree to it" any more than we sign a contract with our mothers agreeing to abide by her judgment about when to cross the street or go to bed. Such acts of faith are *primal*. They precede reason.
And this is not something that you are solely responsible for me coming to realize;
Of course not. My purpose was to remind you of what you already know and to help you shake off the rationalist rubbish you were spouting that was making you forget common sense.
I've gone through enough of life and schooling to know that you need axioms upon which to base logic, language, etc. Otherwise how would we communicate?
True. Therefore it may be worth sitting down and asking yourself, "How is it that I could forget something so elementary and obvious as the necessity of faith to even do reason at all? Could there be something in the atheistic rhetoric I've been parroting that is making me blind?"
My primary goal, in other words, is to help you do what you want: cultivate a healthy skepticism and not the diseased skepticism that is contemporary atheism. Contemporary atheism is highly selective about what it doubts and it never doubts its own first principles.
Catholic faith has lots of room for doubt and questioning. Just familiarize yourself with the though of St. Thomas, who carefully considered 10,000 questions that were premised on doubts about every concievable aspect of the Catholic Faith. The only thing he didn't do was assume that mere skepticism was itself the goal because he knew (as you have just rediscovered) that to doubt everything is to render the intellect sterile. The purpse of keeping an open mind, said Chesterton, is like keeping an open mouth: the bite down on something. I would urge you to actually test the truth claims of Christ, not simply reflexively reject them out of an irrational rejection of anything requiring faith.
Toastisyummy, I can look at the universe, and see that it has order, and a purpose, and is a work of art, and from that come to the reasonable conclusion that behind it is an Orderer, and that he has some purpose in mind with it, and that he also is in Artist.
To claim that the universe and everything in it came together by chance would be as obsurd as to claim that the can in the grocery store magically formed itself out of nothing. Indeed, there is no other way to be a solidly grounded atheist than to take it on faith that there is no God.
It's reasonable to expect that I was born on the day I believe to be my birthday, because my parents have told me and it is the date on my birth certificate as you said, and it is the most plausible date because of these things; I have had no indication that it would be another date.
That's about as much faith as it takes to accept the credibility of the authors of the four gospels.
Interesting points, Mark, but I'm afraid we may have to "agree to disagree".
One last question. You said of the law of non-contradiction "No. It's something we absorb into our bones before we've ever heard there was some supposed conflict between faith and reason. We don't "agree to it" any more than we sign a contract with our mothers agreeing to abide by her judgment about when to cross the street or go to bed. Such acts of faith are *primal*. They precede reason."
Why? Why could it not be the case that we craft this "rule" just as we craft values of "truth" and "false" just because we need them in society? That we learn them like we learn how to speak?
"That's about as much faith as it takes to accept the credibility of the authors of the four gospels."
So you say, but respectfully, the claims in the four gospels are much more grand than the claim of when I was born.
toastisyummy, I hate to say it, but you're in way over your head here. Stick to calling yourself a "realist"if you must (that's not really the philosophical viewpoint you're advancing, but most people, such as yourself it seems, don't much care to know the difference) but do read some more. Christianity isn't philosophically ignorant or scientifically illiterate.
Because the law of non-contradiction is not something we craft, it is something we bow to as true whether we like it or not, like the law of gravity.
It is curious, is it not, that you, the Man of Reason, are now trying to argue that reality is whatever we pretend it is while I, the faith guy and saying that you need to face the fact that reality is not whatever you wish it to be to make your system work.
Normally, that's the common atheist trope: Religion is for people who can't cope with reality.
Really, before you declare yourself committed to reason and opposed to faith, I would strongly urge you to consider the possibility that you understand very little about either and that you have swallowed a bill of goods when it comes to the merits of atheism over the Catholic revelation. In the space of a single afternoon, your atheism has led you to posit that reality is whatever you subjectively define it to be (an accusation commonly made by atheists against religious believers which, if true, would decisively show the falsehood of religious faith). And system of thought that collapses that quickly into self-contradiction is in deep trouble.
If you've never done so, I strongly recommend you take a look at the Catholic Church's hefty intellectual tradition. One good place to start is with Chesterton's fine little biography St. Thomas Aquinas: The Dumb Ox. The Church is an anvil that has worn out an awful lot of hammers.
"Christianity isn't philosophically ignorant or scientifically illiterate."
Never said it was. If anything, all I want to know is why a Christian believes what they believe and what there reasoning is. It's that simple.
