Tag: Christianity

Mailvox: Answers for MJ 1

This was a long letter from MJ, so I’ll have to address it in parts:

I am 21 years old and a student at a small Jesuit college in Ohio. I just recently came across your blog. To be precise it was introduced to me last spring–March, I believe. I wasn’t part of your regular traffic until October or so. Now I think hardly a day goes by that I don’t read what is stirring in your head. First, thank you both for your insights and your (at least I consider it) courage (maybe you consider it normalcy). To be brief, I grew up in a relatively conservative Roman Catholic household. However, as one who prefers to avoid confrontation, I rarely engage in debates about politics or religion. I’ll speak vehemently about such subjects with people with whom I agree. When it comes to others, I prefer to keep quiet or, if necessary, appease. I say this so that my thanks might be better placed. You have no desire to avoid or appease those whom you consider wrong. Your example is a great help.

Perhaps it was divinely ordained, but I had been reading through a handful of literature on science, atheism, and religion at around the same time that I grew fond of your blog (I didn’t read any Dawkins; I skimmed the first five chapters of Hitchens’s memoir; I gravitated toward Stenger’s God the Failed Hypothesis and Cunningham’s Decoding the Language of God)…. At the time I started this endeavor and even during the initial stages, I probably would have classified myself as an agnostic….

Now, I am not contacting you solely for the sake of encomium; I have a few things that I wish to ask. First, I remember reading some comments you had about the omnipotence, omniscience, etc. of God. You suggested replacing such attributes with ideas about tantipotence, tantiscience, etc. I prefer to think of my theology almost in terms of mathematics (just to note, my theology is incredibly uninformed. A current goal of mine is to become both more biblically literate and theologically literate. The downside of a Catholic upbringing!). I have never been a fan of the arguments of god’s nonexistence by means of syllogism (that is, God is A, but A leads to B, and B is inconsistent with well known fact C, so God is not A or something like that) since syllogisms of this sort seem to be equivalent to abusing and mutilating the dictionary. However, since these arguments are out there, I began to consider the following. I don’t wish to jeopardize God’s infinite nature.

However, pure omnipotence can cause logical problems (if we wish to impose some logical structure on God’s nature, something that I think objectionable). In your suggestion of tantipotence, you (I think) mentioned that to the human mind tantipotence would virtually appear to be omnipotence. To the human mind, there is no significant difference between a God who can do all and a God who can do nearly all things. My only qualm is that to the believer this might be an acceptable concession; but I would imagine that the non-believer would love to poke fun at the not-fully-all powerful God. I was wondering what you might think of this idea. In mathematics there are different gradations of infinity (I am sure you are aware). The set of integers has a cardinality of infinity, but this infinity is less than the infinity that is the cardinality of the set of real numbers. That is, there are more real numbers than integers even though both are technically infinite in extent. If we take omnipotence as the cardinality of the real numbers and tantipotence as the cardinality of the integers, then God still remains infinite even if “less so.”

My point is to ask your opinion about thinking about theology in terms of mathematics. To some degree I think that mathematics presents the universe (or multiverse, hyperverse, or whatever they are calling it now) with its own mind-body problem of dualism. How is it that mathematics, something so abstract, can interact with the physical world? (I suppose something similar could be said about language; how does an abstract concept such as language reflect, relate, and influence the material world?) I read your post today from Spengler’s Decline of the West. I am definitely going to look into that book. As a final point, I am awestruck at one of the most basic ideas in mathematics, continuity, and how continuity affects infinity. For example, I am still puzzled by how an infinitely long number line can be looped up into a circle of radius 1 through a simple compactification method….virtually allowing me to hold infinity in my hand! I am also intrigued that through a few simple lines a mathematician can prove a statement that can solve an infinite number of problems. I suppose it’s akin to what you write in The Irrational Atheist that a few lines of programming can generate the infinitely complex Serpinski Triangle.

