Tag: Christianity

The ex-Pope, or possibly genuine Pope, depending upon how you see these things, lambastes the moral degradation of his Church:

Benedict’s “The Church and the Scandal of Sexual Abuse” has the unmistakable ring of a papal document. You might even call it a post-retirement encyclical.

It’s written with his signature precision and clarity of insight and offers a piercing account of the origins of the crisis and a ­vision of the way forward.

The church’s still-radiating crisis, Benedict suggests, was a product of the moral laxity that swept the West, and not just the church, in the 1960s. The young rebels of 1968, Benedict writes, fought for “all-out sexual freedom, one which no longer conceded any norms.”

Benedict adds: “Part of the physiognomy of the Revolution of 1968 was that pedophilia was now also diagnosed as allowed and appropriate.” This might strike contemporary readers as puzzling. But those who lived through that wretched decade will remember that some of the leading ’68ers also advocated “anti-authoritarian education,” which involved some pretty ­unsavory interactions between adults and children. Hippie communes weren’t child-friendly places, either.

“I have always wondered how young people in this situation could approach the priesthood and accept it, with all its ramifications,” Benedict writes. “The extensive collapse of the next generation of priests in those years and the very high number of laicizations were consequence of all these processes.”

The church, in other words, was no more immune to the disorders of that decade and its aftermath than the rest of society.

How come? Benedict blames clerics and theologians who, in the ­aftermath of Vatican II, abandoned natural law — the notion that morality is written into ­human nature itself and can therefore be grasped by human reason — in favor of a more “pragmatic” ­morality.

Under the new dispensation, “there could no longer be anything that constituted an ­absolute good, any more than anything fundamentally evil; there could only be relative moral judgments.”

The real world result was that “in various seminaries, homosexual clubs were established, which more or less openly and significantly changed the climate in seminaries.”

The new morality also encouraged a “critical or negative attitude toward hitherto existing tradition,” he writes, in favor of a “new, radically open relationship with the world.”

For one bishop, the German pontiff says, that meant going so far as screening porn for seminarians. In many seminaries, meanwhile, students caught reading his own books, written while he was still a cardinal and known for their doctrinal rigor, would be “considered unsuitable for the priesthood.”

The looseness of those years also affected how the church ­handled cases of abusive priests, who we now know targeted mostly boys and young men. In church proceedings, “the rights of the accused had to be guaranteed” above all else, “to an extent that factually excluded any conviction at all.”

Such absolutism in defense of the accused was ­incorrectly seen as a “conciliar” requirement — anything less was a betrayal of Vatican II. Hence the cover-ups and shuffling around of abusive priests.

You will note that the key to abnegating Christianity, even in the Church, is the redefinition of evil. The existence of evil is not, and has never been, a philosophical problem for Christianity. To the contrary, in the absence of the existence of evil, there is simply no need for the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, his Crucifixion, his Resurrection, salvation, or the Christian faith.

The problem Google is facing with its AI ethics council is a microcosm of the larger one facing post-Christian society:

An ethics board set-up by Google last week to help the tech giant tackle morality issues surrounding its technology has already been disbanded. Eight experts from outside the company were recruited for the panel, which was announcement of on March 26

Employees at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California, took issue with two of the panellists and decided to revolt. More than 1,000 of its protest-prone ‘liberal’ workers signed an open letter objecting to two of the board members. Google has now bowed to the pressure from within and is dissolving the board, according to Vox, who first reported the news….

‘It’s become clear that in the current environment, ATEAC can’t function as we wanted,’ a Google spokesman said in an emailed statement.

‘So we’re ending the council and going back to the drawing board.’

The board had been specially curated to steer the firm away from any future controversies by ensuring it fully considers morality while developing its artificial intelligence.

How do an immoral people, who reject both truth and Christian morality, provide a moral basis for artificial intelligence or for anything else?

The answer, of course, is that they don’t and they won’t, because they can’t. Google is not going to succeed where centuries of philosophers have relentlessly failed.

The African delegation ensures the exit of the sodomite churchians who have been trying to converge the United Methodist Church:

After days of passionate debate, deliberation, and prayer—and years of tension within the denomination—The United Methodist Church (UMC) voted Tuesday to maintain its traditional stance against same-sex marriage and non-celibate gay clergy, bolstered by a growing conservative contingent from Africa.