Keeping these things in mind, what would you recommend I read first? (Besides the Bible... I've read the Bible long ago.)
toastisyummy, I don't know how well educated you are or what your habits and tastes are. I couldn't begin to tell you what to read about Christianity. Christians have published a lot of books...
"It is curious, is it not, that you, the Man of Reason, are now trying to argue that reality is whatever we pretend it is while I, the faith guy and saying that you need to face the fact that reality is not whatever you wish it to be to make your system work."
This is untrue. I'm merely trying to find out what your justification for these logical axioms being "primal". Basically, I'm trying to be polite by asking--rather than being conversationally intolerant. Perhaps this is the wrong place to ask such questions?
So you say, but respectfully, the claims in the four gospels are much more grand than the claim of when I was born.
True. But the odds of your being born are just as weirdly astronomical. Only a few people can bear eyewitness testimony to the sinking of the Titanic or the assassination of Lincoln. We don't ask "How grand is the claim of the eyewitness?" we ask "Is the eyewitness credible?"
In short, the common atheist trope "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" is rubbish and a mere incantation that substitutes for actual thought. Extraordinary claims require good evidence, not "extraordinary" evidence. The Church and its tradition have always supplied a multiplicity of very persuasive evidences that her claims are true--if people can look past their dogmas that say they cannot be true long enough to examine them.
Toasty - I would suggest the book Faith and Certainty by Thomas Dubay. It is a relatively short work exploring precisely these questions of faith, reason, knowledge, opinion, etc. - just the questions you are wondering about, written from the perspective of a very intelligent and erudite believer.
When I take a can of soup off the shelf in the grocery store, I have a reasonable expectation that the contents are more or less what is indicated on the label.
You have no evidence or proof that it is.
I'm merely trying to find out what your justification for these logical axioms being "primal".
And I'm telling you: because you understood them long before had the faintest inkling of how to spell, much less define, reason. You knew when you were still in diapers that when you put the toy in the box it was not true that the toy was still outside the box. If it was out of the box and your mother scolded you for taking it out again, you did not tell your mother that we live in a mysterious universe where our perceptions determine whether the toy is in the box or not. You blamed your sister for taking the toy back out when you had put it away. That's because you had already internalized the law of non-contradiction. You did not "formulate" it. You saw it and instantly took it on faith as self-evidently true. It is, as you say, an axiom. Reject it and you reject reason itself.
It is not "conversationally intolerant" to point out that incoherent thought is incoherent. This is part of using the intellect.
True. But the odds of your being born are just as weirdly astronomical. Only a few people can bear eyewitness testimony to the sinking of the Titanic or the assassination of Lincoln. We don't ask "How grand is the claim of the eyewitness?" we ask "Is the eyewitness credible?"
Something isn't made more true or more likely by it being as staggeringly unlikely as my own birth.
"The Church and its tradition have always supplied a multiplicity of very persuasive evidences that her claims are true--if people can look past their dogmas that say they cannot be true long enough to examine them."
Agreed. Although I think it's also the persuasive, yet contradictory, viewpoints out there that the Church has difficulty accepting. Doesn't that also count as dogma?
And I'm telling you: because you understood them long before had the faintest inkling of how to spell, much less define, reason. You knew when you were still in diapers that when you put the toy in the box it was not true that the toy was still outside the box. If it was out of the box and your mother scolded you for taking it out again, you did not tell your mother that we live in a mysterious universe where our perceptions determine whether the toy is in the box or not. You blamed your sister for taking the toy back out when you had put it away. That's because you had already internalized the law of non-contradiction. You did not "formulate" it. You saw it and instantly took it on faith as self-evidently true. It is, as you say, an axiom. Reject it and you reject reason itself.
This is an excellent point, but how are you so sure that you're born with these traits? Although the example is illustrative, I've heard some possibly contradictory things:
For instance, to borrow from your example, very young children have no object permanence. That is to say, if they can't see an object, they don't know it exists or where it is. If this is the case, then how would a young child understand what happens to a toy when you put it into a toy box?
Pre-teens lack the abilities of complex, abstract thought. Maybe other, more difficult concepts in logic can't be learned until their brains more fully mature?
I'm afraid I could not decode your last sentence.