In relation to the above, I encountered on Richard Dawkins’s website the classic argument that atheists make: if god is all-powerful and all-loving, then he should wish to stop and be able to stop evil. You know the rest. Just out of curiosity, does this argument presuppose that God operates on a kind of utilitarian moral code? After all, the alleviation of suffering is precisely Sam-Harrisian…er…I mean utilitarian. Not for a second do I imagine a utilitarian God! If, indeed, this argument presupposes such a God, it seems to me all the more reason to throw it out immediately! 

I’m glad that some people are finding my anti-anti-apologetics to be useful. I’m not going to pretend I don’t enjoy beating up on the intellectual cripples of evangelical atheism, as one agnostic described them, but there is a more serious aspect to the activity than my own personal amusement.

First, I think it is important to always keep in mind that whether it is theology, psychology, philosophy, or even history that we are contemplating, we see as though through a glass, darkly. Nothing we do, think, or say can jeopardize God’s nature, whatever it actually happens to be, from nonexistence to omnipotent omnipresence. We are not debating the truth, we are not even capable of perceiving the truth, we are merely debating our superficial observations and our momentary perceptions of the truth. The truth is out there, but it is grander and more complicated than we can possibly hope to comprehend.

In other words, don’t flatter yourself, sport. Neither God nor nature depend upon MJ’s opinion of them. Or mine.

So, the idea of shying away from an idea due to its potential effect on us or anyone else is fundamentally misguided. Anyone who attempts to make hay with regards to the imagined limits of a tantiscient and tantipotent God is doing nothing more than demonstrating himself to be a midwit and a fool. The analogy of the limits of the two infinite sets MJ mentions is a very good one; regardless of whether one is considering integers or real numbers, it is objectively stupid to claim that the number 100 is bigger than the upper limit of either set.

As for the idea that an all-powerful and all-loving God should wish to stop and be able to stop evil, to say nothing of the idea that the existence of evil therefore disproves the existence of such a god, well, that doesn’t even rise to the level of midwittery. One has to have a truly average mind and remain ignorant of basic Biblical knowledge to find either of those concepts even remotely convincing.

Imagine the Sisyphean hell that is the existence of a video game character, literally created to die over and over and over again. Does the misery of his existence prove that the video game developer does not exist? Of course not. Does it prove that the developer has any limits upon him that the video game character can observe? Of course not. Does it prove that the developer has any particular enmity for the character? Not at all.

Now, it does prove that the developer is not all-loving. But then, the Christian God is not all-loving. He plays favorites. He loves some and He is very specific about others for whom He harbors not only antipathy, but outright hatred. It is fine to attack the idea of an all-loving god, but it is a mistake to assume any such attack is even remotely relevant to the Christian religion.

The argument is stupid, ignorant, and while it can theoretically rest on a presumption of utilitarianism, more often it rests upon the clueless moral parasitism of the atheist who subscribes to it. It is ironic that the more foolish sort of atheist often attempts to disprove Christianity by an appeal to Christian morality, but then, as MJ has already discovered, we’re not dealing with intellectual giants here.

Ban government marriage

The State’s push to force homogamy on the Church has finally resulted in the realization that the Church should never have accepted the State’s encroachment in its affairs in the 19th century:

State lawmakers are considering throwing out marriage in Oklahoma.The idea stems from a bill filed by Rep. Mike Turner (R-Edmond). Turner says it’s an attempt to keep same-sex marriage illegal in Oklahoma while satisfying the U.S. Constitution. Critics are calling it a political stunt while supporters say it’s what Oklahomans want.

“[My constituents are] willing to have that discussion about whether marriage needs to be regulated by the state at all,” Turner said. Other conservative lawmakers feel the same way, according to Turner.

Banning state interference with marriage is the conservative position. Since most people are historical ignoramuses, it will likely surprise many that marriage licenses didn’t even exist until 1631. And as I noted in my 2004 WND column entitled Divorcing the State, some State governments didn’t interfere with the sacrament until 1958.

