I had thought of calling the next sort of superficial people the Idealists; but I think this implies a humility towards impersonal good they hardly show; so I call them the Autocrats. They are those who give us generally to understand that every modern reform will “work” all right, because they will be there to see. Where they will be, and for how long, they do not explain very clearly. I do not mind their looking forward to numberless lives in succession; for that is the shadow of a human or divine hope. But even a theosophist does not expect to be a vast number of people at once. And these people most certainly propose to be responsible for a whole movement after it has left their hands. Each man promises to be about a thousand policemen. If you ask them how this or that will work, they will answer, “Oh, I would certainly insist on this”; or “I would never go so far as that”; as if they could return to this earth and do what no ghost has ever done quite successfully – force men to forsake their sins. Of these it is enough to say that they do not understand the nature of a law any more than the nature of a dog. If you let loose a law, it will do as a dog does. It will obey its own nature, not yours. Such sense as you have put into the law (or the dog) will be fulfilled. But you will not be able to fulfill a fragment of anything you have forgotten to put into it.
-G. K. Chesterton, Eugenics and Other Evils
20 June 2009
Chesterton on the Remaking of America
15 June 2009
Atheist's Faith in Love
During Eucharistic adoration today, I was daydreaming about the atheist view of love as I heard it from the Atheist Experience television show and podcast. I supposed it would be called a reductionist view, i.e. love is just biology—chemicals, instincts, and the like which Mother Nature has put into us to keep the game going. Yet, according to these atheists, love is still meaningful. I beg to differ. When I experience love, it seems to me to be about something...something real...and its being about something real is precisely what gives it its meaning. Once you say, "Oh, that's just atoms arranging themselves this way and that in obedience to the laws of physics so as to give me this epiphenomenal experience."—all meaning is eviscerated. I regard this atheist/materialistic definition of love is an a priori definition that corrupts the data instead of explaining it. The only definition into which the data fits, I think, is the definition of love as ultimately transcendent. Atheists who believe that love (or anything else) is meaningful are trying to have their cake and eat it too—the joys of transcendent realities with a philosophy that can't account for them. What struck me today, was how this puts them was on par with their view of religious believers. God-belief, according to atheists, arises from the emotions and leads weak-minded people to believe in something that's not really there.
11 June 2009
(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (to Be a Moral Absolutist!)
The Left loves euphemisms and one of its favorite is 'tolerance'. 'Tolerance' is code for moral relativism. Those who congratulate themselves for being tolerant are really congratulating themselves for being moral relativists. Those who are scorned as intolerant are really being scorned for being moral absolutists.
There's a reason why the left employs the words 'tolerance' and 'intolerance' instead of 'relativism' and 'absolutism'. Doing so affords them the pretense of moral superiority, which is much easier to foist on the American public than intellectual superority. The Left domineers the opposition by calling it names, because they cannot convince it by giving it arguments. Because they have no arguments. It is precisely because their views are so hollow, that they must push them in the public sphere through the demagoguery of 'political correctness'.
The stripping of Carrie Prejean of her crown is nothing but the discrimination against someone for being a moral absolutist, for merely holding a different metaphysical view when it comes to human morality (a view which happens to be backed up by all the major religions of the world and virtually all of human history). This should put to the lie the idea that we can build a society on unchecked individualism in lieu of the common good.
Prejean was not on a soapbox. Her desire was to keep her opinions to herself, but she was cornered, at which time she courageously stated her belief in the most humble and benign manner possible. Is this how we treat people in America who, when asked to do so, respectfully declare what they believe? I hope this puts to the lie that Liberals are liberal.
05 April 2009
The New Atheism (Ho-Hum) II
In my previous post, The New Athiesm (Ho-Hum), I was challenged by a commenter who goes by the the moniker "mathyoo":
Here's a couple examples for you mathyoo:
First, a false presentation of theism by Dawkins can be found in this caricature of faith in the context of belief in God:
Now the actual position of theism as noted in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, 36:
Next, we have Dawkins' fallacious summary in The God Delusion of the Cosmological Arguments put forth by St. Thomas Aquinas:
First I ask, what is worse: the errors or the fatuous insufficiency with which age-old and venerated arguments are temerariously dismissed...by one who reminds us at every other moment of the profound rationality of which he and his ilk are in full possession? (Really Dick, if religion is the Root of All Evil, then, by all means, take it a little more seriously.)