The plan passed, with 438 votes in favor and 384 against (53{4d03d95b39ff3945e1167b873be0fa6c962ca88d8712576869a88f7cbbdd4402} to 47{4d03d95b39ff3945e1167b873be0fa6c962ca88d8712576869a88f7cbbdd4402}), in the final hours of a special UMC conference held this week in St. Louis to address the issue of human sexuality.

The decision leaves a sizable, vocal opposition, ensuring the exit of many progressive pastors and churches in the largest mainstream Protestant body in the US.

After the final vote, protesters began chanting, “no” and “stop the harm” through the rest of the session until the conference ended over an hour later.

The “Traditional Plan” preserves existing UMC positions and adds further accountability measures for those who violate them by performing same-sex ceremonies or ordaining gay clergy. But this is not the outcome many Americans, including most bishops, had been praying for.

In the States, a large portion of Methodists wanted to see the church accommodate LGBT ceremonies and clergy, as other mainline denominations have done in recent years. One poll through Mainstream UMC reported at least two-thirds of US delegates supported the inclusive “One Church Plan” instead.

But the growing global presence among the 12 million-member denomination held more sway. Methodists from outside the US, who favor more traditional positions on sexuality, made up 41 percent of the 864 delegates at the general conference, including a full 30 percent from Africa.

It’s reprehensible that the vote was anywhere nearly that close. But good riddance to all the churchians; those that don’t leave of their own volition should be excommunicated without hesitation. There is no place in any Christian church for gay or female leadership of any kind; any so-called “church” that permits gay, female, or child leadership is Churchian, not Christian, at best. It is informative to contemplate  how much convergence would have been avoided, and how much sexual abuse would have been prevented, had the various Christian churches that allowed themselves to become converged instead followed the clear instructions on the Bible concerning who is permitted leadership in the church.

An elder must be blameless, faithful to his wife, a man whose children believe and are not open to the charge of being wild and disobedient. Since an overseer manages God’s household, he must be blameless—not overbearing, not quick-tempered, not given to drunkenness, not violent, not pursuing dishonest gain. Rather, he must be hospitable, one who loves what is good, who is self-controlled, upright, holy and disciplined. He must hold firmly to the trustworthy message as it has been taught, so that he can encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it.

Appoint elders who genuinely love what is good and what is true, not those who call good evil, and call evil good.

And ban all homosexual priests. Because the Catholic Church is almost completely converged.

Australian Cardinal George Pell, who helped elect popes and ran the Vatican’s finances, has been found guilty of sexually assaulting two choirboys, a court said Tuesday, becoming the most senior Catholic cleric ever convicted of child sex crimes.

An Australian court found Pell guilty by a trial jury on one count of sexual abuse and four counts of indecent assault of two boys at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in Melbourne in the 1990s.

Pell, now aged 77, was accused of cornering the boys — then aged 12 and 13 — in the cathedral’s sacristy and forcing them to perform a sex act on him.

The cleric denied all the charges and an initial trial ended with a hung jury in September, but he was convicted on retrial on December 11.

Catholics have to stop trying to defend their church and start fumigating it. With a righteious vengeance.

The Z-Man explains why atheism is on the decline in parallel with the retreat of Christianity from the public space:

The central defect of atheism, old and new, is it is an entirely negative western identity and entirely dependent on Christianity. Specifically, it requires people of some status to defend Christianity and the Christian belief in the super natural. Atheism has always been the oxpecker of mass movements. Everything about it relies on its host both tolerating it and thriving on its own. It’s why atheism has had its spasms of success when Christianity in America has had a revival, as in the 80’s and the 2000’s.

Atheists will deny this, of course. They will argue, as Dennett often does, that the steep decline of Christianity is proof their arguments were superior. The reason they no longer talk about their thing is they won and their enemy is dead. The fact that there are plenty of Muslims and crackpot feminist airheads around spouting magical oogily-boogily never seems to get their attention for some reason. The only guy to venture into this area was Dawkins, but the Prog quickly reminded him who pays his bills.

That’s always been the tell with atheism. Belief in something as insane as male privilege or implicit whiteness should get their attention. After all, these are not just beliefs in the supernatural, they are primitive beliefs in the supernatural. Men of the classical period had more plausible and complex beliefs than people like Amy Harmon. She is a click away from demanding human sacrifice. Yet, the new atheists were never much interest in those magical beliefs. They were too busy hounding the last Christians.