All the misguided attempts to accommodate the State have failed. It is time for the American Church to accept the fact that it must now go into the implacable resistance mode that has characterized Christianity for a good part of its historical existence. This may mean persecutions and the falling away of those of weaker faith in time, but then, that is nothing that the Church has not seen or survived before.

Rep. Turner’s action is well-advised. Oklahoma would do well to cease recognizing all marriages as would the other States. If they don’t, they will find that people will simply cease to bother obtaining marriage licenses as is the case in the majority of the black community and an increasing percentage of the white community as well.

Banning government marriage is the right thing to do on libertarian grounds, on religious grounds, on practical grounds, and on the grounds of sexual fairness. I am pro-marriage but I would not recommend obtaining a marriage license to any unmarried young man or woman these days. And if a woman isn’t willing to marry a man without a marriage license, that will serve as sufficient notice that she is already married to the State.

Dark Enlightenment: the second stage

We appear to have passed the “Ridicule” stage of the counterreaction to what some are calling “The Dark Enlightenment”. This is apparent because now, it’s not only our direct enemies on the godless equalitarian Left that are attacking us, but mealy-mouthed equalitarian Christian quislings are attempting to establish their credibility as Left-friendly moderates by joining in on the fun:

What’s the Dark Enlightenment? Basically, it’s a de-Christianized form of right wingery that is drinking deep of white supremacy and racialism. Sometimes, it appeals to something called “Western” Christianity, but this is basically a fig leaf for getting discernment-free conservatives to jettison actual Christian teaching in favor of nutty white supremacy by rhetoric about how Euro-superiority makes it plain that the whole “in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek” race indifference is a huge mistake.

Other times, it daubs on a layer of pseudo-science by tossing around the phrase “human biodiversity” (by which they mean “some races are inferior to others”).

And not infrequently, some of its adherents ditch so much as the figleaf of Christianity (since Christianity really is irreconcilable with racism) and openly promotes bullshit “northern” neo-paganism as they get in touch with their inner Himmlers. Because everybody knows that the people who erected standing stones as their highest achievement were just about to usher in a golden age when they were rudely interrupted by brown ruffians named Augustine and St. Paul and Plato who tamed their manly Nordic creativity with their ethnically impure southern barbarism.

 Let’s count the errors:

  1. There is nothing de-Christianized about it. Several of the so-called “Sith Lords” of the movement, such as it is, are outspoken and uncompromising Christians.
  2. It has nothing to do with white supremacy and everything to do with white survival. In fact, most of the HBDers would be better categorized as Asian supremacists.
  3. There is no call to jettison any genuinely Christian teaching, but rather, the many anti-Biblical Churchian teachings that presently infect the Church.
  4. It is true that “in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek”. The key words there are “in Christ”. The Church is not the State. In the civil government of every political entity where non-Christians are permitted to reside, there most certainly are national, religious, and ethnic distinctions to be made.
  5. There is nothing pseudo-scientific about human biodiversity. The only pseudo-science is on the part of the equalitarians and anti-racists, whose argument that human beings are all essentially the same has been conclusively destroyed by genetic science.
  6. Christianity clearly encompasses the acknowledgement of differences between races and nations. See Matthew 10:5 and Matthew 15:21

Shea wrongly sees the Dark Enlightenment as a threat to Christianity, failing to understand that it is the corrective for the disease of left-wing Churchianism.

At least one of my readers has a young, formerly Catholic, relative who is going for this vile crap in a big way (he now practices bullshit white supremacist paganism because Christianity adulterated European racial stock with its acceptance of all races as children of God) and it is apparently going viral in some College Republican circles (according to people who are writing me about it).