Here's Dr. Peter Kreeft's summary of the the Cosmological Arguments put forth by St. Thomas Aquinas (my emphasis in bold, my comments in blue):
The argument is basically very simple, natural, intuitive, and commonsensical. We have to become complex and clever in order to doubt or dispute it. It is based on an instinct of mind that we all share: the instinct that says everything needs an explanation. Nothing just is without a reason why it is. Everything that is has some adequate or sufficient reason why it is. [Ironically, atheists leave off God, saying that there is no sufficient explanation for His existence; and in so doing fail to give sufficient explanation for everything.]
Philosophers call this the Principle of Sufficient Reason. We use it every day, in common sense and in science as well as in philosophy and theology. If we saw a rabbit suddenly appear on an empty table, we would not blandly say, "Hi, rabbit. You came from nowhere, didn't you?" No, we would look for a cause, assuming there has to be one. Did the rabbit fall from the ceiling? Did a magician put it there when we weren't looking? If there seems to be no physical cause, we look for a psychological cause: perhaps someone hypnotized us. As a last resort, we look for a supernatural cause, a miracle. But there must be some cause. We never deny the Principle of Sufficient Reason itself. No one believes the Pop Theory: that things just pop into existence for no reason at all. Perhaps we will never find the cause, but there must be a cause for everything that comes into existence...
Now the whole universe is a vast, interlocking chain of things that come into existence. Each of these things must therefore have a cause. My parents caused me, my grandparents caused them, et cetera. But it is not that simple. I would not be here without billions of causes, from the Big Bang through the cooling of the galaxies and the evolution of the protein molecule to the marriages of my ancestors. The universe is a vast and complex chain of causes. But does the universe as a whole have a cause? Is there a first cause, an uncaused cause, a transcendent cause of the whole chain of causes? If not, then there is an infinite regress of causes, with no first link in the great cosmic chain. If so, then there is an eternal, necessary, independent, self-explanatory being with nothing above it, before it, or supporting it. It would have to explain itself as well as everything else, for if it needed something else as its explanation, its reason, its cause, then it would not be the first and uncaused cause.
Why must there be a first cause? Because if there isn't, then the whole universe is unexplained, and we have violated our Principle of Sufficient Reason for everything. If there is no first cause, each particular thing in the universe is explained in the short run, or proximately, by some other thing, but nothing is explained in the long run, or ultimately, and the universe as a whole is not explained. Everyone and everything says in turn, "Don't look to me for the final explanation. I'm just an instrument. Something else caused me." If that's all there is, then we have an endless passing of the buck. God is the one who says, "The buck stops here."
If there is no first cause, then the universe is like a great chain with many links; each link is held up by the link above it, but the whole chain is held up by nothing. If there is no first cause, then the universe is like a railroad train moving without an engine. Each car's motion is explained proximately by the motion of the car in front of it: the caboose moves because the boxcar pulls it, the boxcar moves because the cattle car pulls it, et cetera. But there is no engine to pull the first car and the whole train. That would be impossible, of course. But that is what the universe is like if there is no first cause: impossible. [Dawkins, in effect, says that the engine is just another boxcar which theists arbitrarily conjure up to terminate the regress...and then make the unwarranted assumption that this boxcar (which we merely call an engine) is immune to regress, endowing it with properties normally ascribed to self-powered box-cars. But that is a mere caricature of classical theism, which says, in effect, that if we are to satisfy the Principle of Sufficient Reason and give a proper explanation of how one car has the power to pull another car, there must be a car who, necessarily, posesses its own power. Some car must possess it's own power to give it to one car...so it can pull another...so it can pull another...and so on and so forth. Dawkins caricature of the Cosmological Argument in effect says, that it is sufficient for the regress to go on infinitely with one car receiving its pulling power from the one before. Theists would say that no one car would have pulling power to pull another car if one of the cars didn't necessarily have its own pulling power to start the whole process. And this all men speak of as an engine.]