That’s another tell. Atheism has always been a popular pose on the Left, because it was a useful signal. The bad whites loved their boom sticks and sky gods. The good whites rejected all those crazy beliefs. It’s why atheists tended to focus on the mainstream of Christianity, like Catholics and mainline Protestant churches. Mormons were always an easy target. They avoided the Jews and black Baptists. Sure, once in while a zinger against the tribe would be tossed in, but the enemy was always white Christians.

The decline on atheism is a good example of the perils of negative identity. When you define yourself as being in opposition to someone or something, you inevitably become a slave to it. Your very existence depends on it. As the main Christian churches collapse in scandal and bizarre attempts to move Left, the enemies for atheists to attack are getting more difficult to find.

What I find interesting is how many people now understand that atheism is not what it etymologically purports to be, a lack of belief in gods, or even a lack of belief in the supernatural, but what it has observably been since the Abbe Jean Meslier posthumously published his Memoir of the Thoughts and Feelings of Jean Meslier: Clear and Evident Demonstrations of the Vanity and Falsity of All the Religions of the World in 1729, mere Western anti-Christianity.

That’s all very well and good. But now apply precisely the same historical observation and logic to the concepts of free speech, freedom of thought, and the Enlightenment. What you find yourself concluding may very well surprise, if not dismay, you, depending upon your allegiance to the aforementioned dogmas.

The African Methodists choose Jesus Christ over Mammon:

Please hear me when I say as graciously as I can: we Africans are not children in need of western enlightenment when it comes to the church’s sexual ethics. We do not need to hear a progressive U.S. bishop lecture us about our need to “grow up.”

Let me assure you, we Africans, whether we have liked it or not, have had to engage in this debate for many years now. We stand with the global church, not a culturally liberal, church elite in the U.S.

We stand with our Filipino friends! We stand with our sisters and brothers in Europe and Russia! And yes, we stand with our allies in America.

We stand with farmers in Zambia, tech workers in Nairobi, Sunday School teachers in Nigeria, biblical scholars in Liberia, pastors in the Congo, United Methodist Women in Cote d’Ivoire, and thousands of other United Methodists all across Africa who have heard no compelling reasons for changing our sexual ethics, our teachings on marriage, and our ordination standards!

We are grounded in God’s word and the gracious and clear teachings of our church. On that we will not yield! We will not take a road that leads us from the truth! We will take the road that leads to the making of disciples of Jesus Christ for transformation of the world!

I hope and pray, for your sake, that you will walk down that road with us. We would warmly welcome you as our traveling companions, but if you choose another road, we Africans cannot go with you…. Some Africans have been told that if a gracious exit petition is passed our evangelical friends in the U.S. will go their own way and no longer support efforts in Africa. That is not true.

Many of us in Africa have developed deep and long lasting friendships with our brothers and sisters in the U.S. Those relationships will not be severed if a gracious exit petition passes.

Unfortunately, some United Methodists in the U.S. have the very faulty assumption that all Africans are concerned about is U.S. financial support. Well, I am sure, being sinners like all of you, some Africans are fixated on money.

But with all due respect, a fixation on money seems more of an American problem than an African one. We get by on far less than most Americans do; we know how to do it. I’m not so sure you do. So if anyone is so naïve or condescending as to think we would sell our birth right in Jesus Christ for American dollars, then they simply do not know us.

We are seriously joyful in following Jesus Christ and God’s holy word to us in the Bible. And in truth, we think many people in the U.S. and in parts of Europe could learn a great deal from us. The UM churches, pastors and lay people who partner with us acknowledge as much.

Please understand me when I say the vast majority of African United Methodists will never, ever trade Jesus and the truth of the Bible for money.

What a bold and admirable man of God! God will bless those African churches for their faithfulness and bless their nations through them. Those enlightened liberal American churches will die, for they have forsaken Jesus Christ in the name of sin and worldly approval.

The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God. The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
– John 1: 9-14

While I harbor great respect for the intellect of Thomas Aquinas and rather like his philosophical methodology, no man’s reasoning is flawless. Consider the little Socratic switcheroo he pulls here on the subject of the knowledge of God.

Article 9. Whether God has knowledge of things that are not?