The fact that young men are leaving the Church is not an indictment of the Dark Enlightenment. Indeed, we Christians who acknowledge its truths are the only ones who will be able to reach this young ex-Catholic and other young men who have left the Church because we are the only ones they will trust. We are the only ones who have not lied to them. Their leaving is an indictment of the deceitful Churchianism that has betrayed the young sheep who were in the fold, and who have fled it in reaction due to the non-stop lies they have observed, deceit of the sort that Shea is still perpetrating.

Jesus Christ is the Truth. And one cannot defend the truth with lies. John 15:4 states: “No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.” It is not hard to observe that every church, including the Roman Catholic Church, that has embraced equalitarianism, feminism, and anti-racism has almost immediately begun to die. But it appears the idea that anti-racism and desegregation is unbiblical and consequentially antithetical to Christianity may be as hard for some to bear as the idea that homosexuality and usury and fornication are for others.

And yet, fifty years of experience have rendered this conclusion all but inescapable. Show me a church that prides itself on its opposition to racism and I’ll show you a church that will soon embrace female pastors, unrepentant sinners, and declining attendance. That doesn’t mean that racism is a Christian virtue, it merely means that opposing racism is as legitimate a Christian policy as opposing chocolate or the Denver Broncos.

UPDATE: It looks like Irenist has a little confessing to do this weekend:

“Mr. Beale’s piece complains that the Church
embraces “anti-racism,” implying that he thinks the Church should be
pro-racist. As you might say: pretty lame.” 

He can lie and whine about the truths he finds uncomfortable all he likes. In the meantime, his Churchian organization will continue to die. Stick to the truth and you will never have to lie. Embrace a lie and you will soon find it difficult to speak the truth.

The Patriarch teaches

Phil Robertson is now America’s Patriarch:

[H]e stood in front of the small class, at White’s Ferry Road Church wearing his full camouflage suit and addressed the group for around 45 minutes.

He said: ‘I have been immoral, drunk, high. I ran with the wicked people for 28 years and I have run with the Jesus people since and the contrast is astounding.

‘I tell people, “You are a sinner, we all are. Do you want to hear my story before I give you the bottom line on your story?”

‘We murder each other and we steal from one another, sex and immorality goes ballistic. All the diseases that just so happen to follow sexual mischief… boy there are some microbes running around now.

‘Sexual sins are numerous and many, I have a few myself. So what is your safest course of action? If you’re a man, find yourself a woman, marry them and keep your sex right there.

‘You can have fun, but one thing is for sure, as long as you are both healthy in the first place, you are not going to catch some debilitating illness, there is safety there.

‘Commonsense says we are not going to procreate the human race unless we have a man and a woman. From the beginning Jesus said, “It is a man and a woman.” Adam was made and Eve was made for this reason. They left their fathers and mothers and be united to become one flesh, that’s what marriage is all about.

‘But we looked at it and said it was an outdated stereotype. When you look back at the human race, the sins have always been the same: We get high, we get drunk, we get laid, we steal and kill.

‘Has this changed at all from the time God burnt up whole cities because their every thought was evil?’

Then reading from the Bible he said, ‘The acts of the sinful nature are obvious. Sexual immorality, is number one on the list. How many ways can we sin sexually? My goodness. You open up that can of worms and people will be mad at you over it.

‘I am just reading what was written over 2000 years ago. Those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom. All I did was quote from the scriptures, but they just didn’t know it. Whether I said it, or they read it, what’s the difference? The sins are the same, humans haven’t changed.

‘If you give them the bad news, they’ll start kicking and screaming. But you love them more than you fear them, so you tell them.

‘A lot of times they don’t even wait for you to finish and say, ‘But there’s a way out, do you want to hear the rest of the story or what?

‘Jesus will take sins away, if you’re a homosexual he’ll take it away, if you’re an adulterer, if you’re a liar, what’s the difference? If you break one sin you may as well break them all.

‘If we lose our morality, we will lose our country. It will happen. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could all walk around without stealing from each other and killing each other?