Here is one more analogy. Suppose I tell you there is a book that explains everything you want explained. You want that book very much. You ask me whether I have it. I say no, I have to get it from my wife. Does she have it? No, she has to get it from a neighbor. Does he have it? No, he has to get it from his teacher, who has to get it. . . et cetera, etcetera, ad infinitum. No one actually has the book. In that case, you will never get it. However long or short the chain of book borrowers may be, you will get the book only if someone actually has it and does not have to borrow it. Well, existence is like that book. Existence is handed down the chain of causes, from cause to effect. If there is no first cause, no being who is eternal and self-sufficient, no being who has existence by his own nature and does not have to borrow it from someone else, then the gift of existence can never be passed down the chain to others, and no one will ever get it. But we did get it. We exist. We got the gift of existence from our causes, down the chain, and so did every actual being in the universe, from atoms to archangels. Therefore there must be a first cause of existence, a God.
If there is no independent being, then the whole chain of dependent beings is dependent on nothing and could not exist. [This one sentence refutes Dawkins, no?]
In more abstract philosophical language, the proof goes this way. Every being that exists either exists by itself, by its own essence or nature, or it does not exist by itself. If it exists by its own essence, then it exists necessarily and eternally, and explains itself. It cannot not exist, as a triangle cannot not have three sides. If, on the other hand, a being exists but not by its own essence, then it needs a cause, a reason outside itself for its existence. Because it does not explain itself, something else must explain it. Beings whose essence does not contain the reason for their existence, beings that need causes, are called contingent, or dependent, beings. A being whose essence is to exist is called a necessary being. The universe contains only contingent beings. God would be the only necessary being—if God existed. Does he? Does a necessary being exist? Here is the proof that it does. Dependent beings cannot cause themselves. They are dependent on their causes. If there is no independent being, then the whole chain of dependent beings is dependent on nothing and could not exist. But they do exist. Therefore there is an independent being.
Saint Thomas has four versions of this basic argument.
* First, he argues that the chain of movers must have a first mover because nothing can move itself. (Moving here refers to any kind of change, not just change of place.) If the whole chain of moving things had no first mover, it could not now be moving, as it is. If there were an infinite regress of movers with no first mover, no motion could ever begin, and if it never began, it could not go on and exist now. But it does go on, it does exist now. Therefore it began, and therefore there is a first mover. [These two sentences, seem sufficient to refute Dawkins, who merely asserts that the first mover is subject to a mover before him, effectively denying the existence of a first mover and consequently forfeiting an explaination for why anything at all moves, violating the Principle of Sufficient Reason.]
* Second, he expands the proof from proving a cause of motion to proving a cause of existence, or efficient cause. He argues that if there were no first efficient cause, or cause of the universe's coming into being, then there could be no second causes because second causes (i.e., caused causes) are dependent on (i.e., caused by) a first cause (i.e., an uncaused cause). But there are second causes all around us. Therefore there must be a first cause.
* Third, he argues that if there were no eternal, necessary, and immortal being, if everything had a possibility of not being, of ceasing to be, then eventually this possibility of ceasing to be would be realized for everything. In other words, if everything could die, then, given infinite time, everything would eventually die. But in that case nothing could start up again. We would have universal death, for a being that has ceased to exist cannot cause itself or anything else to begin to exist again. And if there is no God, then there must have been infinite time, the universe must have been here always, with no beginning, no first cause. But this universal death has not happened; things do exist! Therefore there must be a necessary being that cannot not be, cannot possibly cease to be. That is a description of God.
* Fourth, there must also be a first cause of perfection or goodness or value. We rank things as more or less perfect or good or valuable. Unless this ranking is false and meaningless, unless souls don't really have any more perfection than slugs, there must be a real standard of perfection to make such a hierarchy possible, for a thing is ranked higher on the hierarchy of perfection only insofar as it is closer to the standard, the ideal, the most perfect. Unless there is a most-perfect being to be that real standard of perfection, all our value judgments are meaningless and impossible. Such a most-perfect being, or real ideal standard of perfection, is another description of God.
There is a single common logical structure to all four proofs. Instead of proving God directly, they prove him indirectly, by refuting atheism. Either there is a first cause or not. The proofs look at "not" and refute it, leaving the only other possibility, that God is.