The Church, says Pope John Paul, cannot impose the faith. It can only propose it. It offers us, not certitude, but rather something that transcends certitude: faith in the person of Jesus. It tells us that the evidences given by Christ are such that they form a sufficient basis to place our trust in him and what he has revealed. But this requires a willingness to be open to the possibility that Christ's claims are true. Such an openness to grace is not mere credulity that muscles down reasonable questions or refuses to think. Indeed, the paradox of the faith is that belief demands more of the intellect than unbelief.
True: when you become a believer you accept certain truth as certainly true upon the authority of Christ. But this is not blind belief like, say, the thoughtless declaration that you take nothing on faith. It is rather, the perfectly rational recognition that if Christ is who he claims to be, then when he solemnly assures us that something is true, it must be true, even if you can't prove it from reason.
And that said, it should be noted that, in fact, there are remarkably few dogmatic doctrine in the Catholic Church. Rather, a huge number of issues about which the world is highly dogmatic remain matters for debate and conversation in the Catholic tradition. Dogma per se is not bad. It's simply the crystallization of Catholic teaching about certain truths, much like the dogmatic declaration "The earth is a sphere" is a harmless crystallization of a scientific truth. It is not dogma, but unfounded dogmatism, that is the problem.
Which bring us to the main question: "Who is Jesus?" Everything follows from how that question is answered. And the faith (indeed, the confidence) of the Church is that the honest inquirer will basically arrive at the same conclusion She did: He is the Christ, the Son of God. Per your question about books, I there recommend Joseph Ratzinger's Introduction to Christianity as a good start
http://www.amazon.com/Introducti...r/dp/
0898703166
His writing is clear as a bell.
Cool, well thanks for the background Mark. I'll take a look at that stuff.
Thanks,
toast
Although the example is illustrative, I've heard some possibly contradictory things
Your examples are all true, but beside the point. All they show is that we can be slow to perceive what is true, independent of our minds. That's about as far as you can get from saying that our formulation of laws determines reality. The child without a grasp of object permanence does not make things vanish from existence by dropping them off the high chair. She simply loses track of a reality that is stubbornly objective. One would not hand such a child a live hand grenade on the theory that if she drops it, the grenade will just go away and do nobody any harm.
The Law of Non-Contradiction is something we intuit deep down in the nature of reality (in a way curiously analogous to the way many intuitive types discern the reality of God). That's not bad. There are other faculties than reason and sometimes reason is an extraordinarily poor tool for doing what needs done, just as science is a bad way to determine some of the most crucial things we need to know in life. A man might be a fine technician, but a lousy husband, if he did a running series of experiments and observations to determine if his wife loved him and was not contemplating adultery. Some things can't run on the fuel of skepticism. Indeed, some times diseased skepticism is itself the thing that needs to go before any real knowing can happen.
You can't even buy a can of food at the store without taking it on faith that what the label says is inside the can is what actually is inside the can.
And when you take the can to the register and pull out greenbacks to pay for it. What kind of money is it? Fiduciary, faith money. The $20 bill doesn't derive its value from the paper (which is near worthless). It's only value is the fact that the government says its worth that much and everyone, the store, the consumer, etc. takes it on faith that the government isn't talking through its hat. Pretty ironic when I see the T-shirt with the slogan, "Never trust the government for any reason." Well, if they paid for the shirt, they did.
It certainly is Dawkins rather than Darwin, tho' it's from "River Out of Eden" (1995, p.133).
Edmund, thanks for confirming!
To be fair, Mark, atheism can be criticized in contradictory ways just like Christianity can.
Some people object to atheism because it is too easy and comforting. It frees people from ultimate responsibility for their acts. Thus, so it goes, they complain that Stalin can die peacefully in bed and not suffer for his crimes since he has the comfort of atheism.
Jen of the blog "Et tu, Jen?" commented in one post about why she hadn't gone back to the 'comfort of atheism' .
But another complaint is that atheism is depressing and difficult to live with because it drains life of meaning.
So we have different people criticizing it for opposite reasons. Some think it is too easy and comfortable, and others think that it is too difficult and depressing.
While Christianity has been faulted for contradictory reasons, I don't find that an evidence of its uniqueness. Just about anything can be criticized for contradictory reasons.
Thus, so it goes, they complain that Stalin can die peacefully in bed and not suffer for his crimes since he has the comfort of atheism.
Stalin did not die peacefully in his bed. He died with terror on his face after underlings found him on the floor, helpless following an apparent stroke. They quietly turned on the heels and left him to die alone, periodically looking in to see if he was dead yet. Reportedly, he looked utterly horrified.