‘Why don’t we just love each other enough that we wouldn’t want to do these things to each other?’

Robertson – who made his fortune from inventing and manufacturing hunting equipment before finding TV stardom – went on: ‘We are a bunch of rednecks from Louisiana, but I am not uneducated, I have a degree from Louisiana Tech.

‘But this week I have been called an ignoramus. This week I have been asked, “Is this the first time you have brought up sin?” I said, “Are you kidding? I have been traveling to and fro spreading this message.”

‘Then he said, “Well do you invite yourself to go and get your Bible and tell people what you are now sharing with us?” I said, “No they are inviting me.”

‘I have made hundreds and hundreds of speeches and you can pick them apart and the center has always been Jesus Christ.

‘Do many people get up and walk out? Yeah, all the time, do I hold it against them? No. Anybody can get up and stop listening. We are all just humans on this planet.’

He added: ‘Jesus Christ was the most perfect being to ever walk this planet and he was persecuted and nailed to the cross, so please don’t be surprised when we get a little static.’

The best part, however, was how he closed in prayer: “I will not give or back off from my path because you conquered death, Father, so we are not worried about all the repercussions.”

May God grant us all similar fearlessness in Jesus Christ. That spirit of fear you sometimes feel didn’t come from Him. We can always find a reason to back down, an excuse to worry about the repercussions. Phil Robertson reminds us that as Christians, we are always going to get a little static, so we may as well grow up spiritually and accept it.

The World War on Christianity

Never forget that the spirit of the world hates Jesus Christ and hates the Christian for refusing to submit to it, for refusing to be a part of it.

Across the world this week, hundreds of millions of us will be singing of that
“silent night, holy night” in the town of Bethlehem. But as Christmas approaches, with its beguiling promise of “peace on earth and
mercy mild”, how many of us will reflect on the words of our great Christmas
carols and be reminded that Christianity was a faith born in the East? How
many of us are aware that, while the first Christmas took place in the
Middle East, there today that same faith is under threat?
Last week, the leader of the Catholic Church, His Holiness Pope Francis, chose
to cast light on this dark story of persecution by taking to Twitter to warn
that we “cannot resign ourselves to think of a Middle East without
Christians”. Later in the week, Prince Charles warned that “Christians in the Middle East
are, increasingly, being deliberately attacked by fundamentalist Islamist
militants. Christianity was, literally, born in the Middle East and we must
not forget our Middle Eastern brothers and sisters in Christ”.

Don’t forget your brothers and sisters in Christ in the Middle East, in North Korea, in China, and in Africa. Pray for them. Pray that their persecutors will be won over by their faith, even as the Apostle Paul was won over by Stephen the martyr.

As the A&E affair demonstrates, one day you may need them to pray for you.

Media bias: the conclusive proof

Many people have argued over the years, in the face of the obvious evidence, that the media cannot be systematically biased to the Left because it would not make business sense to spurn more than half the population as customers. However, the recent decision by A&E to fire its biggest and most lucrative TV star because it is more concerned about catering to homosexuals than making money vividly demonstrates that politics and propaganda are more important to the media companies than making a profit:

A&E has placed Duck Dynasty patriarch Phil Robertson on indefinite hiatus following anti-gay remarks he made in a recent profile in GQ. “We are extremely disappointed to have read Phil Robertson’s comments in GQ, which are based on his own personal beliefs and are not reflected in the series Duck Dynasty,” A&E said in a statement. “His personal views in no way reflect those of A+E Networks, who have always been strong supporters and champions of the LGBT community. The network has placed Phil under hiatus from filming indefinitely.”

These are companies that never fire anyone for anti-Christian or anti-Republican remarks, but they’ll act with alacrity against anyone who says anything critical of the sexually abnormal. Notice that Alec Baldwin didn’t get fired for his many and various rants until he offended homosexuals one too many times.

And if you watch A+E, why are you supporting “strong supporters and champions of the LGBT community”?