Each of the four ways makes the same point for four different kinds of cause: first, cause of motion; second, cause of a beginning to existence; third, cause of present existence; and fourth, cause of goodness or value. The common point is that if there were no first cause, there could be no second causes, and there are second causes (moved movers, caused causers, dependent and mortal beings, and less-than-wholly-perfect beings). Therefore there must be a first cause of motion, beginning, existence, and perfection.
How can anyone squirm out of this tight logic? Here are four ways in which different philosophers try.
* First, many say the proofs don't prove God but only some vague first cause or other. "God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, not the God of philosophers and scholars", cries Pascal, who was a passionate Christian but did not believe you could logically prove God's existence. It is true that the proofs do not prove everything the Christian means by God, but they do prove a transcendent, eternal, uncaused, immortal, self-existing, independent, all-perfect being. That certainly sounds more like God than like Superman! It's a pretty thick slice of God, at any rate—much too much for any atheist to digest.
* Second, some philosophers, like Hume, say that the concept of cause is ambiguous and not applicable beyond the physical universe to God. How dare we use the same term for what clouds do to rain, what parents do to children, what authors do to books, and what God does to the universe? The answer is that the concept of cause is analogical—that is, it differs somewhat but not completely from one example to another. Human fatherhood is like divine fatherhood, and physical causality is like divine causality. The way an author conceives a book in his mind is not exactly the same as the way a woman conceives a baby in her body either, but we call both causes. (In fact, we also call both conceptions.) The objection is right to point out that we do not fully understand how God causes the universe, as we understand how parents cause children or clouds cause rain. But the term remains meaningful. A cause is the sine qua non for an effect: if no cause, no effect. If no creator, no creation; if no God, no universe.
* Third, it is sometimes argued (e.g., by Bertrand Russell) that there is a self-contradiction in the argument, for one of the premises is that everything needs a cause, but the conclusion is that there is something (God) which does not need a cause. The child who asks "Who made God?" is really thinking of this objection. The answer is very simple: the argument does not use the premise that everything needs a cause. Everything in motion needs a cause, everything dependent needs a cause, everything imperfect needs a cause. [Only non-powered box cars need a cause for them to move and in-turn pull another box-car. The ultimate cause is an engine. It is its own explanation and doesn't need a cause.]
* Fourth, it is often asked why there can't be infinite regress, with no first being. Infinite regress is perfectly acceptable in mathematics: negative numbers go on to infinity just as positive numbers do. So why can't time be like the number series, with no highest number either negatively (no first in the past) or positively (no last in the future)? The answer is that real beings are not like numbers: they need causes, for the chain of real beings moves in one direction only, from past to future, and the future is caused by the past. Positive numbers are not caused by negative numbers. There is, in fact, a parallel in the number series for a first cause: the number one. If there were no first positive integer, no unit one, there could be no subsequent addition of units. Two is two ones, three is three ones, and so on. If there were no first, there could be no second or third.
26 March 2009
The New Atheism (Ho-Hum)
Great post. I just ordered your book (from the library :). I used to listen to a lot of atheist audio in my mp3 player in an attempt to find intellectual stimulation--Point of Inquiry, Atheist Experience, Free Thought Radio. Recently, though, I gave it up because their infallible inability to get theistic arguments correctly turned from mere frustration into crushing boredom. They are so self-congratulatory in their intellectual superiority while they TOTALLY misunderstand that which they deride as beneath them. After countless hours of this, I just couldn't go on. I don't know how atheists live and breath in such an environment. As a former atheist, I also purchased the God Delusion, hoping for some semblance of intellectual stimulation. This uneducated union laborer was shocked at how a man of Dawkins reputation and learning can fill a book with fatuous rants and call it argument. He appears to be pathologically incapable of properly characterizing the opposing view. My 12 y/o daughter could out philosophize Dawkins. "If one gives answer before he hears, it is his folly and shame." -Proverbs 18:13BTW, I'm interested in finding some arguments for atheism that are rigorous and compelling. If you know of any, or have some yourself, speak up in the comments.