But another complaint is that atheism is depressing and difficult to live with because it drains life of meaning.
Which is perfectly true and not in the slightest a contradiction of the fact that atheism provides a certain sort of comfortable numbness to vexing issues about sin and judgment. One can (like, say, Christopher Hitchens) take refuge in atheism as one takes refuge in alcohol and discover that both are quite capable of "comforting" you and making life depressing and empty. No doubt you will find some quote for me from Hitchens about how his legendary neoprene liver is no sign at all that he is a troubled man. Yeah, and every drunk who ever resisted a 12 step group is doing just fine too.
In short, find a *real* contradictory critique of atheism and you'll have (sort of) a point.
While Christianity has been faulted for contradictory reasons, I don't find that an evidence of its uniqueness.
I never said it was. I said it was evidence that many critics of Christianity (indeed, I would say "the overwhelming majority" in our theologically and philosophically illiterate culture) don't know what the hell they are talking about, but retain a smug certitude that they are Thinking People[TM] while they regurgitate ignorant rubbish. That doesn't make Christianity unique. It doesn't even make it true. But it sure as hell doesn't inspire much confidence in atheist claims to possess vastly superior intellects and powers of reasoning.
Just about anything can be criticized for contradictory reasons.
Of course. And Christians can indeed offer bad critiques of atheism. So what? They also offer damn good ones.
Atheism has two and only two rejoinders to theism: the existence of evil and the claim that everything seems to work fine without God. But the striking thing is that atheists, while they boast themselves unassailably right, continue to behave like people who sense the weakness of their position, well answered as it was long ago by St. Thomas. That is why the New Atheist therefore cannot restrain themselves from padding their argument with lots of crap fallacies in order to pound the table. And, when faced with the fact that these *are* crap fallacies and they are not the Master Reasoners they advertise themselves to be, they typically do not take the way of intellectual humility and learn from their mistakes, but simply shout louder and repeat the same fallacious arguments for the next century. (Toast was a rare and refreshing exception.) Read Pharyngula to get a sense of the dark intellectual ghetto that is the norm for the New Atheism. Or simply pause and take note of the fact that sentiments I cited were indeed dispelled by Chesterton a century ago, and yet the Brights are still parroting them a century later. You'd think people so proud of their Brain Power could think and learn.
Now, since atheism is *essentially* a criticism and has nothing positive to say, it rather matters if the arguments that it makes are incoherent. Christianity can get along fine without atheism. Atheism can't get along at all without something to attack, because it is fundamentally a sweeping negative. If the attack is incoherent rubbish, then atheists really need to rethink their lives, because they not only can't refute Christianity, they can't even account for themselves. Thus, for instance, toast just today began with the confident assertion that he "takes nothing on faith" only to be handed his philosophical head because he had not the slightest idea what he was talking about. Sooner or later, it seems to me, all attempts at atheism similarly founder on some self-contradiction. Simply asserting "Well, everybody else does it!" is a) merely an assertion without evidence and b) not the slightest reason in the world to suppose atheism is therefore true.
Thing I felt like replying to, in the order I found them.
Nothing I believe to be true is taken on faith; everything is weighted with logic, evidence, and proof.
That is impossible. If you have ever been taught anything by another human being, then you must have first had faith that they would teach you the truth. Learning requires a a willingness to learn, which in turn requires a certain docility of mind, which in turn requires that one trust one's teacher to teach the truth.
I'm a realist, not a philosopher.
The two are not mutually exclusive.
Also, if you are not willing to engage in philosophy, then the idea that your disbelieve in God is rationally based is false. If you refuse to use the tools necessary to examine the question, you cannot be said to have rationally examined and answered the question.
I have no reason to believe the mind exists beyond a complex construct of neurons, organic tissues, proteins, etc.
Then you have no reason to believe in reason or logic as you say you do. Material knowledge can be hindered materially. This is obviously true. If I wear tinted glasses, I do not see the world as it is but only as the tinted glasses allow you to see it. If your mind is purely material, you have no reason to believe that you are capable of knowing the natures of things or the laws of the universe, since there is not reason to believe that your mind is not somehow a pair of tinted glasses.
You may think that you do, because any number of things work, i.e. we can build bridges that generally don't fall down. But that is no argument at all. "Useful" is not synonymous with "true." This is easily demonstrable: 3.14159265 is useful in calculations that involve the number pi. But if you tell me that 3.14159265 is pi, then you are either a liar or you don't understand mathematics.