Objection 1. It seems that God has not knowledge of things that are not. For the knowledge of God is of true things. But “truth” and “being” are convertible terms. Therefore the knowledge of God is not of things that are not.

Objection 2. Further, knowledge requires likeness between the knower and the thing known. But those things that are not cannot have any likeness to God, Who is very being. Therefore what is not, cannot be known by God.

Objection 3. Further, the knowledge of God is the cause of what is known by Him. But it is not the cause of things that are not, because a thing that is not, has no cause. Therefore God has no knowledge of things that are not.

On the contrary, The Apostle says: “Who . . . calleth those things that are not as those that are” (Romans 4:17).

I answer that, God knows all things whatsoever that in any way are. Now it is possible that things that are not absolutely, should be in a certain sense. For things absolutely are which are actual; whereas things which are not actual, are in the power either of God Himself or of a creature, whether in active power, or passive; whether in power of thought or of imagination, or of any other manner of meaning whatsoever. Whatever therefore can be made, or thought, or said by the creature, as also whatever He Himself can do, all are known to God, although they are not actual. And in so far it can be said that He has knowledge even of things that are not.

Now a certain difference is to be noted in the consideration of those things that are not actual. For though some of them may not be in act now, still they were, or they will be; and God is said to know all these with the knowledge of vision: for since God’s act of understanding, which is His being, is measured by eternity; and since eternity is without succession, comprehending all time, the present glance of God extends over all time, and to all things which exist in any time, as to objects present to Him. But there are other things in God’s power, or the creature’s, which nevertheless are not, nor will be, nor were; and as regards these He is said to have knowledge, not of vision, but of simple intelligence. This is so called because the things we see around us have distinct being outside the seer.

Reply to Objection 1. Those things that are not actual are true in so far as they are in potentiality; for it is true that they are in potentiality; and as such they are known by God.

Reply to Objection 2. Since God is very being everything is, in so far as it participates in the likeness of God; as everything is hot in so far as it participates in heat. So, things in potentiality are known by God, although they are not in act.

Reply to Objection 3. The knowledge of God, joined to His will is the cause of things. Hence it is not necessary that what ever God knows, is, or was, or will be; but only is this necessary as regards what He wills to be, or permits to be. Further, it is in the knowledge of God not that they be, but that they be possible.

That’s all well and good. But now consider the subsequent statements in the two following articles.

From Article 12: Since God knows not only things actual but also things possible to Himself or to created things, as shown above (Article 9), and as these must be infinite, it must be held that He knows infinite things.

From Article 13: Since as was shown above (Article 9), God knows all things; not only things actual but also things possible to Him and creature; and since some of these are future contingent to us, it follows that God knows future contingent things.

Now, where is it shown in Article 9 that “God knows all things?” It was certainly CLAIMED in Article 9 that God knows all things, to be precise, Aquinas writes, “I answer that, God knows all things whatsoever that in any way are.” But it was not SHOWN.

This is an uncharacteristic Jordan Peterson-style appeal to self-authority. But at least Aquinas did not marvel at the wisdom of his own assertion.

This continues from the previous post on divine intelligence and is a selection from the same chapter of The Irrational Atheist.

Despite the evidence and the logic presented previously, the skeptical reader may well ask if there isn’t at least some element of omniscience or even omniderigence implied in the assertion of God’s omnipotence. How can an all-powerful god not know what is going on around him? And is it really conceivable to imagine an all-powerful being sitting idly by and refusing to intervene in the affairs of humanity as they unfold? The answer, surprisingly enough, is suggested by Daniel C. Dennett in one of his more technical books.

Gods of the Machine
First, there is the activity of our hacker Gods, who are free to cast their eyes and minds over huge manifolds of possible Life worlds, trying to figure out what will tend to work, what will be robust and what will be fragile. For the time being, we are supposing that they are truly God-like in their “miraculous” interactions with the Life world – they are not bound by the slow speed of glider­light; they can intervene, reaching in and tweaking the design of a creation whenever they like, stopping the Life world in mid-collision, undoing the harm and going back to the drawing board to create a new design.
– Daniel Dennett, Freedom Evolves

I am, as you may recall from the introduction, a game designer.1 Most of my experience has been with designing and producing computer games for the DOS/Windows platform, and I think it would be safe to say that the best adjective to describe my career would be “innovative” rather than “successful”. In 1996, following the release of id Software’s Quake, my partner and I began designing our first true 3D game for GT Interactive. Our two previous games had been of the 2.5D first-person shooter variety, and although we managed to do some interesting and lucrative things with speech recognition technology and hardware bundling deals, we had not yet achieved the sort of market success or recognition within the game industry that we sought.