20 March 2009
14 March 2009
Let the Right One In (2008)
Let the Right One is a beautifully shot horror/drama set in mid 1980s Sweden about Oskar, a 12 y/o emotionally neglected outcast who befriends a vampiress of the same age. The achievement of this film is not its scares or thrills, but its power to draw you into the world of the disattached child as he finds succor in the deleterious. And so, quite uncomfortably, and against your better judgment, you find yourself rooting for Oskar's relationship with a homicidal vampiress. I find the film to be an indictment against the adult world that preaches against all kinds of sins while simultaneously predisposing its children to them. As much as I admired this aspect of the film, I found the plot to be kind of sketchy (and some scenes absurdly foolish), however it will be fun for any fan of the genre. 7.5 out of 10.
11 March 2009
Chesterton mocks liberalism 100 years before its time.
Liberalism advocates for animals, earth, and a sundry of hypothetical rights while it champions the killing of actual, living people. Chesterton, as usual, was prophetic—this time in his novel, The Man Who Was Thursday—when he wrote, in 1908, about a bomb-throwing anarchist murderer who died as a martyr of compassion for animals.
24 January 2009
22 December 2008
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (2008)
The Film
"If the intellect is the soul’s navigator, the will is its captain. A wise captain listens to his navigator, but it is the captain who is in charge and ultimately responsible for the ship." (Dr. Peter Kreeft). When reflecting on the Holocaust, any honest person, at some point, asks himself, "What would I do? Would I even know?" Truth is a Person—a Person with whom each of us has a relationship. If we love Truth with our will (or heart, i.e. our center), we will find it with our mind (either in this life or the next). Conversely, we humans are capable of self-deception, of fundamentally opting for the lie instead of the truth. Think about that for a moment: the human person is so complex that he can lie to himself...and believe it! Perhaps that's why Christ said that we must become like little children if we are to gain Heaven—because children are fundamentally honest, whereas we adults are clever enough to hide the truth from ourselves. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is a powerful parable-like story of a family—of each of its members' relationship with truth during a time when finding the truth was difficult and affirming it was dangerous. Told from the perspective of the wide-open, honest, and inquiring mind of a child (whose father is a Nazi officer), the film is a unique treatment of the spiritual and intellectual elements which where pressing on the common man—especially during his innocent and impressionable childhood—at one of the most evil times in human history. What goes on inside the mind of a child when the adults in his life, through the use of euphemism and denial, depict evil as though it were normal? Many haunting parallels can be drawn to how our present culture's children come to believe what they do about our own holocaust of pre-born people.
The Critics
"Boyne's accomplishment is to establish the uncomfortable truth that Nazis were people, too, with wives, children to raise and bills to pay. All it took for the tide of evil to sweep over Europe was for otherwise reasonable people to disregard the big picture, swallow the delusions of propaganda and focus on their own day-to-day survival."
—Phil Villarreal
"It’s the rare film that so slyly and so completely manages to knock you out of your comfort zone like The Boy in the Striped Pajamas does. It’s not merely that it creates a unique perspective on a moment in time that we haven’t seen before, though it does do that fantastically well. It’s that, at the same time, it sneakily challenges us to consider how much of what we take for granted in our own lives are things we’re not seeing, and should."
—Maryann Johanson
"One of the clichés in studying the Holocaust is to ask how Germans were able to murder and commit atrocities while working at the death camps, and then go home, as if from a regular job, and have dinner with their families and play with their children. "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas," turns that notion on its head. What must have it been like to be one of those children?. . . The movie doesn't shock with horrific images, nor does it dwell on the cruelty. Instead it shows how seemingly normal people are capable of great evil. The result proves to be ultimate example of a "loss of innocence" story. While appropriate for teen viewers, it isn't for children. If your kids are old enough to understand the reality of the historical event, then they should be able to handle this."
—Daniel M. Kimmel
The Audience
While there is no graphic violence, it is graphically implied in one scene where it is heard but not seen. Your child may be ready to see this film if he has already grappled with the basic reality of the Holocaust and can endure an emotionally haunting (albeit, non-graphic) depiction of it. If so, it is an inspiring springboard to discussion about the human person's relationship to truth. Take your teen to see it and then afterward to a comfy place to sip warm caffeinated beverages and discuss the nature of self-deception and how one can know if he knows the truth.
The Links
-Trailer
-Official website
-IMDb
-Rotten Tomatoes
-Wikipedia
-Book on which the film is based
-Jennifer F. asks, "If were a 31-year-old woman with three little kids in a busy house in Germany 1941, would I...?