I have yet to see anything that more solidly affirms another theory.
The fact that you can speak about anything universally, such as human beings or the laws of physics, affirms otherwise. Sensory knowledge, material knowledge, is only of the particular. The moment you go beyond the particular you are going beyond matter properly understood. The moment you are talking about "man," rather than "this man" and "that man," you are going beyond the purely empirical. The moment you go beyond "this phenomena" and "that phenomena" to "the universal laws that govern these types of phenomena" is the moment when "mind is merely an aspect of matter" breaks down. "Man" isn't material properly understood, only "this man" and "that man" are. "The universal laws that govern these types of phenomena" are not material properly understood, only "this phenomena" and "that phenomena" are. Either mind is more than an aspect of matter or all universal statements are nonsense.
Clearly we disagree on a definition of faith.
Clearly. In my experience, atheists seem to define faith as somehow being something only religious people can have. Faith is nothing more than holding to a conclusion that does not follow necessarily from some premises. It does not follow necessarily from the fact that your parents told you your birthday and your birth certificate confirms this date that you were actually born on said date. It does not follow from necessity that a can of food is labeled to contain some food that is necessarily contains said food (just ask people who have fallen victim to factory labeling errors or teenage label-switching pranks). These might justify your holding these thing to be true, but they do not necessarily make them true. Thus they are taken on faith.
Why? Why could it not be the case that we craft this "rule" just as we craft values of "truth" and "false" just because we need them in society? That we learn them like we learn how to speak?
I suppose it could, but then "reason" really tells us nothing about reality at all. Thus there is no better "reason" to be an atheist instead of a Catholic.
I find it interesting that you have now gone from one extreme to the other, from reason as capable of knowing all things to the reason incapable of knowing anything.
I'm merely trying to find out what your justification for these logical axioms being "primal".
It is primal because without it we can know nothing. If something can be both true and false, at the same time and in the same respect, then it is useless to talk about reality or hope to know anything. Without it there is no "thing" to know, since calling something some "thing" requires that it in some way be "this" but not "that."
For instance, to borrow from your example, very young children have no object permanence. That is to say, if they can't see an object, they don't know it exists or where it is. If this is the case, then how would a young child understand what happens to a toy when you put it into a toy box?
By being able to tell the difference between "this" and "not-this." They do not know if it exists or where it is, but they know it did, A child cries when his favorite binky is taken away and is happy when it is brought back because there was a binky, then there was no binky, then there was a binky. Without the principle of non-contradiction there is no "binky" or "not-binky," so there is no reason to cry.
Pre-teens lack the abilities of complex, abstract thought. Maybe other, more difficult concepts in logic can't be learned until their brains more fully mature?
The learning of the rules of logical thought is not the same thing as the inherently attempting to understand and argue for things in an orderly and necessarily connected way, i.e. logically. In my experience, pre-teens/young teens are extremely good at arguing by connecting concepts together in a necessary causal chain. Just listen one argue why he should be able to go out on Friday night. The fact that his arguments are bad, at least in part because he does not understand the laws of logical thought, does not nullify the fact that he is attempting to argue in a logical way.
"Stalin did not die peacefully in his bed."
That's why I said "can" instead of "did". I meant that it is possible for a criminal to die without being punished for his earthly crimes in an atheist universe. That could be a source of comfort for some.
I'm not going to find a quote from Hitch, because he's not really that good a source to quote anyway. I have no interest in defending him or the other New Atheists.
"Atheism has two and only two rejoinders to theism: the existence of evil and the claim that everything seems to work fine without God."
I think we disagree on how good these objections really are. I find the problem of evil too much for any theodicy to survive. At least, I haven't encountered a theodicy yet which addresses the problem of evil completely. In case you think I'm just making an assertion without evidence, a combox doesn't strike me as the best place to get into the problem of evil in a thorough way. If you want to go into it though perhaps we could use some other medium.
The second point I would modify to: "No divine presence seems visible in the world."
I agree with you on how the New Atheists, among others, continue rehashing the same mistakes.
"Simply asserting "Well, everybody else does it!" is a) merely an assertion without evidence and b) not the slightest reason in the world to suppose atheism is therefore true."
I won't quibble with a). As for b), of course it isn't in itself a reason to think atheism true. I have other reasons for not believing in God, as pointed out above. I disagree with you though that every attempt at atheism must end in self-contradiction.