Youthful hubris, combined with a desire to surpass id’s legendary pair of John Carmack and John Romero, led us to create a supremely ambitious design. Not only would we create our own 3D engine, but we would also create a multi-tiered artificial intelligence system that would allow for complete cooperation and two-way verbal interaction with AI-controlled squadmates fighting an opposition force made up of separate artificial intelligences in a three-dimensional, non-Euclidean world. The insane impracticality of this design can be seen in the way that ten years later, no electronic game has yet demonstrated even half of the technologies required to fully realize the concepts with which we were working. Nor are they likely to any time soon, as the success of Valve’s Half-Life showed that gamers were perfectly happy playing through pre-programmed scripted scenarios, which requires neither sophisticated artificial intelligences nor complex synthetic speech systems.

The financial collapse of our publisher forced us to abandon this design, but not before we had managed to develop a significant chunk of both the TacAI, which governed individual activities such as ducking, dodging and laying down covering fire, as well as the StratAI, which made decisions about larger scale, goal-related matters such as what target its troops should be attacking first, when reinforcements should be summoned and when to fall back to a stronger position. Ironically, considering the topic of this book, we made use of a genetic programming approach in developing these artificial intelligences, a technique that makes use of evolutionary algorithms in an unnatural selection scheme favoring the survival of the optimally performing, or if you will, the fittest.

In this game world, the lead programmer, Big Chilly, reigned supreme. He was, precisely as Dennett describes the hacker gods of the Life world, quite literally omnipotent from the perspective of its denizens, able to create thunder, hurl lightning, shake the earth, create sickness or grant health according to his whim. He could perform miracles such as stopping time or even making time flow backwards, he could grant one character invulnerability while striking another dead in an instant. He was omniscient too, able to peek into an AI’s “mind” to see what actions it intended as well as taking in the entire world at a glance. That which was unseen by the characters was not hidden from him, and he operated entirely outside their temporal references. Whereas they moved about in conventional time on a second-by-second basis, he had the ability to examine their movements in time-slices ranging from one-quarter to one-thirty-fifth of a second.

In short, Big Chilly was not only their creator, he was their God.

And while it would have been incredibly interesting had these artificial intelligences become self- aware and begun worshipping him, the project unfortunately came to an end before that could happen thanks to circumstances beyond our control. However, it didn’t end before something of some relevance to the subject of this chapter took place.

Not long before our publisher, GT Interactive, went out of business, we were demonstrating the game to our executive producer and a few other GT employees. Big Chilly was playing through a POW rescue mission, a mission which he and others on the development team had played hundreds of times before throughout the course of playtesting. The mission involved one fireteam of AI troops making a diversionary attack on one side of the enemy base while the player led a second team around the other side to rescue the prisoners. Being the lead programmer, Big Chilly of course knew where all of the enemy troops were located because he was responsible for assigning their starting positions, and while the specific results of the scenario varied from one playing to another, the degree to which both friendly and enemy troop behavior varied from the norm was well-known.

During the demo, Big Chilly and the three AI-controlled members of his fireteam had successfully taken out both the wide patrol and the guards, and they were just beginning to lay the explosives to blow the door that held the prisoners captive when there was a sudden burst of bright laser fire that caused him to jump in his seat and emit a startled shriek loud enough to make everyone else in the room jump too. While his AI squadmates shot down the intruder before anyone’s battlesuits took too much damage, what shocked Big Chilly was that for the first time in hundreds of playings and tens of thousands of simulations, an enemy AI had taken it upon itself to circle around behind the rescue force and attack it from an unexpected direction.

But how could this happen? How could a lowly artificial intelligence surprise a lead programmer who was demonstrably omniscient and omnipotent in the AI’s world? How can the created do what the creator did not will? The answer, when viewed in this context, should be obvious.

Surprise was possible because the programmer was choosing not to exercise either his knowledge or his power at that particular point where real-time intersected game-time. While he could have easily provided that particular character with a scripted path and prevented the character from being able to depart from it, he had already elected not to do so. He could have constructed the character in such a way that its head would have exploded for the sin of attempted deicide, or even as punishment for the sin of merely daring to look upon him in all his pasty geek glory, but he did not do that either. And finally, while he could have been scanning that particular AI’s “thought” processes and known what it intended to do in the very instant the intention was born, instead he refrained and so learned about its actions through entirely “natural” means.