As for the statement by the spokesman of GLAAD, I shall await with interest his next statement on Muslim theology. “Phil and his family claim to be Christian, but Phil’s lies about an entire community fly in the face of what true Christians believe,” GLAAD spokesperson Wilson Cruz said.

The fact is that a queer propagandist like Wilson Cruz obviously no more knows what “true Christians believe” than he knows what “true Martians believe”. The true and Biblically-based Christian belief is that self-identified homosexuals are unrepentant sinners whom God regards as abomination because they identify themselves with their sin. It is absolutely impossible to be a Christian and an unrepentant homosexual for the obvious reason that Christianity requires repentance for one’s sins.

Everyone on the planet is fallen. And no one chooses their particular flavor of temptation. But we are all responsible for our own actions, we all choose whether to give into our temptations or not, and we all choose whether to repent of those moral failures, those sins, or not.

The tolerance charade

As expected, the non-Christian groups who begged and pleaded for tolerance show none the moment they feel they are in power:

A girl guide group faces being thrown out of the national association after refusing to force members to drop God from the oath…. The Guiding Promise was altered earlier this year so that members now swear ‘to be true to myself and develop my beliefs’ rather than the original ‘to love my God’.

This is why it is always a massive mistake for Christians to give into the demands for tolerance from non-believers and other faiths in the first place. They inevitably refuse to grant the very same tolerance they demanded. If you don’t keep out the infiltrators, they will eventually take over your organization and pervert it. Tolerance is not a virtue, it is nothing more than weakness and self-inflicted vulnerability.

The secularists have made it abundantly clear that there is no room for Christianity in their godless society.

After 24 years of litigation, a federal court revealed in an emotional hearing that it has ordered the famous Mount Soledad Cross removed from a veterans memorial, holding it is a violation of the U.S. Constitution. Since 1913, a cross has stood as the centerpiece of the Mt. Soledad Veterans Memorial in San Diego, surrounded by nearly 3,000 granite plaques, individually honoring war heroes from every American war, from the Revolutionary War to Iraq and Afghanistan.

So be it. It is time for Christians to again begin constructing Christian civilization without the godless and the pagans as their society collapses into moral degradation and economic stagnation. We did it before. We can do it again.

He who shows up, wins

A Catholic priest mourns the corruption and decline of the Catholic family in reflecting how his parishioners have contracepted their parochial school out of existence:

A stranger came into the sacristy after Sunday Mass. In an incriminating huff he said, “I have been away from the area for fifteen years; where are the people? And now you are tearing down the school? I went there as a kid.”

I put my hands up to quiet him from further talking and I calmly said, “Let me ask you a question: How many kids did you have?” He said, “Two.” Then I said, “So did everyone else. When you only have two kids per family there is no growth.” His demeanor changed, and then he dropped his head and said, “And they aren’t even going to Mass anymore.”

I never thought I would be asking that question, but since I had to close our parish school, I’ve grown bolder and I started to ask that question more often. When I came to my parish five years ago, the school was on its proverbial “last legs.” In its last two years we did everything we could to recruit more students, but eventually I had to face the fact that after 103 years of education the school was no longer viable.

In one of the pre-closure brain-storming sessions with teachers, I was asked what to do to get more students. I replied, “Well, I know what to do, but it takes seven years.” The older teachers laughed, but the others needed me to state the obvious to the oblivious, viz. we need more babies….

I have modestly preached against contraception and sterilization, but
for many of my parishioners it is too late. Most of them are done with
raising more children. They have had their two kids twenty, thirty,
forty years ago and some women don’t want to hear about the Culture of
Death. They decide to go to other parishes where the pastor doesn’t
prick their consciences.

I am reminded of a diocesan official in his talk to us young pro-life,
pro-family priests twenty years ago. He said, “Yes, you can preach
against abortion and contraception, but remember, you have to put a roof
over your churches.” Now, our diocese is closing and merging these same
parishes, but you know what—they all have good roofs.