This is a heady (and good) thread. As a recent Catholic revert and someone who values using one's intellect, I appreciate the well thought out and argued points in favor of Christianity.
I only wish I had the ability to rationally explain faith as you and other posters to your blog do, Mark. I "get it", but often times my words fail me. Hopefully with enough time and study I will find them.
Pax Vobiscum
Toastisyummy,
I have a lot of books, I'd be happy to mail you a book on Catholicism of your choice (among those that I have available to give away).
Just let me know.
Helen
Hello, everyone. My name is Robert, and I run the site brainburstdesigns.com (which contains the 'Atheist Marketplace' section that was being discussed). I noticed a spike in my web traffic that was coming from this site, and decided to check it out. I was surprised to find out that the quote from Charles Darwin was, in fact, from Richard Dawkins. I found that quote attributed to Darwin on several websites, shame on me for not fact-checking.
I would like to thank the 'Catholic and Enjoying It!' website and it's vibrant community for bringing this to my attention. I will remove the mislabeled quote immediately.
Also, I would just like everyone to know that the products in the Atheist Marketplace are not intended to offend or insult believers. Anything in that section is there because skeptics, atheist, and agnostics might be interested in them. I know that I am not offended when I see a "Jesus Saves" shirt, I am just indifferent towards it.
I am an atheist, but I don't have a burning hatred towards believers, and I am not a mean-spirited or depressed person. I think, above all, we are both looking for truth. Personally, I just can't believe in something without any empirical evidence, something that can't be tested in the natural world through the scientific method.
- Robert
Right now I can't stop my tears.
I'm crying for my lost binky.
EM, do you care to tell us about you reversion, ? or perhaps link to it if you've already done so online previously. ?thanks
"Personally, I just can't believe in something without any empirical evidence, something that can't be tested in the natural world through the scientific method."
Its truly amazing to hear someone admit they don't believe in justice, or beauty, or love. To be unable to believe one's own mother's expressions of love must be a dreadful way to go thru life. To claim to have avoided mean-spiritedness and depression in spite of that fact is astounding. Unbeleivable, but astounding.
I do believe in the concepts of justice, beauty and love. Emotions are biological processes. You can study and understand biological processes, without cheapening the experience. Unveiling the mysteries of the bodies workings or seeing an MRI light up when a wife thinks of her husband doesn't change the way I feel towards my wife.
What I am referring to is believing that an afterlife and a soul exists when there has been no empirical evidence for that. I understand that the belief can be comforting and feel good, but there is no evidence.
So you don't really believe in truth, beauty or love, just in some chemical reactions? If we manipulate the material so that those same reactions occur in response to contradiction, Billy Joel albums,and humiliation and derision, it won't render them true, or beautiful, loving
So how did your wife react to that MRI? Well enough, I suppose, since she is now your wife. I'd have told you to pound sand before they'd slide me in the tube.
"I understand that the belief can be comforting and feel good, but there is no evidence."
That's just dogma. The best non-dogmatic claim you can honestly make is that you are ignorant of such evidence. "There is no..." gives the game away.
My wife wasn't ever in an MRI machine, that was just hypothetically speaking.
Another student - I may be ignorant and if so please enlighten me. What empirical evidence is there for God existing?
So you have no real evidence for her love? Well, you're a mensch then. Most folks today wouldn't stay married in such a situation.
As for empirical evidence, there's scads of it recorded throughout history. You don't accept John's experience, why should I think you'd accept mine?
When I ask for empirical evidence, I'm talking about testable information collected through experimentation using the scientific method. I'm not talking about someone's story or hearsay.
Ah, then you aren't, strictly speaking, talking about mere empirical evidence,are you?
Let us try another tack...
Do you happen to know the rate of acceleration of a 10kg weight dropped from a height of 100 meters? A 1kg weight dropped from the same height?
In short, find a *real* contradictory critique of atheism and you'll have (sort of) a point.
How about the theist equivalents to the two atheist arguments mentioned in the first comment? These would be:
1) life is so dire as to be meaningless without God (which you agree with)
2) the world is so beautiful that there must have been a creator.
Actually these aren't really contradictory if you think about them for a minute, but neither are their atheist equivalents.
Christianity can get along fine without atheism. Atheism can't get along at all without something to attack, because it is fundamentally a sweeping negative. If the attack is incoherent rubbish, then atheists really need to rethink their lives, because they not only can't refute Christianity, they can't even account for themselves.