If it is not difficult to accept that an omniscient and omnipotent programmer can reject omniderigence, why should it be hard to imagine that an all-powerful God might not choose to do the same? Even human lovers know that the lover cannot control the beloved, so it should not be difficult to believe that a loving God would permit His creatures to choose freely how they will live.

The question of the nature of God’s knowledge came up in a recent Darkstream. So as not to repeat myself unnecessarily, I will simply post this selection from The Irrational Atheist which still represents my thoughts on the matter. I make no pretense of being a theologian, nor do I claim that I must be correct on the matter, they are simply my thoughts and conclusions concerning the concepts of divine omnipotence and divine omniscience.

MASTER OF PUPPETS OR GAME DESIGNER?
“She was an atheist, but she was a Lutheran atheist, so she knew exactly what God she didn’t believe in.”
– Garrison Keillor, Wobegon Boy

Doubts about the existence of God, particularly the existence of a good and loving God, often stem from great emotional pain. While doubts are naturally bound to occur to any rational individual in moments of somber reflection, it is particularly hard to imagine that a loving God who loves us would choose to intentionally inflict pain upon us, especially if He is all-powerful. When one surveys the long list of horrors that have engulfed countless men, women and children throughout the course of history, the vast majority of them innocent and undeserving of such evil fates, one finds it easy to sympathize with the individual who concludes that God, if He exists and is paying attention to humanity, must be some sort of divine sadist.

Because doubts are reasonable, normal and inevitable, they should never be brushed aside, belittled or answered with a glib phrase, for not only does decency demand that they receive a sensitive hearing, but also because they can have powerful ramifications that resonate long after the doubter himself has had them resolved one way or another. Randal Keynes, a descendant and biographer of Charles Darwin, asserts that it was the death of Darwin’s beloved daughter Annie, at the age of ten after a long illness that convicted the great evolutionist of his dangerous idea that neither divine intervention nor morality had anything to do with the operation of the natural laws. And if this tragic loss was not the only element involved in Darwin’s transition from an accomplished student of theology to the inventor of what today is the primary driving force behind the anti-theist New Atheism, it is widely considered to have been the final step that pushed him over the edge.

One would not be human if one could not sympathize with Darwin’s anguished rejection of the notion that there was any justice or even a silver lining to be found in the death of his beautiful little girl. And perhaps there was some consolation, if any consolation was to be found, in viewing his terrible loss as taking place within the context of a mechanistic universe, wherein one was not subject to the ineffable caprice of an unpredictable deity, but to the predictable operation of natural laws which one could at least hope to understand and attempt to utilize.

But if God exists, it is a basic theological error to attempt to place the blame for earthly tragedies on Him. In fact, it is not only a theological error, but also a fundamental error of logic to conclude that God, even an all-powerful God, must be to blame for every evil, accident or tragedy that befalls us.

The Contradiction of Divine Characteristics
In a chapter considering the arguments for God’s existence, Richard Dawkins muses briefly upon what he considers to be a logical contradiction. He writes:

Incidentally, it has not escaped the notice of logicians that omniscience and omnipotence are mutually incompatible. If God is omniscient, he must already know how he is going to intervene to change the course of history using his omnipotence. But that means he can’t change his mind about his intervention, which means he is not omnipotent.

As Dawkins surely knows, this is a silly and superficial argument, indeed, he follows it up with a little piece of doggerel by Karen Owens before promptly abandoning the line of reasoning in favor of a return to his attack upon Thomas Aquinas. While the argument appears to make sense at first glance, it’s merely a variation on the deeply philosophical question that troubles so many children and atheists, of whether God can create a rock so heavy that He cannot lift it.

First, it is important to note that the Christian God, the god towards whom Dawkins directs the great majority of his attacks, makes no broad claims to omniscience. Although there are 87 references to the specific things that the Biblical God knows, only a single example could even potentially be interpreted as a universal claim to complete knowledge. Among the things that God claims to know are the following:

He knows the way to wisdom and where it dwells, he knows the day of the wicked is coming, he knows the secrets of men’s hearts, he knows the thoughts of men and their futility. He knows the proud from afar, he knows what lies in darkness, and he knows what you need before you ask him. He knows the Son, he knows the day and the hour that the heavens and the earth shall pass away, he knows the mind of the Spirit and that the Apostle Paul loved the Corinthians. He knows who are his, he knows how to rescue godly men from trials, and perhaps most importantly, he knows that the thoughts of the wise are futile.