Pastors, if the demographic winter or bomb seems someone else’s
problem, try this at your parish as I recently did at mine. I took the
last ten burials and printed out their obituaries. At Sts. Peter and
Paul Cemetery we had six men and four women with an average age of 80
years. With the ten, I counted the number of siblings for a total of 45
and divided by 10 which came to 4.5 children per family. Then I counted
the ten’s children and divided by ten. The next generation had 28 kids
which I divided by ten and came to 2.8 per family. I then moved on to
the third generation, the grandchildren. These ten deceased had 48
grandchildren from their 28 children. When dividing these numbers, I
came to a figure of 1.714 per family. The national average number of children per household is 1.91; while the replacement level is 2.1 children per family.

I don’t claim to have answers on how to turn around a dying parish or
diocese. In fact, I am more at a loss as to what to say than ever
before. To defend the Church’s teaching against contraception and
sterilization is like going back to ancient Rome and warning them about
the dangers of indoor lead plumbing. No matter what you would say their
only response back would come in various levels of volume, “But it’s
indoor plumbing!” In other words, no matter the real threat to one’s
physical health from contraception and sterilization, the immediate
perceived benefits outweigh the moral and physical downside.

I’m not anti-contraception myself, but I am against the short-sightedness of small families.The Jews have it right and three is the bare minimum that any Christian couple should have, assuming they can have children. I understand that it is sometimes hard to see past the cost and the challenges that come with raising children, but I don’t know a single family with children who regrets the youngest. And most of the families I know, regardless of size, speak a little wistfully about how it would have been nice to have just one more.

If we’re going to win the future, our children have to show up for it.

The slumberer stirs

A few weeks ago, I was sent a copy of the Inflation-Deflation debate in ebook format. Having finished the first QUANTUM MORTIS novel, about which more later today, I thought it might be useful to put the 2011 PZ Myers Memorial Debate on the existence of gods in ebook format as well so I could review it preparatory to an eventual return to it.

I glanced at it on a train the other day, and since I’d almost completely forgotten how it proceeded, – was it really more than two years ago?!? –  I was surprised at how interesting I found it to be.  So yesterday I got in touch Dominic to see if he’d be interesting in continuing the debate and if he had any objections to my publishing it as an ebook once it is complete. He was more than happy to agree to  a return to the engagement, and so we intend to do so before the end of the year.

I am already working on my next installment, to which Dominic will write a response and both will be published here simultaneously. I’d like to know if Alex, Markku, and Scott are willing to return to their respective roles as Agnostic Judge, Christian Judge, and Atheist Judge; also, I’d very much appreciate it if Alex would send me his complete notes as all I’d posted here was his abbreviated summaries.

If you’re not familiar with the debate or, like me, don’t remember exactly how it went, you might like to read through it again in preparation for our return to the lists. So, here are the links as well as how it began with my first entry:

ON THE EXISTENCE OF GODS

In order to make the case that the weight of the available evidence and logic is more supportive of the existence of gods than of their nonexistence, it is necessary to define the two terms. In making my case for the existence of gods, I am relying upon the definitions of “evidence” and “logic” as defined by the Oxford English Dictionary. I am utilizing the term “evidence” in a sense that encompasses all three of the primary definitions provided.

Evidence:
1.Available body of facts or information indicating whether a belief or proposition is true or valid.
2.Information drawn from personal testimony, a document, or a material object, used to establish facts in a legal investigation or admissible as testimony in a law court.
3.Signs or indications of something.

Logic:
1.reasoning conducted or assessed according to strict principles of validity

There is a vast quantity of extant documentary and testimonial evidence providing indications that gods exist. This evidence dates from the earliest written records to current testimonials from living individuals. While it is true that the quality of this evidence varies considerably, it cannot simply be dismissed out of hand anymore than one can conclude Gaius Julius Caesar did not exist because one cannot see him on television today. Each and every case demands its own careful examination before it can be dismissed, and such examination has never been done in the overwhelming majority of cases.