"Slavery can get along fine without abolitionism. Abolitionism can't get along at all without something to attack, because it is fundamentally a sweeping negative."
"Communism can get along fine without anticommunism. Anticommunism can't get along at all without something to attack, because it is fundamentally a sweeping negative."
"Abortion can get along fine without the pro-life movement. The pro-life movement can't get along at all without something to attack, because it is fundamentally a sweeping negative."
Etc. Atheism isn't really a "sweeping negative"; like other oppositional ideologies its an attempt to get rid of something its proponents see as harmful or wrong in order to improve the world. Presumably if Christians found that their beliefs were "incoherent rubbish" they'd have a problem too, and positive arguments can be incoherent as easily as negative ones. I don't understand what you're getting at here.
Mark,
I wanted to add that I enjoyed our discussion (even if I got more than I bargained for!) I've taken a look at your books page and I think the "Making Sense of Scripture" looks particularly interesting. I have a mind to pick up a copy on amazon.
Cheers,
toastisyummy
Robert,
Don't you think it is a little hypocritical to also include quotes by founders of the United States, implying by association that there are atheistic roots to our founding.
Many of the founders were not as Christian as some today claim, to claim they were athiests is completely false. I'm reacting in particular to quotes by Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson.
Certainly taken out of context these quotes seem to support reason over faith, but these quotes are not representative of what these men actually believed. I think it is a disservice to documented history as well as disrecpectful to those who are no longer here to defend themselves to misrepresent their views in such a fashion.
So is Robert celebrating the Sabbath, or unwilling to answer a direct question?
toastisyummy,
The Catholic church has never taught that faith is a scientific, reasoned conclusion to a logical mind, like yours.
One thing she says about faith is that it is a gift. It is grounded in God, not the material world.
While you’ll find a plethora of us willing to share our experience of it, it has never been taught by the Church to foist it on anyone. (Don’t start a historical argument about “Christians who’ve done that very thing,” please. I’m just stating what the Church teaches, not what myriads of numbskulls do with it over centuries.)
Anyway, here’s something to consider before death. Ask God for the gift of faith. Try it sincerely just in case the slightest chance at all exists that He’s true. Say something like: I don’t think You’re there, and I think this is stupid, but if You are, show me you exist. Please.
You’ve got nothing to lose. No one has to hear you, and you’re going to die regardless, so tuck it away on a back burner. You might just consider it someday.
I’m not God, so I can’t tell you what will happen, but I do think it’s a gamble worth 5 seconds of your life.
kc
"Abortion can get along fine without the pro-life movement. The pro-life movement can't get along at all without something to attack, because it is fundamentally a sweeping negative."
Actually, the pro-life movement does assert many things (e.g. the humanity of the unborn). It is the pro-choice crowd which is generally more "negative" in its assertions (e.g. "the fetus is not a person" "there is no reason why a woman can't have an abortion" etc)
Another Student, I'm not sure I'd come back and answer that question, but let's assume that Robert actually has a life on the weekends. I think it was kind of classy of him to come in here and thank CAEI for correcting that quotation, and then to engage in a polite argument.
George, all due respect, but the site sells products that aren't NECESSARILY atheist per se, as well as those that are. Moreover, it's probably fair game, rhetorically, to use a quotation that supports your position. Those who don't comprehend that the author of the quotation had more to say than fits on a t-shirt will snigger and move on, and those who do, will go to the library. Just playing devil's advocate.
I do want to say I appreciate Toastisyummy and Robert, both - polite, reasoned discourse and respect for the people who hold the opposing views. These online personae are a lot more like the atheists I know personally than the public personae of Hitchens, Dawkins, and that guy with the religion/'xtianity' - bashing site that occasionally talks about squids.
That said -
Robert - God isn't testable that way. Proof of His existence is either by logical argument, like Aquinas' proofs, or by arguments like Another Student made above, that the claims of Scripture and Tradition, and the continuity of both the Jewish people, who are defined by a covenant with God, and of the Christian faith - whose survival, given the violent deaths of so many of its early leaders, and whose apparent departure from the messianic ideas of 1st century Judaism, seem as equally unlikely -- as does the continued existence of the Church as we know it, given the idiocy (in both the Greek and American senses) of the faithful and our bishops over the centuries - are a form of evidence. They are empirical in the sense of somebody experienced something, but not repeatable - historical rather than scientific.
It's late - I don't know if I'm making sense, and I'm sure somebody like Brendon can do this topic a lot more justice.
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