The only straightforward claim to omniscience is made on God’s behalf by the apostle John, who clearly states “he knows everything”. However, the context in which the statement is made also indicates that this particular “everything” is not intended to encompass Life and The Universe, but rather everything about human hearts. Not only does this interpretation make more sense in light of the verse than with an inexplicable revelation of a divine quality that appears nowhere else in the Bible, but it is also in keeping with many previous statements made about God’s knowledge.

After all, when Hercule Poirot confronts the murderer in an Agatha Christie novel and informs the killer that he knows everything, the educated reader does not usually interpret this as a statement that the Belgian detective is confessing that he is the physical manifestation of Hermes Trismegistus, but rather that he knows everything about the crime he has been detecting.

In keeping with this interpretation, Dr. Greg Boyd, the pastor at Woodland Hills Church and the author of Letters to a Skeptic, has written a book laying out a convincing case for the Open View of God, which among other things chronicles the many Biblical examples of God being surprised, changing His mind and even being thwarted. Moreover, it would be very, very strange for a presumably intelligent being such as Satan to place a bet with God if he believed that God knew with certainty what Job’s reaction to his torments would be.

But in addition to the fact that it is based on a false assumption, the problem with the Contradiction of Divine Characteristics, as we shall henceforth refer to the logical conundrum posed by Dawkins, is that omniscience, or the quality of knowing everything, is the description of a capacity, it is not an action. Likewise, omnipotence, being all-powerful, is a similar description, which is why these nouns are most often used in their adjectival forms modifying other nouns, for example, an omniscient god is a god who knows everything, i.e. possesses all knowledge. But capacity does not necessarily indicate full utilization and possession does not dictate use; for example, by this point it should be clear that an intelligent scientist is nevertheless perfectly capable of writing something that is not intelligent at all.

Lest you think that this distinction between capacity and action is somehow tantamount to avoiding the question, note that Dawkins himself refers to God “using his omnipotence” in constructing the supposed contradiction.

Now, as I write this sentence, I am holding the book entitled The God Delusion in my hand. I paid cash for it at the bookstore prior to reading it through in its entirety, so I now possess the book in a very real and legally binding sense, and I feel sure that the reader will readily acknowledge that I therefore possess all of the knowledge contained within it in every relevant meaning of the term. But can I tell you the precise wording of the first sentence on the seventh page? Well, no, not without taking the action required to actually look at it.

This illustrates the difference between capacity and action, and the distinction is a vital one. Possession may be nine-tenths of the law, but it is not synonymous with use. Unless one clings stubbornly to an overly pedantic definition of both omniscience and omnipotence, an inherent incompatibility simply doesn’t exist between the two concepts. Indeed, if Daniel Dennett is correct and “knowledge really is power”, then logic not only dictates the compatibility of all-knowledge with all-power, but requires that the two superficially distinct concepts are actually one and the same. In this case, there not only is no contradiction between God’s omniscience and omnipotence, there is not even the theoretical possibility of a contradiction.

Regardless, a God who stands outside of space and time and who possesses all knowledge as well as all power is not bound to make use of his full capacities, indeed, who is going to shake their finger at him for failing to live up to his potential? Only the likes of Dawkins and Owens, one presumes, as their ability to logically disprove God’s existence by this method depends upon His abiding by their rigid definitions of His qualities… at least one of which He does not even claim in His Word.

When considered in this light, the Contradiction of Divine Characteristics can’t help but bring to mind a scene from the novel Catch-22, in which Joseph Heller wrote of an aptly named atheist called Frau Scheisskopf.

“’I don’t believe, ‘ she sobbed, bursting violently into tears. ‘But the God I don’t believe in is a good God, a just God, a merciful God. He’s not the mean and stupid God you make him out to be.’”