For example, there are many documented cases of confirmed fraud in published scientific papers. If we apply the same reasoning to published scientific papers that some wish to apply to documentary evidence of gods, we have no choice but to conclude that all science is fraudulent. But this is absurd, as we know that at least some science is not fraudulent. Therefore, if one is willing to accept the validity of published scientific papers that one has not been able to verify are not fraudulent, one must similarly accept the validity of documentary evidence for the existence of gods that one has not examined and determined to merit dismissal for one reason or another.

Introduction 1 and Introduction 2

Round One Vox and Dominic’s Reply

Round One Dominic and Vox’s Reply

Round One Judges

Round Two

Round Two Judges

Round Three

Round Three Judges

The butter knife at the gun fight

While Tom Kratman doesn’t assert there are no atheists in foxholes, in the afterword of the Tuloriad, he expresses his doubts about the survival prospects of a culture that relies on putting large quantities of atheists on the front lines.

Where was Secular Humanism at Lepanto?
The moral of this story, this afterword, is “Never bring a knife to a gunfight.” Keep that in mind as you read.

In any case, religious fanatics? Us? We don’t think so.

We’re not going to sit here and lecture you on the value and validity of atheism versus faith. We’ll leave that to Hitchens and Dawkins or D’Souza or the pope or anyone else who cares to make the leap. One way or the other. Hearty shrugs, all around. A defense of the existence of God was never the purpose of the book, anyway, though we would be unsurprised to see any number of claims, after publication, that it is such a defense.

Sorry, it ain’t, either in defense of Revelations or in defense of Hitchens’ revelation that there was no God when Hitchens was nine years old. (Besides, Dinesh D’Souza does a much better job of thrashing Hitchens in public than we could, even if we cared to.)

Moreover, nope, we don’t think it’s unethical to be an atheist. We don’t think it’s impossible, or really any more difficult or unlikely, to be an atheist and still be a highly ethical human being. The same, sadly, cannot be said for governments. Thus, consider, say, the retail horrors of the Spanish Inquisition which, from 1481 to 1834 killed—shudder—not more than five thousand people, few or none of them atheists, and possibly closer to two thousand. Compare that to expressly atheistic regimes—the Soviet Union, for example, in which a thousand people a day, twenty-five hundred a day by Robert Conquest’s tally— were put to death in 1937 and ’38. And that’s not even counting starved Ukrainians by the millions. The death toll in Maoist China is said to have been much, much greater. Twenty million? Thirty million? A hundred million? Who knows?

Personally, we’d take our chances with the Inquisition before we would take them with a militantly communist, which is to say, atheist, regime. The Inquisition, after all, was a complete stranger neither to humanity nor to the concept of mercy.

But that’s still not the point of this book or this afterword. Go back to the afterword’s title. Ever heard of Lepanto? Everyone knows about the Three Hundred Spartans now, at least in some form or another, from the movies. Not enough people know about the battle of Lepanto….

Now let’s suppose, just for the moment and just arguendo, that God doesn’t exist, that He’s a pure figment of the imagination. What then won the battle of Lepanto? No, back off. What got the Christian fleet together even to fight the battle, for without getting together to fight it it could never have been won?

The answer is, of course, faith, the faith of the pope, Pius V, who did the political maneuvering and much of the financing, and also the faith of the kings, doges, nobles and perhaps especially the common folk who manned the fleet. And that answer does not depend on the validity of faith, only upon its sincere existence. Faith is, in short, a weapon, the gun you bring to a certain kind of gunfight.

If you’ve got any interest in the atheism/religion debate or military history, you simply must read the whole thing. And then reflect upon the likelihood that the West’s secular humanist culture will survive either the challenge of Islam in the Dar al Harb or the third world’s Christian revival.