Furthermore, there is no theological significance whatsoever to a reduced form of omniscience and omnipotence that would satisfy even the most pedantic critical application of the logic. If one accepts the hypothesis that God is bound by logic and thereby imagines a God possessing qualities of tantiscience and tantipotence equating to omniscience and omnipotence minus the amount of knowledge and power required to avoid conflicting with the logical incompatibility, one is still left with a God whose theoretical capabilities are sufficient to fulfill all of the various claims about His knowledge and power made in His Word. Morever, from the human perspective, this logically acceptable tantiscient God would be completely indistinguishable from the omniscient one.

When it’s time to feed my Viszla, I don’t magically summon food from the mysterious bag of plenty. But my dog doesn’t know that. From his perspective, there’s no difference between my buying it at the store or my summoning it into material existence by the magic force of my divine will. Likewise, we are incapable of perceiving the difference between a god who knows everything and a god who merely knows a whole lot more than we do, moreover, the latter is the god that more closely fits the description of the Biblical God.

Dawkins, of course, knows that it is as pointless to logically consider the potential contradiction between two arbitrarily defined concepts as it is to argue over the score of the 1994 World Series; would that his acolytes understood as much themselves.

Omniderigence
DERIGO -rigere -rexi -rectum [to set straight, direct]; of placing [to order, dispose]; milit. [to draw up]; Transf., [to direct, aim, guide]
– Latin Dictionary and Grammar Aid, The University of Notre Dame.

Though it may at first seem to be a waste of time to analyze an argument that Dawkins himself doesn’t assign much value, it is important to remember that all things, even specious and superficial arguments for His nonexistence, may prove useful in serving the greater glory of God. That’s true in this case, for in considering the Contradiction of Divine Characteristics argument, we were forced to draw a distinct line between capacity and action, the confusion of which is also the root of a much more serious theological error. Interestingly, this theological error is committed by Christians as readily as atheists, perhaps even more often, as they trust in God’s plan for their lives instead of making use of their God-given intelligence and free will.

There are a variety of phrases which contain the same inherent implication about a certain view of God. Many evangelical Christians often refer to “God’s perfect plan” for their lives. This concept is reinforced with children’s songs such as “He’s got the whole world in his hands” and echoed by sports stars who compete in the assurance that their victory has been divinely secured ahead of time. It is held by American Exceptionalists who believe that God has uniquely blessed the United States of America and has authored a Manifest Destiny for it, and by Christian Zionists who see a divine hand in every violent twist and turn of the Mideast Peace Process.

These various evangelicals have an unexpected ally in Sam Harris, who declares it to be an obvious truth that “if God exists, he is the most prolific abortionist of all” due to the fact that 20 percent of all known pregnancies miscarry, and then asserts that those who believe in God should be obliged to present evidence for his existence in light of “the relentless destruction of innocent human beings that we witness in the world each day.”

What the evangelical and the atheist have in common here is a belief that because God is omnipotent, omniscient and compassionate, he is somehow responsible for these events, although Harris would qualify that with the necessary “if he exists”. And in fairness, it must be pointed out that when Harris cites Hurricane Katrina and the 2004 Asian tsunami as God’s failure to protect humanity, he is really doing rather better than the “perfect plan” evangelical who would assert that these tragedies were sent by God for some ineffable higher purpose intended to benefit humanity.

This belief in an all-acting God, who not only guides the grand course of events but actually micromanages them, is the result of the same confusion between capacity and action that we saw in the Contradiction of Divine Characteristics. When God asserts that He cares about the sparrows and knows when one falls from its branch, this is very different from an assertion that He only happens to know about it because He personally struck the sparrow down. An omniscient God knows the numbers of hairs on your head and an omnipotent God is capable of changing their color, but it requires an active Master Puppeteer to personally pluck them, one by one, from your balding head, in the desired order.

Sadly, the English language appears to lack a word describing such a god, even though this is the way that many individuals, even those who do not believe in Him, believe God behaves. So, as Richard Dawkins coined the very useful word “meme”, it appears to have fallen to me to invent a word that is, despite its undeniable utility, rather less likely to be dropped into conversations at coffeehouses for sheer effect.

Hence the term “omniderigence”, which I define as: ‘making infinite use of unlimited or universal power, authority, or force; all-controlling; all-dictating.” Less formally, one can think of it as uber control-freakdom or ultimate puppet-mastery.

In Letter to a Christian Nation, Sam Harris shows how this mistaken belief in God’s omniderigence is part and parcel of the atheist case against God.